Things We Sometimes Forget

This article, this "speech" to the graduates
is very inspiring. Thank you for sharing it.

Great speech, except the "No call too small" part. Maybe in Orange County you have infinite resources, but no one else does. Choices must be made about what receives police attention. Time spent on barking dog complaints is time not spent on drug dealers or other offenders that require self generated work.

Chiefs love the "no call too small" attitude because it ingratiates them with city council. Unfortunately, it means their officers are going to nuisance calls that do nothing to make the city safer and reduce job satisfaction. But, hey, if the mayor is happy that's all that matters, right?

By not saying "no, that's not a police matter" the police become all things to all people and become inundated with nuisance complaints. Saying no takes guts; a quality sorely lacking in many police administrators.

Last night I got a call because a store clerk was rude to a customer. Thankfully, my boss doesn't want us spending one second on such nonsense, because that call is too small and I have better things to do with my time.

I agreed that you need to make choices on call; however, if you keep ignoring calls like barking dogs, people will take the law into their own hands and then the situation becomes dangerous for cops because they did not take immediate, swift action against the owners. Cops have plenty of laws to take action on things like this if they really want to. Furthermore, if you don't take action against small things, people will say "Why should I help them, when they didn't help me?" Police Chief Reuben Greenburg in his book Let's take back our streets stated that his cops answer every call no matter how trivial because it enhances the contact between the public and the police. He also stated that if the people think that the police don't care about trivia matters such as taking a burglary re[prt in person or answering to a minor fender bender, then why should the public help out the police when things are more serious. How would you cops feel about it after you retire, you reported a trivia crime event especially if it happend to you and the cops did not respond. You be pretty tick off.

Frankly, it seems to me no matter how hard they tried, the cops can't seem to put some drug dealers out of business, so maybe it is about time they get back to answering calls like a barking dog or directing traffic when the traffic lights are out of order.

In the 1980s, being a construction worker was one of the most dangerous jobs in America and the reason was that President Ronald Reagan and Republican governors cut back funding on workplace safety and inspections. Even if the company was guility of safety violations, they woud paid a small fine and never have their license revoke. You can saye that about the coal companies in West Virgnia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, etc.

If you cops don't like the working conditions in your department, you can leave for another agency. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for people who work in the coal mines, meat packaing industries, etc., because those are the only jobs available in their area which is one reason why people join the military. If there other different industries with better pay and better worker protections such as labor unions, companies like coal mining would be out of business or they be importing foreign workers (both legal and illegal).

I disagree that since "the cops can't seem to put some drug dealers out of business" they should give up entirely and go back to directing traffic. Sorry, I don't buy into to a "let's just give up" mentality.

I agree that in an ideal world there would be enough resources for all calls to be answered; just show me where to sign up for that department and I'm there.

But that's not the case. We have to make choices about what we do with what we have.

So the question is; do you answer trivial calls and not have time for proactive work, or do you select the projects that give you the most bang for your buck and are likely to have the biggest impact on the community?

I can either :
a) go to all the burglary calls in person, which makes the victim feel warm and fuzzy because they think the police are trying to solve it (but since we spend all our time going to all the small calls we don't actually solve many) or

b) not spend so much time on the burglaries that have already happened (forensics notwithstanding, you want me to look at where you tv used to be?) and instead spend my time doing surveillance on the guy I'm pretty sure is doing the burglaries and catch him in the act.

As for the construction comments; didn't follow the line of thinking there, sorry.

I guess the question are:

Is the Broken Windows theory synonymous with "no call too small"?

And, are the Broken Windows strategy and the Crime Reduction / Prolific Offender targeting strategy mutually exclusive?

In my city, we had a rash of burlargies committed in the south side and in the north side of the city. The people in those areas were really tick off at the police's inability to break the case. The police at the community meetings got a real grilling by the public. I bet you that if more police officers had their home burglarizes, they would be using their brains to discover who was doing it.

I don't see bang for the buck when it takes police several months or years to bring street gangs down considering the fact that many of these gangs are pretty sophicated in their operations. Even if you take them down, you have other people taking their place let alone put a dent in the drug trade. Even many law officers will attest to that fact.

I also don't see more bang for the buck, when the police are using their enhance police powers under the Patriot Act to spy on anyone who criticizes the war in Iraq instead of going after terriorists, gun dealers, drug dealers, etc. Police spying on American citizens is having a big impact on the community because you are wasting scarce police resources, manpower, and funding that should have been used against terrorists and the criminal element and then the police would be crying their eyes out that they need more money. I would not give one more penny to the police, because they could not or would not use the money that it was suppose to be used for.

My point about construction jobs, is that you were more likely to be killed doing construction work back in the 1980s than being a police officer. You had more construction workers killed in a single year more than police officers during that time era. The reason was that the federal government cutback on construction inspections and impose little or no sanction against the contruction firms.

Nowadays, cops are so busy, they have no time for proactive work. Even if they did, when it comes time for number crunching, proactive police work will take the biggest hit, and the personnel will be reassign to do reactive police work such as patroling the street. I

Hi all. Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
I am from Bahrain and learning to read in English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Where haven you been yet? ������ Cheap airfare."

With love 8-), Genevieve.