[quote]JJJJ wrote:
vroom wrote:
JJJJ,
I’m very disappointed. You sidestepped the whole issue of having to make tough decisions.
Life is very simple when you think about it, but much more difficult when you live it.
Obviously, all the police in north america are just too stupid to run their lives as you feel they should…
Howabout manning up and forcing yourself to make a tough decision?
VROOM . . . no, it’s not about “all cops being too stupid.” What I’m trying to explain to you is that with a good leadership climate and good leaders who think about this kind of thing BEFORE-HAND . . . then the cop on the beat doesn’t HAVE to make the kind of choices you propose.
But, I’ll bite.
OK . . . let’s suppose space aliens landed tomorrow and Death-Rayed the road networks and communications networks and started slaying people right and left. What should a cop/fireman/EMT do?
What I notice about your choices are that they are all INDIVIDUAL choices. You’ve told me nothing about the organization he works for. Is it functioning as a cohesive unit? Are the leaders competent? Do they care about their people?
If so, then there’s still an Option 4. The chain-of-command recognizes the needs and fears of their “foot soldiers” and deals with the situation “as a unit.” They grab trucks and buses and put armed officers on board and they go out and rescue the familes of their men and bring them to a central location. Or they do it in shifts. “Bill, you’re a single guy so you stay on duty, while Joe, you take an hour and go get your family and bring them here.”
Notice that it’s the sergeant taking care of the problem. You’re not leaving the man to fend for himself.
It’s not an INDIVIDUAL problem . . . it’s a COLLECTIVE problem and it gets handled by the unit. In New Orleans, APPARENTLY that did not happen in some places.
Now, if THAT cohesive climate doesn’t exist in the organization, you’re fucked.
I suppose you just have to rely on the individual’s sense of duty and courage.
Me, PERSONALLY, I would stay on duty and fight the aliens because I trust my wife to take care of business by herself. She’s a better shot than I am.
Bottom line: When individuals are forced to make decisions like the ones you propose, then that means the unit has ceased to function.
I mentioned the military in my first response. The military has years of experience having to deal with emergencies at the home-front while the husband is deployed.
They’ve adopted a very PROACTIVE stance to avoid soldiers having to make the choices you propose. As a result, units that deploy today don’t have nearly the same problems that they used to have, say 20 years ago.
I suspect that this issue will be one of the first priorites in the “new” NOPD.
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One of the problems in NOLA was that the command and communication structures had been completely disrupted. This left alot of cops pretty much on their own. It seemed to me that Vroom was offering individual options because these cops were in many cases by themselves without the option of calling on their units or commanders for support or backup.
The assumption that cops in general are somehow smarter or better prepared than your average civilian looks like a logical fallacy. However, I hope that those of us who are smarter than the average bear take a lesson from this and put together some preparedness plans.
I do not disagree with your basic points about duty. I wish more people had a stronger sense of it.
WMD