Police Departments, High Homicide And Crime Rates. Where Does Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, And Other Cities Stand?

            Many things contribute to high crime and homicide rates. This includes poor parenting, fathers having children that they do not raise, blighted communities, entrenched gangs and gang culture, limited opportunities except in the black market drug trade, and so on. Public pressure for police to not be proactive is counterproductive. The cottage industry of lawyers suing police does not help the public. But what police departments do matters.
            Professional police departments are more successful in addressing crime than unprofessional police departments.
            Professional police departments eliminate clout and connections in promotions. Meritorious promotions are not euphemisms for politically connected, clout heavy people getting rewarded. Meritorious promotions, if they exist at all on a professional police department, are clearly defined. The people that evaluate the candidates considered meritorious have no connection to the candidate, and are completely impartial in their evaluation. If this cannot be achieved, then all the promotions are based on impartial tests. Professional police departments have no place for unprofessional, clout based promotions.
            Professional police departments are not filled with layer upon layer of supervisors, paper pushers and administrators. The purpose of a police department is to serve and protect, with patrol as the most basic responsibility. Wasting money and manpower on anything else is counterproductive.
            Inspectors, paid six figure salaries to ride around and look for petty infractions, a job that is already delegated to the supervisors on the streets, is a small example of money thrown away. Police departments that cannot reform themselves and discard wasteful practices are doomed to not be successful and have unnecessarily high crime rates.
            Layers of supervisors and administrators that are free from basic police responsibilities are a waste of money and manpower. Becoming a supervisor should not be a lifetime pass of freedom from work. Thousands of brass ( supervisors) and administrators pushing paper, having leisurely lunches and dinners, endless meetings, doing little to nothing day in and day out, with supervisors supervising supervisors supervising supervisors in an endless cycle of  pretend work, contributes to failed police departments.
            Regarding technology; it is not a substitute for basic patrol. Some police departments mistakenly believe otherwise.
           Community policing has been hijacked to become a meaningless game filled with nonsense paperwork that justifies worthless jobs and positions. Real community policing existed a long time past, and meant a cop walking a beat in a neighborhood. Neighborhood beat cops knew their neighborhoods, and were an example of what real community policing can be.
           Professional police departments do not play numbers games, in which tactical and specialized units are evaluated on the basis of quantity of arrests, not quality. Numbers games encourages laziness, poor and shoddy police work.
           Professional police departments are concerned with policing, not public relations games and worrying about news affairs and image over substance..
          There are many more things that can be done. All of the above requires much greater detail.
           But it is all pointless if no one is interested.
           Meanwhile, is your police department professional?