#6--Citizens will try to control all aspects of the PD
Another piece of evidence that cops are paranoid and have PLENTY to hide.
There is no cop out there who understands what the citizen wants in a police department because they have always had the mindset of working for themselves with no regard for any citizen preference. For cops, the job is and always will be Us Versus Them. That is the arrogance the Academy looks for and nurtures, leading to every cop thinking that way.
Nobody who is living a public life, AND PAID TO DO IT WITH PUBLIC FUNDS, has anything to fear by being audited, expedited, reviewed or critiqued by that same public, right? Somehow, cops disagree, and the smell of suspicion seeps in……
Another Hypocrisy
There is a subtext here that should not be missed. Cops don’t want their “professional privacy” invaded. (They say it would degrade the quality of their work.) Cops know they are another public utility, like water and sewer, but still want to play the privacy card during work hours or anything else work related, which they interpret as 24/7. This is much more than just hypocrisy. It is screaming ego.
There is an old joke about a high profile night club that is very, very exclusive. In fact, it is so exclusive, absolutely nobody knows where the club is and no one has ever been there. That night club is the cop’s business model. We should all hear and know of police, and hear about how fantastic they are, but not know anything about who they are or how they do things. While such a goal is an out-of-reach ultimate, cops drool over the possibility of being that anonymous. The freedom to do and say anything to anybody and never see a repercussion is what all PDs aspire to. Oh, and get paid. And be called a hero. What a Nirvana. What a Xanadu. What an unrealistic thought.
We Didn’t Want The Job, So We Hired People
This cop-created criticism of a CRB is the one that comes closest to reality, in that when a CRB finds a problem, they will repair or replace it with a method that reflects the citizen’s needs. But to operate every aspect of the PD is not what a taxpayer is interested in doing, any more than operating the water or sewer facilities. The citizen hires police to do that work FOR us, and cops don’t seem to get it. They forget who the real boss is. Arrogance will do that to a fellow.
As stated before, the people invented the police. We invited cops into our communities to do a particular job FOR us, and we offered a fair compensation for their work. We do not hire and pay a workforce, only to do the job ourselves. We expect and demand the paid employees to deliver. We also, however, expect the job to be performed to our satisfaction, and that occasionally includes an explanation to an employee the specifics of their failings. As with any other job, they must measure up or ship out. That bears repeating---as with any other job.
Reviewing and repairing police failure doesn’t constitute the nit-picking, arbitrary method police departments try to predict with their warning that a CRB will try to run all aspects of a PD. We have no interest in doing such a thing, which is why we issue paychecks to the police. Cops just don’t get it.
Clarity On Both Sides Is Needed
What we never offered our cops is jurisdiction over all citizens whenever and however they find them, regardless of what citizens want. We the People are the deciders of who gets arrested locally, who gets ticketed, or searched, or pretext stopped, or detained, or anything else at the local level, including how a citizen is spoken to by a police employee. We can and are supposed to tell our cops how to act, but we don’t. The result is the child telling the parent how to run the household. The animals are running the zoo. We Citizens don’t do our jobs.
The Citizen Review Board is the only solution to what has gotten completely out of control. I do not mean some figurehead style entity that meets now and then just to vote on when their next meeting will be, and then go home. I don’t mean a body that will decide what the people want and submit it to the police chief, only to have their recommendations instantly and permanently ignored. And I definitely DO NOT mean a board of people who still feel they must take orders from cops or police unions. A Hire & Fire CRB is the only one with any real authority, and after convincing the citizen of that, the police department will have no choice but to fall into line.
Folks, police departments around the country are playing us for fools. Cops know that without Hire & Fire, no CRB can do anything constructive. Forming a CRB without Hire & Fire is like installing a fire hydrant without water. All cops need to do is toss in an irrelevant “objection” here and there to prolong the debate, complain to the Mayor, and claim the CRB only wants to fire everybody, they don’t understand intricate police work, they already have one within the PD. Yadda Yadda. A successful and working CRB isn’t one that debates with cops, it is one that sculpts a police department.
Let’s Settle This
Cops will never understand that it isn’t about what they think, it is about what the citizen wants. Unless a Citizen Review Board attracts and fosters a whole new breed of law enforcement, we will be fed a never ending diet of twisted police garbage thinking, and told it makes perfect sense, even if we can’t understand it. We must do our own hiring.
Any sense makes good sense if citizens agree to it, at least for their town, or state, or country. That’s why we have voting as a deciding mechanism. But when we are told something makes sense that doesn’t make ANY sense to us, it is tantamount to treason. Today’s cops don’t understand they serve at our pleasure, not their own. We must do our own firing.
Demand a Citizen Review Board with Hire & Fire in your city or town today, and don’t rest until your police force is brought into line.
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