See posts 243 and 248 as examples. So many people refuse to walk in another person's shoes yet are quick to judge. All they have to do is suppose that police departments were predominantly black, and that whites were being stopped and ultimately killed as in the case of Nichols, Floyd and many other cases. Imagine in other words that it was their white son instead of Nichols who was killed by those black cops. Would they still be making some of the comments they have made in this thread?
Very well said. I will say the two aspects of what makes the job difficult are beyond their control. The first is that they are charged with society with maintaining the social hierarchy, but that's done in an unwritten way. You're supposed to harass and exclude from certain neighborhoods those that don't look like they belong there, but you can never say it out loud or put that in writing. Put another way, pace Pogo, we have encountered the enemy and he is us. They are simply reflecting the societal expectations of the majority. It often spills over into the unacceptable in ways of their own creation, but we would be remiss not to recognize the role of society's expectations for police to act illegitimately and fulfill a role that is not in writing but which we fully expect them to fulfill. The second is guns. We haven't orgiastic epidemic of gun violence and guns in our country. Your average rational police officer could not unreasonably presume that every encounter is with someone armed and ready to fire. That creates its own problems. I still think a lot of police problems are of their own creation in their culture and in their resistance to reform. But we should note those two factors if we are being scrupulously fair
And if it had been 5 black cops who had done that to a white kid I suspect the same thing would happen, especially if it had been the umpteenth white kid killed at the hands of black cops.
The complexities of policing, in this nation, at this time, is daunting, dangerous and under appreciated. Thank you for your excellent post. If I am perfectly frank, I could NEVER, be a policeman or woman today. Well I could but would be dropping out of a 20 story balcony. I feel bad for all the shit the police are asked to deal with. I would not do that job for 1 million a year. Regrettably the changes in society will be slow and painful should we decide to continue with our Democracy.
Seriously? No one is arguing that fact. No one. I even brought up the fact that the police chief has a questionable history. What is your point? What do you think people are doing… blaming race? Or … what exactly. The hiring standards were lowered for several of these criminal cops. Why? Not enough training? Why? Bad police chief? Why is that? No one is saying that the blame should be anywhere but on the officers and the police department. Don’t act like there wasn’t this big out cry of DEFUND THE POLICE. Don’t act like this whole time the mantra has been better funding for better training. Better hiring practices. You are trying to change the narrative that has been playing for a few years now. Won’t work.
I don’t understand what you’re babbling about. I made my point about and for some reason it upset you. My point remains, police need to do a better job of hiring, training and not killing people.
Im glad you agreed that murderous police officers need to burn, first time you’ve called out bad police, I’m proud of you.
Take note that I have not commented one way or the other about the Police on this thread....The reason is because unlike other stories of unnecessary force by police this one just may be spot on. There is a difference between beating the crap out of a suspect who is fighting back and one who is laying defenselessly not fighting back and begging the police to stop. As soon as a suspect puts his hands up or surrenders it is time to cuff him and stop the violence. I haven't seen all the facts of this case so I'm just staying out of the discussion of the case itself. In this case the police themselves may well have been thugs.
The issue is you want to act like the right has been pushing back on the idea of police reform for better training, better hiring. The truth is the right pushed back on the idea of Defund the police. A mantra the left enjoyed using for quite a while.. then wanted to change the meaning of “defund” to mean “reform”. And I am not upset at all. But I’ll call out bullcrap when I see it and your posts so far have been nothing but bullcrap. You will never admit it.. that’s been proven over and over on this board.
The Memphis cops were fired ten days after Tyre Nichols died and almost two weeks after the was beating took place. That isn’t really “immediate”. “Immediate” is more like say, a day, which is exactly how long it took for the white cop to be fired in Minneapolis after kneeling on George Floyd’s throat. All six deserved to be fired and charged but only one was actually let go within 24 hours. But hey, don’t let facts get in the way of your baseless conjecture.
The only reason they fired Chauvin is because people posted videos of him murdering Floyd. This was the statement the police released before the video came out: Keep pulling stuff out of your ass. By the way, there was a white cop involved in Tyre Nichols's death. Funny how his role has been largely ignored. Ben Crump says the only known white Memphis police officer relieved of duty in Tyre Nichols' death pulled him from car and hit him with a Taser — yet had his identity protected
It seems there were some idiots who used the "defund" slogan, but many including folks on the left, called it out as nonsense. It's quite apparent too that certain news sources labeled this particular issue political and attributed it on "the left." I don't think "the left" enjoyed using that slogan, though. It was a select set of folks, many who probably don't know the first thing about politics.
I'm sure there are idiots who used or use the slogan, but a lot of very smart people realize that empowered cops protected politically can easily resist even the mildest of reform (add to that their ability to do work slow downs or worse if they dont like reforms imposed on them) and know that disempowering the police via their budget or breaking them up is the only viable solution to the problem in the long run. Some people properly understand that cops run cities, not the local government and that anything but the most tepid of reforms is a case of the tail trying to wag the dog. Basically anyone opposing "defund," abolition or whatever you want to call it is counting on good faith buy-in from the cops regarding reforms imposed on them or have the illusion that cops are accountable democratically to the citizenry. So really, who's the idiot?
It would be productive if people would start turning their criticism towards some laws and policies already in place as well as police administration who continue to duck responsibility. Discipline and accountability should start from the top down but in public service it's the line personnel that are expected to make the changes..... again, a lot of opinions here from people who generally know nothing of how departments operate... The good employees get drowned out in a sea of power/promotion chasers.
Few of my quick thoughts: The prevalence of body cams and street cams is changing things. I still don't think all LEO around the country have them. That should happen immediately. Hopefully they'll help clear good cops and convict bad ones (as well as citizens). Some cops still lie even now when there's video evidence. I can only imagine what many were doing before we had all this video. The fact that the Rodney King beating was caught on film seemed to be the outlier at the time. Let's think about generations of this stuff which was probably even worse in the past to understand the legitimate anger and distrust in many communities. The family deserves credit here, as based upon what I saw, they really got out ahead of the release of the video and were pleading for peace at a time when I'm sure they are very hurt and angry. We can accept at the same time that police have a very difficult job and that they also have a lot of power. It's fair for us to expect a lot from them while also understanding that split second decisions can be difficult. In this case, the cops' egos appeared to be the problem. Looked to me like they were trying to knock him out after they knew he wasn't armed. One cop commented that the man had put his hand on the cop's gun. Maybe that happened, but I felt like he was trained to say that. They didn't look scared to me one bit but wanted to teach the man a lesson. That's not their job. These guys looked like an episode of The Shield. As Rener Gracie has talked about, cops need more hand to hand training. They get far less than people think. I don't necessarily think that was the problem in this case as they outnumbered him and were twice his size. This seemed to be a temperament problem to me. But the general point still stands I think. All cops should be learning jujitsu and how to let someone who's manic or panicking to wear themselves out rather than beating them in the head or shooting them. Another nice thing about jujitsu is that it doesn't take a cop that looks like a defensive lineman to control someone. Finally, maybe there's a nuance to it I don't understand but when there are multiple cops on one unarmed citizen, I don't know why they couldn't have shackled his legs to hamper his mobility.
In terms of the difficulty police experience, which is no doubt true, I think it's fair to compare their situation to armed military in potential conflict zones with civilians. David French made this point a few years ago. Many have since If patrolling US soldiers can avoid shooting civilians, why can't US cops stop murdering unarmed black men? | Boing Boing During his entire deployment, amid hundreds of firefights, French's unit killed two civilians: "one to small-arms fire and one to a wayward artillery shell." So French has a question: how is it that US soldiers stationed in hostile territory — where enemy forces mingle with civilians, where the soldiers and the civilians don't even share a common language — are able to avoid killing civilians, while US police officers — whose on-the-job mortality is far lower than HVAC repairers and construction workers — shoot unarmed civilians, especially black people, all the goddamned time? Also relevant
The Florida Gators did. It was called the Dan Mullen Staff. I’ve been pretty vocal here that I am not a big fan of police. There are far too many bad ones amongst them that the “Brothers in Blue” won’t rat out and if they did, the union would find nine ways to Sunday to not let them be terminated. But the Defund the Police, along with all of the crap thrown at them the past three years has made policing a totally undesired profession, and that is not good. If the energy that has been used to paint with the broad brush was focused against the unions then we would be in a much better place. In the case of Memphis, it looks like the officers involved were not the cream of the crop. Most likely should never been hired. In the case of Derek Chauvin, there were multiple opportunities to remove him and at least one of the others from the force, but the union would not agree. Show me any union shop, and I will show you a shop that has at least one slacker being protected by that union. Chauvin was much worse than just being a slacker
