Reply to Are D.C. residents divided on what to do with police reform, crime, etc.?

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Reply to "Are D.C. residents divided on what to do with police reform, crime, etc.?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the current situation in DC is doing no one any favors.

The police are mostly lazy and incompetent and because there are a lot of them they cost DC a lot of money, money which probably could be better spent on other things.

On top of the police doing a poor job we are now in this crazy situation in DC where the pendulum has politically swung so far the other way that a lot of the political class doesn't want anyone to ever be held responsible for anything or to have any part in the solution.

We've stopped enforcing laws against fare evasion on Metro, we've eliminated fines for not returning library books, the city no longer wants to take away peoples licenses or cars regardless of how many moving violations/parking tickets they've piled up and now there is a serious movement in DC among some people who want to permanently end evictions!  While we are at it let's require companies to pay people to not work (we are mostly there with MPD already) and ban DCPS from giving kids grades or even expecting kids to show up for school.

When I was a kid when people shoplifted they did it surreptitiously. In DC I routinely see teens just openly walk out of stores with food or merchandise with not a concern in the world that they are visibly shoplifting.  And why would they be concerned?  If you are under 21 in DC the system bends over backwards to forgive you and not hold you accountable so as a result MPD doesn't even want to bother arresting juveniles.

So we have chaos everywhere in DC.  Our roads are just nuts with no one following the law and people park their cars illegally with impunity, particularly if they are from the suburbs and know they can ignore the tickets. Kids treat Metro like a playground horsing around, threatening people and being crude but why should they care - they don't need to pay to ride and no one would do anything to them if they were arrested.  You've got these gangs of jackasses on their dirt bikes riding all over town terrorizing people.

This moped case is just another example - there was absolutely no excuse for this guy to be riding a moped on the sidewalk - it is illegal and dangerous but I guarantee he has been doing it for years including in front of cops with no on ever saying anything.

Then mysteriously he gets confronted by a cop and then pursued (which everyone knows is against MPD policy) and ends up dead - both he and the cops should have known better but everyone just makes it up as they go along.

The pre-school to prison pipeline is a real thing and has been an on-going tragedy for low income people of color and is a pattern we need to do everything we can to break.

But the alternative of not having any expectations or consequences is just as harmful for the same community and if left unchecked is eventually going to drag the entire city down the drain with it.

The place to start IMHO is with an engaged and competent and pro-active MPD rather than what we have today which is a bunch of guys sitting in their cars with the engine running all day while they stare at their phones and you need to pair that with a more creative criminal justice system and dynamic education system leading to good paying jobs that lift people out of poverty - in DC right now I think we just aimlessly throw lots of money at the problem and hope for the best.[/quote]

I agree with every word of this.  I fear the most likely outcome is no expectations/consequences and everything going down the drain. [/quote]

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