This is your Left, Right and You promo

This is your Left, Right and You promo


Elgin Mayor Dave Kaptain will join Larry and me this afternoon to discuss the fallout from the Elgin Police Department’s recent recruiting trip to Puerto Rico. Though it’s certainly reasonable to question that kind of effort, some city council folks certainly seem to think that “diversity” is a four letter word!
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And one thinks Puerto Rico is a foreign country!
Then Gail Borden Trustee Beth Kruger will call in to discuss the library districts quest to expand their boundaries via referendum. We’ll get the Mayor’s thoughts on that too!
That’s Left, Right and You, every Thursday at 3 p.m. on WRMN AM1410. Don’t forget to call in (847-931-1410).

0 thoughts on “This is your Left, Right and You promo

  1. Two Council members publicly stated they do not want the City to hire people based on “how they look”. That’s code for race; ie, do not try to hire Hispanics. They are perfectly okay if we end up with an all-white police force if whites score highest. The inequalities shown in Ferguson simply are not a concern for them.
    What the City is doing is actively recruiting minorities to apply for positions. That’s it. Everyone in the applicant pool is treated equally, so there is no “Affirmative Action”. No one who is Hispanic gets a bonus point in their evaluation. They don’t even make speaking Spanish a requirement or worth extra points (which I think is a mistake).
    There are two issues which are tangled up in this “controversy”.
    First is the question of getting good value for your money in going to Puerto Rico to recruit candidates. That is more expensive than a trip to Saint Louis (Heaven help us). I’d say it is cheaper to recruit top talent than it is to suffer living with a substandard police force.
    Second is the question of the importance of diversity in our Police Force. When most of your Police Officers can’t talk to over a third of the people they serve, that’s a big problem.
    I saw video of a fatal police shooting in St. Louis. After the officers repeatedly shot a black man until he crumpled dying on the ground, instead of rendering CPR or trying to stop the bleeding, they cuffed him and pointed a gun at him. Then left him dead on the ground. The only way to get over the FEAR between the Police and the people they serve is if they think of one another as being part of one another. Us versus Them is a recipe for disaster.

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