Am I the only person who is not impressed with less than one in a hundred interactions resulting in a shooting. It seems a really low hurdle. It sounds like south america numbers.
I’m just picturing a police officer interacting with 100 people over the course of a month and randomly shooting one of them just to keep things interesting.
I hate quota systems. They seem so arbitrary! 
While I’m not a fan of Gent, I think he is correct that most police officers go there entire career without ever discharging their weapons. That doesn’t of course men that they don’t have far too many who don’t have the discipline for the job.
Yes, thankfully cops can easily profile criminals by eyesight. This is because crime correlates highly with race, as well as with other presumable factors like facial tattoos, long white t-shirts, sagging pants, etc.
Your perverse fantasies about soldiers getting their comeuppance and their children being indoctrinated by marxist institutions of higher education do not to reality.
It’s funny how leftists can simultaneously preach the virtues of tolerance while gleefully noting that progressivism is intolerant of traditional attitudes. It’s a perfect example of doublethink in the real world.
The contradiction, which people like you fail to acknowledge but generally do implicitly realize, is that both men and women are attracted (in different ways) to strong and powerful people. This means that rather than society becoming feminized and impotent, it will continually be in a perpetual state of struggle between the strong and weak. Moreover, a society cannot long remain standing without the existence of harsh men willing to do violence on its behalf, unless it has no enemies to contend with.
Either progressivism will conquer the world, from the deserts of Arabia to the jungles of South America, or those people who remain willing to use violence will conquer you. I don’t like those odds, but then again I don’t care about your cause either.
“Look, I’m real sorry about this ma’am, but you’re it for this month. Kindly step out of the vehicle and move your hand ever so slightly towards your waistband, please. Yes, I do realize you have a one-piece dress on, ma’am. I don’t make the rules, I’m just doing my job.”
And by God the world is going to get its way by throwing its weight around to stop them!
I don’t think its true though that people are becoming less tolerant of tough law-enforcement. They’re becoming less tolerant of mistakes and that’s as it should be. But bearing down hard on criminals is as popular as ever in the States (and elsewhere), other than of course with the criminals themselves.
Interesting discussion and one point I don’t see being made is that it is important to remember that prevalent political ideology on a local level has a huge effect on interactions between police and the citizens and on the overall crime level as well.
When you put in charge of a town or a city a party, where racism, bigotry and misogyny are (almost openly) institutionalized and you let that party stay in control for decades (literally), the result is not hard to predict.
Take Baltimore and its recent race riots–even before the riots, the crime level there has been significantly above national average for many years and there’re neighborhoods where 30% of children do not attend school. There’s a reason HBO’s “The Wire” was set in Baltimore. Yet, you would have to go back nearly 50 years to find the last time the city wasn’t run by a Democrat.
Same story with Detroit, which is infamous for its crime levels. It’s been half a century, since the last time Democrats weren’t in charge of the city. In fact, one of the recent Detroit’s mayor was so corrupt even by local standards, that he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Saint Louis is almost an identical copy of Detroit, only with crime rates even higher (getting it on occasion moniker of “Murder Capital of the United States”), and Democrats staying in power seemingly forever.
New Orleans can also serve as a carbon copy for Detroit (has there even been a time in the last 100 years when the city wasn’t run by Democrats?), with the homicide rates consistently being the highest in the nation, and with one of its predictably corrupt mayors recently being sentenced to a lengthy prison term.
Unless this cycle of misrule changes (and there’s no indication that it will), there’s not much hope for things being improved in terms of policing, the crime and the racial tensions.
How is it doublethink to be celebrating the disappearance of so-called traditional attitudes that were intolerant? It’s not clear to me that you understand what doublethink means.
I believe the gentleman is trying his hand at the old “if you’re so tolerant, why don’t you tolerate intolerance, huh ?” ploy.
The good Lord bless and keep his little heart.
What “race riots”? What is a race riot?
I was going to let it lay as a reductio ad absurdum.
But I have to ask"what exactly is the traditional value not tolerated; and Where, and when was that?"
He might not think so but I am just as concerned as he is.
Let’s look at the statement “intolerance of intolerance is not intolerance”. Because you must simultaneously believe that “intolerance of intolerance” is intolerance (the first part) and “intolerance of intolerance” is not intolerance (the second part), you must believe that something can be intolerance and not-intolerance at the same time. It’s textbook doublethink.
Of course, “liberals are the real intolerants” accepts the marxist concept that intolerance of weakness and deviancy is a moral fault. I really don’t care if leftists are intolerant, though if they have an ounce of intellectual honesty, they should.
A bit too close to a personal attack. Keep it about the posts and not the poster.
[ /Moderating ]
I believe, if 1 % of police-public interactions here involved the police shooting at someone, we’d consider ourselves to be a failed nation.
You say 1 % as if it is a low number, but it is horrifyingly high.
Construct, were you raised by members of the John Birch Society? Your fixation with Marxism is 30 years out of date and it does nothing to persuade anyone that you have any understanding of the real world in 2015.
Wow. This makes less than zero sense, in so many ways. I hope that’s not insulting.
I looked up some numbers. Here (Norway), counting only situations that led to a reported crime as an interaction, police firing shots happened in 1/186 000 interactions. The real number will of course be vastly lower, because the actual number of police public interactions will be far higher.
This would indicate that shots are fired more than 18 000 times more frequently by police in the US.
This is not a subject drenched in idealistic disagreements. This is a subject of math: one side despises math, while the other side embraces it.
Police officers do not kill African Americans. African Americans kill African Americans.
Police officers must fire their weapon in order to stop the bad guy. Unlike any other culture, our’s is riddled with violent gang members who run havoc. It’s a problem that our politicians refuse to address.
Even with said gang problem under consideration, in less than 1% of police interactions, a shot is actually fired. It’s quite remarkable.
The vast majority of police shootings involve gang members. You know, bad guys. Bad guys who kill innocent children. Bad guys who forced young men to join their lifestyle. Bad guys who take advantage of young women.