I was watching the Fox Report last night and they did a piece about the most dangerous and safest cities in the country. Way to go to Detroit and St. Louis for being tops on the most dangerous list. But hey it is only stats and they are at least a year old anyway. In the feature part of this report they went to Boston, where the mayor there has started a door to door campaign to inform the residents about the services available to them and the find out what they feel are the real issues. Leaving it right there it sounds like a good program, most of us would love to have a sit down with the government leaders and give them straight answers and shoot them hard questions. Let them really know what our two cents are.
One of the aspects of this program is to have the police officers go door to door also, which that only being said sounds good. It sounds like it gives the citizens a chance to know the boys in blue are real people and gives the boys in blue a chance to learn that not all the people on their beats are criminals.However, according to the report on Fox News, the primary purpose of the door to door by police is not for the above stated reason, but to ask permission to search the bedrooms of kids, without a search warrant or probable cause, looking for weapons. THANK YOU BUT NO THANK YOU!!!!
I have a real hard time with this program—the stated goal is to get weapons off the streets. I think that the bad public relations this will create will not only counter any gain on removing weapons from the streets , but will impede the investigations already in progress and will majorly obstruct future investigations in the city.
Think about this scenario—police officers entering the homes of citizens in the most crime ridden areas of Boston and asking to search the premises. There is NO polite or politically correct way to ask, simply by asking you are implying that the individual is a criminal or bad element of the community. These areas already distrust law enforcement and feel like they do not receive equal treatment by the police. And these are the same persons that you will need to give information and statements when there are crimes to investigate.
I wonder if someone asked the powers that be how many weapons might be recovered if they did the same door to door request to search in the less crime ridden neighborhoods. And I wonder just how many weapons they will actually remove from the streets with this project. I would say that the number will be minimal. Someone deserves a stupid award for this one—at least for not using common sense when they really thought this one out.
I am aware that this is an old blog... but I feel we all need to read the updated version and see how far they got with this idea, or how far has the project got us. Has anything changed? Are the crime rates lower than 7 years ago? Are there any less guns and shootings on the streets after the introduction of this program? What is current state of this program, how far behind has it fallen or how far has it improved? Thank you for sharing this... and look forward to reading the updates. You've made valid points here. I do have an issue though, even then when the officials open their doors to public to ask questions- I wonder how come we never get to ask, and if we do why do we not get the answers.
ReplyDeleteQuestions are being raised - answers are not being given. More questions - less answers. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to help fix the problem, if nobody wants to hear about it. The over all attitude is "Give them kids some toys, so I can finish cooking dinner". My question is - Can we get something real, while they keep on stirring the pot!?