Law Enforcement

The headline reads “’Let Burglars Off With Caution’, Police Told”. It refers to new guidelines for the police in Great Britain that have just been handed down.

Burglars will be allowed to escape without punishment under new instructions sent to all police forces. Police have been told they can let them off the threat of a court appearance and instead allow them to go with a caution.
The same leniency will be shown to criminals responsible for more than 60 other different offences, ranging from arson through vandalism to sex with underage girls.

It’s important to note that these new rules are only iron clad when dealing with new criminals and are up to the officer’s discretion after that. A perp can walk if it is a first offense, while a repeat offender can go home only if he can sweet talk the officer who caught him. But it is also important to note that the Home Office has actually stated that a fair number of serious crimes should be dealt with in this way.

What blows my mind is that a few of the crimes that will get you a Get Out of Jail Free card are violent in nature. The author mentions threatening to kill, common assault, threatening behavior, and even crimes which result in “actual bodily harm”.

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In an update to my previous post about illegal immigration, I saw a debate televised on CNN that was about this subject. One position was taken by veteran newsman Lou Dobbs, while the other was represented by immigrant advocate Maria Elena Salinas. Keeping in mind that it has been some hours since I’ve seen the program, I’d like to share my impressions.

Dobbs was very clear about his stance. He said that he favored restricting immigration due to a wide variety of concerns. Foremost amongst these was concern for the immigrants themselves, since they are prone to exploitation by employers if they aren’t supposed to be in this country.

And Salinas’ rebuttal? She immediately attacked Dobbs and accused him of being a racist! The basis for her charge was that Dobbs only mentioned the 11 million illegals from Mexico while ignoring the estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants who are here from European countries.

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Jonathan has a thoughtful post about the problems that should be discussed in the immigration debate. It is worth your time to read the whole thing. However, I’d like to discuss the 2nd paragraph.

“You also have to add likely enforcement costs into the equation. These include grand abuses of civil liberties, national ID cards (which will be completely ineffective for their ostensible purpose), rampant criminal extortion of employers, etc. How does anyone propose to track down all of those illegals — house-to-house searches?”

Any discussion of enforcement must, by necessity, take in to account the application of force. This is an issue that everyone seems to be ignoring, willfully or otherwise. The reason why is probably because our border guards are already outgunned and certain to lose if there is a confrontation.

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Lame. Something tells me the cops aren’t going to stop many terrorists this way. OTOH it seems likely that they are going to annoy a lot of people who don’t appreciate this kind of official attention. Reminds me of the police department that was in the news a while back for stopping law-abiding motorists to congratulate them on being good drivers.

I suspect that the new Miami police initiative will not last very long.

This news article discusses how some police departments are rethinking their policy of requiring off duty officers to be constantly armed. According to the author, the reason why has been some friendly fire incidents where uniformed officers mistakenly killed their brethren.

That doesn’t seem to be a sufficient reason, though…

“According to the FBI, 43 police officers have been killed since 1987 by friendly fire. Some were caught in crossfire, or killed by firearms mishaps. A handful, like Young, were mistaken for criminals and shot by fellow officers.”

Every single death was a tragedy, but 43 in 18 years? This webpage states that there are about 20,000 police agencies in the US, with about 1 million employees. Of course, not all employees are sworn police officers.

This article from the Rand Foundation states that the US has 2.3 police officers for every 1,000 people. If I’m punching the numbers into the calculator correctly, that’s about 130,000 police officers, a number which seems plausible.

At any rate, there are an awful lot of police officers in a population of 300 million. And “a handful” of those officers have tragically lost their lives due to off-duty incidents in the past 18 years. This doesn’t seem to be a sufficient justification to disarm trained, motivated people who have dedicated their lives to serving the public. And that is what the author of the AP article admits even with all of the talk of friendly fire deaths.

“The policy is at the center of a $20 million civil rights lawsuit being heard this month in Providence, where Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. was killed in 2000 while he was off duty and trying to break up a fight.”

I’ve written before how departments make policy decisions that are clearly against the best interests of the public in order to avoid lawsuits. I think this is yet another example.

Police officers are held to a higher standard than the public they serve, both in and out of uniform. (Which is a constant source of griping whenever cops talk shop.) This is considered justified because of the nature of the job, and the people we require to perform the service. It makes perfect sense to require those same people to be ready to act in an emergency 24-7.

Unless there’s money on the line, that is.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)