Accountability – one sentence post
Those who advocate strong limits on police accountability should keep in mind that the entire reason the police exist is to enforce accountability.
Those who advocate strong limits on police accountability should keep in mind that the entire reason the police exist is to enforce accountability.
04/02/2021 @ 10:52 am
The question of why we have a police force at all is very interesting.
There is a body of belief that police forces were created to catch runaway slaves and send them back into slavery.
The first police forces known to history are found, appropriately, in ancient Egypt, and date back more than 4,500 years, which was well before there were any Israelite slaves to police.
Constabularies have existed in every ancient culture. In fact, there isn’t a single culture known to us that did NOT have a constabulary.
There is, however, much confusion over the correct role of a constabulary, They are peacekeepers and law enforcers, but these functions are clearly related to the detection and detention of lawbreakers.
Police forces are not there to prevent crime. That’s a major misconception. Attempts to prevent crime inevitably become attempts at population control.
Police forces definitely deter crime by their mere presence but they cannot interdict criminal activity until there is criminal active to interdict. Attempting to interdict crimes that have not yet been committed is repression, not law enforcement.
It seems clear that law enforcement in the United States is becoming increasingly repressive, and will continue to trend in that direction as long as citizens demand increased protection from criminal acts…but the fact remains that the police are powerless to enforce the law until a crime has been committed.
The question of “Who Watches the Watchers?” has plagued us since approximately forever and there is no simple answer to that question although I am sure that Bitey will have something to say about this.
04/02/2021 @ 12:23 pm
The answer should be that the judiciary watches the executive branch, which the police belong to. The problem has not been criminal action on the part of police – police are citizens with failings like any citizens – the problem has been prosecutors shielding them from accountability. As long as they’re accountable, a police crime is like any other crime.
04/02/2021 @ 12:50 pm
I have a 100 pound Labrador retriever named Miles. Miles is about 22 months old right now. For the last 20 years, my wife and I have had terriers are about 20 pounds, but intense like a hurricane. We have a video of them attacking our lawnmower…while it was running. Fierce intensity. So, as I approached 60, after Barkley, who we lovingly called “Bitey” passed away at the age of 17, I thought I wanted a bigger dog, but more gentle. Most dogs are bigger, and absolutely everything is gentler. So, we ended up with Miles. And we love Miles.
In the first year, Miles grew like a science experiment gone wrong. He war growing by about 2 pounds per week, which may not sound like much, but I am not kidding that on several occasions, I would stand still, hold my breath, and see if I could see him growing. Quite often he was bigger in the morning than he was the previous night. What I did not count on is how labs mature. They grow very fast. They learn very fast. But they mature very slowly. They stay puppies for about 4 years, so we are about half way through that. Now, a 100 pound puppy is a complicated thing. He can jump about 4 feet high from a standing start, flat footed. He has a thick, solid body that he slings around like he is made of Nerf. He is a flesh and bone projectile which detonates like a bomb, but does not explode with force. He flies and impacts…usually me.
So, to keep “Crash” (his new nickname) from detonating, I have to walk him about 5 miles per day. And our walks are not just walks. The neighbors rarely see him. These are hikes. I drove across town to a large park, which winds through the woods, and has a stream with pools in it deep enough to swim. I take a toy that floats and has a rope on it. The park has deer, coyotes, and various other animals. There is also a 2,200 year old Adena Indian mound. We love this park, but it is 18 miles away. So, I take the freeway to get there.
Now, Columbus Ohio is an odd American town. It barely existed in the 1960s, and now it is the largest city in Ohio. It has spread out, and it is attracting residents from both coasts seeking a less expensive cost of living. With this growth, the freeway system is growing like a cancerous tumor. It has many of the stupidest, most dangerous interchanges that I have ever experienced. Driving across town on this freeway is an ordeal. That is mainly because these midwesterners drive like cars are rare, and they aren’t. Driving is very different in Southern California. Drivers use more efficient strategies. There is not nearly as much lane changing. In Columbus, they drive like it is a video game that they are trying to lose. Every day I find myself saying, “where are the patrols”? “I wish there were some cops”.
While I’m gone, my wife will be home alone. God, I hope there are cops to discourage an attack. We live in a comfortable neighborhood that is well patrolled, and very safe. We pay high taxes, and receive excellent services, like law enforcement that meets our needs. Starting yesterday they are flushing the public water system. They do this every year, and our local infrastructure is in excellent shape. And we pay for that. Lawn season is beginning, and they are starting to collect yard waste. Just keep your yard up, and collect what the grass, and bushes discard, and bag it. They come around and take it once a week. And we pay for that. I live under a 104 year old oak tree. It was planted by the father of our next door neighbor. That thing drops huge bags full of acorns which are lawn killers. I just rake those bad boys up and bag them, place them next to my garage on Monday, and they are gone. We pay for that. And the school system is excellent. Grandview Heights schools produce great young scholars, and those kids are good citizens. They are from nice families, and the neighborhood streets are peaceful. Guess what? We pay for that.
Police departments are just like any other city service. You get what you pay for, and how that resource is managed matters. It is not really mysterious. If you feel like you have substandard service, if you dig into it, you wont need to go far before you find resource or resource allocation as a significant contributor to some degree. It isn’t mysterious. It is a matter of priorities.
04/06/2021 @ 5:03 pm
You **hope** he’s a puppy for four years. I wouldn’t count on it. My poodle was a total spaz for at least six years. I wouldn’t be surprised…
04/02/2021 @ 3:41 pm
It’s all about resources. I’m in NY State and we’re like Columbus: high taxes and good services. (By the way, I drive through Columbus from here to my mother in law in Cincinnati. I know about the damned highway interchanges, though on 70 they’re a bit better than they used to be. Changing lanes was insane and necessary fast.
This was the main problem with police relations in Ferguson, MO. In an anti-tax environment, the local judiciary was reduced to funding itself from unreasonable fines on poor people not making court dates (for reasons like not finding child care) and having the police reinforce these.
It’s not only that you get what you pay for, it’s also that you get what you incentivize. This is not inherently a police problem because the incentive system is not set up by police, nor are they independent of the rest of government.
04/02/2021 @ 4:13 pm
Right. You get what you incentivize. Issues of competence vary from community to community. Policing is not uniform (pardon the pun) across the entire country. If you put crap into your formula, you’ll get crap out as a result. Sadly, in the last generation, we have been trying to do government as cheaply as possible.
04/03/2021 @ 12:37 am
Doing gov’t as cheaply as possible is a deliberately self-fulfilling prophesy: starve government of resources, then criticize government for the lousy job it’s doing because it has insufficient resources, the solution of which is of course to privatize, not that the private sector will do any better (they won’t and they’ll cost us more) but those who favor the private sector blindly do so out of a sort of religious conviction.
04/06/2021 @ 8:04 am
How much ‘accountability’ would there be today if we didn’t have the benefit of the videos, taken by citizen bystanders, as opposed to ‘official’ police reports?
04/06/2021 @ 8:12 am
Ron, you do realize that videos are evidence, right? You claim the value of evidence , but when asked for evidence, you offer unsubstantiated opinion.
04/06/2021 @ 9:32 am
How many ‘official police reports’ are little more than unsubstantiated opinions predicated on fabrications and lies that, introduced as ‘evidence’, have become the basis for convictions and executions?
04/06/2021 @ 9:38 am
Because corrupt cops can do it, you can do it? Kind of a low bar you’ve set for yourself.
04/06/2021 @ 10:29 am
Kosh,
My opinions are not predicated on wholesale lies and whole cloth fabrications…
The fact that you won’t accept my explanation as “evidence or proof” does t render my posture or point of view as being based or predicated on demonstrable falsehoods.
No way my opinion would be accepted as evidence in a court of law…
I wouldn’t attempt to offer an unsubstantiated utterance as proof of anything beyond my capacity to express an opinion.
How does my opinion stand as equivalent to an ‘offiicial police’ report’?
No one anywhere ever who be convicted and sentenced solely on the strength of my ‘opinion’.
04/06/2021 @ 11:25 am
You’re the one who used police reports as a standard.
There is no statement on the table accusing you of basing your point on demonstrable falsehoods. The problem is that you’re not basing your point on demonstrable anything. That’s the point, the whole point, and nothing but the point.
“Most White people are racist.” White people, check. Racist, check, though ill-defined. Most? Not checked. At All.
To illustrate the issue with this, let’s try a parallel statement:
“Most Black people are _________” [insert uncomplimentary adjective here]
I assume you can see the problem with this statement, as incomplete as it is. It’s an obvious generalization. This is exactly how bigotry works or actually what bigotry is: unsubstantiated uncomplimentary generalizations.
I suppose I could try “Most religious people are (or perhaps even All religious people are) _____________” [insert uncomplimentary adjective here] but you’ve already gone there.
04/06/2021 @ 1:33 pm
“The problem is that you’re not basing your point on demonstrable anything.”
If 1000 years of racial bigotry, 300 years of slavery, and 100+ years of Jim Crow aren’t demonstrable, nothing is.
The fact that you refuse to accept this history as ‘evidence’ or ‘proof’ is on you…
“Most Black people are _________” [insert uncomplimentary adjective here]”
Insert stereotypes developed over the periods cited above…
Again you’re quibbling and nitpicking over syntax and semantics…
04/06/2021 @ 2:26 pm
The phenomenon is demonstrable. The quantity is not. Your statement wasn’t “Some White people are racist.” I’d agree with that, and I’d imagine nearly 100% of America’s population would agree with that.
“Most” is a different claim. More than 50%. “If you are White the probability that you are racist exceeds the probability that you are not.” No substantiation at all. All you’ve done to substantiate that is to talk about legislative policy as if policy is reliably the reflection of the will of the majority, which it isn’t.
I am not telling you that over 50% off the White population is not racist. That depends on a definition of racist and a whole lot of quantitative information. I am not responsible for proving that it is not because I am not stating that it is not.
04/06/2021 @ 5:34 pm
It is not about syntax or semantics. It has nothing to do with syntax or semantics. All it has to do with is unsupported assertions.
04/06/2021 @ 1:36 pm
Ron, here is the difference between the most corrupt officer of the law offering testimony in the form of a report, and your use of opinion. An officer is accountable to the statements made in a report, and testified to in court. Conversely, you make statements, and then use, “it’s only the internet”, or, “that’s my opinion”, to avoid accountability. An official report, no matter how corrupt the officer, requires the help, or deception of another individual to avoid accountability. Furthermore, to make a case about a “corrupt cop” and a false report, you need to present that cop and that report. Just because one has does not attach guilt to all others. That is positively moronic. And it is a massive subject change.
Why don’t you just stick to the subject.
04/06/2021 @ 1:40 pm
“…If 1000 years of racial bigotry, 300 years of slavery, and 100+ years of Jim Crow aren’t demonstrable, nothing is…”
This lacks context. First, it is a weak assumption, and lacks any concrete proof. But even more important is that this must be within the context of North America. Racism has surely existed for longer than that. Slavery has existed for longer than that. Your statement was “most white people…”. Most white people don’t exist, nor have they ever existed, in America.
04/06/2021 @ 5:07 pm
Oh my goodness! Six years?
By the way, I took him for 4 miles in the woods right after getting my second Moderna shot today. I wanted to get it in before I felt any weird side effects, like they say is possible. Got that done, mowed the lawn, and still no pain or sickness after 6 hours. If I get thru tomorrow with no issues, I’m in the clear.
04/06/2021 @ 5:31 pm
I had trouble sleeping on the arm the first night and woke up the first morning with a light fever of 100.7.Ibuprofen took that out. For me that was about it.
04/07/2021 @ 1:18 pm
Think what it would be to take him out bird hunting for the day. My brother hunts pheasants with his lab and she has no trouble going all day. I forget exactly how old she is but pretty sure it’s over 4. On the other hand, she’s usually home alone at least 12 hours a day. She has access to the yard and an inside kennel but she behaves herself. I think.
04/07/2021 @ 1:19 pm
oh p,s, I had pfizer, no side effects either shot.
04/07/2021 @ 4:20 pm
Lucky you. I woke up at 4am today and my shoulder was in pain. Still not a biggie because I get should pain all the time from sports. Then around 7am, I got head to tow body aches, and had a 99.7 fever. The fever was gone by 10am, but the body aches feel like I have been in several car wrecks.
04/07/2021 @ 7:12 pm
Out in the field, he’s a dream. He wants to do everything you suggest in the field. He even wants to stop when you stop doing the activities he loves. walking and doing the various activities with him is relatively easy. Sitting next to him on a couch when he punches me with his paw, or flops his full body weight on me is another story.