Awareness, along with accurate consciousness of reality, is an important factor of well-being and mental health, and is important for adapting to stressful situations at a personal level in every day life in a community, village or city. Awareness is also highly important for individual safety and security.
Unfortunately, some municipal authorities do not provide a realistic representation of the public safety in cities or villages because they obstruct the release of crime and public safety incidents, or severely limit the details of crimes or public safety incidents. Awareness of the public via citizen demand of accountability from the government is an important factor of “Open Government” in civilized society. Awareness and accountability of government places a demand on the promotion of transparency and open government to allow the entire public to understand the actions of their government — not just a circle of privileged elite friends of police chiefs and elected officials.
The “point person” for public safety in each municipality is the police chief; and for unincorporated areas, the point person is usually the county sheriff. The county sheriff is an elected official, but the municipal police chief is a chosen employee that is often micromanaged by the village or city manager and the elected officials of the municipality. If the municipal police chief’s leadership is thwarted by political policies of elected officials and village or city managers, police officers are kept unaware in a similar manner as the methods used to keep citizens unaware. Police officers often become frustrated and dejected by subsequent micromanagement by police chiefs. They may even become concerned about their safety when they are left out of receiving important information. There can be favorites that rise among the ranks because some officers strictly follow the micromanagement of the police chief. The rank and file, who just want to do an honest good job to help the citizens of their city of village, are subjected to frustrations in work ethics, which can interfere with pride in doing honest, good, and rewarding work.
County sheriffs are often more directly accountable to the people who elect them.
Municipal police chiefs are often more accountable to the village or city manager and the elected officials. In worst case scenarios, they even become managed as agents by the politicians or the village or city managers, and the police chiefs are given specific assignments to gather intelligence about citizens or business owners involved in matters that are being considered by a city or village.
This is why it is extremely important that citizens of a municipality become highly aware and constantly active to oppose corruption that might be directed by municipal authorities. The problem is citizens are often not aware of problems.
A police chief’s career success can compared to sitting on a 3-legged stool. If any of the legs fall completely, the police chief’s career is over, or at least very uncomfortable.
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Here are the three legs of the stool …
LEG 1, the support of the city or village manager and elected officials,
LEG 2, the support of the police officers and the police officers’ union, and
LEG 3, the support of the citizens who live in the municipality.
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The easiest leg to manage is usually the citizens’ support — an easy challenge unless a catastrophe happens, such as an unjustified officer-involved shooting, the mismanagement of a mass shooting, a botched investigation, a neglected investigation, or other type of mismanagement of an incident.
In general, the easiest way to maintain support of the citizens is to lie to them, hide crime, hide incidents, and minimize the seriousness of public safety issues so that awareness of issues doesn’t hit a critical mass that would activate protest of citizens. Another method is to create the mindset in the general public that they don’t deserve to know things, shame people for being curious about emergency incidents, or to subjugate the public with the intent to normalize lack of enforcement of crime.
Not all municipalities are this terrible, but it is important to be aware of various degrees of corruption that might exist in a municipality.
Awareness is a relative concept with multiple definitions, but it is extremely important in many situations that municipalities help individuals live safe, effective, enriching, and profitable lives. Beware of municipalities that focus on micromanagement of local businesses, marketing and unproven ideas, beautification, social media fluff, and more global governing issues while neglecting issues of actual local governing, such as crime, safe roadways, psychiatric issues and homelessness, overcrowding, traffic congestion, flooding, and other public safety issues.
Awareness may refer to an internal state, such as a visceral feeling or “gut feeling, or awareness related to the sensory perception of external events (witnessed events or experiences) that are processed and compared to each individual’s collection of experiences that develops a model of how we think the world operates. You know when something just isn’t right.
Corrupt municipal authorities don’t want the masses to understand the reality of what is happening in a decaying city or village.
Regarding a new CARDINAL NEWS hashtag #awarenessmatters, the term refers primarily to situational awareness, which is defined as your awareness for your personal, family, and workplace protection of life and property. If you’re an individual that is situationally aware, you are more likely to make effective decisions that reduce risks of accidents, reduce risks to health, reinforce good judgment, and you are more likely to understand policies that improve your community or workplace. The new hashtag will be attached to articles where “awareness matters” applies to the news report.
When news media functions properly, published content helps provide dynamic facts in a timely manner to help people become situationally aware of their community. The goal for news media providers and news media consumers is the successful integration of optimal information — geographically and chronologically (from real-time to retrospect). Another important goal of news delivery is to organize news information so that it is easy to find (even historically), and doesn’t misinform or sensationalize incidents.
Unfortunately, corrupt authorities, who have monopoly control of information in the city or village, often despise any news media that attempts to report thorough reality in a truthful light.
Municipalities have a monopoly on the ingestion of information via 9-1-1 centers and emergency services department operations, and a number of other municipal departments. However, this information can become a treasure for the municipality that hoards information for its own use, but has little respect to benefit shared knowledge with the general public. Have you seen a municipality map that indicates hotspots where crashes are located? … where the serious crashes have occurred?
Regarding informing the public, authorities are challenged with the need to respect individual privacy, security issues, investigation integrity; but authorities are also challenged to meet the public demand to provide situational awareness for community safety, risk reduction, preventive actions, traffic safety and efficiency, neighborhood disruptions, and incidents of public interest. The importance of awareness and understanding (Open Government) is the necessary relationship to the welfare or wellbeing of the public, and facilitation and enhancement of governance by the people on policy matters.
Unfortunately, municipal authorities and other players in the local economy use acquired information for their own special interests, and often act to interfere with your personal awareness. In this situation, authorities interfere with your progress to an optimal life of health, safety, property protection, prosperity, and enrichment.
WHO/WHAT OBSTRUCTS AWARENESS?
Village managers in suburban communities are in competition with other communities. They want to have the best economies and the lowest crime rates in the area — compared to neighboring communities. They might even boast about attracting customers that are residents from a neighboring town into their own town. If they can hide crime or minimize the seriousness of a crime, they will. They can also micromanage police and fire department public affairs to minimize important details about an incident or present details in a manner that puts the municipality in the best possible appearance.
Police chiefs also want the lowest perceived crime rates in the area. If crime rates can be minimized or categorized in a manner that minimizes serious details of crimes, some non-transparent police chiefs will also hide details from the public interest. The favorite catch phrase to withhold information? “It’s under investigation.” Remember, the police chief sits on a symbolic 3-legged stool and aims to please (1) the village manager or city manager and elected officials, (2) the individual police officers and police union, and (3) the citizens or residents of the municipality. As mentioned above, the easiest leg to manage is the citizens or residents by keeping them in the dark or keeping neighborhoods divided and unaware. Some police chiefs also frustrate their own police officers by unfairly controlling access to information and awareness of officers — sometimes connected to internal favoritism that provides advantages to certain police officers and makes the police chief believe he or she has more power.
Encrypted Police and Fire Radio Communications eliminates details of real-time awareness by citizens and news media in the event of disasters, major public safety events, routine traffic-related emergencies, fire emergencies, hazmat emergencies, storm-related emergencies, electric outages, flooding, and other hazards. Additionally, encrypted radio communications becomes an excellent tool for controlling and limiting information for the public interest awareness regarding violence, crime, road safety, and other hazards in a municipality. Instead of fair awareness for all citizens in the public interest, information involved in encrypted police and fire radio communications becomes available only for a privileged class.
Elected municipal officials in corrupt situations serve their friends and family as a priority over the general public interest. Extra leniency can be applied to friends and family in criminal or legal trouble. They may exert their influence to benefit the business of a friend or relative, or even benefit their own business as a priority in decision-making. They may also exert their influence to manipulate perceived reality for their own political advantage; for example, available facts can be manipulated for the advantage of political friends proposing a construction project, including the decisions about where to place the project, etc. Elected officials may also exert their influence on the village/city manager, police chief or fire chief. The micromanagement of chiefs then creates a beat-down culture of worthlessness in the rank and file police and firefighters.
Retail businesses, shopping center management operators, apartment/condo complex property managers, and even some real estate agents also want to have the best perceived economies and the lowest perceived crime rates in their domains. Some crimes might not even be reported, or if crime is reported, property managers might attempt to have it suppressed by the municipality authorities.
Activists for multi-family housing projects, affordable housing, specialized housing units with higher risk residents, or group housing in single-family neighborhoods also tend toward minimizing awareness of public safety incidents affecting their properties. Housing authorities may even be in a cooperative or concerted effort with village board trustees or city council officials, and even outside activists, to minimize the awareness of impacts of proposed projects that might negatively impact traffic, crime rates and tranquility in nearby single-family neighborhoods.
Advertisers and Political Actors in general may have selfish interests to sell a product or sell an idea or ideology that attempts to manipulate you into believing that you need something that you don’t need at all, or may even promote a product or ideology that causes you harm. This involves altered and influenced awareness and anti-reality. Some of these fakes are even known as “influencers” on Instagram. Yes, “influencers” influence reality and negatively alter your awareness, while they acquire popularity and money.
Entertainment for the mind can be compared to nutrition for the body and mind. Bad food = Bad body. Bad information = Bad mind. A steady diet of too much “unaware” entertainment (that is, mindless or unrealistic entertainment) can manipulate your mind in a manner that discourages understanding of how the real world works, and reduces the ability to cope with actual stressful situations. Mindless or unrealistic TV shows, and mindless, unrealistic movies can promote escapism, but an overdose of “unaware” entertainment disconnects you from critical thinking, and develops habits of low engagement with narratives or details. Among the worst of the mindless TV shows are Reality TV shows that really don’t represent reality, and utilize shallow storylines that are followed with minimal attention to details. Beyond mindless TV shows and mindless movies, there are distracting Internet videos (often with fake narratives) on social media platforms that are designed to quickly grab attention without providing substantial content. Social media platforms also promote (by operational design along with content providers) mindless scrolling by offering videos, memes and headlines. To make matters worse, main stream TV news media and entertainment television often blend TV shows with news presentations and commercials that mislead, and often promote an unreal agenda that blends news presentations with unrealistic TV shows.
Intoxication with alcohol or drugs is, of course, the temporary intentional action to turn off awareness or alter awareness. Besides having negative health effects in many cases, intoxication is dangerous when you are not in a protected environment. Notice that your local municipality also has a hand in the alcohol and marijuana industries via regulations, fines, and taxes — like vampires hurting your health and acquiring your money.
Perhaps the most important awareness is your own personal awareness that there are many players in your life that have selfish interests that result in blocking or manipulating your own situational awareness.
In successful and ethical business and government operations, situational awareness is built in to operational practices for risk reduction, safety, employee satisfaction, employee retention, profitability, customer safety and satisfaction, and staff and company and customer enrichment.
Situational awareness is recognized as a critical foundation for successful decision-making across a broad range of situations and industries, which involve the protection of human life and property, including law enforcement, fire/rescue/EMS emergency response, aviation, air traffic control, ship navigation, health care, military command and operations, self defense, and industries with high risks that demand error-free operations, such as offshore oil facilities, chemical plants, nuclear power plants, and high-risk manufacturing and construction industries.
Personally, you can benefit from having your own situational awareness mindset and plan in your personal and family life, too.
Awareness Beyond Situational Awareness
When faced with information that doesn’t agree with your world model of reality, you experience what is known as cognitive dissonance. Alarms go off in your mind, there is mistrust, and your gut instinct might indicate to you that something is wrong. Your cognitive dissonance might be so strong that it causes the physiological response known as “fight or flight” (adrenaline release, rapid heart rate, rapid breathing, increased circulation to skeletal muscles). Hopefully, fight or flight is activated appropriately when necessary to avoid danger. However, in many cases, misleading influences or pressure to conform to societal “norms” can suppress cognitive dissonance and lead to lack of awareness of dangerous situations.
Additionally, there is the possibility that you become alarmed unnecessarily and might even have a panic attack. You might be put on alert unnecessarily; or you might be in a dangerous situation, but don’t believe you have the capability to cope or respond appropriately to avoid danger. Some people are gifted with emotional intelligence to cope, but many people are conditioned by society to a point that they lack true awareness, and are unable to cope with stressful situations.
Awareness is associated with consciousness in the sense that it is a fundamental experience that combines with a feeling or intuition that joins a collection of a personal history of conscious and subconscious experiences.
In psychology there are three types of awareness …
cognitive awareness, which is an accurate and deep understanding of one’s perception and thinking;
multilevel awareness, which considers multi-sensory consciousness and the subconscious (can be sequential or simultaneous); and
empathy awareness, which is the recognition of the feelings of others.
Unfortunately, some municipal authorities lack empathy awareness for their citizens, and fail to respond truthfully to critical incidents that deserve satisfaction of the public interest. They are too busy manipulating the message.
Nurture your awareness to understand what is really happening.
NOTE: This content is available at Arlingtoncardinal.com/awarenessmatters
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