Seems counter-productive. "Hey you're clearly miserable and not doing your job properly, so we're gonna make sure that you spend more time on the job being miserable while doing it improperly".
The officer at the polling place I worked Tuesday in Brownsville NYC went out and bought everyone cold water cause the community center was so hot. That was nice of her.
I think a lot of the NYPD are fairly average humans who probably don't really enjoy... tackling people or whatever.
Definitely hear a ton about the one's that do though. And there's some real pricks for sure as we saw during footage of the summer protests and police response.
It's a rule of thumb that roughly 10% of the NYPD receive 99% of the complaints and claims of excessive force. 90% of the NYPD is fine. The issue is that there is no meaningful oversight mechanism to correct the 9% that behave inappropriately sometimes, or the 1% that are serial offenders and are dangerous to the public. Other cops stay silent about it because there's nothing more dangerous to health and career than being a cop that rats out other cops. The civilian oversight board can't even look at records without the permission of the police.
Yeah, I think it's fairly normal to have an officer outside of or at the entrance to a polling location. They're not actually in the room with poll watchers, etc., and certainly nowhere near the private voting booths.
It has never felt inappropriate to me – maybe because I typically vote at a public school, where it's normal to see a crossing guard or public safety officer outside.
Yes it is normal. They are there to enforce the regulations around no campaigning within a certain distance, and other voting related laws. Plenty of crazies showing up insisting on inspecting ballots and stuff, and poll workers delegate dealing with this to cops.
Is it not? I think police's duty at polling place is to maintain order, nobody shouts, breaks the line, becomes violent, break things, creates chaos. If sny objection, follows the procedure calmly n within law.
They are most of the time near entrance. They are never near anywhere you cast the votes.
Having some security at a polling place feels extremely appropriate. Any private security would run the risk of being partisan. The military would run the risk of having the ruling party order the military to do intimidation. Local police are the right choice.
At my polling place (an elementary school gymnasium) the officer was in the entrance/hallway on his phone the entire time. Probably some easy OT for a day of more or less basically being a hall monitor.
Part of being a police officer (perhaps a huge part) is simply being present and visible. This "presence" generally coincides with any large gathering of people.
It seems completely normal to me for a police officer to be there and to have not to have been needed. Sounds like a peaceful event.
Most megalomaniacs I know aren't particularly happy people. I don't think the sudden outbursts of rage that we've come to know from cops are because they're zen inside.
Most officers will be placed on paid leave while they are being investigated for whatever crime they’re accused of. So it’s more like they have their vacation time adjusted to reflect their mandatory vacation.
From an employer's perspective, this is fine because you don't want to lose more paid work hours without any return.
From the employee's perspective, it's a different story of course. The point of vacation is that you can recuperate from work stress and get some energy back, so that you stay healthy and can deliver good work. I doubt very much that this goal can be reached when the reason for your time off work is that you're under investigation. For instance, I don't expect most cops to fly to Vegas to party during such a time.
This is just actual 'unlimited vacation'. Instead of a being a doublespeak name for eliminating vacation time, they actually can take time off at will. Just find someone powerless to take your frustrations out on, sign the union form and pack for the beach.
