Our nation’s police department’s primary objectives have to be enforcement of existing law as enacted by the various state and federal legislatures.
The latitude exercised by each department is affected by a dizzying array of various police departmental and community circumstances. There is no template except that which falls back upon established law.In a real sense, the Executive Summary and therefore the full report of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to the White House Task Force on Community-Police Relations (January 2015) is putting the cart before the horse.
The summit participants “outlined three conceptual elements of building community-police relationships. The report defines those elements (as) communication, partnerships, and trust.”
However, the lack of confidence in those three elements actually begins with the legislatures. The legislative branches are in fact the disconnect hurdle that is the most difficult to overcome. There are three distinct elements of lawmaking that cannot be addressed by community-policing – the victimless crime statute syndrome, faith-based moral lawmaking, and the judiciary’s failure to remain independent of the legislature.
It isn’t the integration of community-policing that the community needs. It is an independent judiciary that can identify and overturn laws that do more harm than good and are subject to undue political, corporate and religious influence and interests, not common law.
Without the reform and possible overturn of current unjust victimless crime laws, the intimate intent and goals of benign community-policing violate the separation of officialdom from our innate private community life, and once established it will set a precedent not easily amended.
Police are not and should not be community social, behavioral workers. Enforcement is a very recognizably different official responsibility that carries an inherent and alienable danger of getting too close to the private lives of people in the conduct of their individual freedoms and interests.
Whatever benefits may be derived by community-policing can just as easily become drawbacks.
The greatest evil of men is their treatment of all things as property, where people and nature exist at the pleasure of their dominion and disposition. It is there where laws against human nature and individual conscience are more than injustice. It is the shame of law that upholds any atrocity against its citizens. There is no morality, no dogma, no tradition and no political will that is greater than the innate commune of free will that victimizes no one.
The first breath of air is the same in all of our bodies. It is the one freedom that cannot arbitrarily be denied. But how much longer can we survive if we cannot see the malaise and ignore the injustices our legislatures lay upon us for the sake of their red and blue blooded absolute loyalty? If it remains so, we are a nation where hope is lost.
When a community cannot secure for itself the rights and freedoms of self-determination to insure their happiness and tranquility, a state of unsound union will always exist.
Vidda Crochetta
Lawmaking that cannot be addressed by community policing
I love your unique take on this. The core of which, I think, is:
“There are three distinct elements of lawmaking that cannot be addressed by community policing: the victimless crime statute syndrome, faith-based moral lawmaking and the judiciary’s failure to remain independent of the legislature.”
As well as, in the 3rd paragraph: “…the Executive Summary…(and) full report…is putting the cart before the horse.”
Talk about timely, the MacArthur Foundation issued a press release recently announcing it is launching a $75M initiative “to reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails.”
http://www.macfound.org/press/press-releases/macarthur-launches-75m-initiative-reduce-americas-use-jails/
Mmilitarism abroad and police militarism here at home
At the age of 60, Mark Twain as a result of his travels abroad, published “Following the Equator” in 1897, based on his last worldwide lecture tour at the age of 60 – was a book, as a recent NYTimes books article wrote, a “book remarkable” for its “prescient depiction of the modern evils of racism, militarism and imperialism.”
It was the precursor of our militarism abroad and our police militarism here at home. It continues to this day.
The MacArthur Foundation will need a lot more funding than $75 million to “reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails.”
Yes, it’s always been the victimless crimes that fuel this war on its own people, and, yes it starts with the legislatures, the power brokers and the voters who put them there.
What about the people? The police? But mere pawns on the board.
Marijuana - the massive pillar of the victimless crime syndrome
Even with legalization underway in a few states, marijuana criminalization was and is yet the modern massive pillar of the victimless crime syndrome.
VTDigger reported yesterday that the “Vermont Legislature will not take up a bill to regulate recreational marijuana this session but the issue will return next January (2016), Sen. David Zuckerman, P/D-Chittenden has said.”
green mountain fog
Kind of pitiful, a state that prides itself on being progressive, and should have led this, is so behind the curve. It’s one instance when braggart would be a better tag than laggard.
"...there is nothing to hide."
http://ibrattleboro.com/sections/police-fire/predictive-policing-closer-look-looking-closely-i2-software
“The first thing to know about i2 is that it is a suite of software packages that can be tailored to specific uses in law enforcement, banking, defense, health care, insurance, and even retail.
The videos are promotional and do not address potential issues with privacy, warrants, or errors. They do, however, show that local police are feeding into and extracting data from numerous sources to identify people and connections between people in the community and potentially around the world.”
http://ibrattleboro.com/sections/town-news/brattleboro-citizens-breakfast-notes-breakfast-brattleboro-chief-police-michael-f
“Open communication means there is nothing to hide. The impact of perceived negative criticism of the department should be to educate or improve. If something is wrong, we need to be accountable and fix it. If it is a perception, we need to explain why we did what we did.The media are often good at sensationalizing an event. The police department needs to get the word out about the good work being done.”