Baltimore police stopped noticing crime after Freddie Gray's death. A wave of killing

[GMDino]

So rather than fix the problems that were found they decided to just ignore everything?

I suppose "that'll show 'em to question the police!"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltimore-police-not-noticing-crime-after-freddie-gray-wave-killings-followed/744741002/

Quote:Just before a wave of violence turned Baltimore into the nation’s deadliest big city, a curious thing happened to its police force: officers suddenly seemed to stop noticing crime.

Police officers reported seeing fewer drug dealers on street corners. They encountered fewer people who had open arrest warrants.

Police questioned fewer people on the street. They stopped fewer cars.

In the space of just a few days in spring 2015 – as Baltimore faced a wave of rioting after Freddie Gray, a black man, died from injuries he suffered in the back of a police van – officers in nearly every part of the city appeared to turn a blind eye to everyday violations. They still answered calls for help. But the number of potential violations they reported seeing themselves dropped by nearly half. It has largely stayed that way ever since.

“What officers are doing is they’re just driving looking forward. They’ve got horse blinders on,” says Kevin Forrester, a retired Baltimore detective.

The surge of shootings and killings that followed has left Baltimore easily the deadliest large city in the United States. Its murder rate reached an all-time high last year; 342 people were killed. The number of shootings in some neighborhoods has more than tripled. One man was shot to death steps from a police station. Another was killed driving in a funeral procession.

“In all candor, officers are not as aggressive as they once were, pre-2015. It’s just that fact.”
Gary Tuggle, interim Police Commissioner of Baltimore

What's happening in Baltimore offers a view of the possible costs of a remarkable national reckoning over how police officers have treated minorities.

Starting in 2014, a series of racially charged encounters in Ferguson, Missouri; Chicago; Baltimore; and elsewhere cast an unflattering spotlight on aggressive police tactics  toward black people. Since then, cities have been under pressure to crack down on abuses by law enforcement.

So has the U.S. Justice Department. During the Obama administration, the department launched wide-ranging civil rights investigations of troubled police forces, then took them to court to compel reforms. Under President Donald Trump, Washington has largely given up that effort.
"If you want crime to go up, let the ACLU run the police department," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a gathering of police officials in May.

Whether that scrutiny would cause policing to suffer – or crime to rise – has largely remained an open question. 

In Baltimore, at least, the effect on the city's police force was swift and substantial.

Police typically learn about crime in one of two ways: either someone calls for help, or an officer sees a crime himself and stops to do something. The second category, known among police as an “on-view,” offers a sense of how aggressively officers are doing their job. Car stops are a good example: Few people call 911 to report someone speeding – instead, officers see it and choose to pull someone over. Or choose not to.

Millions of police records show officers in Baltimore respond to calls as quickly as ever. But they now begin far fewer encounters themselves. From 2014 to 2017, dispatch records show the number of suspected narcotics offenses police reported themselves dropped 30 percent; the number of people they reported seeing with outstanding warrants dropped by half. The number of field interviews – instances in which the police approach someone for questioning – dropped 70 percent.

“Immediately upon the riot, policing changed in Baltimore, and it changed very dramatically,” says Donald Norris, an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, who reviewed USA TODAY's analysis. “The outcome of that change in policing has been a lot more crime in Baltimore, especially murders, and people are getting away with those murders.”

Police officials acknowledge the change. "In all candor, officers are not as aggressive as they once were, pre-2015. It’s just that fact," says acting Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle, who took command of Baltimore's police force in May.

Tuggle blames a shortage of patrol officers and the fallout from a blistering 2016 Justice Department investigation that found the city's police regularly violated residents' constitutional rights and prompted new limits on how officers there carry out what had once been routine parts of their job. At the same time, he says, police have focused more of their energy on gun crime and less on smaller infractions.

"We don’t want officers going out, grabbing people out of corners, beating them up and putting them in jail," Tuggle says. "We want officers engaging folks at every level. And if somebody needs to be arrested, arrest them. But we also want officers to be smart about how they do that."

The change has left a perception among some police officers that people in the city are free to do as they please. And among criminals, says Mahogany Gaines, whose brother, Dontais, was found shot to death inside his apartment in October.

 “These people don’t realize that you’re leaving people fatherless and motherless,” Gaines says. “I feel like they think they’re untouchable.”

A wave of violence
On a sticky morning in May, the Rev. Rodney Hudson slips on a black “Sermonator” T-shirt and walks down the street from his west Baltimore church, a gray stone edifice two blocks from where police arrested Gray. A few days earlier, a drug crew from another neighborhood set up camp on the corner across the street. Hudson says  the dealers nearly got into a gunfight with the crew that usually works across from the elementary school down the block.

Since Gray’s death, at least 41 people have been shot within a short walk of Hudson’s church.

“Drug dealers are taking control of the corners and the police’s hands are tied,” Hudson says. “We have a community that is afraid.”

Rev. Rodney Hudson, the pastor of AMES United Methodist Church in West Baltimore, conducts a Bible study on the sidewalk in front of his church. (Photo: Doug Kapustin, for USA TODAY)

Two blocks away, Mayor Catherine Pugh and a knot of city officials are under a tent on an empty lot to break ground for a group of new townhouses. Police officers linger on the streets, and a helicopter swirls overhead. But three blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue, drug crews still appear to be at work. Shouts of “hard body” – one of the drug cocktails on offer – ring clearly. Another man shouts a warning as Hudson and a reporter approach.

Drug dealers have worked Baltimore’s street corners for decades. But Hudson says it has been years since he has seen so many young men selling so brazenly in so many places. Dealers, he says, “are taking advantage” of a newly timid police force.

 At least 150 people have been killed in Baltimore this year.


Ebony Owens’ son, Decorey Horne, 20, was shot to death in 2016 in a parked car along the narrow street behind his aunt’s house. Another man who was with him was shot but survived. Eleven months later, the father of Owens' youngest son, Sherman Carrothers, was found dead outside his house with a gunshot wound. He was one of four people shot in the city that night.

Owens grew up in Baltimore and knew the city could be dangerous. But this, she says, is different:

“I don’t remember it being like this.”

'These guys aren't stupid'
By almost any measure, this has been a troubled time for Baltimore’s police force.

It began in April 2015, when officers in west Baltimore chased Gray, arrested him for possession of what they said was an illegal switchblade and loaded him into the back of a police van, handcuffed but without a seatbelt. By the time Gray left the van, he was in a coma.
He died a week later. Protests followed, then riots. Prosecutors charged six police officers for Gray’s death but abandoned the case after three were acquitted.

The next year, the Justice Department’s civil rights arm accused Baltimore’s police of arresting thousands of people without a valid legal basis, using unjustified force and targeting black neighborhoods for unconstitutional stops. Investigators quoted a detective who said he saw officers plant drugs on a suspect, and a patrol officer who said his job was to “be the baddest (expletive) out there.”

This year, eight officers in an elite anti-gun unit were convicted in a corruption scandal that included robbing drug dealers and carrying out illegal stops and searches. One officer testified that a supervisor told them to carry replica guns they could plant on suspects. Another officer was indicted in January after footage from his body camera showed him acting out finding drugs in an alley. The city’s new police commissioner, Darryl De Sousa, resigned in May after federal prosecutors charged him with failing to pay his income taxes.

For civil rights lawyers and federal investigators, those episodes offer evidence of a police force in trouble and too often willing to trample the rights of minorities.

But some officers drew a different lesson: “Officers no longer put themselves on the firing line,” says Victor Gearhart, a retired lieutenant who supervised the overnight shift in Baltimore’s southern district before he was pushed out of the department for referring to Black Lives Matter activists as “thugs” in an email.

“These guys aren’t stupid. They realize that if they do something wrong, they’re going to get their head bit off. There’s no feeling that anybody’s behind them anymore, and they’re not going to do it,” he says. “Nobody wants to put their head in the pizza oven when the pizza oven is on.”

Former Baltimore Police Lt. Vic Gearhart, pictured at his Baltimore County, Md. home, says "officers no longer put themselves on the firing line." (Photo: Doug Kapustin, for USA TODAY)

Gearhart and other officers say no one ordered them to make fewer stops or take fewer risks. "We didn't have to tell them," he says. "We just said these are the facts, this is the situation, and if you want to risk your career, have at it." 

That reaction fits a wider pattern. Nearly three-quarters of police officers who responded to a Pew Research Center survey last year said high-profile incidents had left them less willing to stop and question people who seem suspicious. Even more said the incidents had made their jobs harder.

It has also drawn scorn from civil rights advocates, who scoff at the idea that police can’t protect both the city and the rights of its residents.

“What it says is that if you complain about the way the police do our job, maybe we’ll just lay back and not do it as hard,” says Jeffery Robinson, a deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, which had advocated for an overhaul of police agencies in Baltimore and elsewhere. “If it’s true, if that’s what officers are doing, they should be fired.”

A sudden change
To track the change in Baltimore, USA TODAY examined 5.1 million police dispatches from 2013 to 2017.
They show that even before Gray died, the number of encounters Baltimore officers initiated on their own was dropping.
But in the weeks after the 25-year-old’s death – after protests erupted into riots, and the National Guard came and left – the number of incidents police reported themselves plummeted.

After Freddie Gray’s death, Baltimore police stopped noticing crime
Policing Initiated by officers

Shootings

START
The number of encounters Baltimore police initiated themselves – rather than in response to a call – plummeted after Freddie Gray’s death, and the number of homicides and assaults involving guns rose.
SOURCE USA TODAY analysis of Baltimore Police Department records

Where once it was common for officers to conduct hundreds of car stops, drug stops and street encounters every day, on May 4, 2015, three days after city prosecutors announced that they had filed charges against six officers over Gray’s death, the number fell to just 79. The average number of incidents police reported themselves dropped from an average of 460 a day in March to 225 a day in June of that year, even though summer weather typically brings higher crime. By the end of last year, it was lower still.

Hundreds of demonstrators march toward the Baltimore Police Western District station during a protest against police brutality and the death of Freddie Gray in 2015. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)

At the same time, violence in the city leapt to historic highs. Police recorded more than 200 murders and assaults involving guns in May 2015, triple the number in March.

Criminologists who reviewed the records say it’s impossible to determine whether that rapid change played a role in the city’s rising crime, but some found the pattern troubling.

“The cops are being less proactive at the same time violence is going up,” says Peter Moskos, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor and former Baltimore officer who reviewed USA TODAY’s data and analysis. “Cops are doing as requested: lessening racial disparity, lessening complaints, lessening police-involved shootings. All those numbers are just great right now, and if those are your metrics of success, we’re winning. The message has clearly gotten out to not commit unnecessary policing.”

Neither the mayor nor Kevin Davis, the city’s police commissioner until January, responded to questions about the changes.
Anthony Barksdale, a retired Baltimore police commander, says the message to officers was unmistakable.

This is nothing short of them being big babies.  They don't want to try and do their job better so they just quit doing anything where THEY might be questioned.

Sad.

As some say:  There is a middle ground between what the investigations found out about the violation of constitutional rights and just ignoring EVERYTHING.

If they can't do it...quit.  That goes all the way up.

Police work is inherently dangerous and an incredible responsibility.  With that come more criticism than the guy who is an accountant or taxi driver.  Don't like it?  Go away and let people who are willing to learn and work do the job.

[Beaker]

Did anybody watch The Wire?

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-12-2018, 10:27 AM)GMDino Wrote: So rather than fix the problems that were found they decided to just ignore everything?

I suppose "that'll show 'em to question the police!"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltimore-police-not-noticing-crime-after-freddie-gray-wave-killings-followed/744741002/




This is nothing short of them being big babies.  They don't want to try and do their job better so they just quit doing anything where THEY might be questioned.

Sad.

As some say:  There is a middle ground between what the investigations found out about the violation of constitutional rights and just ignoring EVERYTHING.

If they can't do it...quit.  That goes all the way up.

Police work is inherently dangerous and an incredible responsibility.  With that come more criticism than the guy who is an accountant or taxi driver.  Don't like it?  Go away and let people who are willing to learn and work do the job.

More pro cop stories from GM, shocking to say the least.  I can't speak for Baltimore, having never been there.  I can tell you that rank and file officers notice that administration does not have their back when a citizen complains.  Complaints are taken as gospel, regardless of how improbable or outlandish they are.  If the officer and deputies on the street know that admin is going to feed them to the wolves if something goes south they're going to take far fewer chances.  That guy looks suspicious, I won't stop and question him because I might get accused of profiling.  The biggest issue is arm chair quarterbacking, something GM excels at so this should interest him.

A decision is a good decision based on why it was made at the time.  The results of said decision do not determine if the decision was a good one.  Unfortunately the opposite mentality has firmly taken hold.  This has a stifling effect on the initiative of individual officers.  One of my early mentors told me something that could not have been more true; you can't get fired for being incompetent, you can get fired for doing too much.  

Now feel free to return to you castigation of people who do a job you can't do and have no idea how to do. 

[GMDino]

(07-12-2018, 11:09 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: More pro cop stories from GM, shocking to say the least.  I can't speak for Baltimore, having never been there.  I can tell you that rank and file officers notice that administration does not have their back when a citizen complains.  Complaints are taken as gospel, regardless of how improbable or outlandish they are.  If the officer and deputies on the street know that admin is going to feed them to the wolves if something goes south they're going to take far fewer chances.  That guy looks suspicious, I won't stop and question him because I might get accused of profiling.  The biggest issue is arm chair quarterbacking, something GM excels at so this should interest him.

A decision is a good decision based on why it was made at the time.  The results of said decision do not determine if the decision was a good one.  Unfortunately the opposite mentality has firmly taken hold.  This has a stifling effect on the initiative of individual officers.  One of my early mentors told me something that could not have been more true; you can't get fired for being incompetent, you can get fired for doing too much.  

Now feel free to return to you castigation of people who do a job you can't do and have no idea how to do. 

Weird...seems very few officers get convicted of anything.  Hard to say no one has their back when they don't get charged or go unconvicted in the vast majority of cases.

I'd like to say I have experience at EVERYTHING (like some people claim) that is above and beyond the average poster on these boards, but I do not. All I have is the stuff I see and read and research. However...

This line:

Quote:A decision is a good decision based on why it was made at the time.  The results of said decision do not determine if the decision was a good one.

...is one of the least smart things I have ever seen you post.  I can't even begin to get into why that is an inane way to look at decisions and their results.  Yes, we all try to make the best decisions we can based on what we know at the time but to completely disregard the results of the decision is so dumb I don't even know where to start with it.  Seriously.  

But feel free to defend people not doing their job so they can't get in trouble for doing their jobs poorly.  

[Millhouse]

(07-12-2018, 10:52 AM)Beaker Wrote: Did anybody watch The Wire?

A few years ago I was listening to Dan Patrick on his radio show, and he said that was his favorite show ever. So luckily I had HBO and watched all of it on demand. Awesome show.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-12-2018, 11:16 AM)GMDino Wrote: Weird...seems very few officers get convicted of anything.  Hard to say no one has their back when they don't get charged or go unconvicted in the vast majority of cases.

Please learn to read.  I said admin does not have their back.  The District Attorney's office files charges, not admin.  The court system determines innocence or guilt, not admin.  Also, not being convicted but losing your job is still a horrible outcome, especially to a long serving officer.  Not to mention that myriad disciplinary actions up to and including dismissal don't reach the level of alleged criminal conduct. 

Quote:I'd like to say I have experience at EVERYTHING (like some people claim) that is above and beyond the average poster on these boards, but I do not.  All I have is the stuff I see and read and research.  However...

Based on what you've admitted to your life experience is very limited on the subjects you tend to discuss the most on this board.

Quote:This line:


...is one of the least smart things I have ever seen you post.  I can't even begin to get into why that is an inane way to look at decisions and their results.  Yes, we all try to make the best decisions we can based on what we know at the time but to completely disregard the results of the decision is so dumb I don't even know where to start with it.  Seriously.

Again, learn to read.  If a decision is made for a good reason when it was made then the decision was a good one.  This is so simple as to not require much brain power to understand, yet you seem incapable of grasping it.  Your results based accountability is exactly the type of thinking that's getting the type of policing in Baltimore that you're simpering about in this thread.  

Quote:But feel free to defend people not doing their job so they can't get in trouble for doing their jobs poorly.  

Poor, poor black and white world view Dino.  There's an enormous middle ground between not doing your job at all and doing an exceptional job.  The sooner you join us in the the adult world and realize that the world isn't an on/off switch the better you'll do on this board and likely everywhere else.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-12-2018, 11:25 AM)Millhouse Wrote: A few years ago I was listening to Dan Patrick on his radio show, and he said that was his favorite show ever. So luckily I had HBO and watched all of it on demand. Awesome show.

Omar is probably one of the most well written characters on any show, ever.


Poor Dookie. 

[*michaelsean*]

(07-12-2018, 11:32 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Omar is probably one of the most well written characters on any show, ever.


Poor Dookie. 

I've seen him in 3 different shows, and all of his characters are great.  Sad to say Hap and Leonard was not renewed.

[GMDino]

(07-12-2018, 11:31 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Again, learn to read.  If a decision is made for a good reason when it was made then the decision was a good one.  This is so simple as to not require much brain power to understand, yet you seem incapable of grasping it.  Your results based accountability is exactly the type of thinking that's getting the type of policing in Baltimore that you're simpering about in this thread.  

Whose "good reason"? Foolish. Asinine. But if you believe that I feel sorry for anyone who suffers due to your "good reason" since results don't matter later.

(07-12-2018, 11:31 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Poor, poor black and white world view Dino.  There's an enormous middle ground between not doing your job at all and doing an exceptional job.  The sooner you join us in the the adult world and realize that the world isn't an on/off switch the better you'll do on this board and likely everywhere else.

Weird because I said in the OP (that you didn't read, just responded because you think I hate all cops...not just the bad ones)

(07-12-2018, 10:27 AM)GMDino Wrote: As some say:  There is a middle ground between what the investigations found out about the violation of constitutional rights and just ignoring EVERYTHING.

That middle ground would be doing your job.

But since this will be all "you don't know anything" and personal attacks I'll let you talk to the ether for awhile.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(07-12-2018, 11:51 AM)GMDino Wrote: Whose "good reason"?  Foolish.  Asinine. But if you believe that I feel sorry for anyone who suffers due to your "good reason" since results don't matter later.

There are these concepts called logic and common sense that appear to be alien to you, hence your confusion here.

Quote:Weird because I said in the OP (that you didn't read, just responded because you think I hate all cops...not just the bad ones)

Because you do, "I don't see the gun that everyone else on planet Earth sees".  You hate LEO's, you just lack the courage to admit it.

Quote:That middle ground would be doing your job.

Within which there is a huge amount of variance.  Again, a not hard to grasp nuance that eludes you.

Quote:But since this will be all "you don't know anything" and personal attacks I'll let you talk to the ether for awhile.

Aww, you always retreat into, "I'm being attacked" when you know you've stepped in it.  So predictable.

[XenoMorph]

(07-12-2018, 10:27 AM)GMDino Wrote: So rather than fix the problems that were found they decided to just ignore everything?

I suppose "that'll show 'em to question the police!"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltimore-police-not-noticing-crime-after-freddie-gray-wave-killings-followed/744741002/




This is nothing short of them being big babies.  They don't want to try and do their job better so they just quit doing anything where THEY might be questioned.

Sad.

As some say:  There is a middle ground between what the investigations found out about the violation of constitutional rights and just ignoring EVERYTHING.

If they can't do it...quit.  That goes all the way up.

Police work is inherently dangerous and an incredible responsibility.  With that come more criticism than the guy who is an accountant or taxi driver.  Don't like it?  Go away and let people who are willing to learn and work do the job.

Why try and do your job when you cast as the criminal...

We need to stop protecting criminals more than the law enforcers.


The people rioting got what they wanted more crime and less police.

[Belsnickel]

This is one of those things that, like most, requires a bit more nuance than the typical conversation about it tends to hold onto. There are nuggets of truth to the statements of both SSF and GMDino.

It is true that there was an effort by officers in some cities, Baltimore included if I recall correctly, to purposely stop doing their jobs in an effort to "show the people." The results have been different in different places. At the same time, there have been places where police feel abandoned by their administration in the face of public scrutiny. Of course, we've had news items in the past year about literal cards being handed out to police to get them and/or their friends and family off of minor crimes.

I think both sides of this issue tend to carry it to the extreme, as is typical of today's controversies. There has to be a middle ground to come to on this, but the two sides aren't willing to hear those solutions at the moment.

[GMDino]

(07-12-2018, 12:17 PM)XenoMorph Wrote: Why try and do your job when you cast as the criminal...

We need to stop protecting criminals more than the law enforcers.


The people rioting got what they wanted more crime and less police.

That's not what they wanted.  They wanted to not have their constitutional rights violated and to not worry that they might die in transport as a "suspect".  What they got are people who won't do anything because they are afraid they might not do it right.  They should quit completely if that is their mindset.

I have to do my job every day.  Sometimes I make a mistake.  Sometimes I am criticized.  (Sometimes unfairly.)  I still do my job.  I don't stop doing portions of it because I might get told I did it wrong...even if I didn't.  And if I did do something wrong I make every attempt to correct my error...I don't just stop doing that thing.

In the Baltimore case it might take time and (heaven forbid) money and training and people who WANT to do it...but just not doing anything is (pardon the phrase) a cop out.  

[Belsnickel]

(07-12-2018, 12:27 PM)GMDino Wrote: That's not what they wanted.  They wanted to not have their constitutional rights violated and to not worry that they might die in transport as a "suspect".  What they got are people who won't do anything because they are afraid they might not do it right.  They should quit completely if that is their mindset.

I have to do my job every day.  Sometimes I make a mistake.  Sometimes I am criticized.  (Sometimes unfairly.)  I still do my job.  I don't stop doing portions of it because I might get told I did it wrong...even if I didn't.  And if I did do something wrong I make every attempt to correct my error...I don't just stop doing that thing.

In the Baltimore case it might take time and (heaven forbid) money and training and people who WANT to do it...but just not doing anything is (pardon the phrase) a cop out.  

This is the type of discussion that really doesn't help, and I'll explain why. I get that the desire from BLM and similar movements is for their rights to be respected. Not an unreasonable desire. But what specifically is desired for a policy change? When we discuss only these things, what the law enforcement community hears are grievances, but they are doing what they have been trained to do. Sometimes things go wrong, but if they are following policy and their training, then that is an unfortunate circumstance. So how can we adapt policies and training to make the community and law enforcement more of a partnership than it currently is? That's what we need to be focusing on.

And to be clear, law enforcement isn't blameless in this. There is a lot of resistance to change, as there always is in any organization. They are already on the defensive because of the criticisms, so they are even less receptive to constructive ideas for change than they would normally be.

This is why we just need to rethink how we approach all of this.

[GMDino]

(07-12-2018, 12:35 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: This is the type of discussion that really doesn't help, and I'll explain why. I get that the desire from BLM and similar movements is for their rights to be respected. Not an unreasonable desire. But what specifically is desired for a policy change? When we discuss only these things, what the law enforcement community hears are grievances, but they are doing what they have been trained to do. Sometimes things go wrong, but if they are following policy and their training, then that is an unfortunate circumstance. So how can we adapt policies and training to make the community and law enforcement more of a partnership than it currently is? That's what we need to be focusing on.

And to be clear, law enforcement isn't blameless in this. There is a lot of resistance to change, as there always is in any organization. They are already on the defensive because of the criticisms, so they are even less receptive to constructive ideas for change than they would normally be.

This is why we just need to rethink how we approach all of this.

That's the "middle ground" I am talking about.  If nothing had been found then no changes needed to be made.  But rather than work with the community and work for change they have (apparently) just quit doing some of the job.

And that's why I said it might take better training (money & time) to fix anything.

I'm sure I have posted before that training is the key to all of this.  Something other countries invest more in than we do here.

My approach would be to have everyone working together rather than casting unfounded accusations OR being defensive to every accusation.

[Belsnickel]

(07-12-2018, 12:40 PM)GMDino Wrote: That's the "middle ground" I am talking about.  If nothing had been found then no changes needed to be made.  But rather than work with the community and work for change they have (apparently) just quit doing some of the job.

And that's why I said it might take better training (money & time) to fix anything.

I'm sure I have posted before that training is the key to all of this.  Something other countries invest more in than we do here.

My approach would be to have everyone working together rather than casting unfounded accusations OR being defensive to every accusation.

But what about the training needs to be changed? I think that is something that needs to have more time spent on it.

I think a lot of people in this conversation don't understand the evolution of law enforcement to present day, or even the theories that are the basis of modern day policing.

[Beaker]

(07-12-2018, 11:32 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Omar is probably one of the most well written characters on any show, ever.


Poor Dookie. 

As much as everything changed, things stayed the same.

[GMDino]

(07-12-2018, 01:08 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: But what about the training needs to be changed? I think that is something that needs to have more time spent on it.

I think a lot of people in this conversation don't understand the evolution of law enforcement to present day, or even the theories that are the basis of modern day policing.

Awhile back I posted about how police in England are trained more in how to diffuse situations and in dealing with the citizens...that would be a good start.

Maybe ALL of the training needs looked at because there are issues.  And when you have issues training people who can take your freedom, property and life it needs constantly monitored.

There are CLEARLY smart people who look at and understand these things...but will anyone listen to them?  There will be resistance to any change or any "egghead" that wants to discuss possible changes.  Heck there are people right here on this board that see no issues at all except citizens complaining about police "doing their job".

Everyone needs to pull their heads out of the dirt and look at each other and work together to try and make things better.  Not perfect.  Better.

We would all be better off.

[fredtoast]

The claim that "administration does not have their backs" is total BS. Administration is full of former officers and we have all heard about the famous "Blue Wall". The problem is that street officers feel that if the administration does not support them 100% no matter how bad they messed up then that counts as "not having their back".

But the increase in crime is not all due to police just sitting on their hands. Police need to cooperation of citizens to solve crimes. They rarely solve crime without a witness or some sort of cooperation from private citizens. When things go bad like they did in Baltimore then citizens stop talking to police at all. they don't even want to come forward as a witness because they don't trust the police.

It is disgusting that police refused to do their jobs because people were upset over a person dying in their custody, but that is not the only cause for the spike in crime.