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Sr. Supt Williams Says Quality Of Life Crackdown Wasting Police Time
posted (July 6, 2015)
Earlier in the news you heard from the new commander of Eastern Division Southside, Senior Superintendent Chester Williams. He spoke candidly about the changes he wants to make in the policing strategy in the Ghost Town area. But that's not all he wants to change: Williams says that the crackdown on bicycle bells is making criminals of law abiding citizens and wasting police man hours:..

Sr. Supt Chester Williams, Commander Eastern Division South
"The quality of life crimes are in the books, and they are there to enforce. But like you rightly said, I do not believe that we are to arrest everybody for each and every minor infraction in law. so what I intend to do, I will write to the commissioner of police and I will propose to the commissioner to propose to the mayor to probably do some kind of bi-law where we can now address quality of life crime through a ticketing system. So just like how you give a ticket for a traffic violation, those like riding bicycle without bell, we do have it, the city council can issue it. But we want the power to be given to the police as well, because when the police has to leave his area of patrol to come to the police station to process a man, for riding a bicycle up one way street or without a bell, it takes about 2 hours from his patrol time at the station when he could be out there being very productive. It is not my intention to make criminals good citizens because at times people do mistakenly commit infractions of these minor offenses. So would that occur then, I think the police should be reasonable, should use their discretion and see how best we could work with people. And if we do that we'll find that more people will be on our side than against us."

Jules Vasquez
"However sir, so then, because let's talk about what's behind the curtains. Behind the curtain, police officers are sent out and told 'you have to make "X" number of arrests for quotas.""

Sr. Supt Chester Williams, Commander Eastern Division South
"Hold on, if that was happening, it will no longer happen. Policing is not measured by the number of arrest that you make. Policing is measured by the effectiveness of how you're out there policing the streets. So I will not measure my success by arrest, because what is the use of I having several arrest for minor bicycle infraction when, when it comes to the major offenses, they are up there. That is not the way I intend to operate."

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