So I see where you’re coming from and generally am on board with what you’re saying. I’m a little skeptical that chases, stops, and warrant servicing are the best interactions for developing the sorts of relationships that get you good intelligence, but that’d be a better discussion to have over beers if the opportunity ever presented itself.

The problem with the union response is that this sort of knee-jerk excuse to justify a return to the MOST divisive police practices makes it really hard for those of us who want to reform policing with a sympathetic ear toward the actual experience of those policing.

Sure, a chokehold can be a really good way to restrain someone. But it’s also a really good way to inadvertently kill people and generally a bad way to rebuild relations with a community that fundamentally doesn’t trust you. Of ALL the tools you would want as a cop, that seems like a really bad hill to die on. You could also argue that a spiked club is a probably a pretty useful tool for subduing people, but we’re not about to let the cops walk around with them.

The unions here are doing the line duty cop no favors. It’s hard to convince people to have sympathy for the genuinely tough spot many cops find themselves in when all the public sees is stuff like this. It’d be easier if we ever saw ANY sense of real self-awareness and desire to improve from within the policing world rather than the knee-jerk defensiveness and refusal to accept any responsibility.