ARE POLICE TOO HEAVY HANDED, UNDER TRAINED…SHOULD WE TAKE THEIR GUNS AWAY…OR ARE THEY DOING A BETTER JOB PROTECTING US THAN YOU REALIZE?
By J. Gary DiLaura, FBI, retired
My personal opinion is that being a police officer in the United States is the most dangerous, toughest, most underrated, thankless job in the US.
When I worked in NYC there were 25,000 NY police officers. Today there are 35,000. In all my years as an agent I NEVER worked with a better municipal PD in my entire career.
I could not imagine then or now how the hell they managed an army, with the control, discipline and honor that they exhibited. Their job, like all lawmen, is to keep people safe, and they did that then and now, fearlessly.
Of course they were not required to “NOT” enforce the law then as they are today, which makes a big difference.
NY Mayor Bill de Blasio is absolutely criminally negligent in his handling of the police dept.
You are not honoring your oath to protect your flock when you tell police to stand down!
If I were police commissioner, I would find a DA with guts and have him charge deBlasio with obstructing justice and felony criminal negligence and put him in jail… Let him fight it!! He’s ruining an institution! Even Gov. Andrew Cuomo hates his guts and that’s saying something… He could sleep with a rattlesnake!
I worked with the NYPD Safe and Loft Squad, the Burglary Squads while on the Truck Hijacking Squad and then ‘MCU,’ the Major Case Unit, while on the FBI Bank Robbery Squad.
There was also a unit in the NYPD that was the best, toughest, group of Cops you ever saw and they were called NYPD Emergency Services… Ask any COP who put out a “10-13” call for help!
Emergency Services were just that… when things turned into shit and people, mostly lawmen, were in trouble and needed help NOW, Emergency Services came, very fast and very heavy… This was before SWAT!
Lawmen… local, state, federal, we all got jammed up on the street at one time or another and many of us put out a “10-13, Officer In Trouble” call. They responded to so many calls that they actually worked out of the fire halls!
If you believe that the police, NYPD, LAPD, Chicago PD and small town USA PD are all inept, corrupt, racists, or any other derogatory name you can think up, you had better back up and take a better view. I looked up a few stats from the FBI crime stats and found some interesting facts:
From 1962 to 2013, the number of police officers killed went generally down, from a high of 132 in 1972 to 27 in 2013.
We would expect violent crimes to be tied directly to population and police killings… right? Let’s look:
In 1961 the US population was 179,323,175 and violent crimes were 288,460.
Look how crime and population climbed together…
In 1993, population 257,908,000 and violent crimes 1,926,020.
Then something changed. Population kept climbing, while crime went DOWN!
In 2018, population 327,167,434 and violent crimes:1,245,065.
What happened to reduce crime while population exploded?
You and I both know who is responsible for reducing crime… it was the police departments!
They became more educated, many department required college… either 2 or 4 year degrees. The training vastly improved, escalated, and equipment improved.
We went from tear gas, AKA mace, to CAP STUN a much better product. We went from batons to “STUN GUNS” …that really work! So there are fewer broken bones, concussions, and gunshot wounds.
The training… thanks, in many ways, to the FBI, became vastly improved as we all learned better, safer ways to handle dangerous criminals and we trained many police instructors as we learned new techniques.
The FBI ran training schools all over the country. Ask any cop who worked in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and they will likely tell you they attended schools taught by FBI Instructors on law, crime scene , community relations, fingerprinting, firearms defensive tactics and more, including instructor schools to teach their own departments or received training by those Instructors while in their own academy.
In the early 1970s we had no “bullet proof vests”, a misnomer…bullet resistant is more accurate. In the late 70s and into the 80s vests took hold and began saving police lives and made police better because they felt safer.
Weapons improved with the new semi-automatic handguns with higher capacity. Long guns in cars improved in quality and quality.
When the police out man, outgun and have the element of surprise, we …the good guys… and the bad guys are all much safer, but when elected officials alert fugitives the law is coming it gets MUCH more dangerous for everybody.
That’s felony obstruction of justice in any jurisdiction and those doing it should become prison inmates!
If you want to know what’s wrong…don’t look at the police. There are less bad cops than there are good Democrat leaders! Mayors like the Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin, and Governors like California’s Newsum, Washington’s Jay Inslee, NY Cuomo and most Democrat states are the guilty parties.
They stop the police from doing their jobs then condemn them for not doing their jobs!
To STOP and even prevent violent crime, the STANDING rule is, has been and will always be to meet more crime with more law enforcement …to reduce crime, increase law enforcement… to stop the increase in violence, increase force… to stop subjects from resisting, increase force.
Every single arrest a police officer makes involves a gun… The officer always brings one into the fight and he MUST protect it because stats show that if a violent criminal gains control of his gun, the criminal WILL shoot that officer with it!
Only someone who is either ignorant to life or simply stupid would either reduce law enforcement or disarm their police in the face of increased violence!
The way Republicans want to reduce crime is to increase law enforcement… The way Democrats want to reduce crime is to do away with law enforcement and the Rule of Law… That’s the difference in the two parties and don’t believe anything to the contrary!
Disbanding or defunding your police department is absolute insanity… Dethrone your Democrat “leaders”…they are leading you to hell!
Cuomo’s way is to release criminals, disarm citizens, open the borders. deBlasio’s is to order the police to NOT enforce the law, follow his lead to do NOTHING, take the abuse by assholes, and pretend it will just… go away!!!
