It was a flip of the coin thing. When Hal suggested that we have a volunteer police dept all I could think of is folks like Gomer running around yelling, “citizen’s arrest, citizen’s arrest”! After that it was indeed a mental picture of Barney fumbling with his one bullet. Weird but some of the mental images I get in my head are more fun to me than watching a comedy skit. Maybe because they’re even more exaggerated than the actual skit is. Dunno.
Oooh, speaking of emergency responses... (yeah, I'm veering OT, but it's my thread so there you are.) I have probably mentioned that we live in a cul-de-sac on a river; we are the last street in this subdivision and our street dead ends into the boat ramp. On the "river side" of the street, the houses are huge and in the very-high-dollar range. A couple of nights ago, I noticed red and blue lights out the window and peeked out to see at least a half-a-dozen police cars and a couple of ambulances and a bunch of LEOs surrounding one of the "mansions." Turns out the teenage son of the homeowner had MURDERED another kid in a drug deal gone wrong. Sheesh. Right outside my door! And to veer back on topic, I'm sure the murdered boy's family was glad the police are still "funded".
I've said before I've lived in trailer parks and I've lived in neighborhoods with $1M+ homes. I know who I trust the most, and it ain't those who have everything yet they're entitled to more.
Folks, who wants this? Say it. People must know. There is a party devoted to this kind of criminal nonsense. They're called democrats. No, I'm not a repuican. I'm registered independent. I'm like Ghandi. I am a little bit of all ideologies.
I want to be like Ghandi, but then every one would be screwing me. At least the democrats will kiss me and leave a 20 on the table when they're done.
On a serious note... My father never like policemen. All his life. Thought they were a bunch of wannabe cowboys and bullies. Policemen were always very nice to me, so I figured my father just had a bad experience or two and was wrong. Of course I'm white and female. The best of all worlds. I naively assumed my experience was the same for everyone else, for a long time. Then, I assumed things had changed a lot since my father's time. A lot more restrictions on misconduct. That hasn't worked so well either. Bobby brought up the Andy Griffith show in another context. While they have been talking about restructuring law enforcement, I have been thinking about that very model. Instead of a large central police station with people from all over the country as staff, maybe the police ought to be more local. Smaller police stations in each neighborhood, as much as possible staffed with people who live in the neighborhood. The police would then learn who the violent residents are, and who were not, and how to handle them accordingly. And that knowledge/experience could be passed on to new recruits. Of course you may still have the bully mentality problem pop up occasionally, so some central agency for whistle blowers might be necessary. I believe it's a model to think about. What do you think?
For the life of me I cannot remember which city had a very good idea which comes extremely close to your suggestion. It was within about 6 months of the Ferguson death when some police department came up with the idea of giving the police their own regular neighborhoods to patrol. They were told to go door to door and introduce themselves, hand out their cards and if possible try to have a 30 second or so conversation with the residents of the home. I guess the reason I like the idea so much is that I know most of the police who answer the emergency calls and patrol our neighborhood once in a while. One time a policeman stopped by at 10:30 PM to ask if I heard some shots (I had) and then ask me what kind of weapon it was. On another occasion, a policeman who was finishing up after settling an argument at a home next door looked more troubled than he normally would have so I asked him if I could pray for him. He said yes that he needed it and so we prayed together. I’ve also known a couple of “not so nice” cops but I kind of understand their temperament because I was mentally there in 1969 after I came back from a war. Alas, one of those policemen transferred to gang duty and the other to narcotics where they would fare better than being beat cops. In short, I do like your idea Nancy.
I probably heard about it long ago wherever you did and it stuck in my mind. Seems to me like they tried a variation of this in New York City long ago. Maybe I'll look it up.
Some cities have implemented similar models but it seems like it's usually treated as a special project by a particular police chief or mayor, then abandoned when there is a change of faces.
I think that this is one of the advantages of living in a small town; everyone knows at least most of the law enforcement, and they also know most of the people who live in the town. When I was growing up, the chief of police lived just behind us across the alley. The assistant Chief also did home remodeling, and he did work for my mom on her rental houses when she needed something done. Because my mom had the rentals, if the police were looking for someone that they thought might have rented from her, then they knew who to ask. My dad worked for the power company, and was often at some kind of accident where they needed power shut off, and he knew all of the county deputies and state patrol for our area. Being a small Idaho town, we really didn’t have very many serious crimes, but none of the law enforcement would have even thought of shooting at someone unless a life was being endangered, and they had no other alternative. I worked as a reserve for the Sheriff’s department for a while, and enjoyed being able to help out in the community. I answered phone calls, and also helped as security at the country fair, and similar celebrations. My oldest son was a deputy for quite a few years, and then a reserve after that, as well as part of the Search and Rescue team from our county. Growing up with this kind of law enforcement, a person has a lot different attitude than someone would who lived in a large city, with a lot of crimes, and there was no real communication between the police and the community where they worked.
When I was living in the UP of Michigan, people generally referred to the police by their first names. When someone addressed a cop as "officer," they were probably being sarcastic. Here's a story I told in another thread a few years back, which sort of fits here.