Re: Ride With The Taser
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can you point me to where I can read about this?
Obviously this is my opinion. Should I dissect the media/cop dichotomy over the past 20 years? No thanks. I stand fully behind all I've written.
However, by constructing your sentences as such:
“A lot of the time things can be handled much better by all involved.”
You leave yourself an ‘out” when confronted. As in, “that’s not what I said!” Ambiguous nonsense. The obvious inference is that you believe that this coulda (shoulda) been handled better. Maybe I agree. My position on the Taser notwithstanding.
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Im not trying to leave myself any outs. Yes I think this should have been handled much differently and in this instance the burden lies on the police officer. He had a lot of discretion and chose to take a route that wont be popular in the court of public opinion and perhaps not in real court either.
The initial statement was one that relates to any situation that goes further than necessary. Sometimes its the police officers fault and sometimes it is the other person's fault and sometimes it is a combination of the two.
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Also, I would recommend that you do some research. In the last 15 years US policing has moved from pseudo-military towards touch-feely. Not the other way around.
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I don't believe this to be true. Perhaps it is my "liberal" Masters degree in criminal justice that is biasing my opinion but what I've learned it the total opposite. I haven't done extensive research but I have listened to those that have. Peter Kraska, someone Ive taken classes from, is considered an authority on the subject and while I don't really like the guy too much personally, I do respect his thoughts on the matter.
Just because there has been a push for community policing over the last decade or so doesn't mean that it has been implemented at the level desired by the people pushing it. In fact there is a lot of resistance at the operational level. The merits have no bearing in this discussion so I will leave that out.
I'm also going to stay away from the right vs left wing media debate at this point.
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