Cop-Proof CRB Part 4

We are now organized with members and a meeting place, and are utilizing the print and TV media in our favor. Next is the local government.

Current Officeholders

Elected officials who can do something to further the cause---Once again, we cannot forget the Constitution that tells us that we choose the government by voting, based on what we want the government to do. Let’s make that clear with a Citizen Review Board. Collect names and contact information for all governmental positions that are subject to election in your town, city, district, county. Contact them now, starting with the Mayor, city council, selectmen, anybody who runs the show in your city or town that needs a vote to get the job. Next, --

Elected officials that do not have the position to do something---go to anybody whose office couldn’t form an oversight panel, but needs to be voted in to get a paycheck, and demand that they join the fight. Also work on these peoples’ assistants. They are often more motivated than their employers.

Get phone numbers, snail mail addresses, email addresses, fax numbers, facebook pages, twitter accounts, myspace pages, blogs, and personal or official websites for all elected officials and their assistants. This can be done with a minimal amount of effort online, and all for free. Do this for every sitting member of local government right down to the dogcatcher, (and no disrespect meant to dogs or their catchers!). Political party doesn’t matter because we all live with our PD, and it is up to us to structure it, without regard to the political party in office. Contact all the members of your local government by all the above listed means regularly, and request personal responses. Much of the info needed is in the yellow pages or online, and will be free to use. Research the info and network it with all other members, and fill the politician’s offices with requirement of citizen control over the police departments for their next election. Make it clear, it’s a CRB or nothing.

Next, the Newcomers and Wannabes

In the coming months leading up to 2010 elections, watch the news for political ads introducing incoming candidates. All parties, all offices, all persuasions. Find their contact info and explain the need for a citizen oversight, and one with teeth, not some shadow organization. Make it clear that it is the only way to get a vote in that election. When voting day comes, choose whomever you want, including abandoning the citizen review, but force the CRB issue onto every candidate’s platform. When they all realize that a cop control is as essential as shaking hands and kissing babies, they will respond. Before they are elected, they are at the hungriest level they will ever be in their political careers. Leverage that in a relentless effort. Police culture likes to ignore what isn’t convenient for them, and arrest what disagrees with them. We need to stop both behaviors. Spell that out to all new candidates.

Suggest to the newcomers, as often as you can, that we need proof of their belief in a police reform in their campaign literature, print and TV advertisements. Their public support from day one is essential. It is our job to raise a new generation of politician that will, in turn, support the citizen’s effort to raise a new generation of police.

As stated many times here, if you like the police as they are, keep them and don’t bother with establishing any citizen oversight panel. But if your city is not happy with the police antics taking place there, don’t fool yourself into thinking cops will ever cooperate on their own. The necessary mental processes simply do not exist in them, due to Cop Culture. We the People are given the rights and the tools to assert ourselves, and we must use them.

After the Citizen Review Panel is up and running, there is one that must be established to insure the effectiveness of the citizens’ police force as well as the oversight panel itself. Hire and Fire. Police policy, as it stands today, must be adjusted to meet the needs of the people, as must individual cop attitude. Red tape, bureaucracy, foot dragging and the rest cannot get in the way of the progress our citizens need. We must sculpt the PD. More to come.