Officer Evaluations/Activity Tracking

[Mazury401]

An officer who knows their beat like the back of their hand is worth their weight in gold. IMHO

They're worth their weight in gold to officers that value quality police work, but the officer that spends 2-3 hours off the street with a simple No Valid arrest and collects that $500 impound fee will get the pat on the back from the brass.

[ChiTownDet]

And the PDs that 10 years ago started looking at their places as a place to generate money, now, through attrition have PDs, whose members have the mindset that grabbing some illegal with no D/L or writing the soccer mom from town a 10 over ticket is doing Police work. The pro active patrolling of the town, looking for bad guys, knowing who belongs, who doesn't, knowing what's out of place in their area is quickly fading in some Depts. Driving the alleys and side streets blacked out on mids is being replaced with sitting and running radar all night on the main drag, or grabbing that dui, which ties you up half the night, leaving whomever is remaining on the street to handle whatever jumps off. But grabbing a garage burglar or auto thief doesn't bring in $$$.

[dogcop]

^^^ 1,000,000% agree

[Joe Snuffy]

And the PDs that 10 years ago started looking at their places as a place to generate money, now, through attrition have PDs, whose members have the mindset that grabbing some illegal with no D/L or writing the soccer mom from town a 10 over ticket is doing Police work. The pro active patrolling of the town, looking for bad guys, knowing who belongs, who doesn't, knowing what's out of place in their area is quickly fading in some Depts. Driving the alleys and side streets blacked out on mids is being replaced with sitting and running radar all night on the main drag, or grabbing that dui, which ties you up half the night, leaving whomever is remaining on the street to handle whatever jumps off. But grabbing a garage burglar or auto thief doesn't bring in $$$.

Leave it to you salty old timers to ruin a young guys dreams of grandeur. I was absolutely SURE I invented driving around blacked out on mids. In the great ways of McCarthy, I was going to reinvent policing, introduce this new crime strategy to the department and certainly we'd see double digit drops in crimes on the 1st watch. But now my motivation is killed. First, my crime fighter plan has now been exposed. Second, if I get into a crash (again) they'd throw me under my blacked out lights. I wonder if anyone has thought of sitting down with our troubled people in town over a nice cup of joe and seeing what's on their minds.....hmmmmm

[ChiTownDet]

Or the "Midnight Basketball Legues" which were so ever popular in the south side projects in the 80-90's.

Although if your sunglasses are dark enough, you can "run radar" for hours and be well rested in time to go home.