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The Two Faces of Policing
There are two faces of policing: community policing and enforcement can be somewhat confusing at times. Thankfully the violent encounters seen on YouTube still disturb the majority of the American public. Television and movies tend to glorify violent encounters. Violence sells, but most encounters between private citizens and police officers rarely result in a violent encounter. Police officers are no different than any members of any other profession. Some are competent and some are not. Police officers should be held to a higher standard of conduct than private citizens.
The Sunshine Division of the Portland Police Bureau has provided food and clothing to needy families since 1923. Policing is a strange job, a mixture of compassion and sometimes violent encounters. You never know what you will get as a street cop. The Sunshine Division is supported by private donations.
Published in PolicingMore than nine decades after those early humanitarian efforts by uniformed and volunteer police – and still in a vital partnership with Portland Police Bureau – Sunshine Division continues its fundamental mission: to provide emergency food and clothing relief year-round to Portland families and individuals in need. During the life of Sunshine Division, we’ve grown into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency that relies solely on donations to fund the collection and distribution of food and clothes.
Through our front doors we serve 15,600+ households a year with “shopping” experiences in our clothing store as well as with food (including nonperishable, frozen, fresh produce, and dairy products). We also make bulk donations of food to 15+ other food-relief agencies in five counties, thus extending our reach beyond the City of Portland.
The police have a lot of those community faces: police athletic leagues, Officer Friendly programs, etc.
Some big organization like NAPO should have a permanent PR campaign for police. They should put out feel good stories and how to videos for drivers (how to act, when you are pulled over).
I don’t how effective it is, but the police on our three cities like to have yearly sort of meat and greats at local coffee shops or McDonald’s of the like. It’s interesting to go talk to them and the idea is to get people to see a more casual, normal person side of a cop.
I’m kinda’ flummoxed by the “sort of”. (-:
It may be modifying the “yearly” before it.