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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Seriously..those who voted for Elrich..do you honestly think he is good for business and job growth? Whst has he done to prove this? Or do you not care about this?[/quote]

I care about business and job growth, but those things aren’t at the very top of my list of priorities. 
There are a lot of things about Blair that, for me, raise serious concerns, that weren’t allayed despite my efforts to get more specific information.

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Do you care about public safety? Do you want a fully-staffed police force? Or is public safety also not on your list of priorities?[/quote]

You seem to be much more interested in spewing out your own priorities than in genuinely being concerned about mine. Have at it.  
And know that your ranting is the opposite of persuasive. [/quote]

Safety is my priority, for me and for my entire community. I’m frustrated that our officials make decisions that put us at risk. That includes their call to reduce police staffing by 50% in Wheaton and Silver Spring, claiming those areas need reduced interactions with police. (Note that they don’t seem concerned about who will respond to crime in those areas.). Elrich also pulled SROs against the wishes of many.

You never actually said what your priorities are. (If you are the poster above, you claimed what they aren’t: business and job growth.) I probably care about your priorities, as well, or at least I can respect them. Can you do the same?[/quote]

Yes I can, and I would have been more specific if you had asked — instead of emphasizing your own priorities. Honestly, I’m kind of tired. (Not of addressing this with you, PP, just with the current realities of politics.)

Safety is my number one priority. But it has to be acknowledged that “safety” doesn’t mean the same things for all of us in our community — whether that’s SROs, the behavior of police officers, health care and the way that COVID and other public health issues are handled, gun violence, domestic violence, or other things that affect our well-being as individuals and as communities.  My Safety list clearly overlaps with Health, and Education.  I have priorities as well, but Safety, Health, and Education are broad enough to cover quite a lot of my concerns.

I voted for Elrich in large part because I’m comfortable with the way that our county handled COVID — a novel, communicable, potentially fatal or disabling disease that has decimated my community.   I’m uncomfortable with Blair for a variety of reasons— including his background, his lack of specifics in the materials that his campaign provided, his self-funded campaign, and a brief personal interaction with him. One of the questions I have about Blair’s background is his lack of public service —including the way he spent his time between elections, and general questions about what it is that he wants so much that he’s willing to spend quite a lot of his own money to get it.

I, too, am frustrated that our officials make decisions that put us at risk.

I’ll add that I’m not anti-police, and have had both personal and professional relationships with many police officers. The presence of police officers, though, without making explicit statements about training, recruiting, and codes of conduct, doesn’t make me or some of the communities that I am a part of “safer”.

If you’re genuinely interested in seriously discussing these types of issues, I’m open to doing so —perhaps in a dedicated thread. I’ll even use a pseudonym to make it easier to follow the thread.

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Thank you for the thorough response. I’ll try to respond, but I’m on my phone and not very adept at that.

I suspect many of our concerns align. It is what you mention toward the end (whether police officers make people feel safer) which is why I can’t support Elrich. His rhetoric, along with that of some council members, is that the police are actually the problem within the community. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force recommendations are written in a manner that assumes the police are a problem to be solved by politicians. It doesn’t take into account the fact we have a highly trained department that has held itself to higher standards than most. We have sent many officers to head other jurisdictions in large part because of MCPD’s long-standing reputation: recruiting strong candidates, training them well, regularly evaluating their performance, etc. Unfortunately, that’s not the current climate. It now seems to be low morale, understaffing, and a general sense that there’s no support from the council or county Exec. The result is a department that can no longer recruit. If we want to reform policing, you need to be able to selective with applicants. The last academy class had 12 officers, I believe, a far cry from the 50+ it used to be.

I was pulling for Blair because of some of the reasons you mention. His lack of public service is actually a plus to me, in a “it’s time for something new” sense. We need somebody who knows how to lead people. I trust that Blair would lean into experts, something that didn’t happen during the SRO debate. Experts, in this case the school administrators and others who intimately know the roles of SROs, were ignored. I am part of the school community. I feel safer with SROs in the building, a feeling many share. PGCPS did a survey and over 80% of community members supported keeping SROs. MCPS did no such survey.

Covid? I’m in agreement. He did a great job there. I know many will disagree, but I really appreciated Elrich’s work in that category.

Thank you again for that response!

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Thank you for your response to my response, PP.  I may come back later and respond in a more detailed way.  For a bit of context, I’ll add that I have spent much of my life attending and working in schools — mostly public schools.  I am also the person who wrote the post at 12:04.  While I have had excellent personal and professional interactions with many police officers, whether or not I, personally feel “safer” with SRO’s in the building depends completely on the particular SRO.  I have worked with well-trained, compassionate SRO’s — and I have worked with SRO’s and Community Police Officers who would view handcuffing and threatening a 5 year old as all part of a successful, if irritating, day at work.

I guess my point is simply that to talk about “policing” and increasing SROs without acknowledging both the history and current realities of ways in which people in these roles have abused them, it may be impossible to reach a common ground. While I think surveys are useful, they also have serious limitations, and are quite often lacking in specificity and nuance.

I feel safer with SROs like Officer R. in the building, and truly appreciate the sensitive way his knowledge of the kids and the neighborhood community serves to prevent problems. I feel less safe with the ones like Officer P. who yells at small kids, and threatens them with jail, CPS, or worse, and actually provokes —or fails to prevent—many incidents, with his attitudes and behaviors. Most surveys are not nuanced enough to accurately capture the experiences of large groups (community members) who are responding based on their own individual experiences— which may be extremely different, with little overlap (Officer R vs Officer P vs both). In general, understanding opinions, particularly minority opinions, might require steps beyond surveys and any general and specific limitations that they might have. (Not knocking surveys, I just view them as step one in a multi-step process, particularly about issues as important as policing.)

As to Blair, I’ll simply say that you trust him with things that I do not — which is one of the reasons I value actual experience —which can be assessed and critiqued — over “something new”.  I’m consistent in this even when the something or someone new is — like Wes Moore — an extremely attractive candidate in other respects that are consistent with my personal and political values.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses and your willingness to engage in dialogue about these thorny yet critically important concerns.

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