Camden Didn’t ‘Defund the Police’
“Camden … actually employed more police — and more law enforcement. As the now-retired chief who led the transition explained, understaffing had made his city force a ‘triage unit going from emergency to emergency.’ Staffing up … made policing in Camden not just more cost-effective but better overall, incorporating training, rules of engagement, and accountability protocols otherwise unaffordable or unacceptable.” - NR
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Camden’s done some good things with policing, and no doubt they can further improve things by extending community policing and other measures, but the next challenge in dropping crime rates is demographics. In the 2010 Census, only 22% of households there were married couples living together. In comparison, Chaska, MN, is almost 55%. Rochester is 49%. To put things in perspective, Camden’s rate of married couples is only slightly better than that of Detroit, and is actually worse than that of Gary, and the #1 predictor of crime is if a child’s parents are not married, especially when they are born.
They’ve dealt with some of the outcomes of family breakdown, and now it’s time to figure out some of the root issues.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Some International Assoc of Chiefs of Police items posted the last couple of days:
- IACP Policy Framework for Improved Community-Police Engagement
- IACP Statement on Qualified Immunity (not for tossing it out)
- IACP Statement on “Defunding the Police” (not for it… obviously!)
I’ve been surprised to see how much confusion there is in the press, and even Congress, regarding Qualified Immunity. There could be some real benefits to putting it in legislative form. It’s mostly case law. But the case law doesn’t allow COPS to do whatever they want. It doesn’t allow what was done to George Floyd. Personally, I doubt that it needs fixing, though the strongest argument for that I’ve heard is that it may encourage the wrong kind of attitude among officers regarding use of force. Skeptical. I’d like to see that notion researched. I think the attitudes come mostly from the local PD’s organizational culture, how they train, what gets you disciplined, etc.
At the moment the statements/docs above are all listed at https://theiacp.org home page.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Regarding the links you provided, it strikes me that the first provides some limits that will prevent things from going very wrong, as well as some things to do if and when it does. Great as far as it goes, but the riots we’ve had seem to be related to a general distance from the police—almost seems as if (if it’s not there already) there needs to be some means of reaching out to the community a la Andy and Barney, to use the stereotype.
My guess is that it would include my favored first step—“get out of the cruiser and get to know your community”—but would not end there.
Also, probably the biggest reason for reforming qualified immunity is that if it’s indeed case law, that tends to be rather “legalese,” leaving what is often too much room for interpretation. If you could trust legislatures to clarify the case law, that might be a huge improvement for what both police and non-police would expect.
Yeah, HUGE if. :^) I don’t trust legislatures to do it right at this point, either, but I’d be glad to be surprised.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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