At the least, police training should be improved and centralized, ensuring some consistency and quality, stressing that force should be a last resort and that tickets don't exist to raise revenue.
It's a lot easier for a dept of 200 to build a training seminar than a department of 4. I guess you could have dozens of police chiefs get together and, hypothetically, cooperate on these things, but that doesn't seem to happen.bprop wrote:Their diagnosis is pretty much right on but their prescription doesn't make sense: just make things "bigger." No objective criteria on quality, accountability, service, or accreditation....just, bigger.
I like WaPo, but this one sounds like a bunch of armchair quarterbacks pontificating.
Well, that's a good point that they make, for example that force should be used as a last resort. Centralizing training - or making departments bigger - does not actually address that.quincunx wrote:I think they touched on that
At the least, police training should be improved and centralized, ensuring some consistency and quality, stressing that force should be a last resort and that tickets don't exist to raise revenue.
16.3.6 Use of Force Training & Firearms Proficiency
Yes, good.quincunx wrote:SB5 mandates accreditation within 6 years
Because rural Missourians hate St. Louis?bprop wrote: And by the way, why wouldn't this apply across the state?
Code: Select all
We’re going to have to bring in new revenue or make cuts, or some combination of the twohttp://m.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-a ... b1a16.htmlAt Thursday night’s meeting, Chesterfield Police Chief Ray Johnson encouraged small cities to apply for police accreditation as required within six years under the new Missouri municipal court reform law. Northwoods Alderman Errol Bush said the cities should fight to repeal or change the law, which he said is aimed at financially destroying North County cities.
http://www.siue.edu/news/2015/09/Dunsta ... ncil.shtmlThe group’s mission is to raise awareness of global exporting and foreign direct trade investment as an opportunity for economic stability and growth in Southwestern Illinois.
“We are working to identify and form strategies to address barriers that may be preventing or limiting Southwestern Illinois companies from exporting,” said Torres Bowman, noting that the formal board will meet quarterly, but work will take place throughout the year.
http://m.stltoday.com/news/opinion/colu ... e6c91.htmlGreat. Another committee. The Supreme Court already appointed a Municipal Court Working Group, but if another committee is what it takes to persuade the Supreme Court to consolidate the 82 municipal courts in St. Louis County, then Godspeed.
http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-a ... f65f2.html“Because we're strictly residential, we have to look at all components to make sure we stay viable,” said Earlene Luster, who chairs the board of trustees in Velda Village Hills.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crim ... b68c9.htmlDavid Leipholtz, of the organization Better Together, which is urging consolidation, had a ready answer: The citizens no longer believe in this system, where 90 municipalities run 81 different courts and 29 mayors were last elected with 100 votes or less.
The idea of some mandate to preserve the status quo, Leipholtz said, is “just not true.”
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/wor ... solidation"We’re working very hard on making these courts better," said Michael Gunn, a municipal judge in Manchester. "It would be an absolute sin to destroy this great benefit that we have, and other major cities in the United States would love to have, and that is local government solving local problems."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/opini ... ounty.htmlAs many unwary drivers can attest, small-town speed traps have long been a steady source of income for local governments. But “policing for profit” acquired sinister overtones when a Justice Department investigation into the shooting and racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo., drew attention to the fact that some towns in St. Louis County derived 40 percent or more of their revenue by repeatedly nailing citizens with traffic fines and fees for petty violations.
http://www.politico.eu/article/why-is-b ... s-attacks/...blamed [St. Louis's] complex structure of government, which he said made exchanging information between police and intelligence services difficult. [St. Louis] has six police departments, just covering the city, and 19 municipalities with 19 mayors. “The approach is too divided between different local authorities here in [St. Louis].”
This is a small tangent, but I'm always leery of describing being spread out as a categorically bad thing. Allowing people to spread out freely without connecting that spread to service costs and lower quality services is where it becomes a free-rider problem rolling into a financial catastrophe.quincunx wrote:It's not just fragmentation, being too spread out and lack of street grid/ hierarchical street/road system makes it more difficult and expensive to serve us with fire protection and EMS.
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/tra ... dards-push“We have old people in our community. Very many of our people are retired. We have no businesses. We have very, very little in and out of our community,” Valle said during last week's St. Louis County Council meeting. “We chose Normandy (for police service). We love Normandy. They know us. They take care of us. And my constituents feel safe. That's what's most important to us. Not a lot of fighting about standards.”
