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Posted
With a town that size, I'm sure it has a lot to do with who she is, rather than what she looks like. It's worth noting that 80% is only 5 officers. She had previously held an officer for the town, so it's more than possible that they know her and her work habits well enough to know they don't want to work under her.
Posted

From a thread on an officer not shooting a charging suspect (that he should have)  to the election of a black mayor?

 

Oh well............... 

 

I think a lot has to do with small town politics. I hate it where towns have a mayor in charge so when a new elections comes up, you can get an entire new police and fire chiefs, etc. Most cities in this area employ city managers to run the city. The city council is the budgetary arm of the government and vote on tax rates and how much each department can spend of the taxpayer's money but the day to day operations including the hiring of department heads is done by the manager. It helps to insulate the running of public safety agencies from the whims of a single person because his/her son got a speeding TICKETarrow-10x10.png. The city manager not being elected, can be fired by the council at any time but it takes a majority of the council to back up the manager. Basically a city manager can't play small time politics without the backing of the council but a mayor can do as he/she wishes up until the next election. 

 

So what was the situation in this tiny town? Had the newly elected mayor made comments about getting rid of the police chief who may have been popular and his/her men followed? Had she had run ins with the police in the past and made on or off the record comments about getting even? Did she campaign on getting rid of the PD and contracting with the sheriff office for officers and the city officers simply headed out early?

 

Way too many questions with no answers from the media except... the mayor is black. Maybe I missed it but I didn't see the race of the officers or the chief. 

 

For all we know, the former mayor who was there for 37 years according to the article, was involved with political kickbacks including the police department. That is entirely plausible since two other departments heads quit which likely had nothing to do with the police. Maybe the new mayor came in under a promise of open records, accountability and cleaning the place up. Of course we don't know because the only investigation by the media appears to be based on the race of the mayor. 

Posted

Could it be they resigned because of sex and not race? Why not mention it was a female that won, along with being African-American? Either way it is crazy they did it, but it is not always about race.

Ahhhhhhh you read the article. Bingo. 

Posted
Film away. Just don't interfere and that means stay a good distance away from the officers.

There is a bill currently in front of the TX legislature that requires a person to stay at least 30 feet away from officers if using video. It likely will not pass but I wish that it would go further and require people to stay that distance away from officers conducting business whether filming or not. Ten yards away is plenty close enough to get all the video you want.

It is dangerous for the officers and not only from the people closing in but they then have to divert attention away from a person detained or being arrested and have to deal with that secondart threat. That takes attention away from the person being detained/arrested which is always a danger. Bullets 13 has witnessed that riding with me when a simple citation for one person (like here sir, please sign this ticket) went to crap that ended in a fight for officers and three people going to jail. That is when a simple situation of signing a citation turns into a use of force incident and when people start getting hurt or killed.

There is already a law that says interfering (which can including getting too close) is a crime and carries up to 6 months in jail but the distance if used to make an arrest is discretionary on the officer. Simply telling people they can film all they want but give the officers space seems like a very clear way to handle it.

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