Cops Say Citizen Oversight Won't Work Part 7

Why It Won't Work Part 1  2  3  4  5  6

#7--It is Too Time and Money Consuming

What? For whom do they speak? The citizen or themselves? Both are equally wrong. Excuse #7 is a rookie attempt to move the focus of myriad cop screw-ups off themselves and onto pretty much anything else they can find. This excuse is professional dodging and weaving at its most transparent. It even shames the practiced liars that cops are. Once again, they are blinded by their own balls. OK, now we break down the already obvious----

TIME--The wasteful time they speak of isn’t their own, it’s that of the citizen. Cops are either hourly or salaried, and get paid accordingly no matter what they do, including nothing. They have no concept of wasted time. And since cops are not good stewards of the citizen’s time, (remember, it is cops who put people in jail for as long as it takes to decide how to make their spurious accusations stick), they are not experts on how citizens should best employ their time.

Yet somehow, looking at a CRB that will spend time learning the fallacies and downfalls of that city’s police department and is dedicated to the improvement of that department as desired by the very people that pay for it, is somehow a top concern of the PD itself. The longer we think about that logic, the dumber it gets. Highway road signs in Braille make more sense.

Maybe they are thinking of the time cops will have to spend dealing with the review board. Well, there may be the time dedicated to supplying police reports and dash cam videos to the CRB when requested, but the Chief should be archiving those things anyway. There also may be the time for a cop to explain himself to the CRB when an incident is reported, but a cop can mitigate that time by learning how not to screw up. A CRB is devoted to the sculpting process, and just as sculpting marble goes, the specifics of the vision slowly become more clear as the sculptor progresses, until all that is needed is regular, minor polishing of the finished product. The closer a cop acts to what the citizen wants, the less time it will take to keep things that way, and the more time the oversight board can spend on bigger and better refinements.

MONEY--The money they speak of is again not theirs, and if everything is done well, not even existent. A well produced CRB will run with very little or no funds at all. When a cop says money is being wasted, he should think about bogus charges to justify an arrest and the law suits that follow, not to mention the cost to the citizen in legal fees that were never necessary. He should think about the huge settlements cities are forced to pay out to citizens that were wrongfully approached and treated because the cop didn’t bother to handle himself as the citizens of his town want him to. They should think about the paycheck they earn, no….receive…no….make that steal, from the taxpayer every week when they don’t have a clue as to what the citizen wants, (assuming they are willing to providing such a thing). Cops who mention the citizen’s money or time are only providing another proof of police arrogance.

Regular readers of this blog who have clicked on my Cop-Proof CRB series already know that a working CRB needs diligent preparation and dedicated staff, but little money, and surprisingly little time to get up and running. Any cop who doesn’t get that is deep in denial.

How About Some Top-Notch Cop Arrogance
The idea that we the people need financial guidance from our PD is not a new one. Get a load of this example from a few years ago, 1994. In Boston, cops broke down the door of an apartment in a drug raid. They had the wrong address. The elderly minister living there was chased and terrorized by police and within about 45 minutes, died of a heart attack. His widow sued the police department and was awarded $1M out of the $18M she sued for. (The cop settlement offer was $600K.) The PD appealed the case, not because they believed the cops who caused Rev Accelyne Williams’ heart attack were not guilty, (both Chief Paul Evans and Mayor Menino of Boston apologized), but because they believed the widow, Mary Williams, was too elderly to “handle that much money”, and a request was made to appoint a guardian for her. They wanted the award reduced. Is that arrogance beyond all ability to measure it or what? And cops worry that citizens may find the expense of an oversight panel excessive. Thinking like that is reminiscent of the stink on day-old trout.

No Mr Policeman, we little boys and girls out here who pay your bar tab with our tax money can handle the burden, and probably with more accuracy than PDs handle their annual budget. And we won’t even have to worry our pretty little heads about it, because a smoothly operating CRB has little or no budget to start with, and works on donations from citizens and local businesses that enjoy the quality of the police department citizen control insures.

A CRB would dramatically reduce if not eliminate the lawsuit payouts to citizens who were abused or cheated out of their rights by cops. Millions of dollars go to settle lawsuits like that every month across the USA, and the taxpayer has to foot that bill. Cops cause insurmountable financial cost on a citizen with charges which are later dropped, or Constitutional violations, or physical injuries during arrests. But they think a CRB that runs on a shoestring or less is too expensive for us. They don’t know expense when they see it.