Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gladstone Police Department


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. There is no consensus here on whether the notability guidelines are met or not. Davewild (talk) 07:08, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Gladstone Police Department

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Run of the mill local police department. Police departments have no inherent notability such as settlements do. There are sources, including some reliable secondary sources, but the coverage does not extend beyond WP:ROUTINE, what one would expect for any police department. Further, all of the coverage is from Metro Portland, so it fails WP:ORG John from Idegon (talk) 01:08, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment - Have no objection to this being redirected to the community the PD serves. Indeed, I had boldly done so and was reverted with the suggestion we come here.  I would however, oppose a merge.  Most of the content is wholly inappropriate for a settlement article. John from Idegon (talk) 02:06, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:29, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Oregon-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:29, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:29, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment - John, what I would like to know is how this article (and the other agencies you removed) is significantly different then, say, Hillsboro Police Department (Oregon), an agency you evidently thought was suitable to keep. Does it simply come down to the size of agency or its constituency? Does the latter have a particular type of source(s) that I've yet to identify? Unless we're only going to maintain articles on the dozen or so largest agencies in the nation, I guess I just can't see the line between what you think is an acceptable LE agency to keep and those which should be removed. Buddy23Lee (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep - I may have been the original creator of the nominated article, but I did so in response to finding that at least a dozen other "run of the mill" law enforcement agencies in Oregon had long-standing articles of their own. The nominator of this AfD has evidently taken it upon himself to effectively delete all of them by redirecting them to their constituent city/county without moving any of their content. This article is no less notable than any other police department in Oregon, as was evident prior to the one-editor purge of the 'Municipal police departments of Oregon' category. Buddy23Lee (talk) 01:50, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * What we have here is that the other "run of the mill" law enforcement agency articles shouldn't have been created either.  —Мандичка YO 😜 11:37, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I mean no disrespect to either you or the nominator of the AfD, but I was attempting to say 'run of the mill' with the least bit of sarcasm. While we should probably try to keep articles as entertaining as possible, I don't take it upon myself to gauge this. I just strive to meet or exceed the core policies and guidelines as best I can, which I in good faith believe this article does. I would have never moved it to articlespace and wasted your time and mine if I had for a moment thought otherwise. Buddy23Lee (talk) 18:41, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment Just some context here, first there is the WP:OTHERSTUFF argument--the other articles may or may not have merit but that has no bearing on this article. If the other articles need to be deleted they should be sent to AfD. Also for context for the phrase "run of the mill" as used on Wikipedia: WP:MILL. I'm neutral on the deletion question right now. Valfontis (talk) 02:56, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep - for several reasons. First, the editor who unilaterally and arbitrarily merged just about every police force in Oregon (and some other places) sort of condemns the process by opposing a merge, as the redirect is a bit inappropriate if there is no relevant content on the target page. Secondly, the editor apparently sought no input from anyone else, despite there being several relevant WikiProjects to raise this issue. If it was just one article, that's one thing, but doing it wholesale is another when the editor fails to actually review each article for notability versus doing it on all. Third, the nominator made no mention of their search for sources, which is required before nominating an article for deletion on notability grounds. Next, notability is not global, as in sources such as the regional The Oregonian (or OregonLive) are not a local source. The Gladstone paper would, but not The O. Lastly, many municipal police departments of larger cities (say 20,000 residents) that have been around awhile (say 100 years or more) are often notable once people take the time to fully search out sources. It is usually a matter of taking the time to look. I'm not saying this topic is notable, but odds are it is, and the nominator did not due the search required. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:20, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete - I don't see the encyclopaedic value of articles about small police departments with no famous history KiwikiKiWi (talk) 08:35, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The value relates to our readers interest in local history, how public money is being spent, whether public services are performed adequately and so forth. Our guidelines tell us that notability does not require fame. James500 (talk) 09:05, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * By "fame" I meant news stories or the like. I don't feel the purpose of Wikipedia is to record things such as whether public services are performed adequately. KiwikiKiWi (talk) 09:21, 6 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep. I'm prepared to accept this satisfies GNG. There are about eighty results in GNews. Coverage like this seems relevant. And that accreditation is something that the vast majority of police departments don't get. So not routine. A number of snippet results in GBooks relate to an employment case called Cross v Cleaver. Upon inspection of reports, the department don't seem to have been defendants. I say this only to prevent confusion. James500 (talk) 08:58, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete - fails GNG. Kill with fire. —Мандичка YO 😜 11:34, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * delete coverage is limited to run of the mill. Fails WP:ORG. And coverage is limited as per WP:GEOSCOPE. I expect a long winded convoluted response to my !vote. LibStar (talk) 11:12, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Did you search for coverage? And WP:GEOSCOPE is for events, and I'm pretty sure this is not an event. Aboutmovies (talk) 19:29, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

John from Idegon (talk) 19:28, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep - While I’m not an expert on deletion, it looks like the article has sufficient reliable/independent sources to establish notability (e.g. The Oregonian is cited multiple times…it’s the largest newspaper in the Pacific Northwest and among the 25 largest in the U.S. with ~375K readers). Also, I believe articles need to be seen as works-in-progress.  Once sources demonstrate basic notability, the article should be left for editor to develop over time; otherwise we're demanding  quality content to qualify as notable.  Finally, while its off the subject, I noticed that there were a number of Oregon police department articles re-directed to various city articles, but none of the PD content was merged.  That’s the equivalent of deletion, but without any due-process.--Orygun (talk) 01:11, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment - I have waited to address any of the points raised til now.
 * 1) Not that it is relevant to this discussion, but the reason nothing was merged when I redirected the articles is because there was nothing to merge. A community article really doesn't need content saying it has a police department, does it? If it didn't, that fact should be discussed.
 * 2) The day I did this, I also did it in 4 other states. This is the only resistance I got. The fact that a large part of the arguments here have been from the state Wikiproject and have been along the line of, the Oregonian has articles on it so it must be important, should be enough explanation for why I didn't consult the Wikiproject; never mind that I'm under no obligation or even tradition to do so. The many hits in the Oregonian are 99% on crime that the department has interdicted in, not on the department. There is no reason or need to have a different threshold for an article in Oregon than any other state.
 * 3) The reason I did not oppose the reinstatement of Hillsboro is that it has an independently published book on its history. Hence it is notable. Same reason I didn't redirect Portland, Multnomah or Lake County Indiana. Percieved importance, or possible future importance is not what we base decisions on what we cover on; notability is.
 * Then what is notability to you? This article has multiple, independent sources from a large, regional newspaper. Plus, you still have not addressed looking for sources prior to this nomination per WP:BEFORE. Aboutmovies (talk) 20:01, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Let me put this another way. Pick any high school football team in metro Portland. For any one of them, you will be able to find literally hundreds of stories in the O. Are any of them notable? No. Why? Two reasons: one, the stories are almost exclusively game stories, quite comparable to a story on a crime for the police department. Second, even tho it is a large paper serving a wide area, it us still the Portland paper. A high school football team is not going to be thought not able by anyone if it's only coverage is in the local paper, because EVERY high school football team is covered in its local paper. The exact same thing is true for a PD. As far as BEFORE goes, perhaps you should AGF. What I found was just as chillingly compelling as the bit about shooting the bear. So sorry I didn't see any reason to waste people's time over it. John from Idegon (talk) 21:21, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * John, please don't take this personally, but I think it's a shame that this requested AfD is the only resistance you confronted in your one-man quest to purge the encyclopedia of law enforcement agencies that don't meet your rather subjective-appearing opinion of what should exist and what should not. The notion that Hillsboro PD should exist because it has a "published book on its history" seems a strange standard when you seem to argue that much of local police department coverage is "routine" and shouldn't count. If that's not the case, then do not the several citations in the Gladstone article from independent newpapers covering its history in the early 20th century lend a very similar notability? Aside from this, can you stand by your assertion that all sources and content regarding Gladstone PD is routine when some of them regard the rocky tenure of the last police chief or a sergeant fired for an alleged murder? Honestly, at the risk of taking this down a non-germane tangent, even if some of these law enforcement agency articles are not as entertaining as we might hope them to be, does their inclusion in the encyclopedia really do our readers a disservice? If they only help a very small number of our readership, isn't that still worth their existence? I have to ask - even if your arguement is spot-on, what harm does their inclusion here really do? Buddy23Lee (talk) 06:50, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I added something like a half-dozen source that are about the PD (or its employees) and not crimes they were investigating. And you know what, I think we could probably have articles about high school football teams if people got over their hangups and predisposition about what they think is notable and instead critically think about notability. Notability was implemented not to be some sort of cool kids club to keep out things people didn't like but to tackle the issue of hoaxes and poorly sourced articles, which is why it ties into WP:V. Early on articles on high schools themselves were often nominated for deletion as non-notable, but we finally moved beyond that. The only reason we have notability guidelines is to ensure we can have sources independent of the topic, nothing more; and we have sources that are independent of the subject here. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:02, 13 July 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.