The problem becomes that there's no continuity within that district to precinct or area. I know our city's department likes to keep the same cops in the same districts so the community gets to know them.
But I see the value of rotating them out of the combat zone so to speak.
And that is part of community policing or whatever they call it. You rotate guys out and staff it with guys who aren’t familiar, you have dudes who are on edge, treating everyone like a suspect. It’s not that different than handing off battlespace to a new unit.
The next time the FBI, DEA, or local drug task force do a large scale operation, watch the blotter first that area in the weeks following. The fight for power is phenomenal. There is never a plan in place to address the power vacuum or handle the petty crime that the local crew took care of.
I won’t go into Grossman other than saying I’m not fan. He’s in it for the money peddling his BS to anyone who will pay. Go to any cop convention where he’s speaking and you see a plethora of overweight cops wearing sheepdog or gruntstyle shirts.
As for fixing things, leaders in these agencies need to step up. LE needs to be part of the conversation, not excluded from it. How do you turn it off? Training + experience + maturity. Years ago I sat through a presentation by one of our chiefs who addressed some of this and I recognized a lot of the problems he talked about in myself. One of his solutions: decompress after work. Take 5/10/15 minutes or more when you get home. Take off the gun and the badge, change clothes, get that stink off you. Don’t bring the job home. Don’t identify as a cop. It’s what you do, not what you are. Have non LE related hobbies. Have friends who aren’t cops. I took a lot of that stuff to heart and it made me better at home and better at work.
I’m way different now than I was 15 years ago. For better or worse, the adrenaline dump isn’t there anymore, at least not like it used to be. Learn to treat people like humans. I’ve fought to get handcuffs on dudes an had them apologize to me after the fact. Why? Because I handled business and when it was over it was over. Hell, we hooked up a dude a few hrs ago who had been on the run for a couple years for a laundry list of crimes. After he asked if he could call his girl. The dudes deferred to me and I said yep. Why? Why not? Who does it hurt to let a dude make a call to family or have a smoke, or have a drink of cold water on a hot ass day? No one. You can be a dick, or not. You’re the one who has to live with yourself and look at yourself in the mirror every morning.
