Is that a bad thing? It's not clear that police are the right way to address all crime. Policework has been a miserable failure in the drug war, for example. Maybe we need to approach that another way. Maybe instead of having high crime rates and employing lots of police to fight that, we should invest in communities, make them more prosperous and safer, reducing the crime from that end, thus requiring less police for less committed crimes. While we probably still want some investigative units, maybe we don't actually want cops on a beat, especially in communities they don't understand or care about. Maybe we want trained social workers to be connected to communities, to understand their needs, solve some of the problems and represent their communities to city councils and the like. I think the goal of most is not to completely remove all police everywhere. But I think we have to look at trying to address the root causes of crime and invest on that end, rather than investing in more and more police for more and more crime. Fund better and safer communities and defund a police force that we don't need to be as large.
Peace officers, not Swat teams. Need to raise the bar and attract talent to the profession ..maybe community peace officers with funding that aren't fueled by quotas and courts and jails but by public accountability..redefine the profession with emphasis on healthy community....peace officers should be immediately charged with caring for the homeless population and the attorney general should be in charge of eliminating organized crime and gang presence in our communities..every neighborhood needs a peace force that is stronger than the criminal element...hell we all need a new playbook for public safety
It's an interesting dilemma, Minstrel. You may be right on some of these counts. I absolutely agree with you that sometimes it's better to have a fence at the top of the hill, as opposed to a hospital at the bottom. In other words, digging in addressing the root causes of crime seems like a good approach. When I was that teenager in North Portland, my dad made me go to the community teen center their church had developed. I made a lot of friends there. It was a proactive and productive way to help keep these teens preoccupied and became a very success venture.
I also grew up in North Portland through 6th grade. I loved it there and was pissed when my pop moved us to the suburbs. My mom went to North Catholic & Roosevelt, pop went to Jeff, thats where I was and wanted to go.
I went from playing little league rules to Connie Mack farm ball where you could lead off, & steal, squeeze plays too.
i agree with the goals established by your suggestions, but am not convinced about the practicalities. i have stated in past opinions that i believe opportunity to be one of the fundamental building blocks to an equitable solution for many of society's ills. many of your suggestions address this in some manner, yet, especially in relation to the drug war, you haven't convinced me that it will go away on it's own quite so simply. because of the very nature of the problem, the size and scope of it's influence, we need a much broader approach that will include a continued police participation if for no other reason than to protect the citizens of the communities impacted most severely by the violence. the organizations that profit from the trade are unlikely to disappear if for no other reason than the enormous profits involved in the enterprise. the importation alone requires a federal level organization to interdict because neither a city nor state has the authority to act so. the sub culture is so ingrained and has been for so long that imho, the localized changes you have suggested alone will have only a small impact on the problems that communities face concerning organized drug importation,distribution and sales. i like them as a starting point but feel they will not be adequate. the incarceration of individuals needs to be addressed first. the drug court model needs to be implemented on a national level, both by the states and feds. i have witnessed its success as an alternative solution that works on the community levels that you suggest. the for profit incarceration model needs to be changed. the monies this system generates has undo influence on legislation in all levels of governing. unfortunately rural communities that rely on the institutions will be negatively impacted in very real economic terms. how will we address these concerns? it needs to be an important component to the solutions proposed in order to make sure we are not creating an even more divided nation. would tougher sentencing of the importation and organizational ends help? it seems even after incarceration, the leaders of the organizations retain control and therefor power of these structures. what do we do? the nations that are exporting the products are extremely poor, exasperating the problem and impacting the forced migration of individuals trying to escape the violence that the drug industry creates there. the drug war would appear to be too big for even a single nation as large and influential as the USA to solve simply on its own at the community level. i love your suggestions but can't see them impacting the problem significantly on thier own because it is too large for individual communities to address. unfortunately we as a nation seem to be abrogating responsibility in trying to make positive changes in the societies around the globe with our foreign policy. it is a very tangled web to unravel in order to make changes.
Allen Robinson is saying essentially much of the same things I've been (ongoing) relating in this thread. He's a Black NFL player. Apparently, I'm an intolerable, privileged White boy. Therein lies the difference.....I guess.
That's what you took from the article? Because you have grossly misunderstood what he was saying or what the article was about. He's talking about whether or not the NFL will "allow" players to take a knee during the national anthem, not the stuff you were talking about. He's talking about wanting change to occur instead of having to stand pat at continue taking a knee/the NFL ignoring the issue. He was talking about what steps the NFL will do to address the systemic racism that offers in the NFL. He wasn't talking about how the changes need to only be done at home because they're issues of the "heart". Funny, though, that you didn't quote this part of the article. Did you bother to read the entire article? Because it really doesn't support what you said.
Thanks for the detailed, thought-out response. A couple things that I'd like to clarify: 1. I'm not making any definitive policy prescriptions. The reason I used the word "maybe" so often is because I don't think there are any certain answers, but I think these are some of the questions we should be asking when we think about safety and how we address it. 2. I don't think anything in this sphere is "easy," let alone the drug war. I wasn't trying to imply that a mere change in direction makes it disappear. It'll probably never disappear completely, but the way we've been prosecuting has arguably yielded nothing at all. I don't think my suggested directions are complete solutions. They are, as you said, starting points. By investing more and more into the armed enforcement end of things, we're asking for a more violent society--as crime gets worse, we create larger and larger forces with greater and greater capacity for violence. And, perhaps worse, we create a force that has a constant siege mentality--they start viewing the populous around them as the enemy they're surrounded by, rather than the people they're supposed to be helping. My post was meant to suggest that we need to rethink enforcement. We should go well beyond what I suggested, as you say--but we need to consider that maybe we're not using police correctly, for the correct jobs, and we're using them in lieu of preventative measures.
Well, duhh! And he went on to discuss moving on from here - regardless of the approach. That's exactly what I was relating. Sure, I had my feelings relating to what some of those next steps might be, as as well as the inherent issues. Either way, simply taking a knee might be a bit ineffective - at this point. BTW, I also discussed what the NFL might do to address the issues at hand, as well. I suggested the players association get involved, continue to cultivate and grow community programs, and the like. That's the nitty-gritty stuff that can begin to help heal issues of the heart, and so on.
let's play the victim card eh? I don't think of you any differently than I do many of my relatives who hold similar views.....this isn't about personality...it's about clarity in govt and policies that represent a vast melting pot of americans….I don't think you have as much in common with Trump as you do with most Blazer fans actually...but you do like the golly gee whiz it's not my fault spin...and you have selective ethical filters when it comes to politics and religion it seems.....I definitely have filters but I tryy to own them proudly...we are allowed to have and voice strong opinions and those are mirrored throughout the media....you either engage it or you don't..personally I"m about done with this political campaign season..bring on the vote...I'm here to encourage you to vote against Trump period...it's like quitting smoking...you won't regret it
Not at all. I'm simply using other poster's views of me. They said it, not me. It's OK, my responses were tongue-in-cheek in nature.
