I think sometimes in discussing policing, we forget the point of it all. We don�t hire police because we like the many colors on top of their cars. We hire, train, and deploy police for one objective: safety. So, the real question then becomes: When police start beating people, firing their weapons at people, and all these other problems, does it result in more or less safety? The conceptual problem I see is that every response we get when we protest violence is that the officer was worried about his/her safety. That�s understandable. It is a hazardous occupation. But there is no conscription for the occupation. Despite that, they seek and accept it. And when they do, they know their job is the safety of the city where they work, even if it doesn�t happen to be where they live and therefore not �their city�. If a private security guard did something out of fear that caused insecurity in the facility they were supposed to guard, how much defense would that person get. So the argument that some circumstance made the cop feel unsafe is no argument at all. Their safety is not their job. I don�t send my tax dollars in to make anyone on the police force feel �safe�. It is my safety that my dollars are supposed to buy. And when they act the way they have acted, they actually cause me to feel LESS safe. And that means I�m being ripped off. And some here call that a fair deal. But I call it one more case of the social contract being breached. So, naturally, I want something done about it, and I expect my elected officials to be more concerned about ME than about its employees.
Child Hookers
Ruben Rosario had a really good column this morning on the serious problem of recruitment of Minnesota children for prostitution. In Las Vegas, Minnesota is regarded as the second most valuable recruiting ground. One wonders what that says about us. But I really mention this because it gets at a chronic issue in policing: we don�t like certain activities, but when we cannot make them illegal, we try to use OTHER laws to get at them. There is no real consensus about prostitution. If there were, it would collapse for lack of customers. So, those who feel desperate about it try to shift the focus to something like the use of drugs to enslave. Effective policing really requires a united community. If you try to shut down something with a divided community, you end up HARMING the community.
The recruitment of children for prostitution is a crime that THIS community does agree is very wrong. And that�s why our kids are being shipped to communities like Las Vegas without the same values. But this is PRECISELY the kind of thing you hope gets a laser focus of our crimebusters. You hope they identify the major perpetrators and focus on them till they are in a cell or choose to relocate to a kinder environment. Maybe that means you WON�T be able to bust people selling sex because that is their free choice. But that�s merely a factor of limited crime-fighting resources. If a given pimp feeds children to the interstate rings, then go after them. But if he(she?) is merely selling adult services, don�t subtract resources from child prostitution to address a lifestyle issue.
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Jim Mork
Cooper Neighborhood
"America better beware of a candidate who is willing to stretch reality inorder to win points." George Bush, September 2000, quoted in The Press Effect, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 53
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