I’ve been in more than one screaming match with my boss when the pols ordered a “vice” sweep around election time and my budget was going to get tapped to pay for it. I had plenty of cases with victims who had been injured physically and fiscally that needed to be cleared without wasting money on sin.

I always favored keeping the peace over enforcing the laws. I didn’t want to ride with people who dressed or acted like gunslingers because they caused trouble, and there is always an ample supply of that on the streets.

Yeah, well, laws making consensual commerce illegal, making it illegal to be homeless (basically), etc., tend to make it one also. When a government outlaws conduct that a significant minority of the population wishes to engage in and which harms nobody other than the people engaging in it, or outlaws conduct over which people have no control due to financial issues, mental illness, etc., what you do is create a war between government and a significant minority of the people. Paramilitary cops simply reflect the fact that there is this disconnect between government and the people they supposedly “serve and protect”. I’m not sure you can blame the cops for this as much as you can blame the sanctimonious self-righteous pricks who pass the laws the cops are supposed to enforce. B.F. Skinner would look at the set of stimulae in the system and note that the behavior exhibited is exactly what the set of stimulae reward and reinforce.

As for the notion of “serve and protect”, that’s so… Carter-era. The days of my youth, when cops in uniform would congregate in my dad’s shop (down the street from the police station) and talk and joke with each other and the civilians therein are over. Now if a cop is in uniform, he’s scanning the crowd as if expecting an insurgent enemy to pop up and take a potshot at him, and doesn’t really relax until he gets home and takes the uniform off and can blend with the civilians somewhat. Cops nowdays are so tightly wound that if I have any interaction with a cop in any way, I treat it the same as if I’m being accosted by an armed criminal on the streets, i.e., say as little as possible (don’t want to offend heavily-armed criminals after all), comply with everything he says, and get out of there as soon as possible and count myself lucky that I’m still alive. As you say, that’s hardly the way for a cop to accomplish anything other than a massive waste of time and resources escalating situations that do not need to be escalated, but I’m not sure, given the perverse set of incentives operating in the War-on-Drugs era, that we can blame the cops for this. We elected the pricks who wound up the cops this way, and we keep electing them, year after year (most Representatives and Senators basically have lifetime tenure). We have met the enemy, and he is us.

-BT

It isn’t a war on the streets unless you make it one. Dressing and acting like you’re going to war doesn’t help you control the situation or head off trouble. Nobody wants to talk to a jerk, so the street people will not be your “non-enemy.”

This is common sense. You have to get out of the car occasionally and talk to people after you find out what they want to talk about.

This instant jump to red alert is an expensive waste of time.

I couldn’t believe it happen in New Haven, home of Yale. Stupid tricks is the norm in a college town, and you need a sense of humor.

i laughed when i read about the lite-brite incident, but when i read about this one, it was no longer funny. noooooooooo! not the hashers! we can’t let them kill off the hashers! i never went on any of their runs, but i did go out drinking with some of them a few times. ok, a lot of times. a drinking group with a running problem, what’s not to like?