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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: 2) by Entropy on Tuesday April 04 2017, @04:04PM
It isn't always bullets. I think we tend in discussions to focus on the bad of a situation. If the mentally ill person
doesn't have a knife in their hand, or is far away(say 50 feet) then there's no need for bullets. Cops are not snipers.
So there's really two cases--
1. The mentally ill person has an immediate potential TO KILL SOMEONE.(cops, family, whatever) -> Bullets.
2. The mentally ill person doesn't have an immediate potential TO KILL SOMEONE. -> Words. (This basically means if they have a knife, they are significantly over 21 feet away from people.)
#2 for someone armed with a knife seems like it'd be kind of hard, unless they are outside.