So, I just read President Obama's request on "strengthening community policing." (exact words, I'm not being sarcastic. Yet.)
There's three parts.
Part one deals with what it calls Local Law Enforcement Acquisition. Basically, being at war for over a decade means we have a lot of stuff left over. Some of which is extremely useful for cops (radios, body armor, carbines, ect), some which might not be ideal, but can do the job in a pinch (an agency might not be able to afford a Bearcat, but if you can get an MRAP for a quarter of the price of a Bearcat, it might come in handy), and some of which might not. In the last few years, state and local P.D.'s have been buying stuff at various levels of appropriateness from the feds kinda willy-nilly.
In essence, part one deals with making sure these are appropriate and civilian-approved. You can translate that as "paperworked to hell and back."
Part two is appointing a task force on community policing and awaiting their findings. Another task force. Thrillsville. But maybe not too destructive.
Part three is a 3-year, $263M investment package. About $75M is a price matching body camera program that would supply them to about $50K cops. (For those curious, the U.S. has something in the neighborhood of 450K sworn officers)
So, is this a bad thing? Not.. really? I mean, yeah, part one is pandering to some vocal yelling to the far left and giving some bureaucrats something to do, and part two is pretty much SOP. What worries me about part 3 is that it focuses on body cameras more than training.
And focusing on things to solve a people problem is a bad idea.
It's also a pittance of a budget and the President knows it. Boils down to about 400 bucks per officer in the country, which means that whatever comes out of it is likely destined to be a check-in-the-box annual training requirement.
Do I have a solution? Not particularly. But neither do I see this as an end-all or even major achievement either.
There's three parts.
Part one deals with what it calls Local Law Enforcement Acquisition. Basically, being at war for over a decade means we have a lot of stuff left over. Some of which is extremely useful for cops (radios, body armor, carbines, ect), some which might not be ideal, but can do the job in a pinch (an agency might not be able to afford a Bearcat, but if you can get an MRAP for a quarter of the price of a Bearcat, it might come in handy), and some of which might not. In the last few years, state and local P.D.'s have been buying stuff at various levels of appropriateness from the feds kinda willy-nilly.
In essence, part one deals with making sure these are appropriate and civilian-approved. You can translate that as "paperworked to hell and back."
Part two is appointing a task force on community policing and awaiting their findings. Another task force. Thrillsville. But maybe not too destructive.
Part three is a 3-year, $263M investment package. About $75M is a price matching body camera program that would supply them to about $50K cops. (For those curious, the U.S. has something in the neighborhood of 450K sworn officers)
So, is this a bad thing? Not.. really? I mean, yeah, part one is pandering to some vocal yelling to the far left and giving some bureaucrats something to do, and part two is pretty much SOP. What worries me about part 3 is that it focuses on body cameras more than training.
And focusing on things to solve a people problem is a bad idea.
It's also a pittance of a budget and the President knows it. Boils down to about 400 bucks per officer in the country, which means that whatever comes out of it is likely destined to be a check-in-the-box annual training requirement.
Do I have a solution? Not particularly. But neither do I see this as an end-all or even major achievement either.
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