Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 4016 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: NOVEMBER 2016 OPINION/EDITORIAL American Police Beat Chairman & Publisher: Cynthia Brown Chief Executive Officer: Sarah Vallee Editor-in-Chief: Mark Nichols Advertising Sales: Dave Quimby Digital Manager: Jeremy Lange Office Assistant: Nora O’Connor Designer: Karin Henderson On September 27th the Mankato Free Press here in Minnesota printed a cartoon in the editorial section of their paper portraying police in a very negative light. I felt compelled to speak out about it on behalf of my members and law enforcement people everywhere. The Mankato Free Press has sunk to a new low with the editorial cartoon published September 27 de- signed to depict police officers as someone people should fear; most specifically African-American children. Publishing this cartoon was a tremendous disservice to communities of color and the broader community as well. It was also a slap in the face to the good men and women of law enforcement. As of July 20 this year, 67 officers across our great nation have been killed in the line of duty. An alarming 78 percent were firearms-related deaths and many were ambush-style killings. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund in Washington, D.C. pays tribute to all police officers killed in the line of duty. The marble walls have 225 names of Minnesota cops who were killed in the line of duty as they served and protected citi- zens across this state. Media irresponsibility like what we see with the Mankato Free Press, does nothing but erode the con- fidence that the police work so hard to build and maintain in communities large and small across our state. Unfortunately there will always be confrontations with police that will result in violent endings. We live in a violent world. We would like to escape from that reality, but it is not possible. We are certainly not immune from problems associ- ated with crime and violence, but don’t try to paint cops as trigger-happy warriors based on things that have happened in other parts of the country. Our law enforcement people will be engaged in confrontations that result in loss of life. That is reality. But when a newspaper like the Mankato Free Press runs a cartoon showing a young black boy telling a white cop all he wants to be is “alive” when he grows up, journalism has hit an all time low in Minnesota. – Dennis J. Flaherty, Executive Director, Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association Editor’s note: We didn’t want to print the cartoon, but for clarity’s sake, the image shows a large white cop asking a black child what he wants to be when he grows up, and the kid answers: “Alive.” Media irresponsibility For a long time now, equipment that was designed and developed for battlefields in foreign wars has been making its way into lo- cal and federal law enforcement agencies. One of the latest products is technology that promises to do a better job informing the police who will commit crimes and where they will occur. The basic idea is technology can do a better job predicting crime and finding criminals than the officers who work the streets. The jury is still out on how effec- tive this will be, but there have been some negative repercussions and it’s good to take a look at them. In Burbank, California, after the introduction of the so-called “big data” solution, officer morale crashed with a minimum of 75 percent of police officers reporting that they had “low or extremely low” morale after a computer program told them where crime was likely to happen. Why should this be? Is it not helpful for police officers to know where crime is likely to occur and who’s likely going to be com- mitting said crimes? Cops, particularly the ones who really know the streets and avenues where they work, know a thing or two about where crime is likely to occur as well as the likely perpetrators. And it’s easy to understand why they resent having their own expertise supplanted by a computer program. Another hard question to ask is if the introduction of all this technology to the law enforcement profession is really about automation, outsourcing and cost cutting. If you have robots calling the shots on enforcement, assignment of resources, and other critical decisions, you don’t need expe- rienced law enforcement officers that know their communities and routinely use the skills and knowledge they’ve gained over a career to do their jobs. You might not even need reserve officers or volunteers. If the computer knows where the crimes will be committed and who did them, maybe you really don’t need cops at all. You could just mail out warrants to ap- pear in court and call it a day. Better yet, the agency could start using driverless police vehicles to deliver said warrants, which would certainly reduce the costs of personnel. It’s not that technology is bad, or that equipment designed for war can never have a legitimate public safety application. But when you start adopting technology that renders the skills and knowledge of experienced street cops and investigators obsolete, you’re likely to make even more experienced competent law enforcement professionals head for the exits. So what’s the deal with all these creepy “killer clowns”? If you’re one of those people that avoids social media – and increasingly regular media, as they’re becoming one and the same – there is a global phenomenon involving people dressing up like clowns and scaring children as well as adults. There have been incidents where arrests have been made, and some situations where the clowns appeared to be armed and/or have some type of criminal in- tent. The vast majority of the “clown calls,” however, involve kids that tell Mom and Dad they saw a creepy clown near the woods at school, only to come clean later and admit they made it up and just wanted to be a part of the new Internet craze. A quick Google News search using “police” as the keyword for the search these days will spit back a lot of “creepy clown” articles. So why is everyone so much more frightened of people dressed as clowns than they are of things like terrorist at- tacks, violent crime and increasingly deadly weather patterns? Here’s a theory – there’s too much real stuff to be scared of these days. Many law enforcement officials tell nervous resi- dents that they should get a gun and forget about calling 911 during an emergency because “it’s not their best option.” Statistically speaking, Americans have a greater chance of being killed by their own televisions than dying in a terrorist attack, but math and fear are usually mu- tually exclusive. A recent poll recently measured how Americans perceive crime both locally and nationally. Sixty-nine percent of US voters think there is more crime in the US than there was two decades ago, with 43 percent saying there is “much more” crime. It’s just not true, though. That’s because fear sells. Ask anyone that ran for sheriff if they campaigned on a “This is a low-crime area. You’re already safe. The sitting Sheriff is doing a great job!” platform. However, there is indeed a lot of very real stuff to be terrified of. Poisonous drinking water, the suicide and opioid epidemics and the odds of the kids successfully paying off student loans before they’re dead come to mind. But when people get overloaded with fear to the degree Americans are these days, sometimes you need a fake threat to knock the real ones off the radar. And that might be helpful to keep in mind the next time you get a call from a suburban mom who wants to know what your agency is doing about the clown abduction murders she keeps reading about. Experience matters Send in the clowns