A former police officer argued Thursday that police departments should be more concerned with enforcing the law than enacting “touchy feely” policies.
Robert P. Taylor, a former law enforcement officer, warned against police officers trying to be friends with their community over making sure they enforce the law to keep people safe in a letter to the editor.
“Stop all the expensive studies that Savannah doesn’t need and its taxpayers don’t want. What Savannah needs is good old-fashioned police work,” Taylor said. “We entered the touchy feely zone several years ago and what has it gotten us: Nothing. We don’t need police officers for friends, we need police officers who strictly enforce the law.”
Parents need to teach their children to better respect the law and law enforcement officers, Taylor argued.
“When I patrolled the streets of Savannah and Chatham County, I never liked hearing a parent tell their child in front of me: ‘He’ll put you in jail if you’re not good,'” Taylor continued. “I don’t believe in scaring children, but I do believe in parents teaching their children respect for the police and obeying the law.We don’t need more police officers, we need to let the officers enforce the law.”
It’s crucial that laws are kept so the general public can stay safe, Taylor said.
“Officers should be able to enforce every law on the books at will, and to know what the laws are. Those are tools to control the general public, so that gangs don’t take over our streets,” Taylor wrote.
One black police officer recently wrote about the internal struggle he feels about policing while black. (RELATED: Black Cop Feels Torn Between Warring Sides Of White Conservatives And Black Community)
“A Black policeman is shunned by conservative White officers for sympathizing with more liberal points of view offered by the Black community. That same officer is shunned by certain members of the Black community for wearing the blue uniform, as it leads to the necessity to write tickets and make arrests in said community,” he wrote in an op-ed earlier this month.
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