I was meaning to cross post this for a while from TOP but I was putting it off to avoid even having to log in but now seemed like an appropriate time.

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Let me start off by apologizing in advance. I am not a professional writer and my grammar can tend to suck. (Figured I would head the Grammar Nazi's off at the pass.)

This is my first Diary, but it is something I have wanted to share with my fellow Kossack's for some time.

Actually, Diary may be giving it too much credit, lets go with "Free form rant". Much less pressure with that since it is my nature to ramble.

Anyway, here are some of my thoughts on things we can do to improve the face of law enforcement as well as rebuild the trust between the civilian and LEO community.

Please follow me below the fold if for no other reason than to tell me where I am wrong. I am always happy to hear countering opinions and ideas.

If I wasn't, I'd still be registered as a Republican, lol!

Distrust (or outright fear) of the Police by the average citizen is at an all time high.

There are many factors that I feel lead into this. One of the largest is probably prohibition in general and the failed social experiment called The War on Drugs specifically, which in all actuality is really a war on a significant portion of Americans.

I have seen studies that show that roughly half of the people in this country have at one time or another used an illicit substance.

That means that at one point or another roughly half of us could have been thrown into a cage if not for the fact that we just failed to get caught.

When I was growing up in NJ, a roach could land you a prison sentence as well as lead to asset forfeiture.

Now, you may be one of the group that didn't experiment with drugs, and that's fine. You are safe from it.

But what about your son? Your Daughter? Your best friend? You might think you don't know any illicit drug users, but you'd be wrong. You just don't KNOW that you know any users of illicit substances because we make them hide in the shadows.

On second thought, let me correct that. You might THINK your safe, but again, you would be mistaken.

We still kick in doors of innocent people waging this war, and shoot your dog to boot. Even if it is obvious that the dog presents no real significant threat.

Hell, sometimes we even shoot you! Even if you're unarmed. Or even just an infant in a crib. (Ok, we don't shoot those, we just disfigure them with flash-bangs.) Try googling "Cops Kill Wrong House". There are so many instances it is just horrifying.

I think we need a DRAMATIC reduction in the use of no knock warrants as well as a more sensible policy to apprehending suspects.

For example, instead of kicking in doors at 4AM to raid a home full of potential innocents wouldn't it make more sense to have a group of plain clothed officers strategically place themselves to intercept the suspect while they are going about their day?

It seems to me that it would be much safer for all involved if a group of officers that are well trained in unarmed grappling techniques quickly rushed and subdued the individual using hands on tactics rather than rushing into a suburban home armed and geared up like your clearing a city block in Iraq.

For those of you that watch Mixed Martial arts, think of 4 guys like Liddell, Gracie, St-Pierre and Silva, except they have been training and working together for one task, that of subduing a single individual as a team without causing the suspect serious injury.

Do you think they could pull it off? I do. In seconds.

Yes, this might lead to minor (or sometimes even not so minor) injuries to the officers, but hey, that is part of our job. We take the risk of potential injury into account when we took that oath and accepted the position.

So do Soldiers, however they do not pass that risk on to the very civilian population they are sworn to protect, instead they sacrifice their safety to preserve yours, and so should we.

Yet we do the opposite all the time. How many times do I have to hear about an unarmed person who's life was ended by an officer, "In fear for his safety"? When did we become such quivering wussies?

Another thing I would like to see is community policing.

By community policing, I don't mean something to the effect of X% of population in a given area is Y% of a particular ethnic group therefor the Police officers for that area must be comprised of the same percentage of officers kind of definition (although that's not to say I think that it's a bad idea, I just have a different take on what the definition SHOULD be) what I mean is getting police OUT of their cruisers and back on foot patrol wherever possible.

Officers should be regularly assigned to a neighborhood, travel in pairs or even solo based on need and get to know the population. When you interact with someone on a daily basis, you get to know them and it becomes much harder to see them as the enemy.

They get to know who is on the block and those on the block get to know them. People used to be comfortable talking to the police, and the police used to be comfortable around civilians. Neither of which is true anymore.

When cops rush from incident to incident in their cruisers, and only deal with the worst the neighborhood has to offer on a consistent basis it makes it easier for them to classify everyone as Scumbags.

And again, the reverse is true. When the civilian population of a neighborhood only sees the cops when they are kicking in their neighbors doors etc. for doing something that isn't hurting anyone but themselves (or sometimes nobody at all, because oops, my bad so sorry about shooting your dad, we had the wrong house.) I just don't see a close knit relationship following such interactions.

We need cops to know the people on their patrol as citizens, and not just as potential enemies and vice versa.

Of course we would still need officers in cruisers, I am not saying do away with them, but that they should only fulfill limited rolls, such as fast response teams for major incidents, traffic enforcement, etc.

Hell, I would settle for putting the cops on Segways even, anything that makes it easier for them to interact with their community on a regular basis will be one of the first steps to healing the wounds decades of over policing from a distance have inflicted.

We need to get back to the days of the beat cop, walking the block, popping into the bodega for a coffee and a chat and then moving on. (Don't even get me started on how this would help our plummeting homicide clearance rates.)

Ok, let's go back to the topic of drugs for a second (Hey, I warned you that I tend to ramble.)

There is a culture of steroid abuse that is rampant through many LEO agencies. We have politicians that want to drug test the poor, but continue to ignore the obvious incidents of 'Roid Rage that are so frequently caught on camera. This isn't new information, yet it somehow manages to avoid almost all media attention.

Take a look at pre-hire photo's of many of these officers that are charged with abuse, then look at them in the video again, then, if by some chance they got charged, look at their courtroom photo's a year later.

Notice anything?

I am not saying that I suspect that there is a steroid abuse problem in the law enforcement community, I am saying that I KNOW there is one.

We need to implement NATIONAL requirements for both mandatory random and post incident drug testing, to include testing for illicit steroid use. Why this is such a controversy is beyond me. We do it for train conductors, bus drivers and even non-safety based jobs, why wouldn't we want to do so for those we are entrusting our lives to and issuing firearms to?

Lets take a note from Republican Jesus 2, AKA Regan "Trust, but verify" that the cops are not in an altered state.

Another thing we way want to consider is examining and screening officers for PTSD. Cops do see some pretty horrific shit, and that is bound to fuck up even the toughest of us.

It might even be a good idea to treat Line Officers like the military in one regard. I.E. you can only do so many years as a beat cop before either promoting up to detective, administrative, etc or moving back to civilian life.

To be honest, I don't know if this is a good idea or not. I am torn due to the thought of the loss of experienced officers, however an experienced but burned out or unstable officer is not a good thing either, but one potential upside is it could erode the blue wall of silence, so I think it's something worth at least discussing.

Lets talk about that wall for a second. We need to do something about it. When "Good" cops cover up for bad cops, even if it is only by being silent, then they are no longer good cops. The Blue Wall leads to massive distrust.

How can you trust someone that is going to lie about you to protect their partners criminal behavior?

I am not sure what we can do about this, but in all honesty I don't see how anything short of enacting RICO type legislation will change this.

If Rico can tear down Omerta it can do the same to the Blue Wall of Silence.

Ok, on to Body Cams.

To me, this is a no-brainer that I don't see how anyone could be against, even officers. If you are really a good cop, and don't violate peoples rights, these are only a good thing as they will vindicate you if you are accused of misconduct.

Now, if you are one of the dirty cops? Fuck off. I got no love for you. You are more damaging than any criminal because you didn't just violate the law, you violated the public's trust in all of us. Call me old fashioned but if I take an oath it's a promise and I don't make, or take, promises lightly.

Personally though, I want more than a vest cam. Vest cams are too limited and can only catch one angle and if I am shooting at you, odds are my chest is going to be facing away from my target so I can provide the smallest profile possible which is going to cause it to potentially miss critical moments of an incident.

I want cameras that are POV so I can see what things from the officers perspective at the time (Something like Google Glasses maybe?) as well as 360 (maybe a hatband with fisheyes?). If some scumbag does take a good cop down from behind I want an image of them too, as well as a complete record of the incident.

But I want those videos secured by a third party agency that only releases them based on need. We don't want potentially sensitive videos of victims of rape or child molestation, etc leaked to the internet so we need to implement some safeguards that preserve privacy while still allowing for legitimate access when necessary.

They must also be capable of live streaming directly to the server and if the signal is interrupted for any reason a radio call must be made to immediately recall the officer to the station to repair or correct the problem. I don't want officers able to switch them off.

Also, officers now have this trick where they blast the radio of their car when they get out so that the dash cam mic's can't properly record, that needs to be treated with disciplinary action up to and including termination, and tampering with a camera should receive the same.

Ok, well this has already gone on longer than I intended it to be. My intent was for this to be a short summary of a few ideas and thoughts and I only got about half-way through them due to my prattling nature. Maybe I will do a follow up some day.

What are your thoughts?

(Like I said, this is my first foray into writing a Diary, so please be gentle. Or don't, I have a pretty thick skin, lol!)

P.S. Special thanks to Shaun King, who's many Diaries inspired me to throw together this one.

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Wow, I just realized when pasting it that it was the first Diary I ever wrote over there, lol!

I was gonna link some stuff from the comments because there was some good discussion there (Remember the days when that could be found there? Pepperidge Farm Remembers...) but wasn't sure if that would cause problems so if you wanna venture to the cesspit and check it out feel free, my username is the same but I wouldn't blame ya if you didn't.

Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it.

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