Wednesday, November 2, 2011

COMMUNITY SERVICE


The Captain asked me to assemble a team to conduct an official "visit" of our local Sheriff station. The idea was to have citizens from the community observe and report on the situation and practices they saw. At first, I thought this was some sort of public relations deal. If you watch the news you'll know that LA County has been under assault from the Without-A CLU people for the past month. Made sense to me.

However, when I got the files via email I discovered that this is a much bigger deal. It isn't merely a county or state PR attempt. No, this is a world-wide undertaking. For a two week period, citizens around the world will make similar inspection tours of their local police facilities. And, at least as far as our local station is concerned, the cops love the idea.

The concept is pretty amazing when you think of it. I mean, there are many places in this world where avoiding a police station would be at the top of my To-Do list. I can imagine myself checking the box for "No Thumb Screws In Evidence." CHECK. But here the police were eager to introduce citizens to the workings of the station. The tour itself was thorough. We went to every place in the station that I knew about and a few places I hadn't known previously. The consensus of the group was that real cops aren't much like what you see in movies. (Unless you've seen the wickedly funny send-up of "Cop Movies" in SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER) See Above.

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