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Thread: DC chief tells officers the city council has "completely abandoned" them

  1. #21
    Member TGS's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Borderland View Post
    Officers per population probably depends on the crime rate. High crime rate, more officers.
    I generally agree with the rest of your post, but this part isn't quite true. Very high crime areas also tend to be low income areas, which means less funding for police, which means less police for the population than what they should have/what you'd expect.

    High income areas will typically have more police and less crime.....at least in the northeast where everything is municipal based, and you can isolate these things easily compared to the county-based shared services like much of the country uses.
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  2. #22
    Modding this sack of shit BehindBlueI's's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TGS View Post
    I generally agree with the rest of your post, but this part isn't quite true. Very high crime areas also tend to be low income areas, which means less funding for police, which means less police for the population than what they should have/what you'd expect.

    High income areas will typically have more police and less crime.
    I suspect that's highly regional. In my county the officers are dispersed by 911 call volume. Neighborhoods with the most calls get the most cops, etc.

    Rural areas, and certain suburban areas, I think your assessment is more correct. Rural areas have less cops anyway and drug-addled rural areas with no manufacturing base any longer have almost no police presence. State occasionally sends in a task force to swirl the mess a bit, but a great example is Austin, IN. Maybe 2 full time and 5 reserve officers for the town. Roughly 1 in 40 residents is HIV positive due to needle sharing (Opana abuse) and prostitution at the local truck stop.
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  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by BehindBlueI's View Post
    And that's exactly what a lot of cops are going to do. Take their runs. Nothing more, nothing less. Little to no self-initiated activity or proactive policing. And it's exactly what the brass will want, and the politicians. Fewer proactive stops, fewer chances something goes wrong and you have to kill someone.

    You get more of what you reward and less of what you punish, and the bare minimum pays exactly the same.
    That's what a lot of folks do. The only thing they're proactive in is checking their bank deposit. Surprisingly to me was that there are a lot of agencies that really don't want proactive policing or maybe do until the wrong people get bagged. Even more prevalent it seemed are the higher level, say, watch commander level people who consciously keep troops on a tight leash and dislike officer generated contacts or arrests except for the most outrageous on-sight stuff. If you happen to be the type that ran radio-shack portable scanners with crystals set for the surrounding agency's channels and maybe happened to pop-up on unannounced "mutual aid" assists coming into your city or maybe on the border but never, ever -almost never, a little deeper or if you did lot's beaucoup FI's, car stops, you were viewed with a jaundiced and speculative eye by some and grudgingly appreciated by others. But I digress and wool-gather.

    I'm sad to see what NY and others are doing with their specialized units and hope that this is a pendulum swing and not a last gasp. As I'm sure most here know you can't "work" a beat by just answering radio calls. Whether you're in a car or a correctional facility, people will fill any vacuum's left by the officer with activity of their own design unless you choose not to let them.
    -All views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect those of the author's employer-

  4. #24
    Site Supporter Erick Gelhaus's Avatar
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    Since "pro-active" keeps getting, which of the recent events was self-initiated activity? Which were dispatched calls?

  5. #25
    Modding this sack of shit BehindBlueI's's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Erick Gelhaus View Post
    Since "pro-active" keeps getting, which of the recent events was self-initiated activity? Which were dispatched calls?
    Ours locally was proactive. It's not getting the same nationwide attention but that's little consolation to the officer involved as he gets sued and now his name is in the media. Or the investigator who has had threats at his house. Or the guy who got disciplined for comments made in what he thought was a private setting but turned out to not be. It started as a traffic stop.

    If it makes national news or not isn't the only consideration.
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  6. #26
    Our local one, while it was a dispatched call, the officer in the hot seat wasn't given the call.

    He knew his coworkers who received the call were woefully unprepared/untrained to deal with the situation and he started that way voluntarily.

    Last year I had to involve myself in a situation on another side of town to end it. Thankfully, it worked out well for me.

    Part of me worries what I would do now in this climate. But the other part of me knows there are mirrors in my home and if I could have prevented a tragedy and didn't leave my shade tree to help.......

    Well, we just can't have that.

  7. #27
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    Having taught domestic violence investigation when I still had relevance. One tactic I suggested was staging for back-up to arrive before approach. In my experience, DV calls are rarely assaults in progress. The arrival of police changes the dynamic radically and what had been a stable scene may not escalate. (Despite what the Washington Post and the Democratic Party think, de-escalation doesn't necessarily work.) When back up arrives, you have a second officer in the event of resistance, a second police witness, and today a second body camera.

    Today it may be time to stage for back-up on more calls for the very same reason. While we'd like to help true victims and catch true bad guys, we're primarily expediting to calls for the protection of other officers. Staging for other calls would provide that second officer/witness/BWC, It would also somewhat reduce the risk of departmental collisions during response.

    We also need to evaluate the policy of mandatory or preferred arrests in domestic violence cases. That would reduce the burden on police, the courts, and corrections. Victims could still prefer charges if they wished, but those charges would likely be by district court summons. If an arrest warrant was issued, police wouldn't be necessarily making the arrest of a fired up, likely intoxicated subject. Indeed, these unarmed social workers I hear so much about could respond to domestic violence calls as the victim usually just wants someone to tell the partner that he or she can't do that or to stop being mean. A social worker can do that as well as a cop can. I understand that this change in policy may cause a rise in domestic violence, but some percentage of DV arrests are of black males and a smaller percentage result in use of force. It seems society is more concerned about that than crime victims.

  8. #28
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    In my town call volume is so high that if cops worked traffic, then the others have had to take their calls. Likewise, calling for backup puts everybody even further behind. This situation is especially true on the night shift. I see the solution as being more and not fewer officers. In the Atlanta Wendy's shooting, if these officers had called for backup before it got out of hand, perhaps the shooting would not have occurred. However, I suspect that the patrol sgt would have asked them why two officers needed more help to arrest just one guy. And has their not been a stigma attached to calling for backup if some viewed doing so to be unnecessary?

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by willie View Post
    However, I suspect that the patrol sgt would have asked them why two officers needed more help to arrest just one guy. And has their not been a stigma attached to calling for backup if some viewed doing so to be unnecessary?
    That's not the case at my agency. We're not a big city by any means (~120k), but we stay busy...especially in the summertime when patrol officers are bouncing from call to call throughout the shift. I've seen dispatchers get pissy about non-inprogress calls stacking up on the CAD due to this...but the patrol sergeants promptly tell them to STFU (in a professional manner).

  10. #30
    Site Supporter Coyotesfan97's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by willie View Post
    In my town call volume is so high that if cops worked traffic, then the others have had to take their calls. Likewise, calling for backup puts everybody even further behind. This situation is especially true on the night shift. I see the solution as being more and not fewer officers. In the Atlanta Wendy's shooting, if these officers had called for backup before it got out of hand, perhaps the shooting would not have occurred. However, I suspect that the patrol sgt would have asked them why two officers needed more help to arrest just one guy. And has their not been a stigma attached to calling for backup if some viewed doing so to be unnecessary?
    From what I’ve read there was no indication this was going to turn into an all out fight. I don’t know how many times I’ve called for a third unit when things didn’t add up and I started to get a bad feeling. I never seen that come back as a stigma.
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