“Before the August 2014 fatal police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, the effectiveness of most police chiefs was determined largely by crime rates and response times to 911 calls.
Now, chiefs say that cultivating better community relations — including everything from curtailing police shootings and eliminating racial profiling to requiring officers to be more polite and professional — has become as important a gauge of success as crime reduction, even though such work does not always easily lend itself to being measured.
“Police chiefs definitely have a shorter shelf life post-Ferguson, and they are more scrutinized and criticized for things they weren’t held responsible for before,” said Charles McClelland, Houston’s police chief, who said he agreed with the change in focus. “Pre-Ferguson, you were held responsible only for the crime rate — now it is community relations. One egregious act of misconduct by a police officer can get a police chief fired. It wasn’t like that before.”
As if in acknowledgment of the changed atmosphere, the authorities in San Bernardino, Calif., made officers quickly available to the news media after the department’s quick response to the terrorist shooting there last week, which killed 14 people.
The job of police chief has changed partly because of the dramatic reduction in violent crime since the 1990s, which, especially after the Ferguson shooting, has led the public to demand that departments shift their focus to police accountability.
“Since crime has been so low for so long, there are very high expectations in terms of what people expect of police chiefs,” said Inimai M. Chettiar, the director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan public policy institute affiliated with the New York University School of Law. “Not only are they expected to keep down crime, but now they are expected to treat people with courtesy. That is new.”
I know that a lot of people think that I am beating a dead horse with the anti cop stuff I am now posting frequently
But I don’t think that it is
As you you can see from the above real change is beginning to happen
“Not only are they expected to keep down crime, but now they are expected to treat people with courtesy. That is new.”
I mean really, who would have thought?
But that is actually the point of the stuff that I post
The police state is out of control and has to be reigned in
I am sure that not every cop is bad, but I am fairly certain that it is not a case of just a few bad apples
From the evidence that I have seen I think that the bad cop has become the standard, not the exception
And that has to change
And between bloggers, activists and cameras
It appears to be happening