Reestablishing Effective Law Enforcement – Buz Blog

“Stop trying to fix the police. Fix the ghetto.” – Sheriff David Clarke

Because of Covid 19, the George Floyd fiasco and the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots, effective law enforcement has been emasculated in our major cities and many other areas of our country. The endless rants in the corporate media and the Democrats, (but I repeat myself, as Chris Plante would say), about “systemic racism” in law enforcement and the criminal justice structure have caused a multitude of problems for street cops.

As the situation stands now, those who patrol our streets are afraid to do anything proactive. The reasons are obvious. Lazy, slug police officers learn early in their careers, that you don’t get in trouble if you don’t do anything. So even though there may be probable cause to stop and talk to a subject or a motorist, it is less risky to one’s paycheck to just drive on by rather than stop and risk a reaction that could get the officer in trouble.

If a confrontation should occur, it is now almost always videoed by someone with a cell phone. The fact is, that even legally overcoming resistance to arrest, is ugly, visually. Striking someone with a baton is lawful in the vast majority of instances, but it is still a beating, none the less. Attempting to handcuff a violently resisting criminal is difficult when two officers or more are present, and sometimes impossible for one officer until help arrives, but even then it looks brutal to the untrained eye.

The corporate, woke media, politicians and police administrators who owe their positions to those politicians, will vilify any officers caught on video, even if they followed their training and procedures. So officers feel they get no backing from their own departments, elected officials or a public whose passions have been aroused by a biased press. If the suspect is a minority, the race-baiters like the so- called Reverend Al Sharpton, will create a circus in the news.

For decades, these types of incidents have led the Federal government, when controlled by either party, to attempt to nationalize local law enforcement. Their principal tool for doing this is the “consent decree”. These decrees allow the federal government to place onerous requirements on local policing agencies. The requirements are such that they keep the officers off the streets for longer periods of time filling out ridiculous forms, (either on a computer or paper). They must document the reason and probable cause for stopping and talking to or arresting a person. What was the race of the person, the location and other extraneous information that keeps the officer from actually protecting the people of their community when the officer is on the street. So every city, county or state law enforcement agency should do every thing possible to get out of the burden of these useless, bureaucratic decrees.

So what can be done to put proactive law enforcement officers back on the streets? First and foremost, officers need to feel that they have the support of their department and the police administrators who run it. Those police chiefs and top echelons in departments need to be independent of the politicians who run other departments in the jurisdictions. In the golden age of police work, police chiefs had civil service protection. Now most serve at the pleasure of a mayor, city manager, city council or police commission.

How many of our cities would have been burned or been partially taken over in 2020, by BLM and Antifa, if a politically independent Chief of Police would have ordered the large scale arrest of those rioters. That didn’t happen because those chiefs had to do what their political bosses ordered, rather than the right thing, or those chiefs would have lost their jobs.

The election of Chiefs of Police would give those chiefs the independence they once had under civil service. They need that independence now, to protect people and property. Chiefs of police need to answer to the people rather than politicians. This is the independence that elected county sheriffs have and the chiefs need. When a video surfaces that appears to show brutality, even though it was within the department’s training and policies, the chief can go before the public and explain what really happened, rather than throwing the officer(s) under the bus. Once the officers feel that they are backed up by their departments, proactive police work will begin again. Morale will improve and recruitment will become easier.

But recruitment is such a major problem virtually everywhere. Other incentives must be offered to attract new officers. Higher pay and more benefits are already being offered in many areas. Educational and housing benefits are an attractive incentive. The pitfall to be avoided would be the lowering of hiring standards. With the proper incentives, merit based hiring would attract good people to a career in law enforcement.