Be cool: Cops. Look old (Part II).

Today I went to my internship. They're totally overworking me. We did the taping for that police show that I mentioned last week. I was camera 2, which meant that I set the shot once before the rehearsal, then stood by for an hour and a half in case the camera were to move on its own accord. It didn't. The more interesting part of my day happened on the ride home.

Oded, one of the police officers involved with the show, lives in Netanya, which is close to Ra'anana so he offered to give me a ride. We got to talking and I learned a good deal about the Israeli Police Force. Ready for some psuedo-reporting involving borderline-irresponsibly little research? And awwaaaayyyyy we go:

Oded has the title of "Chief Superintendent- Community and Civil Guard Department." He works at the central station and is one of the officers in charge of the organization, strategy, and deployment of the 50,000+ volunteer police officers.

The Israeli Police force implement the ideology of the Broken Windows theory. For those of you not currently reading The Tipping Point, here's author Malcolm Gladwell's description:

Broken Windows was the brainchild of the criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argued that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive pandhandling, they write, are all the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crimes.

Basically, the theory is that crime is contagious. Cracking down on the small crimes will ultimately curb the serious ones. It's the same ideology that fueled both the New York City subway system's revival in the late 80s and Rudolph Guliani's fight against crime. The Israeli police rely heavily on the volunteers to establish a visible police presence throughout the country. They serve mostly as patrol, but also do traffic duty, community outreach, etc. Oded asked me if I had seen any police cars at night. When I replied that I see them all the time, he said, "Good. My volunteers are doing their jobs." The majority of nighttime patrol cars are volunteers.

There have been significant changes to the program since its inception in the mid-70s. At the time, terrorism was the largest source of crime, so a great deal of training and effort went towards practical counter-terrorism. While terrorism prevention is still one of the areas of concern for the volunteers, car theft and burglary have since become the big focus points.

The program is fairly selective. Volunteers must pass a background check and have no prior convictions. All volunteers also go through training before being deployed on the streets.

At about this point in our conversation, Oded pulled over to the side of the highway and said, "Are you good from here?" I told him that I had no idea where we were. He pointed towards some trees in the distance and said, "Ra'anana is that way." I thanked him for the ride and he drove off. A couple of wrong turns later, I was home. I think I have to go in to my internship AGAIN next Wednesday. Ugghhh. Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.