“Baltimore commissioner asks police officers for input on reorganization”

11 thoughts on ““Baltimore commissioner asks police officers for input on reorganization””

1. Post title should read "Commissioner asks fox best way to guard the hen house"

2. You think the citizens of Baltimore are fowl? How dehumanizing. How insulting.

3. No. I think the BPD rank and file are foul.

4. But you said they're foxes and the citizens are hens. I like foxes.

5. But in all seriously, the pointlessness of your belief is exactly what helped us get into this mess. An extra person a day is dying in Baltimore. But you probably care less about that than insulting the police officers, mostly minority, who will be part any solution. If you feel police are the problem, and that dead Baltimoreans are a small price to pay for less police activity, so be it. At least it's intellectually honest. Personally, I'd prefer to deal with the real world, the world we have, and make it better.

6. I like chickens. Keep six of them myself and there is nothing better than fresh eggs. Didn't believe that there could be such a difference between store bought and home raised until my kids convinced me to try a side by side taste test. But that's off topic. I don't think that in the present environment the Commissioner should treat the rank and file as anything other than dangerous adversaries.

7. I'm all for better policing, but that is going to have to be imposed on the BPD. What they stand for right now is a temper tantrum where they decided they would stop doing their job because they might be held accountable. Unfortunately, they are being rewarded for that. Bad parenting for toddlers and equally bad policy for cops.

8. I'd love a chicken coop. I love fresh eggs. But I'm afraid the care would make it too hard to travel. But that is off topic.

   See, even if you were right about the nature of cops, you can't save lives if you treat police as dangerous adversaries. It doesn't work. That's exactly what the last commissioner did. It didn't work!

   You can't keep doing what has failed. People are dying. Police need to be part of the solution, no matter what you think of police.

9. Know your neighbors. For the price of fresh eggs that they collect while we are gone, they are more than willing to volunteer. You and I disagree about how cultural change happens. I find collaborative approaches to be emotionally attractive but do not always work all especially if there is no accountability. I find mandates work just as often if not more often, but noone likes to admit it since it defies are kumbaya bias. Based on what I saw in Baltimore, I think any real change is going to require breaking the spirit of the BPD because that is how broken the system is currently. You have written about Camden, NJ; that certainly was not collaborative.

10. "You have written about Camden, NJ; that certainly was not collaborative."

    I disagree. But it's worth discussing. And this is actually a constructive comment. Thank you for going beyond thought-numbing "cops are bad" statements.

11. I think there is a tipping point about bad cops and that most forces are way too close to that tipping point. I put it at about 20 to 25% of the force, but that's just my gut (and like Colbert, I know that it is right). Interesting to me that Camden hired 150 of 195 police when they converted. We probably don't disagree about there being a tipping point and maybe not even the range of where it matters. What we disagree about is what the average force hovers at; I think it is right around the tipping point where you seem to think it is below 10%.

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