My hard charging cop readers (and their supervisors) will likely hate what I have to say. That’s OK. Read the article anyway. Think about the ideas I discuss. My guess is that after 20+ years policing your community, you’ll eventually come to similar conclusions. It’s an issue of perspective; and I guarantee your perspective will change after a couple more decades in the game. If you read and embrace the ideals of this article, you’ll be far ahead of the curve and you will lead a much happier and more productive life.
The best police officers in this country don’t act like mindless automatons. Cops who robotically enforce every law on the books seldom accomplish anything useful besides generating measurable statistics to please a supervisor. “Law Enforcement” shouldn’t be the goal of a good police officer. In fact most officers would be far better off if “enforcing the law” became a much lower priority in their day-to-day patrol activities. What? Read on. I will try to explain what I have learned from some of the best officers on the planet and in my own experience being a cop for 23 years.
Would be Police should be watching episodes of the Andy Griffith show to fine out what an officer of the law should be doing in and for his community. Best training vids available.
ReplyDeleteGood article.....you can break it down by shifts.....
ReplyDeleteDays........tickets and burglary reports....
Evenings.....tickets, a few dui’s, and disturbances....
Midnights.....dui’s, disturbances, and actual burglaries....
But what do I know that was mid70/80’s......
Ed357
He's basically saying be Andy Griffith. Stop being Barney Fife.
ReplyDeleteAustralia, it's all about "policing for profit".
ReplyDeleteIt seems like everything now days is a reason to arrest someone. The cops around here love busting people for "child endangerment". Usually it is some blue collar parent who fell asleep and the kid went out the front door. A couple weeks ago it was a grandmother who was changing a dirty diaper when the kids went out. "Haul them all to jail!" seems to be the only answer the cops have. Guess what? People fall asleep. Diapers have to be changed. Toddlers are escape artists. The community would have been better served for the cop to bring the kid back, drive to a hardware store and buy a couple door locks to secure the doors where the kids could not open them. But that might cost an hour of time and $50. Better arrest the guardian, put them into the just us system, give the kids to CPS, spending hours and a hell of a lot more than $50 in tax money.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago, at about 5am, the doorbell rang. It was a neighbor girl about 4 or so. She was asking to play with the kittens in the garage. Her parents were a young couple who each worked two jobs to make ends meet. I could have called the cops, but instead I was a decent human being and walked her back home. Few weeks later I unloaded a kitten on her.
The title Law Enforcement Officer, infers and implies that said LEO knows the laws they are supposed to enforce. No where near the truth as so many cops do what they think is right or what they want to do.
ReplyDeleteBadgemonkeys exist to keep the tax slaves scared, compliant and docile. They exist to extract cash from us via the countless "fines" imposed for virtually EVERY action a person engages in. The exist to serve their political masters, NOT society. And until that reality changes they are and will remain the enemy of freedom and the citizens.
ReplyDeleteInteresting take, but NOPE. I'm neither scared or docile with regards to police or the local government. Compliant? If that implies abiding by the law, then yeah, guilty as charged. Guess that's why every interaction I've ever had with LE has been pleasant, neighborly, and civil. Guess that's the way things are when you're not a law breaker. Who'd have thunk huh?
DeleteDAN you friggin nailed it, mind if I copy and past your comment then pass it around. Oh and Rayvet your time will come, then your opinion will 180.
DeleteSaber 7
Spastic Toad basically captured everything that needs to be said.
ReplyDeleteIt’s not a difficult concept.
It’s about promoting freedom and liberty; not the police-state control mentality of, “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
Too many Law Enforcement Officers are not taught to use their own judgement. How many times does a welfare check end up with the person being shot. In the ‘60s and ‘70s cops could walk away-they were police.
ReplyDeleteJFM
Sorry for the copy and paste,
ReplyDeleteSir Robert Peel's Policing Principles
In 1829, Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police Force. He became known as the “Father of Modern Policing,” and his commissioners established a list of policing principles that remain as crucial and urgent today as they were two centuries ago. They contain three core ideas and nine principles.
9 Policing Principles
To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
To recognize always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
To recognize always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing cooperation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
To recognize always that the extent to which the cooperation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
To seek and preserve public favor, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humor, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public cooperation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
To recognize always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
3 CORE IDEAS
The goal is preventing crime, not catching criminals. If the police stop crime before it happens, we don’t have to punish citizens or suppress their rights. An effective police department doesn’t have high arrest stats; its community has low crime rates.
The key to preventing crime is earning public support. Every community member must share the responsibility of preventing crime, as if they were all volunteer members of the force. They will only accept this responsibility if the community supports and trusts the police.
The police earn public support by respecting community principles. Winning public approval requires hard work to build reputation: enforcing the laws impartially, hiring officers who represent and understand the community, and using force only as a last resort.
Terry Pratchett demonstrated this pretty well in his novel, Night Watch.
DeleteBeat me to it, Highlander. I've said for years that calling them and letting them call themselves "law enforcement officers" gives them the wrong mindset and that every man and woman who pins on a badge should be made to learn and be able to recite the Peelian Principles, just as I had to know the General Orders as a soldier.
DeleteThey're mostly revenue generaters anymore, not peace officers or law enforcement.
ReplyDeleteSomewhat off-topic, but:
ReplyDeleteToday is Killdozer Day. Hoist one in memory of Marvin Heemeyer.
Perfectly on-topic.
DeleteThe government agents exist because we allow them to exist.
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Happy Killdozer Day!
When raising the kids, my very Catholic ex needed to punish every misdeed even if she didn't know who did it. My philosophy was always "how do we prevent this from happening again?"
ReplyDeleteAs Boston T. Party (AKA Kenneth Royce) put it: "A 'Cop' works for the citizens. A "Law Enforcement Officer' works for the state."
ReplyDeleteI remember making the transition from when we used to be "Peace Officers" to what are now "Law Enforcement" officers.
ReplyDeleteI still remember the exact full-precinct muster in 1998, when a Captain first used the term to describe everyone in the room; he came in and after a morale pep talk, said the following, and I quote "Everyone is guilty of something. Your job as a law enforcement officer is to figure out what that is, and throw them in jail for it".
Mind you, this was spoken to guys that even worked the better neighborhoods, and not just us across the tracks in the hoods.
I left policing not long after but still have friends in the ranks, and now it's all full blown "law enforcement" and has been for the past 20 years. No more giving a break to someone like the old days. You'll get in trouble for that. Now, everyone goes to jail in many areas.
Law enforcement officer my ass. I'll bet everything I own that 99.99% of the "leos" don't KNOW the laws they "enforce".
ReplyDeleteReserve Police Battalion 101 isn't just going to magically re-staff itself, you know. The population isn't culling itself fast enough for the overlords, so the process will need to be accelerated.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a teen, we dirt bikes across the river from the town park. Once I had to use the restroom (oh the need for tp!). I walked my bike across the bridge and used the restroom there. I got a wild hair and decided to ride my bike out of the park. I got 10 feet when the hardest-ass cop in town comes around the corner. He was the last cop anyone would want to get caught by. He let me go with a warning.
ReplyDeleteAnother incident, I was asked to come to the police dept. I was 15. They played good cop / bad cop for I don't know how long. I hadn't done anything so I was more pissed than worried. Eventually they let me go soon after the "good cop" asked what I wanted to be. I laughed and said a lawyer. These days I know better. Just request a lawyer and STFU.
Dr Thomas Sowell said to understand bureaucracies you have to understand bureaucrats are only concerned with procedures, where outcomes mean nothing.
ReplyDeleteParaphrasing
Chillhill
LawEnforcementOfficials.
ReplyDeleteUsed in a sentence:
* "AuthoritiesAndOfficials announced a sweeping new series of reforms to aid LawEnforcementOfficials in their quest."
I taught my trainees and officers that people want Peace officers. We keep the peace by enforcing the law as a tool, not indiscriminately but with the goal of keeping people safe and they feel secure. The visual I used was people want Andy Griffith the peace officer and not Barnie Fife the law enforcement officer.
ReplyDeleteAre some of my comments that bad that you are not posting or are they not hitting you?
ReplyDeleteSaber 7
I must not be getting them. The only thing I've deleted out the past couple days are obvious troll comments, and those are all anonymous.
DeleteIn the future there will be no Barney Fifes in policing. Scrawny white dudes are not needed. The ideal “LEO” of the future is an 80-IQ sociopathic negro with psychotic hatred of whites. Said hatred having been programmed into them by the shot callers, of claimed 110+ IQ, who truly hate heritage whites.
ReplyDeleteAlso, no more local police, and especially no sheriffs. We wouldn’t want elected police with local ties. In the future police will be Federalized, the better to be able to use semi-feral Baltimorons to no-knock Montana patriots. That’s how our psychopathic “elite” will end-run posse commitatus.
Sound crazy to you? Country’s already 50% run by high-IQ psychopaths, who see themselves as separate from ordinary Americans, and those people are already using legally untouchable low-IQ ferals to terrorize normal people.
No, I can’t help being such a ray of sunshine. It’s a medical condition. I’m the real victim here!
When I grew up, I don't think the cops did any paperwork. Some would drive around while others would walk around and if you met one, it was always yes Sir, no Sir. Any mouthing off normally would end with you hoping your teeth wouldn't be loose for more than a few days. There was always a mutual respect, even when we were horsing around - they knew we were young and letting off steam, and we knew if we crossed a line we met the business end of those 4-ton flashlights.
ReplyDeleteNot once did we ever dare to say anything to our parents.