A Special Message for First Warders
Gossips is headquartered in the First Ward, so this post is meant for my neighbors and former constituents. Thanks to our current aldermen, Dave Marston and Nick Haddad, Hudson's new police chief, Ed Moore, will meet with residents of the First Ward at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 23, at Basilica Hudson, to hear about the worrisome things that have been happening in our neighborhoods.
I was totally impressed by this man, Chief Moore. I believe that we're incredibly lucky to have his approach here at long last, which has met with success everywhere it's been tried.
ReplyDeleteA small example of the nuance of the general approach: when police in another, much larger city got to know their beat's regular inhabitants, they were able to tell the difference between the regular vagrants, whom they even greeted, and new ones who were often a source of trouble for everyone.
The example sounds like an odd recommendation, and I'm not advocating vagrancy in Hudson, but it actually makes a lot of practical sense in a large city.
In Hudson, the same approach might mean a few gentle reminders from the beat cop, such as asking to see a dog-walker's free plastic bag. If that was already happening here, then the council mightn't have passed that onerous legislation last year when we already had a suitable law in place. Our politicians figured themselves as heroes, but they actually made a new problem for the HPD without making the old problem go away. What a surprise.
To me, the positive, social-networking approach looks like a cousin to our new counter-insurgency theory, which we eventually implemented in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The results are sometimes mixed, but they're undeniably successful in the long run, and are an agreeable alternative to the offish, hard-headed approach of a law enforcement "technician."
In war-torn countries it goes like this: befriend the leaders of a community and then demonstrate your good will and commitment to residents. Eventually they decide that it's better to chance confiding in you than remain silent about the sources of wrong-doing all around them. (Just recall those "Don't Snitch" T-shirts here, which ultimately benefited gangs.)
Everyone wins with Chief Moore's approach, by purposefully making our social connections richer and more meaningful.