I strongly recommend you read this piece by John McWhorter at Quillette. Here’s its conclusion:
Police officers are too often overarmed, undertrained, and low on empathy. Some police officers are surely racist and act like it. But it does not follow that white cops routinely kill black people in tense situations out of racist animus. This scenario may seem plausible—I believed it until only a few years ago. But there are times when facts are counterintuitive, and it is important to get the facts right and to analyze them with clear eyes and a clear mind (the enlightening work of criminologist and ex-cop Peter Moskos is helpful in this regard). Rhetoric has a way of straying from reality, and to get where we all want to go, it is reality that we must address.
Can police forces be made better and should they be made better? Definitely. Should they be “defunded” and the money be used for other purposes? At least in Chicago you’re not going to free up much money that way, much of what is spent on those “other purposes” will be used to line the pockets of community organizers, and black people will suffer more from crime and violence, nearly all of it perpetrated on them by their neighbors.
Everyone who wants to comment on police behavior and reform should read Cop In The Hood by Peter Moskos. Even if there were no racism in police forces, reforms have been needed for a long time.
Steve
Can the police be made better, reformed, made more professional? Who are you recruiting? The recruits are not Harvard professors or Chicaogo lawyers. They are working class and lower middle class men, generally large, muscular, and aggressive. Many are military veterans of infantry units.
And they need to be. Policing a city means confronting large, intoxicated, violent criminals, like Floyd, who chose to fight rather than submit to arrest. Every one of the blacks recently killed by police, except the woman, was intoxicated and fought the police. Violence is at the heart of police work, as much as infantry patrols, which policing resembles.
You cannot reform what is basically warfare into some tea party.
I think you’ll find those physical standards have been relaxed in order to recruit more women to the force.
The two Atlanta officers were actually unable to get cuffs on the suspect, if they had, he would’ve been in custody, instead of dead.
Greyshambler is right. The physical standards you’re talking about were relaxed a generation ago, not just to allow more women to become police officers but to allow more blacks and Hispanics to become police officers.
If we want the police to just beat up and shoot people then I think the above logic holds. However, we know that in the rest of the world it is possible to have policing with a lot less violence. Heck, it varies in the US. A lot less killing. We need police who are willing to at least try to de-escalate situations. Stopping no knock raids and a couple of other things needs to be handled at the policy level. (We tolerate the killings and injuries to innocent people in no knock raids and there is no real evidence that the War on Drugs has had a positive effect.)
It was pretty surprising to see two police not able to handle one guy and even let him go. Having restrained dozens, maybe hundreds, of people as part of my job in my early career never had that happen. One on one is different. Then anything can happen. Note that in this particular case they had all the personal information on the guy so it wasn’t like he would really get away.
Steve
@ Steve:
But. He grabbed a weapon from the officers belt , turned and fired it at the officer. What I hear from you is that you would have done exactly that, (if you were BLACK), out of fear for your life, because white officers always try to kill BLACK male suspects.
I’d say, if the officers were stronger than him, he would have been cuffed.
He could still run, but not been shot. You think he would have been shot anyway? Out of white racist zeal?
“But. He grabbed a weapon from the officers belt , turned and fired it at the officer. ”
A taser. If you watch the video it looks like they had him under control until the one officer reached for his taser and that allowed the guy to grab it.
If you want to consider a taser a deadly weapon it will make things interesting in Atlanta. They pulled those two college kids out and tasered at least one of them multiple times and they were not resetting arrest or trying to get away. That would the Atlanta police used deadly force multiple times for no reason.
I suspect the officer shot the guy out of anger and embarrassment. I dont know if he is or was racist. What I do know is that if there was no video it would have been claimed he was a real danger nd the shooting justified with no questions asked.
I dont know what I wood do if I were black. I am not generally prone to panic, but if you were prone to panic I could see deciding to run in the hopes that you wouldnt get a beating or get shot.
Steve
However, we know that in the rest of the world it is possible to have policing with a lot less violence. Heck, it varies in the US. A lot less killing.
Hmm, I wonder what the demographics of the areas with less violent police forces look like?
Sounds like a rationalization you would get from the suspect’s mother. Why the emotional attachment to the aggressive criminal?
I am a lot less casual about the taking of life than are you and most conservatives.
Steve
Now do blacks, Steve.
Are you less casual about taking lives than blacks are? Because blacks kill and murder people a lot more often than the police do, and frankly just don’t give a shit. Nor do they care when blacks get killed by other blacks. Or any of the other violent crimes common in black neighborhoods.
The BLM movement was ready to burn down Tallahassee when one of their leaders, a young black woman, was killed. Then they found out that she had been abducted and raped by two black men, one of whom then killed her to make sure she wouldn’t snitch. (He also raped and killed his 75 y/o social worker, but she was white so no one gave a shit about her anyway, especially not fine liberals like yourself.)
Once it was found out the perps were black men, no one cared anymore. No “peaceful protests” (by which I mean rioting where the local shoe store is looted and burned, with some bystanders raped and murdered), no massive funerals paid for successful black athletes, none of that. Because blacks don’t care, and neither do fine liberals like yourself. Just another dead black woman.
I’ll start giving a shit about black lives when blacks do. I don’t expect I could live that long even if I was immortal.