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An Anonymous Coward writes:
Camden, New Jersey is a very low income neighborhood. According to this NY Times article, until recently it had typical low income policing--heavy on corruption and violence and low on compassion.
But now they have a new chief and things have changed --
"Handing a $250 ticket to someone who is making $13,000 a year" — around the per capita income in the city — "can be life altering," Chief Thomson said in an interview last year, noting that it can make car insurance unaffordable or result in the loss of a driver's license. "Taxing a poor community is not going to make it stronger."
Handling more vehicle stops with a warning, rather than a ticket, is one element of Chief Thomson's new approach, which, for lack of another name, might be called the Hippocratic ethos of policing: Minimize harm, and try to save lives.
Officers are trained to hold their fire when possible, especially when confronting people wielding knives and showing signs of mental illness, and to engage them in conversation when commands of "drop the knife" don't work. This sometimes requires backing up to a safer distance. Or relying on patience rather than anything on an officer's gun belt.
While not out of the woods yet, it sounds like there is hope for Camden and maybe it won't just continue to be written off as a war zone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @12:46AM (5 children)
Intelligence as in being smart, a good learner, having knowledge, reading books etc.
This intelligence is missing in almost all police forces, especially in the US of A. According to people in-the-know, police was intentionally dumbed down so they would follow orders and are totally unable to think. The proposed rules in this article would have worked if the police persons were smart and intelligent and able to think for themselves.
As it stands now, police are crazy criminals in uniforms who deserve to be put down immediately, preferably behind the house. Or dragged out of their homes and curb-stomped.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @01:46AM
"In the end, the plague touched us all. It was not confined to the Oran of Camus. No. It turned up again in America, breeding in-a-compost of greed and uselessness and murder, in those places where statesmen and generals stash the bodies of the forever young. The plague ran in the blood of men in sharkskin suits, who ran for President promising life and delivering death. The infected young men machine-gunned babies in Asian ditches; they marshalled metal death through the mighty clouds, up above God's green earth, released it in silent streams, and moved on, while the hospitals exploded and green fields were churned to mud.
And here at home, something died. The bacillus moved among us, slaying that old America where the immigrants lit a million dreams in the shadows of the bridges, killing the great brawling country of barnstormers and wobblies and home-run hitters, the place of Betty Grable and Carl Furillo and heavyweight champions of the world. And through the fog of the plague, most art withered into journalism. Painters lift the easel to scrawl their innocence on walls and manifestos. Symphonies died on crowded roads. Novels served as furnished rooms for ideology.
And as the evidence piled up, as the rock was pushed back to reveal the worms, many retreated into that past that never was, the place of balcony dreams in Loew's Met, fair women and honorable men, where we browned ourselves in the Creamsicle summers, only faintly hearing the young men march to the troopships, while Jo Stafford gladly promised her fidelity. Poor America. Tossed on a pilgrim tide. Land where the poets died.
Except for Dylan."
Pete Hamill, back cover of Dy;an "Blood on the Tracks" copied from notes with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Px6Jtye60 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday April 04 2017, @05:08AM
As it stands now, police are crazy criminals in uniforms who deserve to be put down immediately, preferably behind the house. Or dragged out of their homes and curb-stomped.
When I was growing up in NYC, we considered the cops to be just the best armed street gang. Not really sure how much that's changed, except there are fewer of the other street gangs these days.
What's more, I've noticed (although I am white, which makes a huge difference of course) that the NYC police are actually a lot better then many other places I've lived/visited. Which is a rather depressing thought. Sigh.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 05 2017, @12:59PM (2 children)
Just wanted to point out that police departments being "intentionally dumbed down" isn't just opinion or conspiracy theory. Here's one case where it went to court, the police department acknowledged that they refuse to even interview any candidate that scores highly on an intelligence test, and the courts ruled that it was perfectly legal for them to discriminate in that way:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 [go.com]
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Wednesday April 05 2017, @02:04PM (1 child)
Interesting link, but the judge's "reasoning" strongly suggests that he passed the same low-IQ requirement.
It was not discrimination because
the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.
So, if we apply the same skin-color rule or genital exam to every applicant, that's OK?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:45PM
Well, ultimately the point seems to be that the laws against discrimination don't mean the cops have to hire someone who is totally unfit for the occupation. Which isn't at all unreasonable. Where it gets absurd is that the judge accepted, without ANY evidence, the idea that high intelligence makes one unfit for that particular job. That was based on information -- which the plaintiff demonstrated to be inaccurate -- provided to the police force by a private consultant.
It's security through outsourcing -- the outsourcing firm can't be blamed because they only provide "opinions", while the police force can't be blamed because they're assumed to be acting in good faith when they blindly accepted those opinions as statements of fact.
The full ruling can be found at:
http://www.aele.org/apa/jordan-newlondon.html [aele.org]
Interesting side note, the ruling seems to be partially based on a case from the 80s, Harris v. McRae, which found that the government had a legitimate interest in promoting childbirth and for that reason they had a right to limit abortion access for low income women. Seems to me that they went further than they should have in order to punish the "immorality" of having sex while poor, and in doing so set the bar for proving discrimination extremely high. Providing medical treatment for anything except one specific class of illnesses seems a pretty clear case of discrimination IMO, and I REALLY don't like the idea that "the army needs more cannon fodder" can override a constitutional amendment against discrimination. But that's the existing case law and now the courts have to follow it:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/448/297/case.html [justia.com]