Policing and a culture of protect and serve
Dan here…In the middle and late eighties grants went out to train police on methods of intervention into domestic violence. In my experience on the North Shore Boston, police chiefs seemed to agree this was the most dangerous situation officers faced on a routine basis. There were also efforts to re-orient police departments to be more responsive to community needs…the push for this orientation to policing disappeared in the hysteria of “three strikes and your jailed” and privatizing jail services.
Community policing goes beyond simply putting officers on foot and bicycle patrols, or in neighborhood stations. It redefines the role of the officer on the street, from crime fighter to problem solver and neighborhood ombudsman. It forces a cultural transformation of the entire department, including a decentralized organizational structure and changes in recruiting, training, awards systems, evaluation, promotions, and so forth. Furthermore, this philosophy asks officers to break away from the binds of incident-driven policing and to seek proactive and creative resolution to crime and disorder.
The Community Policing Series was published in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the National Center for Community Policing at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice, with support from the C. S. Mott Foundation of Flint, Michigan. This article appeared in 1992.
Joe Lhota – RUDY’s Minnie Me – ran an incredibly racist campaign against De Blasio suggesting bringing back the Democrats would bring back crime. Of course, the last Democratic mayor was David Dinkins who just happened to be black. And of course, De Blasio is married to a black woman. What this only Republicans can reduce crime canard forgot to tell the voters was that the fall in the crime rate started under Dinkins who had the audacity to raise taxes so we could put more police on the street. Giuliani greatly benefitted from President Clinton’s efforts to have the Federal government assist local governments through The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services – something President Obama wants to extend.
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But if we are serious about addressing issues such as crime as well as having more professional police departments, we need to spend the money. Update: Table 3.15.6. Real Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment by Function shows that real (2009$) government spending on “public order and safety” peaked in 2009 at $350.8 billion per year but was down to $339.8 billion per year in 2012. This austerity was bad macroeconomics and was generally a terrible idea.
Want to end police treating minorities as “different” (from them) and not deserving the same respect as their “own”? Try doubling the minimum wage in a hurry and getting the labor market rebuilt with (legally mandated) centralized bargaining. Then minorities literally wont be different.
Otherwise we are trying to treat the human behavior symptom without treating the underlying economic/political pathology.
While we are on the subject, law enforcement these days is feeling freer and freer to encroach on everyone’s space on everything (20 blocks of Boston suburb searched without warrants, civil forfeiture, etc., etc., etc.). My explanation: the middle class (God help the poor — see above) has lost its mojo to de-unionization. No economic power, no political muscle — everyone feels free to step on us; we even step on each other (cops are middle class).
Shame: that’s what’s missing in the cops behavior towards minorities. Shame is what’s missing in law enforcement bureaucracies’ ever more cavalier overstepping on everybody else. In the latter case, 9/11 may have been the impetus but that there is nothing in the way to rein that impetus in — post de-unionization — is what allows it to rein unchecked. It’s a form of Parkinson’s Law.
Just to add to the middle class de-fang-ization picture: in the neighborhood I grew up in in the Bronx (hard by Yankee Stadium) we had a beautiful county courthouse (landmark status inside and out). Due the (300%?) crime jump in the late sixties through seventies the city built a beautiful new $120 million (today’s money) courthouse down the block to catch the overflow.
After crime dropped back 75%, Mayor Stop-and-Frisk thought to build a new $500 million (today’s) courthouse right next door to the “old” two (leaving two more derelict buildings — just what we needed in the Bronx). Such foolishness never would have been perped on the middle class of my growing up years — would have gone insane.
Was the difference our more affluent middle class with our high school (drop out?) educations and our 21 inch (15 inch?) black and white tellies — versus today’s more college educated, electronically space age Bronx population? No; it’s was just back then that we were all there was — all there was. Today’s middle class is nobody living in billionaires’ playgrounds.
PS. Mayor Stop pulled the same stunt in downtown Brooklyn (just over the bridge from City Hall() where I presume it was equally unneeded — for (today’s) $750 million. Four “old” and new courthouses may be viewed here:
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2014/03/obamas-148000th-activism-versus-real.html
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More current results of the helplessness induced by de-unionization:
The last two days have seen the stories of the rule against making risky derivative bets with FDIC covered money rolled back without any real fight — and — a law passed that allows the government to warrantlessly abscond with and store all electronic communications, ditto for no fight. No fight because there was no personnel on the spot to fight them — nobody manning battle stations = missing battalions of union lobbyists.
It’s the labor market, progressives.