From: viking@iastate.edu (Dan Sorenson)
Subject: Re: No charges filed in SWAT killing
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 01:52:20 GMT

donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin) writes:

>Maybe we need to cchange our ideas regarding how "effective" we want the
>police to be.  For example, I'd rather see some car thieves get away than
>have an unarmed one shot be the police for fleeing.  I'd rather have
>them lose out on some drug busts (for as long as this idiotic War on
>Drugs continues) because they get flushed, rather than continue to
>allow masked SWAT team members to stage a no-knock bust.

>What do you think?

	I'm agreed to this principle.  That old adage "better ten guilty men
go free than one innocent man hang" is rather sobering, and I'd extend it
to "better ten car thieves go free than have one armed robber escape from
apprehension because the police don't have the manpower."  I don't want to
live in a police state, of course, and my taxes are high enough already.
Thus, I expect the police to allocate their resources and manpower to
cover those who represent the greatest threat to the public and allocate
less to those that represent little or no threat.

	I do, of course, see the problems inherent in allowing a SWAT team
to bust the bad guys (tm), but does arresting a person for a charge of
distributing cocaine require a SWAT team?  Save those guys for the
hostage situations, where their training is needed!  "They might flush
the evidence!" some people cry.  Too damn bad.  It will take more time
and manpower to arrest the guy as he comes out of the supermarket, take
him back to the house, present the search warrant, and then search the
place.  So what?  I won't deny that there may be times when the police
are justified going in guns drawn, but it seems that the vast majority
of these cases can be handled differently and would make for less danger
to both the officer and the citizens.  In my opinion, the case of Tony
was screwed up from the beginning.  Sure, a simultanous bust of four
suspected murderers would have made great headlines.  However, how
could bad guy A notify bad guy B that he'd been busted?  When you grab
him outside his house, you take the phone off the hook and then take
him to the station.  When everybody's rounded up, let them make their
phone calls (I assume it is reasonable to deny that phone call for a
few hours while his cronies are being rounded up in this case).

	Personally, I'd like to see one idea for restructuring debated
here.  Let's go back to beat cops, perhaps in cruisers where it's cold
or raining, bicycles when it's warm.  Let's also equip them with radios
and let them patrol a neighborhood of some set size.  One cop for an
area of 12 block by 12 blocks, let's say.  Have a few more officers
patrolling at random, so nobody can just wait until the beat cop passes
by and be certain of an hour uninterrupted.  Finally, those patrolling
officers act as a fast response team should a call-in be made of a crime
in progress.  The way I see it, things are still as spread out, but
we have one officer within a minute of any site, and a host within a
few minutes.  The beat cop handles the routine stuff (issuing summons,
writing parking tickets, traffic stops), the patrolling cops can be
there in a few minutes for the more dangerous things, and citizens are
more likely to report problems to a familiar face than to a stranger
they can only get half an hour after dialing 911.  In addition, the cop
gets to become familiar with the territory, and the people with the cop.

	Living in the tall corn country, mainly outside the towns but
never in a town of more than 25K, I get a different view of the cops
than most.  I know most of them here in Ames on sight, and many of
them know me (I worked as a janitor and cleaned the police station,
among other places).  In my home town, the cop goes on duty at 5:00pm,
is a member of my church, and a pretty good friend.  Once when my car
broke down, a sheriff deputy found me walking down the road, come
alongside, and offered me a ride home (I took it -- 15 miles from town
to home at that time).  He didn't know me, nor I him at that time, but
can any of you city folks (tm) concieve of a place like this?  My
home town also held an impromptu street dance after a particularly 
unliked officer was beaten up by a rather large gentleman.  Said officer
was in the hospital for several weeks, and within two weeks the coffee 
cans at the supermarket and taverns held over $25K for the gentleman's
defense fund.  I'll relate more of this story if anybody wishes, but
it does show that even in this psuedo-utopia there are problems with
police abusing their power.  The thing is, those people rarely make it
on the force when he isn't an anonymous face in a cruiser passing by
you on the freeway, and when they screw up you can bet the city
council listens to its citizens better when they're neighbors.

	I see this little organizational change I've outlined above as
one step towards letting the police and citizens know each other and
feel some responsibility towards each other.  In addition, a problem
officer should be more easily removed when an entire neighborhood
is screaming to the council about him.  If you'll probably not see
him again, will you even bother complaining?

<Dan Sorenson, DoD #1066 |"There'll be angels on Ariels in leather>
<z1dan@exnet.iastate.edu | and chrome, Ridin' down from heaven    >
<viking@iastate.edu      | just to carry me home." -- R. Thompson >
< ISU thinks I need more education, which they provide for a fee. >