Policing must be supported and improved
By Letter to the Editor on July 23, 2020.
I have been observing the behaviour of people for a while and in the aftermath of COVID-19 and the recent deaths of innocent black people, the response by the people has been stark, decisive, violent and the emotional binge by a few has hurt their own community.
The new cry now is “defund the police department.” That is not an answer: there are still criminals, murders to solve, thefts, cyber-crime, in addition to speeders, jaywalkers, family violence. We need the police, and obviously a better way of choosing who gets to patrol our business streets and neighbourhoods. Are the people who have until now been put in the position of hiring officers deliberately choosing bullies over the thinkers in their choices?
There is room for both in the department. If there is a barroom brawl you send in the brawn but if there is a child safety issue you need both sides in attendance. Communication is key here; the community needs to reach out to the police force when there is, for example a storm trooper with a plastic ray gun on the property so the police do not attack an innocent staff member of the store. The police need to do a better job of reaching out to the community; once-a-year events do not cut it. There needs to be community liaison all the time. If we as a community are going to survive we need to support our police force who are always putting themselves in harm’s way. We have lost some wonderful people who were just doing their jobs.
We must look at hiring practices, the psychological testing and weed out the bullies. Policing takes brain and a certain amount of brawn depending on the situation. Policing is not easy; the officers suffer from burnout and that has to be acknowledged by changing things up on the career path. Social media has exposed a lot of ugliness in some members of the police force but only the few that are bent in that direction. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. We need our police. They need more training about mental health issues and awareness about public perception and that can be remedied.
The police department is not our enemy. Hiring practices need to be changed, the psychological tests must be examined by professionals to identify what is wrong with them and fix them.
We need to support our officers.
Dianne Wall
Lethbridge
10-9
How hard is it to weed out the thugs? Is it the nature of the occupation that attracts thugs? Are the police so desperate for new recruits that thugs manage to slip through? Are the thugs able to hide their true persona during the interview processes?
Good questions, Seth.
And is it only a balance of ‘brain and brawn’ that is at issue? Or should ‘bigotry’ be better considered? (I assume that this is what the letter writer meant by ‘ugliness’?)
Also, the defunding movement is about the police budget directed to providing social services – something that should be done by social services, given an equally adequate budget.
This is informative: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/defund-police/612682
Or this, on ‘unbundling’ the police: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/unbundle-police/612913
good points to ponder. certainly, while some go into policing to be a positive difference, there are those that are attracted to and have issues with regard to power and control…as is the case with govt, too. it does not help that we have 2 cops that recently broke what i believe to be a sacred trust and abused their power. they should have been dishonourably fired…such that only a backwash usa police force would consider employing either. instead, we get a whitewash at best.
not only does the system not weed out the bad ones – and the thoughtful comment from hansdad to the tarleck letter is worth a read – the system seems to get hijacked to some degree by the bad ones. macho behaviour, keep quiet about wrong-doings by ‘brothers’, cover ups, abuse of power, lack of transparency, lack of justice when police have broken the law/abused power, bigotry/racism/sexism…each have contributed to the malaise that are now igniting backlash.
There is another possibility.
What of the possibility that just like most organizations, it’s inevitable that there are going to be a few bad apples?