Where I live, crime has been rising, like it tends to do everywhere. The local papers have been focusing on drug busts and taskforces and statistics, using nifty little bar graphs and pie charts. Armed robberies are up, and more out-of-towners are being blamed, war on drugs, and so-forth. I dont want to get started onto a drug war thread, but thats a large part of the problem, to be sure. The street level dealers tend to move here because it's relatively cheap to live, yet larger profits can be made because:
-- its a mid-sized city where the turf hasn't been laid out like battlezones (south of main street is Crips land, all that bullshit).
-- drug prices tend to be higher because there are a lot of bedroom communities surrounding the city, where teenagers can live and work in anominity, and then spend their disposible income without being members of a poverty stricken community, returning to the secure comfort of mommy and daddy's house where busts dont happen often.
So, one of the results has been large portions of the city, which were the outskirts a few decades ago, are now declining in property value, and the baby boomers who bought homes there in the '70s are now scurrying like rats from a sinking ship. Rental properties popping up, and its just a nasty cycle, the urban sprawl invades.
This leads me to my point: The people who are remaining in those areas mentioned in the paragraph directly above are participating in crime watch organizations. A new one begins every year or so, and the newspapers applaud it, outlining the reasons that propelled this particular group into activism. A rash of break-ins or a murder, whatever.
And, that point leads me to this question: Why does it seem like once these crime watch organizations, which begin with such a flourish of optimism, ultimately flounder into a small group of soccer-moms and dog walkers ? They seem to meet on a regular basis, they are usually homeowners and respectable people with good intentions. Why does the police department not make some sort of effort whereby the crime watchers can appoint a representative to interact within the police community, like a deputy ? If the crime watchers are, by default, a result of the inaction or inadequecy of the police, why are they not utilizing their combined resources to streamline and cooperate in a more efficient manner ? If the police would acknowledge the crime watchers to be an informed, educated, responsible group of people, who are trained to participate and given some merit, like a dedicated cell phone hotline which only the crime watchers can utilize, wouldnt the efforts of the crime watchers not only benifit the efficency of the police, but also expedite the police resources to the scene of the crime ? And where are the newspapers during this, once the initial fanfare is printed ? Could the newspapers not afford to impliment a moderated web-based BBS, like this one ? If the stock-in-trade of all THREE of the above mentioned organizations is the responsible exchange of accurate information, why the hell are they ignoring each other except for a passing glance once the old lady is dead, or the shoot-out is over ?
The answer is simple: Because the police dislike outsiders. Outsiders dont understand the undercurrent of true police work, which is based solely on fear and power. It is a closed society, closed for protection of its ranks. Closed to prevent scrutiny of its methods. Closed to prevent insight into the inadequecy and inefficiency of its lazy approach to the day-to-day tasks such as patrol and paperwork at the headquarters. Reporting to court to testify at "not-guilty" pleas in traffic violations. The visibility of police presense is an illusion based on the average citizens negative experience throughout his life, because when they aren't there, you are subconsiously happy during your day-to-day activity. You drive around town, to the store, to work, and once or twice a week, notice a cop with someone pulled over on the side of the road, lights flashing, and feel relief that it isn't you. That negative reenforcement has multipul impacts through the community. Dozens of people, if not hundreds, all feel the same relief at that same moment, while the person who is arrested or issued a citation feels violated for months or years afterward at the mere sight of a cop in traffic. That, my friends, is psychological warfare. Why do you think they post the arrest reports in the paper? Because they exist, and they can arrest you, and don't you forget it. Because they want you to think they are exhaustedly persuing the evil criminals of the world, and they risk their lives and safety every hour of the day. When, in fact, a medium sized city, such as the one I describe, employs dozens of officers, and they collectively account for thousands of man hours per week, and do nothing except for wage their psychological war upon you, respond an hour late to domestic violence, accidentally arrest the occasional pot smoker, and issue traffic tickets to honest citizens who are simply commuting to work or home, trying to scrape together a living.