The following includes editorial content which is the opinion of the writer.
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HARTFORD, CT- Only in a liberal city such as Hartford could an exercise where police academy trainees are sent out into the community to learn about the city and the services it provides be considered controversial. But this is 2023 and the leftist loons wasted no time trying to make the exercise into something it was not.
The Hartford Courant reported that a Twitter video posted by the Hartford Police Department showing 36 police recruits walking two-by-two along Park Street in the city’s south end has “drawn a furious backlash.”
HPD Recruits walk different neighborhoods to learn about community policing. #HPD pic.twitter.com/BeAmJY6sVx
— Hartford Police CT (@HartfordPolice) December 29, 2022
The trainees, wearing khakis with dark jackets were accompanied by several Hartford police officers, assumably their trainers. Nonetheless, the snowflakes on Twitter were all up in arms.
‘When I think ‘community’ I definitely imagine an invading army threatening my neighbors,” wrote one Twitter user.
‘This just looks like a gang reminding the citizens who runs the turf,” added another.
All told, there were well over 100 comments on the video posted by the Hartford PD. A vast majority proved the abject insanity of leftists who populate Twitter, whose comments ranged from “bad optics” to “intimidating” and more, the Courant reported.
“Imagine deploying housing inspectors in these numbers and with this level of confidence,” said one city council member, Josh Michtom, a member of the far-left communist-leaning Working Families Party.
For his part, Hartford Police Chief Jason Thody bowed to the mob and said the tweet, which was intended to draw attention to the department’s work in community relations, didn’t have the desired effect.
Of course as expected, instead of accepting responsibility, Thody threw one of his officers under the bus, claiming they had made a “poor choice” in selecting that portion of the video.
Instead, he suggested the “community-building” exercises undertaken by the recruits would have been a better choice.
“It didn’t embody what the day was about. It was Community Day for the academy,” Thody said. “They were moving recruits from Point A to Point B in an organized way, but I can see where some of that may trigger people.”
Yes, especially liberals who are triggered by matters such as people wearing a red MAGA hat or not wearing a mask while outside playing hoops. As always, we must cater to the lowest common denominator of idiots.
The tweet was posted on Dec. 29 and aside from highlighting the community relations work the Hartford PD undertakes, it was also intended as a recruiting message, the Courant wrote.
Aside from the khaki pants and darker jackets the recruits wore, they also wore facsimile firearms in order to get them accustomed to the weight of guns they will carry when they become fully sworn officers. Apparently fake guns trigger some folks.
Accompanying the tweet was the caption, “HPD recruits walk different neighborhoods to learn about community policing.”
Once the video was posted, the mob of wackos began to condemn it, probably the same folks who see no problem with the Biden Stasi conducting pre-dawn raids on pro-life activists and hauling them off in front of their minor children.
Also, likely the same people who have no problem with people who lawfully exercised their First Amendment rights outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, still being locked up in Washington, DC-area gulags. But police recruits getting to know their neighborhoods? The humanity!
“I don’t think the police administration had the sense of the message that sent—that they feel like their officers need to be in large numbers and armed [they weren’t] to be safe on the street where unarmed people walk all the time, the people who live there,” Michtom said last week.
Perhaps we can educate Mr. Michtom on the number of police officers who are armed who are attacked in this country on a daily basis. Nonetheless, these recruits were not armed.
“It’s a worldview that pervades their messaging; they view their job as showing force,” he said.
Well thank you for proving how utterly stupid you are, councilman Michtom. An overwhelming majority of police officers view their job as helping people. Ask them.
Meanwhile, the chairman of Hartford’s civilian police review board, Eric Crawford, believes the intent of the exercise was good but not how it was carried out.
“You can’t look at the police as military. People were probably thinking ‘are they saying our streets are out of control, that we’re animals?’” Crawford said. “Instead of having them in some sort of formation, have them just walk. Maybe carry a bag of candy canes to hand out to kids. Talk with people.”
Maybe they could have been handing out needles to heroin addicts to, right? After all, that’s how they roll in liberal-run cities like Hartford.
Crawford’s take was echoed by Dr. Alfred Titus, who teaches criminal justice policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
“Just the fact that they went into the community shows they really had good intentions, they really did. But I don’t think whoever came up with that video understands what the community wants,” Titus, a retired NYPD homicide detective, said.
“By doing it that way, you’re showing you really don’t understand. It creates the opposite effect of what you’re trying to show: that police are human, police are regular people,” he said. “Marching through the community isn’t the way to do that.”
The effort is part of an effort by the department over the past 20 years to reach out to the community. Those efforts have included open houses and attending community revitalization meetings.
In fact, Thody highlighted the fact that the department won a national award for its community policing efforts during the Obama administration. He insisted that Community Day was intended to bring recruits closer to neighborhoods as opposed to driving a wedge.
“They met with social workers from the HEARTeam talking bout resources for mental health, we had people from Hartford’s housing court come in and talk about ways to get people housing, they had lunch at the West Indian Club in the North End,” Thody said.
“Our community relations officers walked with them to show them some of the businesses and talk about quality of life issues,” he continued.
Thody said the department would take to heart some suggestions made on Twitter, where it was advised that any such effort in the future have the classes divided into smaller groups when moving amongst locations.
“A lot of people want to see our officers on bicycle patrols and walking beats, a lot of people don’t consider it intimidating,” Thody said, highlighting the fact that many city residents ask for more police presence in their neighborhoods.
Thody said efforts include officers greeting children on the first day of school.
“Some people want that. Some people think we shouldn’t be there,” the chief said.
Meanwhile Michtom continued to whine about recruits walking through the Park Street neighborhood.
“It would have been much more accepted if they went in as small groups going into each store and introducing themselves, talking with the owners, maybe explaining some new initiatives,” he said. “That individual focus is what the community is looking for from policing in general.”
What appears to have been lost on Michtom is that these were rookie cadets. How would they be expected to explain “some new initiatives?”
What else are we to expect from an anti-police liberal?
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