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Showing posts with the label reform police

There go those violent cops again...

"A person who is not inwardly prepared for the use of violence against him is always weaker than the person committing the violence."  - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,  The Gulag Archipelago  chp 1, 'Arrest' If you've been paying attention to the news, the new buzz word around policing and the law enforcement profession is "police violence".  Even the United Nations is  getting in on the discussion  surrounding use of force in the US, with a heavy focus on the death of Keenan Anderson in Los Angeles, and murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Notice the terms I used. Keenan Anderson was involved in a traffic crash, fled on foot, attempted to enter another vehicle, and was initially compliant with responding officers.  After a short while he suddenly gets up and runs off, and around this same time officers made the determination that he was at fault for the accident.  I watched the BWC footage and I could easily articulate the aspects of gross intoxication (body mov

The cost of fast-forward reform

If it isn't apparent lately everything has been about sound bytes, knee-jerk reactions, click-bait headlines, and edgy hashtags. I've seen hashtags like #defundthepolice, #abolishpolice, #policereform and so on. Our own mayor wants all sorts of changes done within 90 days.  She is going to force reform one way or another.  I've seen the new co-chair of the working group for the city say if she doesn't get her way, she has the ability to go over the mayor and superintendent and have a federal judge force the changes. Let us be honest, we all dislike change.  New schools, new grade, new house, new job, new significant other....everything comes packaged with an awkward and anxious-filled phase.  Learning the ropes, where things are, trying not to look lost, and so on.  But for whatever reason cops hate change even more. I don't have an exact answer why, my own personal opinion is I don't feel I've been doing anything wrong.  It took a while to learn the