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Re: "running while black"
slolerner #34138 05/05/15 06:50 PM
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Originally Posted By: slolerner
Another factor is that some of the officers involved may be local to Baltimore, may have grown up there.

According to one study I read on Huffington Post, the majority of Baltimore police officers do not live in Baltimore and a substantial number do not even live in Maryland. The rate of white officers living outside of Baltimore is over twice that of African-American officers. No figures were given for the percentage of officers who grew up in the various Baltimore neighborhoods, but I would not be surprised if those same percentages held there as well.

Originally Posted By: slolerner
What I do not know is whether the police department there reassigns officers to different precincts on a regular basis. A certain 'comfort zone' can lend itself to abuses of power. With six officers involved, it is hard to believe that this young man is the only person who has experienced this disregard of human suffering. He may be the worst case scenario.

There have been reports the "Patty Wagon ride" is an old and well established practice used by the Baltimore police to punish prisoners who resisted arrest. The same report went on to say it has been less frequently used in recent years. The tone of the report was admittedly biased.

Originally Posted By: slolerner
I am still a little stuck on this "paddy wagon" mentality. …<snip>… The young man in Baltimore was put in a van and the van went to pick up a second person somewhere else. So, the arresting officer does not arrive with the prisoner?

In Fort Worth, Texas the downtown and tourist areas are patrolled almost exclusively by officers on bicycles or horseback. This has the advantage of putting the officers in closer contact with the public they are assigned to protect and as one horse mounted officer said, "The quickest way to break up a bar fight is to ride in on horseback — even drunks respect the horse". However there is not much room on the saddle of a bicycle, motorcycle, or horse for a prisoner so the arresting officer will call for a squad car, generally a sergeant, who will take the prisoner in and take care of the initial paperwork. The arresting officer then continues on patrol and finishes any paperwork at end of shift. I suspect you will find the same is true for non-vehicle mounted officers in New York City. The "Patty Wagon" concept used in Baltimore appears to be a hangover from 50 or 60 years back.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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Re: "running while black"
joemikeb #34218 05/12/15 01:39 AM
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http://articles.philly.com/2013-12-09/ne...olice-officials

"McKenna alleges police subjected him to a form of abuse - a jolting and dangerous ride in a police wagon - that has a long, dishonorable history in Philadelphia.

The practice was entrenched before the department vowed to end it a dozen years ago after an Inquirer investigative series. The articles detailed crippling injuries, including paralysis, suffered by people placed unrestrained in the vans."

Btw, Tacit, everyone ran from the cops when I was in Philly for just this reason. (Philly is not far from Baltimore, either.)

Last edited by slolerner; 05/12/15 01:32 PM. Reason: more
Re: "running while black"
joemikeb #34227 05/12/15 11:15 AM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
The "Patty Wagon" concept used in Baltimore appears to be a hangover from 50 or 60 years back.

Just a quick correction:
It's paddy wagon, "perhaps because formerly many American police officers were of Irish descent" (New Oxford American Dictionary = Mac dictionary).

Re: "running while black"
slolerner #34235 05/12/15 02:24 PM
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Originally Posted By: slolerner
http://articles.philly.com/2013-12-09/ne...olice-officials

"McKenna alleges police subjected him to a form of abuse - a jolting and dangerous ride in a police wagon - that has a long, dishonorable history in Philadelphia.

The practice was entrenched before the department vowed to end it a dozen years ago after an Inquirer investigative series. The articles detailed crippling injuries, including paralysis, suffered by people placed unrestrained in the vans."

I spent the better part of 30 years working, at least part time, in training software developers at one level or another. It was an axiom within the training community that the most difficult task of all was changing a culture. Management can write all the rules they wish, make pronouncements from on high, single out and severely punish offenders, reward those who adapt to change, but long established cultural norms will persist until the vast majority of those in the culture recognize the advantages of change (or the inevitability) and not only adopt the changes but enforce them on their fellows through social pressure. Another axiom for those involved in effecting cultural change is the What's in it for me? effect. It is human nature to resist change unless individuals can see either a direct or indirect personal benefit.

Philadelphia may have said the Paddy Wagon ride was outlawed, but until a big enough majority of Philadelphia police recognize there is a DIRECT BENEFIT to them so they exercise social pressure to change the behavior of the remainder, the Paddy Wagon ride will continue albeit perhaps clandestinely. Cultural change never happens easily or overnight. In my experience it takes years and the dedicated focus of all levels of management to make real change happen. Unfortunately it is also an axiom that management can seldom maintain focus for more than a year. There has to be an overriding and commonly accepted goal to maintain management focus long enough to truly impact cultural change.

In the case of the company I worked for the focus was provided by an attempt to win the Malcolm Baldrige award. It turned out that it was not the award itself rather management's deep embarrassment over not even making the first cut the first year they tried. They learned it was not enough to talk the talk or make rules. That embarrasement held their focus for the over five years time and huge cultural changes from the office of CEO all the way down to the janitors mopping and waxing the floors. We had to learn that talk was cheap and real change required actually walking the talk.

Maybe there needs to be a Malcolm Baldrige award for law enforcement? confused


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: "running while black"
joemikeb #34239 05/12/15 05:22 PM
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I think this one is pretty easy, tho. That article is from 2013 and lists three serious incidents from the same cause. Yes, the carrot is a good motivator for certain behavior, but in this case it's the stick because the solution was known from similar events in other cities and not done. No more arrest vehicles where prisoners are facing sideways. Get them off the streets. From the article I referenced above:

"Schneider was an expert consulted by the ACLU in bringing the Chicago class-action lawsuit. The lead plaintiff was a man who bit off his own lip while rolling about in a police van."

Gray was one "running while black" iincident, but in this case he was resisting (running) most probably because of the same reason people in Philadelphia ran from the police on sight. There's corruption in some police departments or precincts, unprofessional behavior, racist attitudes, cultures of abuse, lack of knowledge of making a proper arrest or the law, loss of moral compass, plus everything that dboh and alternaut spoke of, many factors and each has to be verified as the cause or causes and addressed, in my opinion not lumped together or you never know what really happened in each case and are helpless to prevent it from happening again.

In 1992, Boeing was sued because the cargo doors on a passenger plane opened during flight. It happened before, in 1987. You start with what you know is a definite problem, eliminate that, and go from there. You have to start somewhere...

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