To Serve and Protect... Prevention is another story.
Here is a hard truth.
The police do not prevent crime.
They do not stop crime.
In a broad sense, you can say that the police prevent crime by being visible. Having a presence in a location does “deter” some crime from happening but for the most part they do not prevent anything or protect you from it in any specific way.
Now, they do have units that identify people or groups that are in the process of planning and executing crimes (drug dealers, sex slaves, burglary rings, organized crime, etc) and try to take them down before they encounter you, but the vast majority of public interactions with the police involve crimes that have already taken place.
Detectives. They know what happened, they're just trying to figure out who did it.
Think about it:
The majority of the time when someone calls 911 it is to report something that has already happened. Yes, there are occurrences where people report a crime in progress but those calls are in the minority. Typically an officer arrives after the incident and their sole objective is to find out if a crime as been committed, identify the perpetrator and victim, then take the suspect into custody for the courts to decide guilt or innocence based on the evidence they collect.
The majority of the time when someone calls 911 it is to report something that has already happened.
Why crime skyrockets in various cities is not necessarily because the police aren’t doing their jobs. It’s because criminals have no fear of punishment or opportunity to change their life choices, things which the police have nothing to do with.
To actually LOWER crime in a city we have to remove the criminal element behind it. Stop people from wanting to do criminal acts in the first place and catch and remove those that do from our society for a time as punishment. The job of parents, teachers, politicians, friends & family, employers… practically everyone living in a community is the former. The job of law enforcement is to do the latter.
And because we as a society have been doing such a poor job doing our part it seems as if the police are being too zealous at theirs.
This is not a “tough on crime” generation. It's pretty much the opposite, especially in urban metro areas. We seem to have much more concern for the rights of criminals than the loss experienced by their victims. Time behind bars as punishment for crime is becoming frowned upon because it’s not an “enlightened” way of stopping criminals. Progressive rehabilitation is the mantra now. But rehabilitation without punishment is fruitless. There must be consequences for your actions. This is how we learn to do better, to be better.
The police can arrest a drunken driver that’s involved in an accident that takes a life (after the fact), but when you find out this is the driver’s fifth DUI, that’s not on the cops.
When a vicious predator is arrested (after the crime) and he/she is let out without bail on a promise they will return for their court date only to go back steal and attack again a few days later, that isn’t the police’s fault.
The cops can arrest a suspect for violent assault (after the crime), but when he’s released after three months and then murders someone that crime stat shouldn’t be on them. The DA and the courts own that murder.
Robberies, drug possession, sexual crimes… the police can do their jobs flawlessly but if the criminal does not fear the repercussions of his or her actions, crime increases. If we don’t teach people there is a life outside of crime that they can aspire to, crime increases. The police have no control over any of this.
When we as a society decide to actually do something about THIS crime in our streets will decrease. Guaranteed.
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