h a l f b a k e r yBaker Street Irregulars
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Some countries require a sort of national service, whereby their citizens take part in the armed forces for a certain amount of time. Cities should require police service from the people who live in them. It would instill the ability to react well under stress, provide basic combat, firearm, driving,
and medical skills as well as a better understanding of criminal law.
Metropolitan Police Special Constabulary
http://www.met.poli...dsworth/special.htm
In London, anyone can be a Police Officer in their spare time [hippo, Oct 10 2000, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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Until the 20th Century, the U.S. citizenry were better armed than the police, and were expected to offer assistance when needed. |
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Better armed is one thing, but this idea would provide training so that citizens could use those arms more effectively to defend their communities. |
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Some countries, such as Taiwan,
already do this (for males only I think). The biggest problem I could see is that people tend to do their national service when they're 18-22. Having cops in the final stages of growing up is not great. I remember hearing about a wave of copy cat suicides inside the police force. Young and new cops also tend to defer to judges & superiors. |
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I'd rather have some model close to the national guard, where once a year you get on a plane to a city you've never been too before, and acompany a local cop. This would probably make police corruption a lot trickier. |
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(Oh no, here comes the universal gun control debate...) |
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I fear what would happen if the police were staffed by everyone. We all make fun of how corrupt, stupid, and incompetent the police are, but they're really not that bad in general; I'm not sure I want to entrust such a critical life safety role to J. Random Kid. |
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The once-a-week solution has the problem that the police force would be perennially a year out of practice. |
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I suppose you could have a police force that was part "professional" and part "mandatory service", but I suspect one might come to resent the other. |
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Beverly Hills P.D. armed a few folks, disbanded after 'shooting without cause' last year. |
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Maybe they should just ban clothes. Nudists can't carry "concealed" weapons. Well, some of them can, but I think you guys get my point. |
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Everyone always complains that there aren't enough police officers to deal with crime.
So, make everyone who between 18 and 65 and is phyiscally capable and mentally competent into a part-time police officer. Every citizen would have to do 2 8-hour shifts a month and 2 24-hour standbys on a rota basis. Employers would have to let employees go to do their police duty. There would be regular compuslory training. Everyone would have a car with a siren, a blue light and a radio. Everyone would have powers of arrest, handcuffs and pepper spray. On promotion to Sergeant or above you would be allowed to build a jail cell in your house and get upgrades on your personal weaponry. |
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If there was any trouble, everyone in the vicinity would be expected to answer the call via local area pager systems. If you saw someone speeding you could chase them and pull them over (unless they were on a call in which case you would help them). |
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Some officers would be designated to specialise in Scenes of Crimes, Victim Support or ARUs (SWAT teams to our transtlantic bretheren). Truck drivers or other long distance travellers would be assigned to Traffic. Private pilots would perform aerial surveilance. |
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The existing police force would become the "internal affiars" branch of the new Citizen Police, dealing out swift disciplinary intervention to any officers who misbehaved. |
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Then we could put all the poiliticians in jail and elect a Lord High Sherrif to run things. Even better, he (or she) could be appointed by his (or her) peers on the basis of experience, suitability, ability and merit .... |
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goobereater: See my first annotation. |
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This would be great training for future criminals, who would gain an insight into how investigations are conducted, how to defeat forensics, etc. |
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hmm.....a government that Forces people to work for them, even when not in times of war... You must be a communist. |
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bad idea, as theives, murderers, and ther criminals will take advantage of this somehow. and if its compulsory than the criminals will also have to be in it, so its likely to happen. fishbone. |
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Anyone who's ever lived in Italy will have encountered the Carabinieri, and will have first hand experience of the efficacy of giving guns to half-trained eighteen year old kids and putting them in charge of law enforcement. Genius decisions like this should remain here in the safety of the hb. |
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remember starship troopers? in that novel you cant vote or hold office if you didn't do something for the community like servince as a fireman, policeman or soldier |
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