Dear editor, I have had more than one person who lives in Grants tells me disturbing things recently about the City Police. I saw some recent Face Book Posts form the Grants Police closing City Parks after dark and asking citizens to check there home cameras for persons shooting firearms off. When people commit minor crimes and officers choose not to make reports, follow -ups and arrests regardless of the reason, it only encourages more crime.
In 1829, Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police Force. He became known as the “Father of Modern Policing,” and his commissioners established a list of policing principles that remain as crucial and urgent today as they were two centuries ago. The goal is to prevent crime, not catch criminals. If the police stop crime before it happens, we don’t have to punish citizens or suppress their rights. An effective police department doesn’t have high arrest stats; its community has low crime rates. The key to preventing crime is earning public support. Every community member must share the responsibility of preventing crime, as if they were all volunteer members of the force. They will only accept this responsibility if the community supports and trusts the police.
'The police are the public, and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
Not acting on a porch pirate caught on a home camera, then showing up later to check the camera for other crimes from the same home. Letting people use vacant homes and buildings for drugs and fires to stay warm, not citing property owners for rundown buildings. Refusing to remove vagrants from businesses, getting out of your car to ask if there are any issues before something happens, and doing it more than once in a blue moon All it takes is one lazy officer who blows of a “petty citizen complaints” and you lost the support of the people who pay your salary maybe we should defund the police Fille complaints with City Hall and the Police Department. Weed out the lazy officers and support the good ones.
One Rotten Apple spoils the whole Barrel, Benjamin Frankin 1737 Poor Richards Almanac.
Signed Mr. Harry L. Hall USAF Security Police LE Retired Local Police/Sheriff LT 38+ Years