Police Used To Generate Statistics; Folly Of Numbers Game Policing

 The role of police should be simple and straightforward. Serve and protect through patrol. The patrol must not always be vehicular. In many urban areas, true community policing is achieved by having cops walk assigned beats, where they become integral parts of the neighborhood they serve. 

Unfortunately, the police mission has often been twisted and made to serve the whims of politicians, ivory tower academics and incompetent police officials. Community policing, for example, is far from the simple, straightforward concept that worked many decades ago when beat cops patrolled neighborhoods on foot. Community policing became the implementation of academic nonsense or the furtherance of political patronage. 

There are politicians and police bureaucrats that use police to generate statistics. In the 1990's, crack cocaine turned a number of urban areas into gang war zones. Gangs fought and killed for control of streets and housing projects; territory in which to sell drugs. Certain politicians, police officials, and at least one incompetent big city mayor, pushed police, especially specialized units, to generate high numbers of arrests. The more arrests made, the more the politicians and police could brag about how effective they were. This was smoke and mirrors that did not correlate to effective policing. It did not result in lowered violence. Specialized police units, instead of patrolling and making arrests when needed, were busy making nonsense, unnecessary arrests that supposedly looked good on paper. It freed them from patrolling and working a full tour of duty after they met unofficial arrest quotas. 

To this day, it is not uncommon for police and law enforcement personnel, including deputies, to be used to generate meaningless statistics and numbers. 

Certain ingratiating cops and deputies, eager to please their supervisors, push the envelop as to what is legal or at least reasonable, in order to generate numbers. More tickets, more stops, more name checks, more warnings, more arrests, more numbers of one sort or another, no matter how alienating and ineffective this might be. This is done not because it is needed, but because it is what poor policing requires. Numbers game police work is unofficial, unwritten policy, so there rarely is a paper trail. A good cop that actively patrols, whether by foot or by vehicle, will be busy enough without having to purposely generate meaningless numbers in order to please a higher up.

Numbers game police work is unchallenged, and remains off the radar of those that profess to want better policing. Journalists, reporters and certain others without exception have failed for decades to expose these practices and help policing be far better than what it is now.

A good cop or deputy that actively serves and protects through patrol has no reason to generate meaningless numbers and statistics. Enough things will naturally come their way in the course of good police work. A good cop knows when and how to escalate situations that need escalation, and when and how to de-escalate situations that require de-escalation. A good cop knows how to patrol and is sufficiently disciplined, with a good work ethic, to not shortcut the patrol required for a full tour of duty. In high crime urban areas and certain other areas, there is a critical need for cops on foot to patrol and become integral parts of the neighborhood where they walk the beat. 

There is no room in good police work for deceptive numbers games. Police are not needed to generate numbers, and should not be used for such.