NNO, National Night Out — are you doing anything?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I have no idea how any of my neighbours voted, and I wouldn’t ask. Is this aggressive politicisation a symptom or a cause of polarisation?

We’re friendly with our immediate neighbours, and there’s one other guy in the village who likes to chat, but we don’t know any of the others. It would be nice to have some kind of event to break the ice. Going to church probably helped build community in the past, but with the collapse of religion, there’s nothing that’s really replaced it.

What’s that?

I don’t really understand why the US has such a problem with cops. Here in the UK there’s a lot of complaints about them not doing their jobs (mainly the result of funding cuts), but I rarely see complaints that they are too heavy-handed or authoritarian (and only because of free speech issues, tbh).

22

When people put signs in their yards advertising a politician, you don’t really need to ask. Also, it’s weird to keep those signs up after the election. Those neighbors didn’t just vote for Trump, they want to make absolutely sure that everyone knows they support Trump.

23

People don’t really do that here, which is the reason I don’t know.

Yeah, that’s really weird. In America, politics seems to have become more about identity than policy preferences for many people. It’s a dividing line like race or religion used to be. I hope that doesn’t happen here.

Neighbours talking to each other should help reduce polarisation as well as isolation, so I think this ‘national night out’ is a good idea, even if it doesn’t work for everyone.

24

When we live our daily lives, doing as we please what interests us, it’s easy to take for granted the protection that LEOs provide for us.

Thinking like a Marine, whenever your unit moves into an unknown area with unknown dangers, the first thing you do is set up a defensive perimeter. Once you have that perimeter secured (say it’s a big circle on the ground), you can then move into that circle and live, eat, and exist and operate knowing that you’re relatively secure.

As civilians today, we live, eat, and exist and operate within the safety provided by LEOs. Within that ‘virtual perimeter’.

While it can be true and it has certainly happened that LEOs can be abusive, they certainly have to be kept in check. If you’ve ever been a victim of power abuse, it sucks. When I was a young Marine I had one section chief who was a bonafide asshat who liked to lord his power over you. Other victims of power abuse have had it much worse, even to the point of being killed.

But most of us do not experience that. There are exceptions, sure, but most of us live peacefully within the blanket of security provided by that ‘virtual perimeter’ established and maintained by LEOs.

Most of us live in peaceful conditions, but many do not. Many live where there’s a war raging outside their doors and walls. LEOs do their best to keep us safe.

Don’t take that for granted. These people have spouses and kids and parents that they love like many of us do. When they walk out their front door in the morning all they want, most of them anyway, is a peaceful shift where they don’t get injured or worse, so they can come home to their families that night.

So if there are events to help promote our relationships with them, I’ll support that.

25

Around here it started as encouraging neighborhoods and neighborhood watches to gather together in small neighborhood groups. Police officers on patrol as well as community police detectives would go from group to group to listen to concerns or just meet people. Not a bad idea for spread out suburban communities. Walking beats don’t make sense and most people just see cops while they are driving past.

As of let’s say ten years ago the politicians took over. The original intent seems to be lost. Now the town blocks off an area and has things like a car show and some sort of performers. Also various vendors. The politicians make speeches. It’s become a bit of a competition between towns. I’m sure the candidates for governor will make the rounds this year. I met Cory Booker there one year. When I was a detective we had to get into uniform and walk around it for hours. It’s usually a hot miserable night. There was usually some problems with unruly yutes and petty crime at the end of the night.

26

It’s the modern day equivalent of painting your doorpost with lamb’s blood.

27

I think @puzzlegal did a great job of explaining my concerns about my 3 lot down neighbor. Plus this isn’t a yard sign, this is a fully flown flag on a personal standing (not porch mounted) flagpole. And that’s still better than the other individual (thankfully further away and around the corner of the closest T-intersection) who kept up a roughly 4x6 foot banner on their wall all the same time. When these people tell me who they are, I believe them.

I apologize, let me clear this up a bit for our non-USA posters. So first let me quote the whole section rather than the snip (I don’t blame you for the snip, but I think context helps):

So starting with the second half of the sentence, it’s almost praiseworthy if you build a LEO organization that treats all of the protected equally - you don’t (theoretically) have a White Cop throwing the book at a black perp because they’re racist while letting a white thug off with a warning. Or a Hispanic cop “look the other way” because that’s how life is.

But it’s almost never that way in practice. What it -is- effectively doing is saying that you’re a COP before you’re anything else, and you have to protect COPS. Which means that in countless investigations to wrong doing, Cops DON’T self report on their fellows, or otherwise lie and conceal evidence, even when sometimes the video later PROVES they knew it was a bad idea, and consistent defend each other in terminology that is obviously “It’s US vs. them!”.

Cops see themselves as different (lots of potential chicken and egg issues) and everyone else as potential/probable enemies (again lots of reasons for the attitude).

Again, in an ideal world, the NNO could be away of gently correcting the situation. In the USA (nothing about the rest of the world), cop culture (IMHO to be clear) is fundamentally broken at the heart, and Trump is on the record as saying he doesn’t care about the victims writes and he’s going to cripple what extremely limited and weak oversight we Did have.

Sorry for the book on this related tangent here in MPSIMS but our LEO issues in the USA are endemic in ways outsiders probably won’t get.

28

Why call it “national night out” if it’s really “national police-community engagement”?

29

Because that’s what the guy who started it came up with?

I may get some of this wrong. I know it was started by a guy named Matt Peskin. He’s not a cop. He’s a neighborhood watch guy. If I am interpreting his intent it is supposed to foster more involvement of community members in their own communities. He didn’t think all the answers to crime and community issues were with more police involvement. Engaging with police as part of the community was a component but mainly it was supposed to get people out of their houses and join the community at large.

30

I got the impression, from earlier in the thread, that it was originally and supposed to be still at least partially “neighbor to neighbor engagement.” Ideally at least some of the police are also neighbors, of course; though I think in a lot of areas they aren’t, at least in any real sense, even if they live in the same city.

31

Both Masonic Lodges in our small town are participating. I plan to visit both. This is a good way to meet people and bring them together in a positive, apolitical way. What’s not to like?

32

There are no rules to it. Each community is free to set it up as they want. It’s just that where I worked the grandstanding mayor realized it was a way to literally get on a grandstand. Other communities use it for engaging their neighbors.