[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

And nobody has been able to define what this buzz phrase actually means.

It's not a buzz phrase. It's an actual policing model called Community Oriented Policing. It is a dramatic change from the Professional Policing model that relies on type A personalities who harbor authoritarian tendencies, and instead relies on more individuals with type B personalities who rely on empathy, communication, and cooperation as tenets to their practices. The community participates in the policing function and has much more influence and guidance on policy because they are partners in enterprise. The police are much more engaged with the community and reliant on the community to protect themselves by allowing them to be active participants in the whole mechanism.

How about instead of looking at silly concepts like defund the police, that they look at the balance of funding between enforcement arming, training and recruiting.

Defunding the police is a solid practice to counter corruption of power and authority in the service. It is better to burn it down, rely on the county sheriff for a year or two, and start a fresh with new leadership and a new force.

I think a big part of the issue with the police lies in recruiting and training. They are getting the wrong mix of people in and the training seems to be piss poor. You can also recalibrate funds in terms of policing the police.

Recalibrate funds? Speaking of a buzz phrase. That sounds exactly like defunding.

The police definitely have to start recruiting and training better. Stop recruiting ex-military. For the most part those recruits are broken and untrainable for the job of working in the civilian world. They come in and rely way too heavily on the training they received while they were "in" and are incapable of turning that training off. They are better to make systemic changes and start fresh.

Another really big problem with the police today is the militarization of the police services. Since the Patriot Act went into play state and local law enforcement agencies have been given access to military hardware and training. This is a tragic mistake as when you train someone on a system, and given them access to certain weapons, they are inclined to use that equipment and tactics when opportunity arises. There is no reason for a police service to be driving around in armored vehicles and employing urban warfare tactics against the citizens they serve. This is a massive issue that needs to be addressed.

More importantly, you have a full generation of leadership that have grown up in this environment, with these weapons and tactics, and this is what they know. These are the tools they rely upon and this is what they know. To make significant change you have to clean house of leadership from the past 20 years. Let that sink in. This is why burning it down and starting over is the most attractive scenario for many jurisdictions.

But throwing out buzz words without meaning when we're talking about defunding the police is going to create worse situation and create greater levels of mistrust.

Just because you don't understand the terms or how the process works does not mean they have no meaning. The whole idea behind defunding and replacing the service with a different model is to establish higher levels of trust. The current system is broken. Dramatic change is needed.