SURVEY RESULTS: Which Police Activity Would Make the Biggest Impact?

43 people want to see Police on Foot Patrol

11 people want to enact a Stop and Frisk policy

3 people think a Gun Exchange is a good idea

2 people each would like to see Seatbelt Checks and a Restaurant Curfew

1 person would like to see Sobriety Checks

Could the results be more lopsided in favor of Police on Foot Patrol?

Here’s my opinions....

Foot Patrol

My guess is that a lot of people believe that if folks saw uniformed police officers in the flesh (as opposed to inside a car) people would be less inclined to commit a crime. There are not enough police to be everywhere but there should probably be a group of ‘beat’ cops that regularly walk through the ‘hot zones’ on a random rotation.

Stop and Frisk

This policy has always been a civil rights and privacy nightmare. As much as we’d like to stop and frisk people we suspect are carrying weapons, it always gets ugly; people get hurt and police get sued. It creates more trouble than it solves. I’m not a fan of stop and frisk.

Gun Exchange

Let’s see how many people will turn in a gun to buy a week’s worth of groceries on Saturday. 

Seatbelt Check

To me, this is low hanging fruit for the police. SO MANY PEOPLE ride through town with no seat belts and with their seats leaned back so far that you can’t see their head. If they had seat belts on it would be around their throat. What ever happened to ‘Click it or  Ticket?’ I’m in favor of seatbelt profiling. No telling what else you may find in those cars.


Restaurant Curfew
When I come home from work at 4am, I see folks lined up in the Chinese restaurant. Who needs fried wings at that time of the morning? Can't these places be asked to close at 2am?

Sobriety Check

I embarrassed to report that I received a note saying that this got so few votes because Chester people don’t know what ‘sobriety’ means.

I have never seen a sobriety check point in Chester. With all the weed smoking, malt liquor drinking, casino and soccer stadium partying folks on Chester streets, this seems like a no brainer to me.