"In Texas, more training hours are required to be a hairdresser than a cop."
-- Arthur Rizer
It's an interesting article over at 'Hotair' which I would recommend a read (5 minute commentary).
Basically, Rizer brings up the era we live in....where police members are heavily recruited from the military....bring their craft with them, and you end up in a metropolitan area or small town....with some military-assault police who attempt to act like regular cops.
On training? For a small town unit....in most states, it's a weekend-training thing....you do a couple of weekends and 'test'....to get a certificate which allows you to be a small-town policeman.
I would agree....for about 90-percent of what the craft involves in a low-intensity town....'deputy-Joe' is adequate enough for the job.
In a town of 10,000? You probably need something more than 'deputy-Joe'.
But there's no real enthusiasm to change the system presently. So we will simply learn to survive...with crappy or marginal security guys pretending to be regular police.
And remember training and maintenance are always the first things cut in a time of a tight budget.
ReplyDeleteFrom the column:
ReplyDelete* "...in poor communities, the result has been the strange dynamic of “over-policing and under-protection” described by the criminologist David Kennedy, in which police are hypervigilant about petty offenses but unresponsive to more serious criminal activity."
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June, 2022 -- anybody earning less than us$52,000 annually is poor.
Next month, that raises another few thousand.
This time next year, I need us$140,000 to be poor...