Exploring Community-Based Policing

I was asked to post and elaborate a bit on the issue of community-based policing......so here we go with a little bit of an explanation, and of course, my thoughts on the whole shebang....

Community Policing is an organizational wide philosophy and management approach that promotes community, government and police partnerships; proactive problem solving; and community engagement to address the causes of crime, fear of crime and other community quality of life issues.

Two of the core components of community policing are: Community Partnerships and Problem Solving. Community Partnerships are joint efforts between law enforcement agencies and their communities to address the significant crime and quality of life issues. Problem Solving is a process for analyzing a problem from several perspectives in order to seek the most thoughtful approach possible, which should also be the solution that is most likely to succeed.

Community policing provides the community with a:
Voice in how it will be policed
Permanent resolution to reoccurring problems
Stronger, safer and more friendly place to live
Better understanding of police capabilities and limitations
Closer working relationships with the police and other governmental agencies

It benefits the Department by providing:
A way to more efficiently and effectively use department resources
A way to be more responsive to the community
Better intelligence about criminals
Better communications
More community support for Department programs


This seems like a great concept doesn't it? Interestingly enough, very few people are really aware such a philosophy exists. The country as a whole sees their local law enforcement as either one of two things: Either as a pain in the ass and out to get them for no real reason at all, or as a truly reliable and efficient safety measure. The reality is that a majority of the people believe the first one. You could blame it solely on the fact that those who generally believe the police are the enemy are often getting themselves into sticky situations....like i said...you could say that...but it wouldn't be the whole truth. While it's obviously a problem that there are millions of repeat offenders of even the pettiest offenses, the fact still remains that some officers aren't out there for the good people, but out to get the bad ones(anybody watched Dirty Harry lately?). I can't say that I always blame these officers because chances are they've had some sort of horrible unjust thing done to themselves or a loved one. But still...the show must go on....and shooting to feel powerful isn't gonna make a pretty picture. So what, you ask, do we do to turn this around and use our officers for good(like they're supposed to be)? And this brings us to community based policing.

Though I don't see our society as ever existing without the harder forms of law enforcement(because they best understand the hardened criminals), I believe that expanding on the community policing idea is important. Because there will never be a 1:1 officer:community member ratio, the community has to take some matters into their own hands, with the help of the law enforcement. It's about empowering the people of a community to take some responsibility for what's happening around them....the police have the knowledge....and the people have the ability and the connections.....so why not put them both together? Hell...why not create a better future for our kids? Shucks folks! Glad someone thought of it! Now....let's use it.

Can We Improve on Affirmative Action?

Thought this article was well written....especially liked this particular quote: "Make it poverty, not pigment." It's interesting because on the one hand....i think that's the right way to begin thinking....in many ways....we in this country are past the point of basing everything on race in a negative manner....so far so that there have been uber-allowances for people who years ago would have been left out...now everyone feels like they're being done some great injustice in some way. The real issue at hand now (poverty) seems to be turning towards a tangible problem that if attacked properly...could be helped a great deal. Now on the other hand....isn't turning the issue of race into one of poverty still creating discrimination? But is discrimination inevitable? We all have eyes...and brains.....and emotions that register the things we see and hear...discrimination seems to occur at a split second's notice and we have no idea we've even descriminated against someone or some idea...it's human nature! So..how do we turn this natural occurrence into something positive?

Can We Improve on Affirmative Action?
The Supreme Court appears set to roll back racial preferences. But there may be better ways to achieve racial diversity

Posted Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006 You're characterizing each student by reason of the color of his or her skin," chided Justice Anthony Kennedy, during the Supreme Court arguments last week over the legality of school-integration plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle. "And it seems to me that that should only be, if ever allowed, allowed as a last resort." Kennedy is the court's probable swing vote on this issue, and he has a clear track record on racial preferences: he doesn't like them. "It appears Kennedy is going to stick with his long-held position that affirmative action is unconstitutional," says Paul Gewirtz of Yale Law School. If so, the Roberts court is embarked upon a gradual, but ineluctable, rollback of all racial preferences. As Gewirtz puts it, "This could be the most significant short-term impact of the Bush appointees on the Supreme Court."
Affirmative action was never a very elegant solution to the problem of racial injustice. In fact, Gewirtz—who clerked for the civil rights legend Justice Thurgood Marshall—remembers that Marshall was opposed to making distinctions by race, and had his doubts about racial preferences. But Marshall overcame his doubts, and affirmative action became part of the fabric of American society. On the plus side, a generation of minority and women college graduates has entered the workforce, creating a significant black middle class and a more integrated society. But the price has been resentment, especially in the white working class, and some real inequities. Racial gerrymandering of legislative districts, for example, has created a distorted, extremist politics of racial identification, especially in the South.
Even the most passionate advocates of affirmative action agree that it's a temporary fix, that writing racial distinctions into law is corrosive and illogical in a society that presumes racial equality. Even the most passionate conservative advocates of "color blindness" know that race prejudice still exists and needs to be rectified. So what do we do now? Here are three possible ways to ensure diversity and repair injustice:
Change the Definition. Make it poverty, not pigment. This is an imperfect solution. Yes, a disproportionate number of African Americans and Latinos are poor, but the majority of poor people are white—and more than a few are Asian. If race-based remedies are supplanted by class-based remedies, the number of African Americans attending elite universities, for one thing, will fall. Tom Kane, a Harvard economist, told me, "You'd need an economic affirmative-action program six times the size of the current racial preferences to [benefit] an equivalent number of African Americans." There's another step that would reduce racial and economic injustice: eliminate "legacy" admissions to colleges. Legacies—that is, the children of alumni—represent a huge chunk of students in most fancy schools, about 1 of every 7 students in the Ivy League, according to some estimates. A 1990 study by the Department of Education found that the average Harvard legacy was "significantly less qualified" than other students in all areas except athletic ability. If we're going to end affirmative action for African Americans, we should end it for Affluent Americans.
Change the System. Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap. The only real long-term answer to inequality is to provide a better educational system for the poor, and I mean really better: new facilities, longer school days and school years, the best college-prep classes (to lure scholars from the whiter parts of town), and significant salary bonuses for teachers who choose the toughest neighborhoods, for starters. This would require nothing less than a revolution in public education. We would have to stop funding public schools with local property taxes. The states should finance the system, spending equal amounts on all students. Better schools are the most important thing we can do to ameliorate racial and economic injustice.
Fudge it. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a hero of the civil rights movement, is heartsick over the prospect that the Supreme Court might end the forcible imposition of integration in the society. But Lewis is a sunny soul, and he told me, "Society has come so far, and we're certainly not going backward." Even if racial preferences are ruled unconstitutional, "people are going to find a way to do it anyway." The Congressman is quite right. Diversity has been written into the dna of American life; any institution that lacks a rainbow array has come to seem diminished, if not diseased. In fact, there is a general acknowledgment, in all but the most troglodytic precincts, that our racial diversity is a major American competitive advantage in the global economy. And so, if universities can give special preferences to students from exotic locales like Casper, Wyo.—yes, you, Dick Cheney—they will find a way to make some exceptions for students from Harlem. In the end, the conservatives may be right: racial distinctions should not be written into law. But the embrace of our fabulous polychromatic smorgasbord has become an essential part of American society. We cherish it too much to let it slip away.

Preservation of Auschwitz

Personally, I see no real debate in this one....it's history....if not one of the most fascinating pieces of history....it needs to be kept in a state where newer generations will be able to learn about what happened.....not to mention for all of those who don't believe the holocaust actually happened...it serves as one more really large piece of evidence...just an interesting article..enjoy!

The Times
December 07, 2006
The macabre debate on AuschwitzRoger Boyes in Berlin
Death camp to be rescued from decay
Fierce debate on its true purpose
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::nobreak::The gas chambers of Auschwitz are to be rescued from decay under a modernisation plan that has sparked controversy over how to preserve the infamous death camp. “We have to preserve rather than reconstruct,” Piotr Cywinski, the new head of the Auschwitz museum, said. “We must take this step if we want to be able to see these gas chambers in 20 years’ time.”
It is a macabre dilemma. Should one give new life to a Nazi camp that has become synonymous with evil? Or should one let the camp crumble gently? Should Auschwitz become an overgrown site for mourners or a tourist destination? The International Auschwitz Council meeting this week decided that it was possible to strike a balance. Auschwitz remains a museum as well as a crime scene and, as such, should be more accessible to those wanting to learn about the Holocaust.
“It is the oldest exhibition about the shoah [Holocaust] in the world,” Mr Cywinski said. “We really must change.”
This means building walls to prevent the ruins of gas chambers from sinking into the ground. The exhibition and the first gas chamber are housed in a cramped, red-brick complex originally built as a cavalry barrack. It is here that restoration work will be concentrated.
In the other part of the camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the crematoriums and gas chambers were blown up in the final days of the Second World War. There, the original prisoners’ huts still stand and are already being tactfully preserved.
Another priority is to ensure that locks of hair shaved from the scalps of inmates do not deteriorate. A new education centre is also to be constructed.
Much of the museum design dates back to 1955. At least one member of the International Auschwitz Council — which groups scholars, religious representatives and Holocaust survivors — emphasised that engineering companies of the highest calibre should be consulted before building the support walls for the gas chamber. Jonathan Webber, Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Birmingham, said that there was a risk that the Auschwitz management could be accused of tampering with the gas chambers by Holocaust-deniers.
Holocaust-deniers have long claimed that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were either fake or were too small to have been able to kill huge numbers of victims. About 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, were slaughtered there. Far-right Holocaust-deniers base their claim on a discredited report by Fred Leuchter, an American.
So the Auschwitz restoration team has to be careful to avoid the impression that it is building replicas. “The camp has to be propped up without sacrificing any of its authenticity,” a source close to the council said.
The other fear, voiced by Jewish scholars, is that Auschwitz will lose the smell of death and become more of a museum than a graveyard. Noach Flug, the president of the Centre of Organisations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, said: “Auschwitz is the original place where it happened. You must have the feeling as it was then — the smell and the look. It is important not to change.”
The most damning comment has come from the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims: “Changing the memorial and making it less horrifying and more friendly, having more flowers, trees, parks and grass, is good maybe for an amusement park but not for a place that is important to teach us what happened.”
“This is not about beauty,” Mr Cywinksi said. “We have to think about the next generation and different ways of speaking to them.”
Never forget
25 million people have visited the Auschwitz centre to date
500,000 people visit each year, half of them Polish
in 2004 63,000 came from America, 37,000 from Germany and 26,000 from Britain
1.5 million people died at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Second World War. Other estimates give a figure of 1.1 million
Source: Auschwitz museum