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.

Police Reform Badly Needed; Not Racial Incitement

 There will never be needed police reform if the focus on police cannot move beyond race and identity politics.

Race and identity politics are a business. There are those that profit from racial incitement and division. 

There needs to be an end to numbers game police work. Few if any so called police reformers even know what this is.

Real community policing must move away from the hands of ivory tower clueless academics. More cops need to be on the ground, on foot, serving the basic mission of serve and protect through patrol. Cops must not be used to generate meaningless statistics that do nothing to make communities safer. 

Police departments need to be lean. Layers of bureaucrats and upper echelon personal drain money from having cops on the streets. In urban areas, dedicated cops are needed on foot, walking beats where they become integral parts of the communities they serve. No able bodied cop should be at a desk job. Supervisors need to be streamlined, and must be out on the streets. Police departments must not be mired in petty politics, cronyism,  clout or political favoritism. Good, level headed cops on patrol that know how to properly escalate or de-escalate situations are what is needed, not defunded police. Defund the waste, but not the much needed basic police mission.

When Calls To 911 Suspend Civil Rights And Police Respond Poorly

 There are people that call 911 because they want the police to harass someone they do not like or because they do not like the way someone looks. There are people in law enforcement that do not understand that a call to 911 does not mean the person called upon has his or her civil rights suspended. When law enforcement officials get upset or angry because the person that is the target of the unjustified call to 911 gets upset or angry, situations that never should escalate end up escalating. There are those in law enforcement that do not understand how to handle another person's anger or upset frame of mind. People can get upset or angry when they are subject to harassment by police simply because someone called 911 and they know they have done nothing illegal or criminal. Calling 911 on someone does not make that someone a criminal.

 People need to be held accountable for when they unjustly call 911. This happens far too often. There is rarely a consequence for falsely calling the police on someone. Some people that are not criminals end up getting falsely arrested because they do not react calmly or submissively in their interactions with police, especially when the police are called on them for no real reason. 

Violence is never acceptable. But anger itself is not a crime. Many emotionally disturbed people cannot tone themselves down when confronted by law enforcement. And far too many in law enforcement see any sign of non violent defiance as a criminal act. Good cops must be level headed. They must know when to properly escalate a situation, and when to properly de-escalate a situation. They must understand that just because someone had 911 called on them does not make that person a police target whose civil rights are suspended. If a cop or deputy cannot understand how to handle people that are upset or angry without becoming upset or angry him or herself, they do not belong on the job.

Thin Skinned Cops, Numbers Game Policing

 There are people in law enforcement are too thin skinned for the job. They are easily provoked and are clueless about how to de-escalate situations. A good cop knows how to de-escalate situations, and how to properly escalate situations that call for escalation. Some cops are good social workers but lousy cops. They can de-escalate situations but fail to properly escalate situations that call for escalation. Other cops are lousy cops because they are poor de-escalators, or lack the ability to distinguish between when escalation is needed, and when de-escalation is needed. 

Police departments that practice numbers game police work favor the escalator. Thin skinned cops should be a thing of the past. Same for numbers game police work, which unfortunately remains alive and well, completely ignored or unchallenged, or completely off the radar of many clueless police reformers.

Stock Markets And The Illusion Of Wealth

 The more the environment is degraded and polluted, the more is lost collectively. The center of wealth is believed to be stock markets, not the health of the environment or anything else. Stock markets rise as the world deteriorates. There is a difference between individual wealth and collective wealth. Ultimately, collective wealth, not individual wealth, shapes our future.

 Enormous energy and effort goes into stock markets. Much depends on it continued ascent. Our pensions, our economic stability, our economic futures. Labor has long been devalued while speculation gets rewarded. The stock market rises as the environment and life for billions deteriorates. The consequence of making the stock market the only game in town and the definer of wealth is not beneficial, to say the least.

Gulf Of Mexico. The Cost Of Killing Nature

People have not yet totally destroyed the Gulf of Mexico. In places where the Gulf of Mexico is badly polluted and contaminated, coastal property can barely be given away. Signs caution against entering polluted, high bacteria count waters that will make someone sick. The ocean there is a dead zone.

In Florida, where the waters of the Gulf are still okay, the value of coastal properties is astronomical. But one day, when the gulf waters of Florida are just as badly polluted, smelly and contaminated as the waters in some other states, the property values will plummet. 

None of this has to happen. Unchecked development, greed and selfishness makes this inevitable if nothing changes. 

Everyone wants the perfect lawn and landscaping, no matter the chemical, pesticide and fertilizer load and how this kills the Gulf and its marine life. 

All over the world, development in all it forms, properties, agriculture, industry, tourism, recreation, commercial development, commercial fishing, and so forth, is given precedence over conservation. The more the environment is degraded and contaminated, the more lives are destroyed from a multiplicity of ways, and the less there is a quality of life. 

People are fanatical about their politics, their religions, their hatreds, but not so for the lands and seas upon which all depend.

One day when the ecological disaster that is the Gulf of Mexico in one region moves to the not yet destroyed region where people live blissfully unaware of how close the ecological disaster is and how quickly it can expand, the Florida economy will collapse. This can all still be prevented.

The future of mankind does not depend on politics, economics, religion or any man made endeavor. It depends on what we do to the environment, and what it will do in return.

The Country Held Hostage By Violent Jihadists And Their Foreign Master

 There is no country in the world except one where a private army is openly funded, supplied, and supported by a foreign country, and in which the private army is far stronger and better equipped than the army of the state itself. The private army wages war on foreign soil and holds its own country hostage by its military power. 

A private army driven by religious fanaticism and jihad, not by loyalty to the country itself. 

The private army and its business arms operated the port where highly explosive material was improperly kept and stored, and where many people died or were wounded, with enormous property damage, when the material exploded. All due to corruption and greed. 

The private army justifies itself by the pretend use of resistance while it is the occupier and foreign mercenary force.  

It is the one that went to Argentina with its foreign country master and blew up a community center, killing and wounding countless civilians.

It is driving a nation into bankruptcy. It will incite war against the country to its south to divert attention from itself. It uses the word resistance to hide its greed, militarism, bloodlust and slavish loyalty to the  violent jihad that it and its foreign master worships.

Corrupt, militaristic powers need foreign enemies to justify their existence. 

There will be a war that never should be, and many people will suffer because of the greed, the fanaticism, the toxic mixture of violent religious fanaticism with politics by an organization intoxicated and consumed by the violent jihadist ideology of its foreign master.