Paramilitary Police Lead To Fear And Mistrust
By Bob Small
Students called Twitter rather than 911 during the Jan. 21 school shooting at Magruder High School in Montgomery County, Md.
The Washington Post failed to note this in the article I read. Further. there was a statement from Lee Holland, spokesperson from Montgomery County Police Union, making the point that the removal of school resource officers from the county’s schools was a failed social experiment with “no plans to secure our schools”.
Could this be due to either a lack of trust in and/or fear of the police?
Maybe Antifa should have been called, then.
Seriously, how have we arrived at this place, and how do we move from here.
Is this yet another argument for returning to virtual learning or is social interaction more important than safety? Is freedom to go to physically attend school the most important item?
Now the pace of police reform has proceeded at various paces, from measured to snail, throughout the country. We do need the police, but the question has become which police do we need. Do we still need the paramilitary police, sometimes answerable to no one, and trained to be civilian soldiers, most ready to kill, rather than civilian policeman, ready to apprehend criminals, alive when possible. In that vein, why on earth do police forces need tanks and other military equipment?
Is part of this the cultural matrix around the police? Have the expectations around police changed that much from Dragnet to, say, CSI. I don’t remember Jack Webb shooting to death every miscreant. If we want to return to a time when we feel safe to call the police, and arrive at a time when minorities feel safe in calling the police in the first place, this requires the police, and the Courts to change. When the police commit crimes, they must also be held responsible, just like any of us. Period, end of sentence.
Hat tip Scott R.