All Hands on Deck
Ryan Avent expresses some skepticism about MPDC Chief Cathy Lanier’s “All Hands on Deck” program in which certain weekends are scheduled for increased police staffing levels and says it’s especially odd to be doing this “when other strategies have borne fruit in cities like New York and (especially) Boston.”
Indeed, I never really understood why Lanier was tapped for the job in the first place. Crime had been on a downward trajectory under her predecessor, so there was no obvious need for the incoming Fenty administration to make a change. And if you were going to make a change, it would seem like the thing to do would be to bring on board a high-level official from a more successful department like Boston or New York. Instead, Fenty promoted from within and tapped the head of the Office of Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism, a women whose credentials include a thesis on Preventing Terror Attacks in the Homeland: A New Mission for State and Local Police. I don’t want to denigrate the importance of homeland security, but honestly given the city’s relatively high crime rate compared to other American cities it seemed like a puzzling direction in which to go.
20 Responses to “All Hands on Deck”
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January 10th, 2009 at 10:00 am
I’ll denigrate homeland security. First of all, I hate, hate, HATE the term homeland, smacking of some sort of Nazi/Russian-esque concept as it does. Second, terrorism is a crime. Planting bombs to kill people is a crime. How preventing bomb attacks on a local level is a new mission betrays a complete lack of understanding of what the local and state police were there for in the first place (if you said “public safety”, have a cigar). If Cathy Lanier is that much of an idiot that she thinks the MPD can prevent another 9/11 international conspiracy when they cant even prevent drivebys in Trinidad, then she is a bigger fucking moron than I give her credit for. But if she thinks that prevention of local terrorism is a NEW mission for local departments, then she is a bigger fucking moron than I gave her credit for.
And please – if she can’t stop local crime outbreaks like what happened in Trinidad without resorting to police state, Gestapo tactics or tactics like we used in Baghdad (walling off neighborhoods, etc.) then she needs to be fucking canned.
I’ve approved of most of what Fenty has done, except hire this stupid asshole.
January 10th, 2009 at 10:14 am
The amazing thing about Lanier’s appointment was that one of the big problems people had with Ramsey was the arrest and abuse of random people at Pershing Park in 2002, but Lanier was involved in developing the “hogtying” method used on those arrested, in which people guilty only of being in a public park were left for hours with their left wrists handcuffed to their right ankles.
January 10th, 2009 at 11:05 am
What’s left out in Matt’s post is a discussion of what has happened to crime since Lanier’s appointment. Has crime kept going down? I don’t know. She wasn’t appointed yesterday. And it is not necessarily the case that there is a single solution to crime, so maybe Lanier has an idea that will work. Again, I don’t know. But a criticism that she is not copying someone else seems overblown. Lastly, while I agree with calipygian that the term “Homeland Security” stinks, I do think that D.C. policing requires at least a slightly expanded interest in anti-terrorism. D.C. is an obvious target. And isn’t it possible that an anti-terrorism program might have an effect on everyday crime? Once more, I don’t know. But it is worth considering.
January 10th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I’m more interested in whether or not the police plan on stopping their policy of murdering innocent people, torturing them with tasers, and arresting people on trumped up charges.
Crime is only really low if you refuse to count the crimes that the police themselves commit. Police unions should be broken, police training should increase, and the police should start getting treated like every other criminal when they commit crimes and not ‘given the benefit of the doubt until all the facts are in.’. We don’t do that for other people, hell we don’t even pretend to any more.
January 10th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Sweet, sweet overtime! That would be something that she’s gleaned from the elementary-school dropouts that are given guns in Massachusetts.
January 10th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I’m planning to be in DC for the inauguration next week and I really DO NOT approve of Fenty’s order to keep the bars open alomost 24/7.
It’ll be a mess enough without having drunks to deal with. If it was MY call, I’d close down all bars on the 19th and 20th, but it isn’t my call…
January 10th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Can we please get rid of this disgusting, fascist usage “homeland security”? It’s bullbleep — designed to keep us properly cowed and ready to acquiesce in any violation of civil rights.
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