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Reimagining Boston Police
By adamg on Wed, 06/17/2020 - 1:57pm
Bill Walczak writes that true reform will mean changing the way BPD hires new officers.
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Comments
You make some good points Bill
But you missed who goes to the top of the list Disabled Veterans then veterans. Many departments can only hire disabled veterans some of whom are suffering from PTSD and anger issues suffered from witnessing the horrors of war.
One recommendation would be to waive the test fee which is 200 dollars and to get rid of the black jump suits and long rifles and to hold police chiefs and managers accountable when their cops go rogue.
"Hold Accountable"
According to an op-ed by former BPD Chief Ed Davis, the police chief is limited in how much they can fire or reprimand bad officers. There have now been dozens of articles by police management across the country complaining that they know who the bad people are but their hands are tied by union contracts.
If you want good cops you need the power to hire the right people and fire the officers who abuse their positions.
Excellent
I had no idea what a huge impact the veteran preference has on the composition of the police force. It makes no sense.
Veterans get lots of
Veterans get lots of preferences in many programs.
After the reaction of Veterans coming home from Vietnam there was a swing of the pendulum to help make up for that. Veterans also fit into the model of policing that the public had been asking for for years. We now see a shift in public wants, there should be a shift in hiring to address this.
It is also very hard to say no to Veterans groups. They are very organized and are supported by the rest of the military and their families etc.
There is also the simple fact that even though it does lead to more men and white people on the force in theory it is an equalizer. You join the military for many reasons but one of the reasons is you get to the front of the line in some fields that are hard to crack like public safety. It is also where many pilots come from as they are willing to train people in a skill that is very useful for a small number of people.
There is also the fact that in many places and in many ways veterans are a protected class. Another Vietnam era change. Making changes that are seen to being made just to remove them from the field of play could very well end up in court.
police
They can imagine all they want. I moved out of Boston 11 years ago. It will be the poorest residents who will suffer the most as usual. From the "imaginings"
What...
...on earth are you talking about?
Veterans
I thought veterans were also exempt from the residency requirement?
They should suspend the
They should suspend the veterans preference until the US military allows females and minorities to enter the service. It’s unfair that only white males get this opportunity.
?
?
It's a "joke"
A sarcastic one.
Weak
As usual.
I’ve always heard the
I’ve always heard the military was one of the most diverse organizations out there. If this is true, why are New England minorities not enlisting? Serious question, is it that they have better opportunities here than in other parts of the country? Also, I have witnessed firsthand what happens when a department leaves civil service. They swear up and down to the public that it is to hire more qualified candidates. This is MA so more times than not it just results in rampant nepotism
vet pref & social workers
About 32% of the military is black & Hispanic. (PEW RESEARCH). About 32% of BPD is black or Hispanic. (Wikipedia).
Boston is about 42% black & Hispanic (datausa.io). So there is room for improvement there, but it's not insanely out of whack.
My first reaction was that the vet preference is logical due to some of the skills and overall approach being similar*.
If I had the power, I'd add extra points to bilingual candidates. And the part of Walzak's article that I really like is the idea of hiring people with social work backgrounds. That is a smart and fresh idea that seems right for the times.
* For those of you thinking the vet preference is all about guns and killing, I'll challenge that. The majority of military work is logstics, maintenance, MPs, engineer, or a million other jobs. The part I feel that would benefit an aspiring police or firefighter is the attitude:. You work in the rain. You skip family holidays or work long OT when the mission dictates. You improvise when needed. You're supposed to be a professional, be trained, follow a set of rules and maintain a level of ethics. But, obviously that's sometimes been lost along the way. And here we are. Let's get a few social workers on the job and see what it can change.
Future cops will be hired from Labor Ready or drafted
Good piece by Mr. Walczak but it presumes that the city will have the luxury of picking from a pool of qualified applicants. Reality is that few took the last exam and even less want the job now. Not even veterans looking for work want it, especially when the FD generally pays about the same, with more down time and less hostility. Veterans get the same preference on the fire exam so it's an easy choice. Like most recent stories on the police, scant attention is given to the judges and prosecutors who collaborated to release thousands of violent criminals prior to the riots, many rearrested numerous times since. That makes a mockery of the police and hurts recruitment too.
As for the demand for massive changes to policing, some reform is long overdue but most polls show voters are strongly opposed to Democrats call to defund police. Funding the police won't be an issue if there are no police to fund. Don't be surprised if there is some kind of compulsory service or draft, just to find enough bodies to fill the police ranks. This was Obama's goal with his Civilian National Security Force and Common Core for Cops. Eventually, your unarmed local police will be following the UN standards.
i perused the front page and
i perused the front page and a few of the articles on the website he links to. i love the stock angelfire ‘07 thing they’ve got going on.
"most polls show"
A claim like that calls for a citation to back it up. Got one?
(of course you don't, your MO is "spray and pray and run away" and we all know it)
He’s not entirely wrong. I’m
He’s not entirely wrong. I’m all for the unions allowing Chiefs and Commissioners to fire cops who are unfit or too dangerous to do our job. We need to professionalize policing as much as possible.
But would you want your kid to do this job in this climate? Recruitment has been a growing problem for the past few years, and will be a major, even potentially harmful, problem in the years to follow. I wish college educated, mentally fit, companionate people would take our job. But I just don’t see that happening anytime soon.
- a Boston Cop
I personally have thank that
I personally have thank that there was a veteran cop there when we needed him. We had called the cops when my stepson had attacked his father. Six cops came and my husband, with PTSD issues, was having an attack. His son had a loaded 9mm and enough drugs for distribution. He was having difficulty with it all and had an anxiety attack. He was on the floor. A veteran was one of the police officers and understood what he was seeing and steered the other cops away from him and talked him down. I was hiding in the bedroom with my dogs, as I was afraid the cops would not like my dogs. He spent time in juvenile detention. All is ok now but I don't want to think about what might have happened.
Remove veteran preference?
Vets get preference in all government hiring because they earned it.