More Worries about Police Reform

Ruth Zavaleta worries that the state police plan will remove the role of local police as crime preventers:

[T]he perception is that there will exist greater control of police agencies, but the successful public security in many countries with democratic systems is that which is based on two planks: the coercive and the preventative.

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The municipal, community, or borough police has to be a citizen police that everyone knows and that maintains a link that fosters order in the short term and good government. The municipal, community, or borough police must be a police that with its presence inhibits crimes such as the sale of drugs outside of schools and even deals with traffic tasks preventing accidents or act of violence against students.

Andrew Selee had similar comments on the plan.