No offence, Crown, but I think this attitude is equally as dangerous. The entire system is not fucked, and every cop is not a murderous thug. The vast majority of police officers are good people, and police departments seek to do the right (and legal) thing. Yes, you have ungodly bureaucracy. That's a testament to the entire thing being a government operation that has to be in bed with a union. Also, when you compare most city streets and counties in North America to any developing country in the world, you'll see that the departments are leaps and bounds better than some of the corrupt banana republics floating around. It's not fair or helpful to say that the entire thing is fucked. There are a small amount of bad officers. There is a cumbersome union and hierarchy that is difficult to change. Mistakes unfortunately get made, and even worse - sometimes the criminal is the guy wearing the badge. I think change has to start by focusing on the bad apples (something like 12% of police are responsible for 80% of the violence), better recruitment and better training. And to stop offloading unused military equipment onto LE that have no real need for it. I know I sound contradictory post to post, but I genuinely believe that the solution lies in acknowledging what's right and fixing what's broken. Alienating one side, or allowing yourself a polarized viewpoint, is ultimately unhelpful. IMO.
We have the Police Watchdog in Ontario. When an incident occurs, this completely separate organization investigate the police directly. They are NOT drinking buddies with cops like Internal Affairs or SIU are. If they want to end police violence, do two things: 1) Stop punishing taxpayers for police fuck-ups. Whenever the police cripple or kill an nice to person, the people are sued instead of the person who is to blame. So stop this. Lawsuits should be taken directly from the police pension fund. They'll think twice next time, once they realize that Breaking the rules is no longer a free lunch. 2) Stop punishing idiots with paid vacation and start firing them outright, on the spot like a normal person. The rest of us lose our jobs when we screw up at work. The job of being a cop ensures if you even as much as KILL somebody at work you get to sit on your ass and watch TV while getting full pay. You are literally rewarded for breaking your oath as a cop. Instead, fire them. Hey, if it's not a justified dismissal they can sue later and get their job back but in the meantime, you can't do your job so you don't deserve to have one.
I would add... 3) Decriminalize drugs. It's nothing but a shameful cash cow that's up there with Jim Crow. I don't know what the statistic for the percentage of felons who are guilty of non-violent drug crimes is, but eliminate that demographic right now. It unfairly targets minorities and is deeply hypocritical. Most adults who have reached the age of being a police officer have been high on something at some point in their lives. Stop trying to punish a demographic that is already vulnerable. When the non-violent drug offences go, it's going to hit the bottom line of all the for-profit prisons (WTF???) and free up the manpower to focus on legitimate crimes.
I agree with this. I also think that the change has to come from within. Right now, it's "us vs them" with the cops, and they protect each other like a brotherhood, and that is causing a bunch of problems. They have to start calling out their own members that fuck up, and not rally behind them. They have to take ownership of the fuckups as a group, and work at not having it happen again. Right now it seems to be too much of a frat house, and I think a lot of good would come from them showing less solidarity, and start showing more respect for the public as well as an honest desire to protect and serve the public. Another huge problem is that the police force mandate seems to have shifted from handling crime to revenue collection... remove any and all incentive for tickets or penalties for them... have any cash collected go to some cause other than them keeping the lights on or getting new toys to play with or otherwise being a forecasted line item in their yearly budgets.
For instance, this does nothing to help with the respect or trust the public has in police forces: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-futu...conspiring-fabricate-criminal-charges-against Combine that with the fact that we see the 0.01% of total actions being reported, and that people conveniently forget the 99.99% of good shit that cops do, and it's a problem.
Really? If a cop does bad things, punish all the cops, even the retired ones. If a cop does the right thing and it's a justifiable shooting he/she was wrongfully fired for, then punish all the taxpayers with the crippling lawsuit?
I think the families of lynched black people might take issue with that comparison. But drugs are more of a health problem than a criminal one. I would agree that marijuana should be legalized, but I dont think hard drugs like heroin, meth, and crack cocaine should be.
Maybe not make them "legal" but we shouldn't be locking people up for nonviolent offenses. Throwing them in the clink for using a substance solves nothing.
Actually, I think black families who have had a relative shot dead in the street while holding up his hands and possessing no weapon would say the systems are very similar. Yes, drugs are a health problem. So it makes no sense to handle the health problem by sending someone to jail. When you have a heart attack they send you to the hospital. It wouldn't work better if they instead sent you to prison. My point was that we'd all do well to lose the punitive nature of the judicial system when it comes to non-violent, "victimless" crime. Also, I said "decriminalize." Not the same as making it legal. Personally, I would go for legalized everything but that's me. The countries that have done it (see Portugal as a case study) have had excellent results across the board. Reduces everything from overdoses to theft. *When I say "victimless" I am envisioning someone jailed for life without parole because they were caught with cocaine for the third time. Not someone who has robbed to feed their habit, or someone who injured or terrorized someone else while high.
I think you need to read up on Jim Crow laws. How often does a cop go up and shoot an unarmed black person with their hands up actually happen? Not specific cases, but statistically. And the case examples that are typically cited possess enough varying circumstances where it becomes impossible to consider them in any form of aggregate other than the threadbare, "Cops shoot black people." It certainly happens, but it's not a common occurrence or a form of law enforcement against blacks in possession of drugs. And there is absolutely no meaningful comparison to Jim Crow laws whereby a black man could be lynched for smiling at a white woman. That comparison robs Jim Crow Laws of their historical signifance and the drug issue of current consideration.
Has the irony that two white people are arguing over which racist institution is more damaging occurred to anyone else? Somewhere Ta'Nahisi Coates has been struck with a blinding migraine. The ACLU claimed way back in '01 that the war on drugs was the new Jim Crow: https://www.aclu.org/other/drug-war-new-jim-crow And, if you can believe it, Wikipedia actually has an entry on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow One was quite obviously more overt than the other. I'd be interested to see the statistics now vs then on whether black families are more or less separated in the Jim Crow era vs. the mass incarceration era.
No... my bad... I didn't mean to quote point #2. I don't agree with what Crown said... I believe in administrative leave or temporary reassignment while shit gets sorted out, but it's got to be done quickly. If the guy is guilty of something egregious, then his pay while on leave is owed back. There has to be "innocent until proven guilty" protection in there, for sure. The problem is that if a cop does something bad, there's no repercussions to the force as a whole at this point, because they're not the ones paying the civil suits that follow. And then there's the lighter sentencing and fines for the guilty cops. If anything, while we afford them the protection of innocent until proven guilty with the administrative leave, if they are guilty, then they should be punished at the harsh end of the spectrum. They should be held to a higher standard than other people in this regard.
I agree with that 100%. There is no place in society for bad cops, even more so then average criminals, because they have betrayed the trust given to them by the public.
The police have confirmed they shot and killed a protester in Charlotte. This is going to get much, much uglier than it already is. EDIT: okay ten minutes later the same police say the victim was NOT shot by police. Good lord, people.
And with this shooting, it seems that the dead man was actually armed. A gun was recovered and witnesses are corroborating that he went for it. I really don't get why riots break out over the cases where the shooting could be justified. Also, why tear apart your own neighborhood?
Also, in this case, the dead guy was black. As was the officer who shot him. As is the chief of police in charge of the investigation. BLM seems moot here.
It was on a AP post but it was erased. Other sources confirm it was civilian violence as well. I hope people take cover over there because it's looking really awful and more people will no doubt get hurt. This shit isn't cute or rebellious or empowering. There's a wide line in the sand between protesting and looting/rioting.
I don't mean this to come out as racist or as bravado when I say it but we really don't want to see what happens to rioters like this when they go and try to riot in different neighborhoods. That is a recipe for real violence. You watched the Koreans with ARs protecting their stores during the LA riots, if they go into white, middle class neighborhoods in North Carolina a lot of people are going to die.