Shirl:
Does being a resident of a city qualify someone to make those kinds of
accusations? I'd like to know what police dept *doesn't* have incidents
where things turned out badly and could have been handled more
efficiently. And how many incidents are handled well, solved, and have a
positive outcome that don't make the nightly news and are taken for
granted by residents? Always amazes me how an entire operation can be
labeled as "corrupt and grossly inept" by a couple of splashy nightly
news clips of unfortunate incidents.

"Matt Barrow" wrote:

Even police will have a few successes :~)

There are more than a few.
It's just that the successes aren't splashed all over the TV for days
after the fact as are the failures.

Look at their record, though, over the long term. Look, too, at their upper
divisions and the city administration as well.

Just as the public schools intent is not to educate (in the classical use of
the word), neither is the purpose of the police, any more, to keep the
peace. (Notice how in the 1970's an onward, police stopped referring to
themselves as "Peace Officers" and started calling themselves "Law
Enforcement". That requires a pretty big stretch of logic to infer that the
laws are for protecting the public rather than some other group.

Well, now you're talking about police in general rather than your
previous specific judgments and accusations about two specific police
departments, one of which you cited two poorly handled instances that
both saturated local news as justification. When they find a missing
child or arrest a murderer or any number of drunk drivers, no one
notices or remembers because that it, in fact, what they're supposed to
be doing.