Ideas For Democracy:  Goal #17

Police protection and community policing, public demonstrations, debate and protest at public meeting places. 

 

Citizens who want real democracy will actively support this policy and vote for trustworthy candidates who actively support this policy.

 

IFD - policy:  We can stimulate our economy and improve our society and our democracy by developing more public spaces in our towns and cities.  Public spaces for civic participation, or "meeting parks," should be provided for legal public meetings, discussions, debates, protest or demonstrations. 

 

Profiling for suspects beneficial, should also be used for public hiring:

What we call "criminal profiling" or "racial profiling" is actually a specialized field, when conducted scientifically, of personality profiling.  Personality profiling is a respectable and useful branch of the academic field of psychology, and it has demonstrated its usefulness for helping police to screen in the most likely criminal suspects and thereby save the time and effort that would be devoted to investigating unlikely suspects.  If and when there is a legitimate racial characteristic in a type of crime profile, then it is just as valid as other characteristic that are expected in a personality profile.  Criminal profiling is based on experience and criminal history when performed properly, and it is therefore a scientific practice. 

 

We should also be using personality profiling to hire police officers at all levels of public safety agencies.  Personality questionnaires and psychological measurements should be used to screen out those personality types who are driven by fear and anger or insecurity and who are likely to become emotionally excited when confronted with criminal behavior or a suspect who is agitated or defiant.  We want all those who enforce the law to be coldly committed to the task of obtaining good information and enforcing the law.  The proper police officer always remembers the meaning of "probable cause" and that his or her authority is limited strictly to the power to arrest and detain and make primary inquiries.  The proper police officer always remembers that he or she is not vested with the authority to conduct a trial or make a finding of guilt or to punish the subject for any offensive behavior.  The unprofessional and destructive behavior of police officers that has come to light in our times is due primarily to poor hiring practices, and probably to the infiltration of police departments by the Ku Klux Klan.  Local police departments in cities and towns have hired men who are not suitable persons to be vested with the police power and with the responsibility to enforce the law without losing emotional control.  The mistreatment of law-abiding citizens as well as of those who have committed crimes is always the result of one or more officers losing self-control and acting out frustration, anger and resentment by physically assaulting a suspect.  The most offensive behavior of any police officer is to assault a suspect after the suspect has been restrained with handcuffs or leg chains or after the suspect is physically immobilized by one or more officers and then purposely injured.  The physical assault of a suspect often follows the panicked behavior or agitation of a suspect that is categorized by the arresting officer as "resisting arrest."  Any behavior that constitutes resisting arrest may be a criminal offense, but no officer is authorized to punish a person for a crime.  Any act of violent retaliation against a suspect by a police officer is in fact a violation of the public trust and the public authority vested in the police officer.  There is a clearly defined legal difference between "restraint" by a police officer and "assault" by a police officer.  The police have only the authority to arrest, and no authority to try, judge or sentence an offender.  Proper use of personality profiling would help towns and cities improve hiring practices and avoid lawsuits from citizens harmed by unprofessional police performance.  I also recommend that suspicious injuries to those arrested or detained, and other signs of unprofessional police behavior be subject to review by citizen's committees comprised of minority ethnic groups who are the most likely to be the victims of unprofessional police performance.  All efforts to improve our law enforcement practices should be based on the premise that it is logically possible to differentiate between arresting a suspect and unnecessary fighting with a suspect or assaulting a suspect. 

 

Police protection of public discussion in public meeting places:

Public spaces for civic participation, or "meeting parks," should be provided for legal public meetings, discussions, debates, protest or demonstrations.  Corporate business entities often engage in expensive advertising and promotions of their brand names and their products or services.  Historically, financially successful business entities have donated funds for public facilities, such as libraries, concert halls, and athletic fields and stadiums and public parks.  Why not add public meeting places or "First Amendment Greens."  Parks intended to be used for public meetings and for public debate, discussion and protest could become a culturally identified safety zone for citizens who want to give voice to their complaints or grievances against government or business entities.  Special policing practices and protocols could be established for protecting the public safety in such public meeting spaces.  I would like to see American police departments experiment with police uniforms that identify the officer as one who is not carrying a firearm but is serving as an observer and regulator or "sergeant at arms" for a public meeting.  Training police officers to enforce the conduct permitted at a public meeting without the use of firearms would help us to uphold the First Amendment principle that public discussion and even public protest are not criminal activities.  Police officers without firearms would re-inforce the democratic concept that the police are not a military force and the police do not regard the people as an enemy force to be subdued.  Such "unarmed" operations could be enhanced by the use of volunteer community informants to assure that anyone with criminal intent would be separated out from the law-abiding crowd and dealt with effectively.  A key objective of crowd control is to separate out those who are motivated to sabotage free speech rather than support it.