Chicago Police And Federal Government Agreement. Creating True Police Reform And Real Community Policing

     The City of Chicago and the federal government reached an agreement regarding reforming the Chicago police department.
      More than likely it will focus on the unusual and dramatic, and make it seem that the aberration is the widespread pattern, thus failing again to address what is necessary to make police departments professional and efficient.
       Professional police departments do not allow for cronyism and clout. These corrosive elements have no place in promotions or anywhere else. Meritorious promotions should never be used as the way for clout and cronyism to be implemented. Promotions must be based one hundred per cent on civil service exams if there is a failure or inability to objectively implement a true meritorious process. Meritorious, if used, must be a defined, objective process in which the evaluators have no connection to the person seeking the promotion.
       The best way to have incompetent, lazy, unimaginative, and in some cases abusive leadership, with few exceptions, is to continue the use of clout and cronyism.
        Professional police departments do not play numbers games, including where officers in certain specialized units or teams are evaluated by the quantity of arrests they make. Professional police departments do not rely on numbers games regarding arrests or traffic enforcement.
        The purpose of a police department is to serve and protect. This is achieved first and foremost by patrol, which is the bread and butter and basic mission of a police department. In high crime urban areas, this is best achieved by patrol on foot, not only by vehicles. Cops walking beats day in and day out in the same neighborhood form the essence of true community policing. No technology can ever replace the value of a hardworking, conscientious officer walking the beat.
         Cops walked beats many decades ago. This was true community policing. Not the pretend community policing of today, full of meaningless paperwork, endless meetings and reports, and unnecessary down time. Community policing has become the inefficient employer of professors, administrators and paper pushers within and outside of police departments; all ensuring patrol and high levels of police presence are the last thing achieved.
           True reform means streamlined police departments that return to the basics. No more legions of cost inefficient paper pushers, supervisors upon supervisors - many in do nothing positions- and administrators. Efficient, streamlined police departments do not need nearly as many supervisors, and the supervisors that they do have are most often on the streets. Expensive, overpaid police brass, many doing little to nothing day in and day out, can be significantly reduced. No one should be free from working a full day. Becoming police brass should not be a lifetime exemption from work.
           Big buildings sheltering thousands of people completely removed from patrol does not make for efficient police departments.
           Cops on the streets patrolling in vehicles, on foot, supplemented at times by cops on bicycles, must become the basic foundation of police work. No more foolish numbers games. No more police departments that are sanctuaries for clout, cronyism, paper pushers and administrators, doing everything other than the essential mission.