Our police are better than their police. In all my car/roadside interactions, only once have I seen a cop in this country try to escalate the situation right before my eyes (he later made the news for beating another motorist for failing to perform a breathalyzer because he was having an asthma attack). They are either polite or plain --though I'm sure they are on their guard and at least a little nervous-- they are always trying to give ME the impression that they are not a threat. Let's face it: EVERYONE gets sweaty palms when those cherries light up behind them when driving. But, I give them nothing to get pissed at. I roll my windows down, flick the interior light on (even in the day) and toss my keys on the dash. That's what they appreciate, according to my OPP friend. It says "I'm hiding nothing". What are the actual statics of roadside attacks on police compared to actual stops? Aren't the odds actually very low?
Agreed. But we also don't have things like thoroughly corrupt sherrif's departments, and our police are generally better trained. And they receive a lot more mandatory/progressive training, have to stay more fit, etc. This is pretty interesting, and sometimes scary:
The media is fooling you. The vast majority of police interactions here are like that too, and we have 10x as many people and far more cities. The ones that spin out of control make national news. As for corruption, Sherriff's departments are probably less corrupt than police precincts, just based on the power of unions alone. However that doesnt mean there isnt room for improvement in general police procedure for certain situations.
I'm not sure escalate would be quite the right word, but I think American cops are more likely to act like assholes unnecessarily. That said the idea that being shot by a cop while unarmed is something people have to actively worry about is pretty damn ridiculous. Those incidents are rare, but they drive up ratings and acting like they're common place drives up the ratings even more.
This is so fucking true for just about everything. The mere fact that you are watching it on the news means that it's not normal. If you're watching something that is happening on the news and it's in another province/state or country, then it's REALLY not normal. And yet so many people are driven by the fear that what they see on the news is something that is going to happen to them. Nothing shows that more than parents driving their kids to school because they don't want their kids to get abducted. Or people calling the cops because they see kids walking down the street or playing somewhere. Really?
I like how when the conversation is about how police treat people of color and white people differently, a bunch of white guys use their experiences and their plans and their not being scared of police killing them to show that there isn't and doesn't have to be a problem with police brutality. I think that something that's not talked about enough in these kinds of conversations is the historical foundation to the relations between the police and black people. Going right back to the beginning, the development of a centralized, organized, official police department was aligned with and intersected with efforts to curb slave escapes and uprisings in a lot of ways. After slavery ended, a lot of the police were openly and proudly also members of the KKK and if not actively participating in things like lynchings, were pretty much solely turning a blind eye to them. During the Civil Rights Movement, they were the ones turning fire hoses and dogs and clubs on peaceful protestors. There was the COINTELPRO targeting of civil rights groups, and the FBI trying to blackmail MLK Jr into committing suicide. In the '90s there were cases like Rodney King and the Chicago PD detective/commander Burge who had been leading race-based torture sessions - where he would refer to the electro-shock device he used as a "nigger box" - of over 100 black men and, when found guilty, was merely fired and retired with pension to Florida (but was eventually prosecuted in 2008). There are routinely stories that break to this day of cops being caught with white supremacist tattoos, or graffiti in the police stations, or exchanging racist emails/texts/messages. Plus there are strategies like racially-based stop-and-frisk, or the pressure cops are under to meet certain numbers leading to things like vastly increasing their number of petty and/or unwarranted tickets and arrests to meet implied quotas to make them look active while simultaneously not accepting or downgrading reports of index crime - like murder, rape, and theft - so that crime stats appear lower and they appear more effective. Those tactics might not necessarily be specifically race-based, but are disproportionately done in districts that are lower income so that outside people care less and that are higher crime so the numbers seem more impressive, which are often also more diverse. So they'll do things like sweep through a neighborhood at night, tell everyone that's hanging out on the stoops or sidewalk to leave, and if they don't round them up and figure out what to charge them with later, or stop someone to ask them a couple leading questions unprompted, and if they ask for their ID and they don't have one, bring them in. There are stories about cops being discovered to be members of the KKK, thankfully usually when they're fired for it, but there are also stories of cops taking their battle over their First Amendment right to not be fired from the police force over being in the KKK to their state's Supreme Court (and later to the U.S Supreme Court, but they declined to hear the case). In fact, the overlap of cops who are also in the KKK or other organized white supremacist groups was becoming such an issue that the FBI started investigating how widespread it was and how to deal with it (although their interest in it was more related to white supremacists infiltrating police departments in order to get information about the investigations into white supremacist groups and sabotage the investigations/warn their people). That was in 2006, not 1906. And, ever since the Department of Homeland Security named rightwing extremists, particularly those that were driven by white supremacy interests, as the biggest domestic terrorist threat (in 2009) that was also on the rise due to things like the economy, immigration, and Obama's presidency, there have been concerns that the overlap between the police and white supremacy has actually been increasing lately. (Of course, Trump wants to end the program targeting domestic white supremacy fueled terrorism and solely focus on Islamic terrorism, and Sessions is ending investigations into police department's misconduct, rolling back reform, and ending research/data collection projects, so even any surface level progress is likely to revert and shit's probably just going to get worse.) That's not to say that all police - or even all police that kill black people - are literal white supremacists or even just consciously racist or anything, but there is a fucking lot of baggage that's been building up throughout the entire history of this country between the police force as an institution and black people. And all that wasn't even taking into account similar historical/modern baggage between the police and poor people or women, and how much more intense it gets when two or three of those demographics overlap. It's also not taking into account how a lot of this is implicit bias rather than exactly overt racism, where a cop might not be thinking "this is a black guy therefore he is bad" or "Oh hell yes I finally get my chance to open fire on a black guy for no reason," but where all this talk of excusing shit because they were fearing for their life could be (and in many cases is likely to be) heightened because subconsciously they perceive black people (men especially) as being more dangerous, threatening, scary, aggressive, angry, suspicious etc etc etc regardless of what actions or behavior they're actually doing, and they act based on "this is a dangerous person" no matter how founded or unfounded that conclusion actually is. This all has an effect on how these interactions play out from both sides. I think the incredulous reaction of "well why didn't they do this" as a way to dismiss things when shit goes awry is ridiculous in so many situations because the reality of thinking through a scenario - especially one you've never been in - and coming up with the most measured, logical response that predicts all possible outcomes of every reaction you could possibly imagine, and the reality of how people behave when they're stressed, scared, or in any kind of crisis, emergency, or traumatic situation are completely different. Everyone thinks they'd be the hero or the perfect victim, but most people are complete pussies who act totally irrationally. But to apply that line of thinking to these kind of stories about the cops is even more ridiculous because a) for every one of these helpful tips there's a story of a black guy doing exactly that and still getting shot anyway and b) they just don't acknowledge that these interactions, thanks to all that baggage, are an even more stressful and scarier situation where emotions are even more heightened and thinking completely clearly is even more difficult. It's a situation that triggers a fight, flight, or panic reaction rather than the typical nerves a white guy might feel when he's pulled over for speeding. Viewing the cops as people or an institution that's always or generally going to be the good guys who are on your side and there to help and will do the right thing if you do the right thing is far from a universal experience. If you do, that's going to inform your interactions with them one way, and if you don't it's going to inform them differently.
I like how you totally misrepresent what I actually said and draw your own, biased, condescending conclusions. For someone who has no problem writing a wall-o-text, you sure fail pretty hard at the reading comprehension sometimes. But yeah, you're right... there is a bias... cops killed twice the number of white people than black people in 2015. Not once did I say that there isn't a problem with police brutality. Not once did I say that the police aren't over-reacting to situations. But I also refuse to believe that there are more bad cops than good cops. The absolute raw numbers bear that out. Not even a small percentage of interactions that happen result in anyone getting violent, never mind shot... that's just what percolates up to us through the media, so that's all we hear about. If you want to show me some stats that refute that, then please do... I'd love to read them.
Well, I wasn't talking to or about you or saying you or anyone else here thinks that nor was I saying that I think there are more bad cops than good cops, so, take a seat.
Good to know... it's just tough to see that when you make blanket "white guys don't get it" statements in a generic way...
This is the one of the worst parts of the debate in my eyes as many prominent leaders in the black community as well as Democratic leadership that play it as exactly that. Sussing out the actual racism you cite I think is made harder by the broad brush accusations "the police are hunting black youth" since it hardens, the exact people you need to work with, agaisnt you. When it's more likely that is poor police procedure that happens to interact with overlapping demogaphics. Changing police procedure, something we can try new approaches at, could be done with much less resistance then when branding it all on racism. I do think it is a bad mentality that police are taught to escalate force at all times as to never give away the upper hand. They get drilled in acadamy with the video of that southern cop in the late 90's who let the clearly deranged vet escalate the situation to the point where the guy pulled a gun and out gunned the cop with tragic results. I think it has lead to the wierd power dynamic the police have with the public, and it leads to more benign situtations leading to more shootings. They clearly need to shift towards descelating tactics.
One of the biggest road blocks, I think, in combating any kind of -ism these days has to do with this kind of thing, and it plays out in different ways on both sides. There's a lot of clinging to this very narrow definition of racism (just to stick with racism for the time being) that it's solely intentionally and consciously hating nonwhite people and acting on that specific hatred. But there's also this conversation going on that's talking about things like these kinds of implicit biases, and institutional issues, and systematic issues, that don't necessarily mean that any one individual is racist in the consciously hate-filled way but is still working within these racist parameters. And that kind of criticism (along with literal ignorance or the separate-but-equal or discriminatory kind of racism) just all gets lumped under the category of "racism" and "racist" is used as a shortcut, catch-all term when talking about any of it. I, personally, think that's accurate. But, since the knee-jerk to "racist" means "hates nonwhite people," if someone says it you've got one side completely shutting down any efforts to listen or consider or discuss it or believe in it because they don't hate anyone and don't want to be associated with anyone who does, even if they ascribe to the idea in other ways, and then you've got people on the other side who hear that and also haven't exactly done a deep dive in learning about all this kind of stuff either but still want to fight against it, and totally run with equating every kind of racism with hatefulness and shout only that everywhere. That happens probably just as often as I see someone getting all pissy and complaining about someone bringing up racism and thinking "Yeah, but that's not at all what they're saying." I see this all the time with people who are new or surface-level feminists, for example, where their hearts are in the right place but their casual rhetoric is inaccurate and doing more harm than good. The explanation for why something is racist (or sexist or whatever) isn't simply "because they hate _____" all that often (although more often than I would've thought two years ago). There's a lot of layers to most of these issues, so the language that's used to talk about them ends up being a shorthand for big complicated things, and only a segment of one side is able to fully understand that shorthand. I just don't know where we begin with repackaging that whole concept, where the asterisk that encompasses all of the historical, sociological, and psychological context plus the exact specific type of racism and exactly who they're talking about is no longer merely implicit, and everyone can be on the same page. The best idea I've come up with is to start using words like "biased" and "prejudiced" in addition to "racist" more often again when that's really what we mean, and coming up with different words that can describe things that don't quite fall under any three of those options to start using instead. But I don't know how that happens, or if that would even matter.
Changing language and rhetoric is a longer term solution. For god sake even Ted Nugent wants to tone it down. In the short term I'd focus on areas of overlap that can help diffuse some of systemic racism through common means. Sentencing reform can be coached at budget minded republicans. Decriminalizing weed plays well with the anti authority rand Paul libertarian types.
Michael Brown's parents get $1.5M for wrongful death. That certainly sends a message to police across the country. If you're attacked, don't defend yourself. Best to just wait for the crime to happen, take your time responding to the call and avoid any conflict if at all possible. It's become the rallying cry of the Chicago PD..."Stay Fetal" It seems to be working well in Chicago with children getting shot at elementary school picnics and Little League games being called on account of gunfire.
No, escalate is the right word. If an officer shoots someone, they get paid time off (which suspiciously sounds like a vacation to me) while an investigation is done. We'll try to ignore the fact that in most cases, the investigation is done by the same police department that the officer works for in the first place. We'll also try and ignore the fact that cops are loathe to rat on each other, because they have to worry about backup being inexplicably late the next time shit starts going down. In the off-chance that an officer was determined to be in the wrong, they may lose their jobs, but it's more likely they get to keep it while undergoing counseling or being restricted to desk duty. Very rarely do they ever go to prison. In fact, in some cases, a cop basically has immunity in the event of a shooting, if they can prove that they felt they were in danger. Which, if we're being honest here, is a really low bar. If a civil case is filed, it's the municipality that's paying the settlement, not the officer. Tax dollars are being spent on wrongful death lawsuits that could be better spent on shit that might be useful like de-escalation training or after school programs to keep kids out of trouble. A cop shoots someone, rightly or wrongly. The blowback doesn't hit the cop. It hits the taxpayers that pay their salary while they're on administrative leave and when a civil verdict pays out $1.5 million to the family of the person who was shot.. It hits the communities that they are supposed to protect by having one less cop on the street. It makes the jobs of those cops that are out there doing the work harder because they have to pick up the slack while dealing with more community distrust and anger. I realize being a cop is incredibly hard and stressful. But it's really fucking hard to hear how much everybody (and I'm not talking about just this place) gives cops a pass whenever there's an officer involved shooting. Cops should be protecting the community they're assigned to. What they shouldn't be doing is immediately going to a gun or taser or whatever.
That drives me crazy. The lawsuit settlements should come right out of the pension funds. Now that might actually ruffle some feathers.
I agree. One of my guilty pleasures is "reality" cop shows. I regularly watch "24 hours in police custody" from the BBC, as well as 3 other COPS-like shows from England, Australia, and New Zealand, and they ALL are so incredibly different in how they handle bad guys when compared to the US. The US basically felony stops everyone, and the others actually talk to and empathize with the majority of cases (unless they get violent). You can watch the perp/suspect/bad guy transition from a hyped-up, tense person to someone relaxing and becoming calm. They may shoot their mouth off to the cops, but the cops take it in stride and don't take it personally. It really is an interesting study in criminal handling.
I have not seen one person on here do that. There is a difference between recognizing the media plays up how common it is and giving the cops who have done it a pass. I don't think anyone is disputing that cops should get punished much more harshly than paid leave when they shoot someone in an unwarranted situation, accidentally or not. With that in mind I would maintain that the war on drugs, and the emphasis on bullshit fines are much bigger problems overall.
You've got to remember that violence is off the charts in this country when compared to other western countries. Remember the other day when someone rammed a cop car intentionally in Paris and it was worldwide news? Pretty much the same thing happened in this country about the same time (In Oceanside, CA) except the cop getting rammed didn't have a car. The guy aimed his car at the officer, sped up, hit him and took off. The story didn't even make it past the San Diego local news and I think one Bay Area station. If 3 people were killed and 10 wounded in one shooting in Europe, it would be worldwide news. It happened in Chicago a month or so ago and I don't know if I saw anything about it anywhere but local Chicago news. Hell, if two people get shot in OZ it's a major news story. Here? Meh. Happens all the time. And this is more anecdotal, but the other night here in Vegas a cook at a taco shop was stabbed over a dozen times because the thugs didn't want chicken on their nachos. Nachos. Sadly, America is an incredibly violent and idiot filled society.
That's interesting, because here are a bunch of people essentially doing just that. What's a black person to do when even they do comply, being shot and killed is the result? In a vacuum, the logical response is to comply. But these incidents don't happen in a vacuum. Any interaction a black person has with police comes with the baggage of decades of abuse and mistreatment. It's easy for someone that doesn't have the perspective of a minority to say that "if he only followed directions". Castile was following instructions. He was killed anyway. I don't know how anybody who has seen the dash cam video can determine self-defense. The irony is that the woman, seconds after seeing her boyfriend being killed, still has the presence of mind to still be deferential to the cop, and keeps following his orders. The cop says he feared for his life. Was it because Castile was following instructions? Was it because Castile was being polite? Was it because Castile was in a car with his family? Reporting on a black person being shot by a cop doesn't equal playing up how common it is. For the most part, the national stories about black people being shot were running, complying, or under some kind of duress. Those should absolutely be reported on.