Uvalde intensifies doubts over whether tiny police agencies make sense - Wash Post

[TGS]

No reason except the need to hire a thousands of officers.

There's nothing unique about America that would prevent this from happening.

If a state were to change their constitution and institute a state police force as the primary and singular police agency for that state, the obvious answer to your post would be that all the cops in the state would get rolled over to the new state agency.

You can find third world shit holes in this country today. We are seeing the West secede from their traditional values (especially in the USA) and the results are obvious and not surprising.


How many people want bigger, and therefore more corrupt government, is disturbing. A national police force would be part of that corruption.


In general, even with all the associated problems, more local control is better. Be that state, county or municipal.


One thing that small town policing will teach a person is self reliance. When a person is the only officer on, they will be stopping cars , searching cars, making arrest, doing investigations, etc. all alone on a regular basis. Often with back up far enough away that it will only show up for the aftermath of an incident. There are a lot of issues with that, but it does have a benefit as well.


Again, small towns have issues and many would be better served by County Deputies patrolling the area. It would be a good balance of power between city councils who want ticket money and the County Sheriff who is less worried about ticket revenue, but concerned about providing quality police services to the community that holds him accountable.


There are no perfect solutions, but giving the federal government more power is among the worst of solutions.

You're making a lot of noise about a national police force, but nobody else really is....and there's not even a legal infrastructure to support the idea. It would require a constitutional amendment so substantial that it would in effect be a completely new constitution.

There will be no national police force. You're ok. The sun will rise tomorrow.

[feudist]

First of all if the WaPo is for it, it's antithetical to America.

A weird neurotic dynamic has developed in my area towards hiring from the local large ghetto training department. Everyone who works there despises the place, so when they retire and go to neighboring departments all they do is badmouth it. Many of the local chiefs were captains and lieutenants there, so they've been indoctrinated to hate the officers, especially the veterans who can't be intimidated.

The upshot has been to limit transfers and concentrate on hiring off the street. This is a sea change because local departments have essentially depended on these transfers to have any experienced officers at all. It is both difficult to do consistently due to the low number of applicants and the expense of paying for and scheduling academy training.

Even worse, bad guys have developed the ability to drive cars beyond the ghetto city limits, Section 8 housing has seeded second and third generations of thuglifers into formerly quiet bedroom communities, and index crimes across the board are rising so fast that no one wants to report on it.

One local community went bankrupt and the Sheriff took over answering calls. Unfortunately, the area is so awash in thugs that the Sheriff could not sufficiently man the shifts-he has severe manning problems in his jail- so he had to accept a bunch of retirement transfers from the ghetto department. This infuriated all the deputies who were stuck in the jail awaiting their deliverance from corrections.

This, along with his idiotic woke policies led to losing nearly 10% of his department over 2 years. The County jail is now using civilian females, known as control room operators-basically button pushers to answer the phones and open/close the doors-to man the floors by themselves...using one deputy to float between several floors.

The Sheriff is facing multiple lawsuits from inmates who were killed, crippled and/or raped due to manpower insufficiencies coupled with overcrowding. He's also got several deputies injured on duty who are suing him over his policies.

IOW, the whole bleeding metro area is a powderkeg, with the fuse lit.

I've taken to wearing 2 guns again.

[mmc45414]

Do we not have competent, experienced men going to some of those small departments?

Around here I believe they are, they are not going to Mayberry, they are just going to suburbs where they are more supported and appreciated.

I live in an area where I could go about a half a mile and have passed through three jurisdictions, in another mile or so I could hit another, and then make a turn and in a few more miles hit a fourth, and if I had headed off in the opposite direction would have been in a fifth in about the same distance. This is in a smaller MSA of only about 850k, but the core city is less than 140k, half of what it once was. It has been perpetually diminished by families like mine, that moved away because they didn't like the crime and schools. So then these people settled in townships and villages that started growing a tax base. They end up becoming small cities and they have attracted the people that can buy nicer houses that get assessed higher, and those people expect police coverage that reflects what they are paying. Most of the rates are a county thing, so it is not that the rates are lower, just the more valuable property is outside the city limits.

So now the small suburban departments have enough money to pay the same (or better), the retirement plan is a state thing so that transfers, and rather than being shat upon by a city government that embraces all of the typical malarkey they can go work in an area where people like them and appreciate them and want them to be there doing what they do. It really is probably unfortunate, because the tax base is not where the most police are needed the most, but I am supportive of things being the way they are.

[jlw]

I have a very, very strong preference for the elected sheriff model. It creates an entirely different relationship with the people than that of an appointed chief who answers to a board of commissioners, city council, etc. Working for an elected sheriff is MUCH less political than a police chief who is up for election each and every day. It also gives one person that the public can hold accountable versus that of indirect accountability.

A national police force would be run by the same people who are currently in charge of the border.

A state police chief would be run by the large metro area(s) in your state as that is who predominantly elects your statewide officials.

Linkage blindness exists no matter what the model.

[Erick Gelhaus]

In Orange County CA, where I'm from and still have family, many of the smaller municipalities have gotten rid of their PDs and contracted with the OCSO to provide police service. The patrol cars are marked as both OCSO and with the name of the community to which they're assigned, e.g. San Clemente, Dana Point, etc. It seems to have worked out reasonably well.

Coming from a good-sized Sheriff's Office (14th largest in CA, one of the 400 largest in the country) that had contract cities, I'm comfortable with & prefer this model. The city decides on the size & scope of the policing they get - with input. They get a Lt, how every many Sgts they need/want, and the same goes for the deputies. The cars & patches reflect the city by name, the badges et al. reflect the Office. The city gets all of the investigative & additional resources that they couldn't afford. In the event of injury, admin leave, etc, there is almost immediate backfill of people.

In CA, it doesn't seem that we have a history or tradition of a strong state police. Heck, the state police, which was more security than anything, rolled into the Calif Highway Patrol in the early 90s.

With the Sheriff being elected as a Constitutional office holder, it is likely a pretty reasonable system for local control and accountability.

[TheNewbie]

Lots of support for the Sheriff model it seems. I’m glad to see it.


Any system will have issues, but the SO system is the best offered up so far. At least for smaller towns, though Uvalde is not small for a guy who grew up in a town that then had 600 people in it.

[JHC]

You can find third world shit holes in this country today. We are seeing the West secede from their traditional values (especially in the USA) and the results are obvious and not surprising.


How many people want bigger, and therefore more corrupt government, is disturbing. A national police force would be part of that corruption.


In general, even with all the associated problems, more local control is better. Be that state, county or municipal.


One thing that small town policing will teach a person is self reliance. When a person is the only officer on, they will be stopping cars , searching cars, making arrest, doing investigations, etc. all alone on a regular basis. Often with back up far enough away that it will only show up for the aftermath of an incident. There are a lot of issues with that, but it does have a benefit as well.


Again, small towns have issues and many would be better served by County Deputies patrolling the area. It would be a good balance of power between city councils who want ticket money and the County Sheriff who is less worried about ticket revenue, but concerned about providing quality police services to the community that holds him accountable.


There are no perfect solutions, but giving the federal government more power is among the worst of solutions.

More Federal power is not in the conversation. State standards are.

As far as local vs state level corruption . . . ain't nobody topping Uvalde anytime soon no matter how many hold their beers.

State standards, use it or lose it. Sounds like a reasonable balance.


I don't think we're that far apart except in the ginormous area of "traditional values". I'm kinda concerned about what a lot folks on the right mean by that nowadays. But I'll note that as outside the scope of local small PDs discussion.

[blues]

Lots of support for the Sheriff model it seems. I’m glad to see it.


Any system will have issues, but the SO system is the best offered up so far. At least for smaller towns, though Uvalde is not small for a guy who grew up in a town that then had 600 people in it.

I've grown fond of our local sheriff's office. The deputies I've met out and about, and at my LEOSA quals with them, have given me hope that all is not (yet) lost.

[TheNewbie]

More Federal power is not in the conversation. State standards are.

As far as local vs state level corruption . . . ain't nobody topping Uvalde anytime soon no matter how many hold their beers.

State standards, use it or lose it. Sounds like a reasonable balance.


I don't think we're that far apart except in the ginormous area of "traditional values". I'm kinda concerned about what a lot folks on the right mean by that nowadays. But I'll note that as outside the scope of local small PDs discussion.

Support for more federal power is a possibility than can come out of these types of issues. It’s something we should be aware of, and stand against. Regardless of what our other views on issues are.


We have state standards now, and they are inadequate and not proper for the needs of the public and LE. When a review of TCOLE was sent out I responded that more focus is needed on arrest/search/seizure, defensive tactics, first aid, shooting/tactics, etc.


The problem is beyond the scope of having state standards because of the cultural issues going on. The state standards will fail you.


The SO model allows more resources, funding, and manpower to be spread out over the larger area. The standards would be more local to the policies and training of the SO, but those standards would be higher than what the state could come up with.


You’re right, we are not that far apart on wanting better policing.

[mmc45414]

Lots of support for the Sheriff model it seems. I’m glad to see it.

I've grown fond of our local sheriff's office.

In principal I would be supportive of a Sherrif's office having a broader responsibility and better resources, except:

A national police force would be run by the same people who are currently in charge of the border.
A state police chief would be run by the large metro area(s) in your state as that is who predominantly elects your statewide officials.

A centralized responsibility makes it more difficult to diffuse the shitty decisions.

Right now here there is a developing hoonigan street racing (car/dirt bike/ATV) culture that is growing to be out of control, and the pursuit policies of the city police department are undeniably a contributing factor. It is bad enough that they are actually planning a large construction project to alter a major street to make it more narrow and more difficult to navigate in order to slow the speeds of the street racers (that know the police will not chase them for "traffic" offenses). So like adding a chicane on a racetrack before a corner that became deadly they are going to spend money they don't have to dig up a street and make it smaller. Their distorted logic is that the street was built before half the residents moved out of the city, so now the road is too big. I am no angel when it comes to speed limits, but 100+ on surface streets while passing up through the center turn lane is not just boys being boys. The speeds have become so high, one recent single car crash involved a guy hitting a pole hard enough that 4/5 people in the car were DRT, on a surface street.

In another situation there was a swarm of the ATV gangsters that did their flash mob at a sand volleyball court, and in the melee one of the security guards got sucker punched from behind (by a guy on probation) hard enough that he hit his head when he fell and died. This peer group behavior grows out of the knowledge that if you run you can get away, and you can get away because the city PD will not run you down.

So now the work-around is formation of task forces, that bring in the sheriff's department and the highway patrol (many of the faster wider streets are state routes) and somehow do some kind of mutual aid to get help from surrounding community PDs, to go police some of the worst spots because they are not handcuffed by the decisions of the political leaders of the core city. And I do not want those people making shitty decisions that impact my neighboring community.