On 4/1/06, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> In my experience with police, as a result of interacting with them as
> teachers when I was in cop shop... as a state park ranger, I found that
> they tended to separate the world into two camps: cops and not cops. The
> not cop camp was further divided into the rich (that you had to respect)
> and the poor (that you didn't) and minorities (that you could take out
> your fustration on). This was true for cops of all colors.
>
> In term of temperament and world view, the highway patrol was best, the
> cops were middle, the narcs were the worst.
>
> Joanna
>
> Jordan Hayes wrote:
>
> > Josh Narins writes:
> >
> >> A policeperson is trained to see citizens,
> >> a soldier is trained to see threats.
> >>
> >> It's a totally different mindset.
> >
> >
> > It's blurring all the time, though. I blame a down-market in
> > 'community policing' and the drive for specialization: there are whole
> > organizations within (especially the bigger) police forces who never
> > speak to citizens as a regular part of their daily job. The trend
> > started small in the 70s with the LAPD SWAT team and has filtered over
> > into many small-town forces as well: para-military in training,
> > weapons, and tactics. 9/11 has made this much, much worse. "Task
> > force" groups who focus on one issue: drugs, gangs, terror, "crime"
> > ... They have different organizations, different budgets, and of
> > course, see little actual action, so they wind up 'pumped up' when
> > they actually interact with the citizenry. Stuff like that has to
> > stop; departments say they need full-timers on the project to maintain
> > proficiency, but rotation through the whole force would be a) better
> > overall for raising awareness of all officers and b) lowering the
> > tempo of operations when they come up.
> >
> > /jordan
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
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-- Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles