Word: crimed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...career criminals are happy with the nationwide drop in such crimes as murder, rape and assault. But the Louima attack, which is also an assault, has citizens wondering whether one kind of public order has been achieved at the cost of another. In short, is America's crackdown on crime bringing with it an increase in police brutality? The best answer, in most cities, is probably not--though harassment and violence against minorities remains endemic in some quarters. "This is a major problem in this country, particularly in urban areas," says Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil...
This wouldn't happen if some cops didn't believe they had a mandate for such behavior. Even though the rate of serious crime in the U.S. has fallen to levels not seen since the early 1970s, public fear of crime has reached an apex. TV transmits vivid pictures of actual violence into the nation's living rooms on a daily basis in more and more graphic detail. Politicians respond to the mounting public fear with declarations of war on drugs and crime that resonate with voters, from presidential to local elections. They also play well to the police culture...
Before the Rodney King beating, when Los Angeles cops practiced their own style of macho in-your-face policing, crime did not decline. But when, as a result of widespread and bitter criticism in the King case, the L.A.P.D. retreated from such aggressive policing, crime did dip. Crime also dropped in cities practicing community policing, which I define as a partnership effort with neighborhood groups in solving such problems as noisy bars, crack houses and prostitution. As police chief for 15 years in San Jose, Calif., I saw this approach succeed many times where indiscriminate crackdowns had failed. San Jose...
...asserted his legal right to leave, cops "kicked ass." Inevitably a number of officers felt justified in using illegal and at times fatal force. It was constantly necessary to emphasize to the officers that we were peace officers, servants of the community--not soldiers in a war against crime and drugs. Cities in free nations will never reflect the orderliness of Berlin under the Nazis or Moscow under the communists. In America police methods must comply with the law and community standards. They must not arise from a rigid concept of public order formulated within the police culture...
...tough cops who prevent crime; it is citizens' respect for the law. And these brutality cases do incalculable damage to police credibility with poor and minority citizens--those most in need of protection and without whose cooperation the police cannot be effective. We need to impress upon cops, in New York and everywhere else, that a free society is directed by its citizens...