Showing posts with label Law Order Community Policing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Law Order Community Policing. Show all posts

Saturday, December 19, 2009

The Police Harassment edition of Community Policing

The Police Harassment edition of Community Policing

http://tinyurl.com/ybflvap http://twitpic.com/u7etr http://kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/post/290554431/the-police-harassment-edition-of-community

Click here for a larger image: http://twitpic.com/u7etr or here: http://kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/post/290554431/the-police-harassment-edition-of-community

(I received this in an e-mail from a reliable source. Yet, nevertheless, I did go about attempting to verify it in anyway. If the e-mail is not real, then it needs to be…)

Shhh...Special Insider Stuff.

Police Harassment

Recently, the Chula Vista Police Department ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being, "Community Policing."

One of the civilian email participants posed the following question, "I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?"

From the "other side" (the law enforcement side) Sgt. Bennett, obviously a cop with a sense of humor replied:

"First of all, let me tell you this...it's not easy. In Chula Vista, we average one cop for every 600 people. Only about 60% of those cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as "patrol") where we do most of our harassing.

The rest are in non-harassing departments that do not allow them contact with the day to day innocents. And at any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60% patrollers are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So roughly, one cop is responsible for harassing about 5,000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 10,000 or more people a day.

Now, your average ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds long. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and then only three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to this challenge day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow down those people which we can realistically harass.

The tools available to us are as follows:

PHONE: ... People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase used often. This means we'll come out and give somebody some special harassment.

Another popular one is, "There's a guy breaking into a house." The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: ... We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance or no driver's licenses and the like. It's lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding warrant on file.

RUNNERS: ... Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.

STATUTES: ... When we don't have PHONES or CARS and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called "Statutes"; Criminal Codes, Motor Vehicle Codes, etc... They all spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people.

After you read the statute, you can just drive around for awhile until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, there's this book we have that says that's not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It is a really cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well.

We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to "harass" some people.

Next time you are in my town, give me the old "single finger wave." That's another one of those codes. It means, "You can harass me. "It's one of our favorites..

20091229 sdosm The Police Harassment portion of Community Policing , , ,

http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2009/12/police-harassment-edition-of-community.html http://tinyurl.com/ybflvap http://kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/post/290554431/the-police-harassment-edition-of-community

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

20080417 Mikulski slams White House on lack of DOJ COPS funding


Mikulski slams White House on lack of DOJ COPS funding


During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on April 16, 2008, Maryland Democrat Senator Barbara Mikulski gave White House budget director Jim Nussle a piece of her mind over the Bush administration’s lack of funding for Department of Justice domestic law enforcement programs… Hat TIP: “Think Progress” and “Amanda.”


20080416 Mikulski slams White House over DOJ COPS funding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uxZHgRSo24



[Postscript: By way of the wonders of technology – the visual and the audio are not well synched. And perhaps that is prophetic – as upset as Senator Mikulski is in this clip. Listen to the words – smile at the out of synch technology…]

Related:
20080528 Bush cuts aid to US cops by David Lightman; 20080416 Mikulski slams White House over DOJ COPS funding; 20080623 What is Community Policing?



Think Progress:
Mikulski Slams White House: ‘Since You’re Pugnacious, Guess What? I’m Going To Be Pretty Pugnacious, Too’

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/17/mikulski-nussle/

By
Amanda on Apr 17th, 2008

The White House has proposed a
$108 billion emergency-spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Frustrated that U.S. taxpayers continue to pay for the wars while domestic needs go unmet, lawmakers have attempted to attach spending for domestic programs to the bill. But Bush has balked, promising to veto any such bills.

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing yesterday, White House budget director Jim Nussle ironically blasted lawmakers for “
sky-is-the-limit mind-set” on the spending bill. One of the most combative moments came when Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) chastised Nussle for his “snarky, scolding, dismissive” responses to the senators and the Bush administration’s attitude toward funding the nation’s law enforcement officers:

Your testimony has been disappointing in both tone and substance. I personally take offense at the snarky, scolding, dismissive way that this testimony represents. And I think it’s inappropriate. […]

This is an ideological commentary, not the testimony of OMB. So since you’re pugnacious, guess what? I’m going to be pretty pugnacious, too, only my pugnaciousness is not going to be directed at the Congress. It’s going to be pugnacious about the people I represent. […]

Number one, let’s go to safety and security. We have funded the surge of Baghdad, but we have not funded the surge of violent crime in Baltimore, Biloxi, or other places. You have zeroed out the COPS program. You have zeroed out the Byrne grant.

Bush has requested $603 million to train Iraqi police. But at the same time, his FY 2009 budget includes a
61 percent cut for state and local law enforcement programs at the Justice Department.

Transcript:

MIKULSKI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you very much for calling this hearing. I think it’s the essential thing we need to do.

Mr. Nussle, I’ve got to tell you, I’m really disappointed in your testimony. It’s been some time that I have heard the kind of tone that has been expressed by a representative of the Bush administration. Your testimony has been disappointing in both tone and substance.

I personally take offense at the snarky, scolding, dismissive way that this testimony represents. And I think it’s inappropriate.

[…]

This is an ideological commentary, not the testimony of OMB. So since you’re pugnacious, guess what? I’m going to be pretty pugnacious, too, only my pugnaciousness is not going to be directed at the Congress. It’s going to be pugnacious about the people I represent.

So let’s get to it. Pugnacious? You bet. Let’s pick up on what Leahy and Harkin said about the Byrne grant. You want the regular order? I am the regular order. I chair CJS. And what this administration has done here has been outrageous.

Number one, let’s go to safety and security. We have funded the surge of Baghdad, but we have not funded the surge of violent crime in Baltimore, Biloxi, or other places. You have zeroed out the COPS program. You have zeroed out the Byrne grant.

When Shelby and Mikulski tried to do something last year in the regular budget, we were told, Eat $3 billion or face a veto threat. So we foraged and we skimped and we squeezed in to be able to make sure that our bill didn’t get a veto threat, and we came up with $170 million.

You can talk about all your smokestacks and whatever, but you bet there’s smoke. There’s smoke right here and now, and there is frustration from state and local police officers that say they need help. They need help.

And this administration has funded $5 billion over the last couple of years to fund the training of Iraqi police. You bet they need training. But I am telling you, I need the money, Senator Shelby and I need the money to make sure that our local law enforcement, the thin blue line, gets the money that they need to fight violent crime. So I’m going to ask in plain English: If, in fact, we (inaudible) the supplemental, restore the Byrne grants and only the Byrne grants to the needed level of $560 million, will you support it or will we face a veto threat?

NUSSLE: Well, Senator, I can only repeat what the president has said.

MIKULSKI: The president didn’t say anything about this. You think if I went to see the president, he would say, No ?

NUSSLE: Senator, I can only repeat what the president said. And his two priorities that he stated were that the bill stay within the $108.1 billion request and that it support the troops. That’s what he has said on the topic.

Beyond that, I don’t believe he has — I think the senator is correct — not spoken directly to those issues. But I also believe that the regular appropriations process is the time and the place to deal with those challenges. And…

MIKULSKI: But you eliminated it. You eliminated the COPS program, and you eliminated the Byrne grant program in your regular appropriations request.

So you’re saying, Don’t fund it in the supplemental. The president doesn’t request it in the regular order. And now you’re telling me you can’t accept it in the supplemental because the president didn’t talk about it. And when you sent us the CJS president’s request, it’s not in there for ‘09.

[…]

Mr. Chairman, with your cooperation, I hope that we do and fund it. If we’re talking about a safe and secure America, I want to make sure the streets of the United States of America are safe and secure. And I will work on a bipartisan basis to do it.

BYRD: Senator Murray?

MURRAY: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for having this hearing.

And, Mr. Nussle, I share the anger, frustration, I guess pugnaciousness of the senator from Maryland. It is extremely disturbing to me that we are getting an emergency supplemental request for Iraq and Afghanistan five-and-a-half years into this war that’s being paid for off the books.

Public Safety Law and Order DOJ Federal Domestic Grants

People Maryland Mikulski – US Sen. Barbara Mikulski
20080417 Mikulski slams White House on lack of DOJ COPS funding

20080528 Bush cuts aid to US cops by David Lightman

Bush cuts aid to US cops by David Lightman

MORE BUDGETED FOR IRAQI POLICE

Posted By David Lightman on Wed, May. 28, 2008, DLIGHTMAN@MCCLATCHYDC.COM

WASHINGTON -- At the same time the Bush administration has been pushing for deep cuts in a popular crime-fighting program for states and cities, the White House has been fighting for approval of $603 million for the Iraqi police.

The White House earlier this year proposed slashing the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program, which helps local law enforcement officials deal with violent crime and serious offenders, to $200 million in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

In 2002, the year before the Iraq war, the program received $900 million.

The administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress are headed for a showdown over the domestic money, probably next month. When the Senate last week passed the emergency Iraq war funding bill, it allotted an immediate $490 million for the domestic grants while keeping the Iraqi police funds intact.

[…]

"State and local policing should be left to state and local governments. I don't see any advantage to federal meddling," said Chris Edwards, an analyst at Washington's Cato Institute.

Cato opposed the Iraq war, but Edwards said the issue of Iraq's police funding "is a foreign policy question, and foreign policy should depend on things other than economics."

But Travis Sharp, military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, disagreed.

"There are tradeoffs in the federal government, and one of the arguments a lot of people make is that money spent in Iraq is not spent here," he said.

Those angry with the administration have a powerful ally in Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science that oversees the Justice Department.

"While President Bush requests millions of dollars for the war in Iraq, his domestic spending continues to shortchange our safety at home," she said.

When Budget Director Jim Nussle testified before her subcommittee last month, neither side showed any desire to compromise.

Mikulski called Bush's policies "outrageous" and labeled Nussle's testimony "snarky, scolding, dismissive."

"We have funded the surge of Baghdad, but we have not funded the surge of violent crime in Baltimore, Biloxi or other places," the senator said. She then asked Nussle if Bush would support restoring most of the Byrne grant.

[…]

The Iraq police funds are listed as money due to Iraq's Ministry of Interior. Also included in "new obligations" to the "Iraq Security Forces Fund" are $603 million for the Interior Ministry, $744 million for the Ministry of Defense and $153 million for "quick response."

The Congressional Research Service estimates that since the war began, the United States has spent about $20.75 billion to train and equip Iraqi soldiers and police officers.

Read the entire article here:
Bush cutting aid to U.S. cops

20080528 Bush cuts aid to US cops by David Lightman

20080623 What is Community Policing?

What is Community Policing?


http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?item=36


Retrieved from U. S. Department of Justice Office of Community Policing Services website (http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/default.asp?Item=34) on June 23, 2008


A central goal of the COPS Office is to help law enforcement agencies implement and enhance community policing. We have previously defined community policing as "a policing philosophy that promotes and supports organizational strategies to address the causes and reduce the fear of crime and social disorder through problem-solving tactics and police-community partnerships." In an effort to help discern what community policing is, what interactions between the police and citizens are central to this philosophy, and how the field should measure movement towards community policing, COPS has attempted to further outline the elements that are central to the philosophy of community policing.


This document is considered living, just like community policing itself, and it is meant to inform current practice and the discussion surrounding the advancement of community policing. It is not intended to be a prescriptive listing of central elements, but is meant to stimulate discussion in what is an ever-expanding body of experience and knowledge about the practice of community policing.


Community policing focuses on crime and social disorder through the delivery of police services that includes aspects of traditional law enforcement, as well as prevention, problem-solving, community engagement, and partnerships. The community policing model balances reactive responses to calls for service with proactive problem-solving centered on the causes of crime and disorder. Community policing requires police and citizens to join together as partners in the course of both identifying and effectively addressing these issues.


The core elements of community policing are described below:


Organizational Elements:

Tactical Elements:

External Elements:

1. Philosophy Adopted Organization-Wide
2. Decentralized Decision-Making and Accountability
3. Fixed Geographic Accountability and Generalist Responsibilities
4. Utilization of Volunteer Resources
5. Enhancers

1. Enforcement of Laws
2. Proactive, Crime Prevention Oriented
3. Problem-solving

1. Public Involvement in Community Partnerships
2. Government and Other Agency Partnerships