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City Hall175 East 200 NorthSt. George, UT 84770(435) 627-4000
| November 21, 2009 |
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New Years Resolutions A brand new year is upon us. Where did the last year go? What do I want to change? What do I need or want for the next year? Now is the time to decide. Now is the time to look ahead and make this the first day of the rest of our lives. From a police aspect, I can tell you that we are started the slate clean. For a split second at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day, there was no crime in 2005. There were no crashes. No one was a victim. The year was clean and unblemished, so far. Now we go to work. We will begin to take theft reports from unsuspecting victims. We will respond to crashes, most of which didn't need to happen. We will console the victims of assaults, abuses and crimes. We will see some of the things that never make the pages of the newspaper (and shouldn=t). We will begin to compile the statistics of our police-related activities. We have been doing this for as long as I can remember. We do take heart that the things that we do are helping people. That's why we are in this profession. We deal with the criminals so that you don't have to. We try to head them off before they get to you. But they are already ahead of us. We have already started with the crashes and the reports and the arrests. This year, we need your help. We need it more than ever. If we don=t get it, we will respond on over 2300 crashes. We will respond on more than 10,000 crimes and make more than 12,000 arrests. We will give more than 20,000 citations. It doesn't have to be this way. One retired police officer recently told me that his department did away with warnings and began giving citations on all moving violations. This cut their crashes in half and reduced their auto-ped crashes to 0. But at what cost? They gained the reputation as being the most hard-nosed police department in their area. Wouldn't it be much better to have the citizens on board with the police proactively trying to reduce the causes of crime and crashes? There are three ways to gain compliance. The first two are external, the third is an internal method. We can gain compliance by punishing, and certainly this has to be in force. We can gain compliance by giving some reward. Many will not do it any other way. And there is one other way to gain compliance. That is by instilling an attitude of doing the right thing simply because it=s the right thing to do. This cannot be done by someone else. It involves making an internal change of heart. This is what the police ultimately want to foster in the hearts of those we come in contact with. Make these resolutions part of your new year: If 10% of the public did these things, it would work me out of a job. But I'm in a good spot. I have my 20 in. I can retire. Go ahead, work me out of a job. I dare you. Craig Harding Public Information Officer St. George Police Department |
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