Did you miss this FBI report from 2006 (warning, PDF) where they warned that the Klu Klux Klan was infiltrating police forces nationwide.
Is there any solid follow-up data for the intervening decade? And to what extent could a few of those people affect the overall attitude of an entire department?
Just as soon as police officers stop getting shot in the line of duty (which happens all the goddamn time, BTW) I’l consider sympathy towards the human swill and the liberal media supporters they have to deal with on a daily basis.
I like most police officers just fine, including a close relative who is a police officer. That doesn’t conflict with my overall criticism of institutional problems in law enforcement which unfairly and disparately seem to affect black people in America.
One more comment Smapti: There are a shit load studies out their that show that African Americans receive harsher sentences than Caucasians for committing the same crime. There are a bunch of studies that show that crimes that are committed by Caucasians and African Americans at equal rates have prosecution rates much higher for African Americans (cite on request). I admit that there are many reasons for the discrepancies in policing, prosecution, conviction, and sentencing many of which have nothing to do with race but are instead geographical (correlation is not causation). That said, to state that there is no difference in how whites and blacks are treated by the criminal justice system is goes against mountains of evidence. You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
I am not one of those people who think that all the police are a problem and I don’t really think these people could affect the overall attitude of a department. Only a small percentage of police officers are responsible for the vast majority of abuse complaints.
Regarding follow-up data, dammit eschereal, I’m an engineer not a social scientist. That said, I have no reason to think that police officers that joined the police between 10 and 15 years ago are off the force. Nor do I think they would have a change of heart regarding their bigotry. What about you; what do you think?
If I remember correctly, there were something like 34 police killed in 2015. By comparison, police killed over 1,100 people. Those numbers are from memory, so they may be wrong, but they’re probably right to an order of magnitude.
Now that 2015 is over it is clear that it was one of the safest years in American History for the police. There was no war on the police and crime rates across the country (with one or two noticeable exceptions like Baltimore) have continued to drop. Even though it is the job of police officers to deal with dangerous criminals (who need to be put away in my humble opinion), being a police officer remains one of the safer careers in the US. I, personally, am happy about that. I respect officers and am grateful for the job they do and really hope that they stay safe at their jobs. That said, I am upset about the militarization of police, the growing use of no-knock raids, and the number of unarmed people that are killed each year by police. I am upset that they are funding themselves with fines and people are profiting by locking up fellow citizens. There have been studies that showed that police took more money from people in the last several years than burglars for heavens sake.
The fact that you believe that is is unimportant if your fellow citizens die regardless of guilt at the hands of police if even one police officer dies makes you a piece of shit in my book.
No, not all of them. Some other guy said
which seems to me to be the case. It is almost like some kind of “band of brothers”, which seems to extend to their families. There are decent police officers, but when it comes to “your brother is bad”, they close ranks to defend him. I think they made some kind of movie about it a few years back with Al Pacino trying to buck the trend.
So, as far as not being all bad, I view countenancing bad behavior as, at the very least, not good. Very few officers seem to be better than “not good” in that respect.
Everybody is different. Some people are unaffected, one way or the other, by rhetoric (by which I mean continuous exposure to subtle yammer over a long time), others may be pulled off the fence by it. I doubt the Whitist guys would be always preaching from the gospel according to Turner, they would just make comments aimed at swaying the swayable. I cannot guess about whether a lot of departments have been kkkorrupted. Blacks to seem to treated poorly much of the time, but Jews, Asians and Arabs, not so much.
Now break it down by how many needed to be shot and how many were poor, innocent unarmed children.
Then we’ll talk. Asshole.
Here you go.
This breaks down the numbers. Even if you discount the many, many people who were armed at the moment of their deaths, you’re still left with 90 unarmed people killed (with bullets, that is) by police. That number does NOT include individuals like Freddie Gray, who died in police custody, but was not shot. It also doesn’t include the TODDLER that was bitten by a police dog, because she survived.
The police get weaponry, and training, and authority to act. The children who die or are harmed at their hands (and you do admit at least some unarmed children have been hurt or killed, right?) have had nothing of the sort.
I have friends who are good cops. But there are bad ones out there.
On preview: Damn ninjas!
Some people posting in this thread like to use statistics as a drunk uses a lampost: More for support rather than illumination.
Keep throwing your numbers around and I’ll just say this: EVERY SINGLE COP THAT GETS SHOT did not need to be shot, and should not have been shot unless some scumbag criminal decided to shoot him/her. The VAST MAJORITY of the people cops shoot NEEDED to be shot, because they were engaging in criminal activity and threatening the police that were confronting them.
With very few exceptions. 
It’s just a bunch of numbers and breaks down nothing. That’s why we have grand jurys and stuff like that: To prevent idiots from undermining the justice system.
Wow. At least** Smapti **tries to defend his position logically. You just come off as a cop dick-sniffer.
How many dead innocent children is too many?
You wanted to know how many of them “needed to be shot,” or some such. You claimed that cops getting killed in the line of duty “happens all the time.” What really does “happen all the time” is cops killing people (deserved or justified or what have you – or not). Cops do get shot — but not “all the time.” You asked for rhe statistics, and they were provided. Kind of a bullshit move to call them lamp-posts after your request, doncha think?
I say again: Cops should be held to a higher standard. We give them the advantages in virtually all situations, and society as a whole sends them into danger. Could a civilian sic an attack dog on a toddler and then shrug and say “oops”? Could a regular person shoot in self defense and take out additional people and say “tragic but totally an accident” and not face repercussions?
So that makes you, what - a criminal disk smoocher?
Right, so what - cop lives matter?
No, I’m a guy who questions the unreasonable use of force by the police.