Dallas chief talking about the jobs cops have to do

I saved this yesterday from The Wall Street Journal and forgot to share. I thought it was good:

From Dallas Police Chief David Brown at a July 11 press conference:

We’re asking cops to do too much in this country. We are. We just ask of us to do too much. download (8)Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental-health funding. Let the cop handle it. Not enough drug-addiction funding. Let’s give it to the cops. Here in Dallas, we got a loose-dog problem. Let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, give it to the cops. Seventy percent of the African American community is being raised by single women. Let’s give it to the cops to solve that as well. That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems, and I just ask for other parts of our democracy, along with the free press, to help us. . . .

Serve your communities. Don’t be a part of the problem. We’re hiring. We’re hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in. And we’ll put you in your neighborhood, and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about.

9 thoughts on “Dallas chief talking about the jobs cops have to do

  1. Doug Ross

    Start by eliminating traffic stops for non-issues like broken taillights (which is really just used as an excuse to check “suspicious” people out). Then stop worrying about arresting people for using pot. Then stop criminalizing victimless crimes. No jail time for hookers or johns. If pimps are abusing women, use the laws to go after them only. Then stop using police as revenue collectors who can write tickets to feed the government coffers — police should be funded by property taxes, any revenue brought in from fines, forfeitures, etc. should go directly into the state’s general fund. That would remove the incentives to have ticket quotas.

    And, finally – encourage, educate, offer birth control, and offer financial incentives to young, unmarried women to delay having children until they are at least 21 and preferably 25. Start early – beginning in middle school to educate them on the poverty cycle that will result from having a child they can’t support.. then offer financial incentives starting in high school until age 21 to stay in school and not have children. It’s a much cheaper option.

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      You mean, stop enforcing laws against what libertarians CALL “victimless crimes,” even though they are not.

      Sorry, I just can’t ever let that particular canard go by without opposition…

      1. Doug Ross

        Who are the victims? The men who seek the women or the women who are paid for their service? If the man, then we should enforce adultery laws if they are married. If the woman, we should prosecute any woman that sleeps with a guy and gets a gift the next day.

  2. Bryan Caskey

    “Serve your communities. Don’t be a part of the problem. We’re hiring. We’re hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in.”

    I liked this. It makes sense. If you’re frustrated with the police, step up and make it better. Reminds me of the old quote from Teddy R:

    “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming…”

    1. Barry

      Lets also be honest

      A lot of these folks protesting in the middle of the workday- day after day- do not have jobs and it’s likely many don’t have high school degrees.

      Not exactly police force academy material.

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