The National Academy of Community Policing is an Idea that's Time Has Come

Time to get serious about who our law enforcement officers are and get serious about a national standard for their training. 

The police should never be considered by any citizen to be an instant threat to their freedom and safety - if they are generally following the law. A cop should never have (or feel) he or she  needs to have the ever present feeling that each day may be his or her last day on Earth. No civilly legal confrontation with a cop needs to invoke a reaction of fear in anyone who feels they were following the law. Time for a standard and national and long lasting solution that addresses these needs NOW. How long are we going to allow regular people to become cops without first making sure they are great people? The answer of likelihood: Perhaps never if we allow the current direction and old standard of hiring all police to be a mishmash of individual community’s standards. Including, continuing to allow privatized police officer schools to operate and flourish. Including having individual state justice department's use many standards of acceptance such as “Has had firearms experience in the military.” Or, “Worked as a volunteer with the local Sheriff's department.” Or, “Says “He/she really wants to help people.”” We can’t possibly know who these cop “Wanna be’s” are inside themselves. We can’t possibly know all of their past behaviors that would reveal what they may be capable of, years later when adapted to the dangerous and dynamism of thousands of personal situations they will be in. We can’t possibly predict what type of person that genuinely a cop will become after years of service on-the-street. The role of a peace officer has been taken too lightly. We in the United States are some of the most impulsive and violent people on the planet. Our freedom results in this national personal we have become. We have among us nearly 150,000 firearms of all sizes and capacities floating about in private hands, uniquely when compared to all other post-industrial societies on Earth. We have a media which portrays frequently; people using violence to solve problems of domestic complexity. Most of us are capable of experiencing a temporary (or chronic) mental state that any good psychologist would agree “Needs to be addressed!”

It is time to begin a shutdown of every single police academy in this country and convert that system to an agreed upon national standard of complete training that awards a degree of excellence to every single cop in every single community in our larger community. Standards are the problem. Standards that are too relaxed or completely missing are what need to be taught to every single person who is charged with the responsibility of maintaining our safety and upholding law and order. The time to think about this was about 230 years ago unfortunately as is the case with so many problems within the United States. We have a mess of missing standards. Solution time: Many of us in the United States are of the opinion that local is always better.  As if a government that has a geographic center, in Washington D.C., cannot possibly know how to deal with an issue in Kentucky for instance. If you are a person who has had difficulty with the bureaucracy of a federal institution you may have adopted the opinion that locally is better in all things. I am of the former school of thought when looking at all the very local incidents that indicate what needs fixing in the United States. I am a “nationalist,” one might say. I am so because I have lived in five states as a citizen and I see the same problems in every state. I see that local standards are slightly different in almost any way they can be where the United States constitution allows for difference of standards, mostly in the justice system, are allowed to exist. Criminal justice is a stark example at this time and it has always been since the inception of this confederation of states. What we have in our criminal justice system in the United States is discrepancies in standards. Standards of both the rule of law and in the training of those whose careers are to uphold the rule of law. As a citizen of any economic walk-of-life in the United States It would be comforting to know exactly what to expect from one state to another or one county or one city to another. All of the cases of seemingly unlawful conduct by our law officers that we read about and watch on television news reporting are vast discrepancies of a missing standard of the enforcement of the law, spread out across this country.

A National Academy of Community Policing could bring about a standard of law enforcement that is a high degree of behavior that we citizens can all learn about and so know what to expect in every dangerous or every friendly confrontation with a law officer. It should be behavior of the cop and behavior of the citizen that we learn about beginning in grade school. We would be safer. Our cops could become people from whom we all know what to expect. A cop could then have a high and reasonable expectation that that a seemingly unruly citizen has learned this standard of expectation. A standard of behavior on both sides of the law is missing. If you do not see this, you have not been observing and then thinking about what is missing. Standards make us safer. Behavior that is taught is behavior that can be reasonably expected. The quality of police is reflective of the respect the public has for them and their practical value. We need to treat them well by requiring each to attend a 4-year Academy of Community Policing. We should commit to the concept and build 10 of them.

Here are some leading questions of which you probably have a reasonable answer:

How does a child with a toy gun behave when a police car is approaching and the cops are vocally yelling something at him or her?

What exactly can a motorist expect if he or she does not fully cooperate with a cop during the short time they are being confronted with the accusation of having made a traffic violation?

Is the life of any single citizen more valuable to any community than the life of any single law enforcement officer?

Should a law enforcement officer be expected to endanger his body when controlling a situation? Should a cop use his or her electric Taser or a club or use basic hand-to-hand combat training to “arrest,” or calm a situation when an emotionally distraught citizen is wielding a baseball bat yet know one has yet been harmed? Shoot to kill and ask questions later? Shoot to wound and ask questions later?

Should a state-sponsored prosecutor be the sole guardian and arbiter of a grand jury process when a prosecutor is a career-long friend of a local police department? My proposal requires we all see that the absence of standardization that focuses on “Great people before great cops,” has led us to have 120,000 cops of too many poorly trained people conducting too many civil rights violations upon citizens. I will not present evidence of this condition here. That evidence only needs to be seen and heard in nearly any city newspaper or electronic media in our community today. Enter: the National Academy of Community Policing. A vision of what the founders of this country would likely have written into our Articles of Confederation as integral to a peaceful society that uses a centralized government. If they had a time travel visual device with them in 1776. It is our task to use modernity correctly to adapt those founder’s dream to fit what they could not see - in our future. Imagine please: fifty of these academies of excellence distributed throughout the United States. An applicant to this academy has to be tested to get in. He or she will have to have completed many prerequisite courses, that are strongly emphasizing the study of the humanities, to have his or her application even looked at by academy admissions officers. Once in, the real study begins. The first year of training focusing solely on the peaceful and constitutional treatment of citizens. The psychology of people in a complex society, in variable types of local economies, will be taught and tested for. Several students may be booted-out after the first year as testing will be stringent and frequent and tough. Year two will be all policing. Full training of the correct methodology of dealing with all kinds of citizens. Field training that is closely supervised. A daily - six days per week, and weekend days, a regimen of people training and the intense grooming of themselves to be the great people they were tested in to indicate they were prior to the Academy. For a graduate of this proposed 2-year degree of excellence: Pride they earned like few civil servants ever get to experience. A certificate of graduation they will honor and be very proud of the rest of their lives. A degree of excellence proven they will never want to dishonor. A memory of mentors who taught them during the most memorable two years of their lives. The knowledge and clear confidence that they know the people of their community’s better than nearly anyone else. They will be cops that most anyone of any level of society will have confidence and no fear of talking to on the street or at their car’s driver’s side door at any hour of the day. The federal government needs to do this soon. Waiting and hoping that individual states and counties will incorporate true constitutional training and methods that train great people before attempting to train great cops - is something we don’t have the time for. That slowly evolving idea would take decades of the typical pattern of the citizens of the United States discovering what will be needed, and that is is needed at all. The first several years of graduates should be in hot demand by every municipality. Those early graduates will have the ability to rise in their communities to become leaders of the community. They will be first to be considered a great choice of Chief of Police, the Head Sheriff, the Commissioner, the sergeant, the captain of the precinct and so forth. After several thousand of these graduates hit the streets their value to their first served communities will become clear. We will then see funding for their continued hiring and placement increased. As citizens of one big nation, we will see the value of funding them from a centralized source. We will quickly agree this is money well worth it. We will begin to unafraid of a police confrontation. We will be confident and safe from fear of people we should never have been afraid of to begin with - the founders of this experiment in democracy had had a time travel visualization device when the concocted this great idea.

~~~~~ Cops are statistically terrible at physical confrontations, because they draw weapons in a majority of situations. I've wondered why they don't all have expertise in something like Kung Fu. The cost would be worth it. It would be taught at the Academy. ~~~~~

8/10/2016

Baltimore PD has gotten its ass reamed by the Justice Department. A systemic and almost innate pattern of bad policing and bigoted and discriminatory behavior has been documented well.


A community cannot trust the police when these behaviors are recognized by them. When there is no trust, fighting crime with the help of the community is nearly lost.

If there had existed several National Academies of Community Policing, there would be 2,000 graduates ready to replace the bulk of the entire Baltimore Police department and ready now. Unfortunately, the later solution is truly the only to correct this ingrained mess in that department. Change needs to happen fast in Baltimore. Not creeping adjustments, trying to teach thousands of experienced cops to have empathy and revert from their pattern of behavior is futile and will cause the people to not recognize the change because it will appear slow and there will be many who don't recognize the change, due to a slow and adaptive speed of change. We can't beat the ingrained psychology of these cops. Can't happen. Does not happen in the case of ANY human trapped in a pattern of bad behavior.

They must ALL BE REPLACED. All of them. Every officer, every chief, every sergent. I have no confidence that any other slow and adaptive way can fix the mess there. The entire department has to be REPLACED. Every single one of them. 

All of them.

~~~~~

Next: the clear need for real Traffic Cops. Cops who are not armed towers of fear invoking, armored gun wielding people - who have no other business than addressing your traffic or vehicle behavior and compliance with rules of the road. Or; people who cannot turn your traffic stop into a violent confrontation on the side of the road - unless they first back-off and call a graduate of the National Academy of Community Policing.

~~~~~

8/14/2016

You are understood #MilwakeeUnrest. Your lives are invaluable.




#endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #blacklivesmatter #justice #NoJusticeNoPeace #Martin 


2020; The Black Lives Matter movement is BORN AGAIN after another CRUEL, and RUTHLESS and RACIST ACTION is caught on VIDEO, and VIRALIZED.

Late 2020, California:

#PoliceReform !!

I can not endorse this ENOUGH.

It's like my timeline is read!

The male brain is not finished developing until age 25. Why give it a gun and unleash it with violent authority?

College first, creates great people who CAN BE GREAT COPS.

~~https://abc7.com/ca-bill-would-tighten-hiring-rules-for-new-officers/8649059/

https://twitter.com/EndAllsuffering

https://twitter.com/EndAllSuffering/status/1344432061940191232?s=20

All Rights Reserved, James Gray Mason, 2015.

http://JamesGMason.com

http://endallsuffering.org

http://timetravelwish.today

#PoliceOfficer #LEO #LawEnforcement #CommunityPolicing #USDJ #USAttorneyGeneral #AttorneyGeneral #JusticeDepartment #USDJsocial #POTUS #USCongress #USHR #USSENATE #DNC #RNC #Democrat #Republican #Liberal #Conservative #PoliceBrutality #BlackLivesMatter #CampaignZero #Justice #CivilRights #EndAllSuffering #StopAllSuffering #JamesGMason #Creativity #YouAssholes ! #Cops #UnitedStates #CommunityCollege #PoliceAcademy #timetravelwish

There Has Never Been a Better Time for 100% Public Campaign Financing

 

 "All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law."

- President Teddy Roosevelt, 1905

We have proven beyond a doubt that our current electoral campaign finance system mostly does not work for anyone but the wealthy. This inequity is why United States representative democracy has never truly been in place. If you think that historically what works well for the wealthy, works well for you in the long run, then you may not agree with this solution.

The route to Public Campaign Financing has to be a new Constitutional Amendment, because obviously Constitutional amendments are not ruled unconstitutional except by another amendment. 

The anger and disappointment over our Supreme Courts' decision in Citizens United verses the United States, is swelling the ranks of democratic activists and unifying them toward a goal of a Constitutional Amendment to repeal Citizens' United.  I say whoa. Citizens United is horrible, but lets use this opportunity to both fix Citizens United and correct something long over due that will reap benefits for democracy well beyond just the repeal of Citizens United. Public Campaign Financing would remove the target for every corporation and superpac benefiting from Citizens United. Many democracies around the world are succeeding using their own form of Public Campaign Financing. There have been several periods of time in our recent political history where Public Campaign Financing was offered by many people as a solution to the corruption and misrepresentation and under representation that occurs constantly under our current system of campaign financing. The call for Public Campaign Financing is so old it is almost traditional American rhetoric.

I support overturning Citizens United - and it's underlying warped philosophy that corporations are people. But it is foolish to NOT make use of the huge energy and anger in all political parties currently to finally create Public Campaign Financing, which would cause Citizens United to become MOOT and introduce full representative democracy where over 100 million non voting eligible citizens finally become represented. The advantages of PCF are numerous and the arguments against these advantages are very hard to make. The whole proposal for PCF makes so much logical sense it makes the effort to introduce a constitutional amendment to defeat Citizens United look trivial in comparison.

"The greatest moral question which now confronts us is: Shall the trusts and corporations be prevented from contributing money to control or aid in controlling elections?" 

                                  - Defeated Presidential candidate Judge Alton Parker, 1904.

Candidate campaigning has been tainted by the dollars of the few wealthy over the interests of the poorer many since our inception. I don't need to mention examples of the corruption, the resulting absence of representation, the conflicts of our interest created by massive dollar amount campaigns. I won't mention the many examples of decades of fighting against large money donors to get our congress to do something, anything. I don't need to mention that after that fight, when we think we are about to get something with all of our interests in mind, that we get watered down half measures of legislation that are partially representative of us all.

Nearly 50% of our federal representatives, 261 members of Congress, are millionaires. Among us the numbers of millionaires are 3 - 4%. The first priority on their first day as elected representatives is to start raising money to get re-elected. A US Senator from a rural state will have to raise on average $20,000 per week once elected to prepare for re-election. That Senator will have to ration his time for meetings with those most able to re-elect him, not time finding solutions to our problems. Our two presidential candidates will spend nearly $1 billion on this election, up hundreds of millions of dollars from the last general election.

How much are we spending on elections? From Ryan Borek, Executive Director, Take A Stand PAC: "In 2010, researchers believe approximately $4 Billion was spent on the midterm election. 2008's Presidential Election cost over $1.7 Billion not including other elections, and likely topped over $5 Billion. The off years such as 2009 tend to lag significantly behind at around $2 Billion. The average US Senate race costs around $4-7 Million, with the average US House race costing $2-6 Million. State elections cost significantly less, usually around $500,000. Local elections can cost as little as $5,000 depending mostly on filing fees. It is difficult to ascertain exact costs as the system is not designed to keep track of state or local spending in any central location. You can find the exact spending for any single federal candidate at FEC.gov, however you would need to contact each individual state's election office to find the spending on a state or local candidate."

Per person based on current population and the above estimate of $5 bilion per year, a standard General Election would cost approximately $15.87 each. Who would not be willing to pay $16 per year to better ensure real representation for all of us, without conflicts of interest, without corruption of our elected officials?

In the ruling of the Supreme Court in the now famous "Citizens United," corporations were given the status of an individual in the practice of petitioning government their grievances and exercising free-speech. Essentially in the invisible center of every corporation lies a being, a being that pays taxes and wants legislation that favors them, as if they were individuals with unalienable rights like us.

This interpretation of free speech and who or what can participate monetarily in our elections was greatly damaging to representation in that it tipped the scales even more toward more robust representation of those of greatest means. It was not enough that the entire executive board of a corporation is entitled to use free speech and vote their minds as individuals, now an invisible new being in the middle of the conference table is able to pool its larger amount of resources and out-bark the general populace or any target population they may, thereby manipulating all of our futures unrepresentatively.

Enter the only best answer: the 100% public financing of every electoral campaign in the United States of America. Below is educated speculation of what happens after Constitutional Amendment number twenty-eight that mandates this change, has gone into effect:

1. With literally no more purse for the coinage of the lobbyists to be dropped into at our elected representatives offices, the lobbyists for corporations and unions and smaller governments get real jobs in the private industry and vanish in one day from Capital Hill never to be seen again, so long as the 28th Amendment is the law of the land. Citizens United and all other rules as they pertain to corporations or any lobby, will matter no more because all campaign material and money must come from the public fund only, and gifts to our representatives and candidates will remain illegal.

Some lobbyists find a job in a related field practicing an American tradition: marching  around all day outdoors in front of the capital building carrying protest signs advertising slogans about issues. No wooden handles allowed guys! Stay within the yellow tape please!

2. Do the corporations or the unions still have free speech, representation, the ability to give money toward campaigns? Yes of course! The public fund for electoral campaigns is also contributed to from corporations made of individuals who pay a flat rate toward the public campaign fund, just like the citizen who pays the same exact rate who may own a small house right-next-door to the multi-billion dollar corporation. If a corporation is a person and that person is entitled to the free speech act of giving to a political campaign, then under Public Campaign Financing that person/corporation has given, with taxes, toward the political campaign, just like every body else under the new 28th Amendment.

This is a new shared representation in free speech ability the nation has never known. The "individualist" corporations' argument will then have to be "we have more money so we want to be able to give more money because we are more important to the nation than the little people!" And perhaps "This is not unfair to the great majority of the population!" Opinions that will be hidden from us and that the public would find distasteful.

3. Equal campaign funding for equal candidates everywhere. Knowing that your competition has not one more dollar than you do to spend on the campaign, makes the issues and your position on them far more important than ever before in determining a winner. As a representative you won't know who to support more on any one issue unless you delve into your constituency for real information on the issues. Information you then use without influence in dollars, while keeping in mind that it's your stand on the issues that will get you re-elected.

4. Equal political air-time. The media will have to abide by the rules just like individuals. They can not use outside funding for any political propaganda unless it is from the Public Campaign Fund. And they can not get that money until campaign time. Like Great Britain we have restricted the number of calendar days before the election in which television and radio and newspaper advertising can be displayed by anyone in favor of in opposition to a campaign or an issue of political purpose. Perhaps 60 days prior to election. When the millionaires' public relations manager calls the television network to try to gain advantage in an election, the manager would tell him or her "Sorry but you can't advertise for a political issue or a candidate until September 4th of this year and then you'll have to prove your money comes from the Public Campaign Fund. My hands are tied by the 28th Amendment. If you like we can interview you at any time, but your opposition gets an interview also."

Is it not time for the frenzied race to the top of Capital Hill lead by the wealthiest to end?  How much more evidence needs to pile-up for us all to admit the system as we know it, as it's structured, does not work? The Founders did not imagine our present could become this bad, I'm sure. We are not the few land owner, white, businessmen voters and congressmen the framers did imagine, any longer. In attempting to fix our electoral system few if any better solutions exist. Any answer must eliminate the power of the big-money contributors and return our nation to the people.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But this seems unconstitutional! . . .


Keep in mind successful Constitutional amendments are not ruled unconstitutional except by another amendment.

The purpose of the First Amendment is not damaged by Public Campaign Financing. The goal of representative democracy is shared and more fairly distributed, rendering the political speech concept of our free speech more representative and so more powerful than before.

If public funding of election campaigns is somehow unconstitutional then since 1976 checking a box on your income tax return that gives $1-5 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, is also unconstitutional. Because that is nothing more than what Public Campaign Financing does, And the SCOTUS has denied a challenge to this practice on two occasions. I's our government managing and collecting a fund for election campaigns specifically.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The clarion call out of the windows of our homes should be "It's my money and I want my politician back!"

Thank you. Grace on the United States.

James G. Mason

Please post critical and constructive criticism in the comments section below. I will try to  answer every question.

Please sign the online petition! http://bit.ly/LCjp17 It's not an iron-clad endorsement of this solution to sign the petition. It's purpose is to get the public and our Congress interested and talking. Sign it to help if not only to allow us all to begin the discussion.

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Related posts: Financial Plan Saves Families

He Has Become His Own Imagined Enemy

I was pumping gas and leaning on the side my car as my wife sat cooling in the car, on a Friday evening around six o'clock. As I watched the numbers rolling by on the pump's gauge a mumbling and low voice occurred behind me, I glanced back over my shoulder. It was a man in his mid-fifties reading my bumper stickers. "Keep Church and State Separate," and "I'm Too Poor to Vote Republican," my chrome plated Darwin fish and "One Nation Undereducated," and the clencher, much smaller, on the lower right of the bumper "Attack Iraq? NO!"

"Figures!" He then said loudly enough for me to hear, "A commie, pinko, liberal, bunch of liberal crap!" He then huffed off to his truck. I stayed silent – trying to stay cool – and letting him be. But he wasn't through yet. He backed up his truck to within inches of my front bumper and then leaned out to see me while he added more angry diatribe from the comfort zone of his own front seat. "See that tag I got! See that license plate! "I got that in combat fighting for you to have the right to put that communist crap on your car! "Asshole! Pinko!"

I nodded for him to show him I acknowledged his Purple Heart that was displayed on his commemorative license plate that the state of Georgia was kind enough to make available. But I stayed silent and he finally drove off while the sound of words of disdain for me grew quieter has he left the parking lot.

Was he saying that he fought for my freedom, more specifically my freedom to political speech? I think he was. It was a reach, a long reach for reason, teetering on excuse for disagreeing with someone who is disagreeing with the status quo. Kind of like "Jesus died for your sins!" Essentially disagreeing with the wing of the status quo that had supported you – or said they had, seemed they had.

The gas station, mouth wielding vigilante was Vietnam age and I'll assume his Purple Heart comes from that theatre. A war based on a lie that accomplished nothing. What incredible disappointment it must be, the type that weighs like a brick in the chest, like a feeling of pressure on the brain, to return from that invasion and occupation considering yourself a patriot. A patriot so long as the mind stays closed, the brain stays shallow, and selective acceptance of news and of hear-say. Another veteran of that occupation might be a disdainful dissenter when the truth is known, having to deal with his anger, his reality. One man realizes he fought and was wounded in Vietnam for nothing and eventually is cool with the geo-political of it. The other is stubbornly insistent that he did something about communism, that the world is better off for what he did. He is sick of being the minority, so he may become a recluse, hiding himself and his family from the dissenters for the rest of his life. When faced with a dissenter and his bumper stickers, a button is pushed, a rage boils up, reality is hitting him the face, an affront to so much that he personally exalts about god and country.
For the veteran, in confronting the dissenter, with hostility and belligerence, in the gas station parking lot, he has violated the civil rights of the dissenter with the harmless bumper-stickers. He has become the freedom grabbing enemy he imagined he was fighting against. His own personal imagined enemy.