Hucker and Jawando were the worst. Riemer on occasion. This new Council? Mink. |
That's the thing. The media, particularly social media, take low probability/high consequence incidents and drive them into our eyes/ears/brains until it is the only reality we know. And then we demand policy changes based on the cognitive distortion of imagined frequency. 1,000 deaths at the hands of police is horrible. Every life matters. But when put in context of the number of police contacts, which is 61 million per year across the U.S., that's 0.002% chance of death each time you encounter a police officer. That's one in 2,000 Your risk of dying in a gun assault are one in 221. |
So 2 out of 11 current councilmembers are by themselves making police work so difficult that they need to reduce traffic stops by 2/3? Through their Twitter posts. |
Riemer was always the worst on every issue because of how dumb and slimy he was. |
Well, I suppose if you limit their impact to solely social media. But don't forget the 30+ new legal mandates they've placed on police over the past 2 years, and all the negative discussion that surrounded those deliberations. |
Thank you. This is an excellent post. |
I was about to post this. Thank you. |
That sounds very persuasive but the police themselves are not blaming the "30+ legal mandates" for the work stoppage. They are blaming the "rhetoric". And I actually have listened to council sessions and find the notion that the rhetoric during the sessions was in any way offensive or abusive towards police hilarious. There are current and former councilmembers that are abusive bullies. Jawando, Hucker, Riemer and Mink are not in this group. |
Have you been listening to the council for the past couple of years? You don’t see the hostility? In any case, it doesn’t matter if you see it. We went from full recruit classes and the pick of applicants to barely being able to fill a class. This used to be the county law enforcement officers wanted to work for. It was a premier department. Now we can’t keep pace with any of the neighboring counties. The word is out that officers aren’t supported. It doesn’t matter whether you see it. Others do. |
The word is out that there are serious problems with policing and departments are resistant to change. Of course nobody wants to join. |
Here it is. Instead of looking at the real challenges faced by our officers, you just jumped to “they don’t want to change.” That’s not true for MCPD, a department that has been ahead of the curve (and held to higher standards) than most departments in the country. That’s why our officers historically have become chiefs elsewhere. Instead of seeing that they want to work with the county, you assume here that there must be some flaw within the officers. This is exactly what some of us saw from the last council: assumptions, not grounded in an actual understanding of the situation |
Excellent post. But I’m still waiting for someone to jump in with the “even one death is too many!” nonsense. |
That absolutely is MCPD. Their internal affairs is a disaster. They protect bad apples. There have been horrible, unnecessary police killings in Montgomery County. There have been abusive, humiliating traffic stops of Black people. There has been an officer that got caught screaming into the face of a young child. I would not want to be a part of that department. |
That only happens on the bike lanes threads. |
The thing y'all don't want to admit is that the killings are just the most extreme example of disparate and abusive policing. Just because you don't get killed doesn't mean you haven't been harassed or worse injured by police. The people paid to protect you. That impacts a person and it happens a lot, including in Montgomery County. |