I’m a white, stereotypically non-threatening (5’10 125lbs), 30 year old male. I have had 4 direct encounters with police in my lifetime outside of acknowledging them in passing. 3 of the 4 were absolute assholes from the minute the encounter started, unprovoked. One of those I was actually the good samaritan who was trying to help locate a person who was potentially in danger.
I fully believe that a majority of todays police are bad people. They join the force in order to have power and to feel as if they are above others.
I cannot imagine the anguish the black community deals with every single day knowing that they are regularly targeted by the country’s largest gang.
They know they can just say, “There was a protester with a rock standing behind them about to throw it, we missed. Silly journalists got in the way!”
or…
“We ordered them to clear the area, and they did not comply.”
or…
“They are the enemy of the people.”
And regardless, they’ll get away with it. I doubt the media even tries to do anything about it, frankly. They don’t want to step on the wrong toes and stop getting access and sources from law enforcement that let them tell the story the media’s corporate overlords want told.
Only works if we do gun control, which sounds great to me too, but is even less realistic than the rest.
That’s not going to work.
That’s also not going to work.
That works.
Now add an independent oversight body that investigates and prosecutes crimes by cops, and make the mandatory minimums for crimes committed by cops on the job like twice what it is for civilians. With great power comes great responsibility.
The job is awful. Almost by definition you’re going to attract terrible people desperate for authority. I don’t really see any good solution but at an absolute minimum they need to be scared of being put in jail for killing people. Not a high bar but here we are.
Maybe, but at the very least this chief crossed the thin blue line and stood with his community. It’s also quite possible that Flint, Michigan, has managed to elect some folks who are actually good and appointed a good police chief.
But even if it was a publicity stunt and even if 90% of the cops on that force thought it was bullshit, they spent a couple hours marching with their community and I guarantee you some of them learned something.
Sure, but it’s gotta start somewhere and that’s a first step. If it’s not followed by anything else it’s meaningless, but I’m in for at least a slight bit of hope that it was actually earnest.
Yeah, I mean I’m as outspoken about this as just about anyone, and I’ve alienated two of my closest friends over their reactions to this and COVID-19, but if we’re going to share 99 images of shitty cops doing shitty things, as we should, we can at least appreciate that some handled yesterday well.
Right, a huge number of upper middle class and rich white folks get to wash their hands of responsibility by voting for the “right” party and then look the other way when the party goes out there and plays like the Washington Generals on those issues.
We could make it a goal to get to that point, but until you invest in underprivileged communities and reduce violent crime, you’ve still got plenty of neighborhoods in America that need to be properly policed. I’ll grant that no policing may be better than bad policing, but I have a feeling if you walked into West Baltimore and asked the old heads there how they feel about that, you might get some surprising answers.
Whether or not we’re capable of establishing a police force that can do “proper policing” is an open question, but your post was a sort of fantasy scenario of reform here, so I’m going to assume that in that dream scenario we can figure it out.
He didn’t cross shit. What he did was actually doing his job: facilitating peeps assembling as the 1st A promises. But you don’t get special praise for doing your job.
No nonononono. It’s not about individual cops “learning”. Stop that crap. It’s not bad apples in a barrel, and poor choices of barrel tenders. The barrel is the problem. The barrel itself needs to be discarded.
Lol I’ve been trying to gain weight for 18 years. Peaked at 130 before covid lockdown. There are underlying medical issues that make it pretty difficult to gain weight unfortunately.
Working road construction in 90 degree heat is awful. Or in a sweaty warehouse or restaurant kitchen or doing roofing work. Stop feeding into the bullshit notion that police work is some awful dangerous job. It’s simply not. They make decent money, have excellent pensions, and are able to provide for their families very well
Seems clear to me these protests have been coopted by people mad at anything and everything wrong in society, both politically and otherwise. That includes young people mad at wealth inequality, misfits that are mad at being unable to see themselves fitting into society as it stands, and right wing racists wanting to fight some liberals. And the overall police culture of might makes right and establishing order by any means necessary, even violence, is spurring this on. Tons of evidence that police are agitating and instigating as much as it even more than protestors.
This is a symptom of a diseased society. And the issues go back further than Trump (though he’s been like lighter fluid to many/most) and can’t all be solved with better politics.