I demand the police apologize for the actions of extremist cops

The BBQ Pit
1

When a terrorist does something halfway across the world, there is no shortage of people asking - nay, demanding - that other Muslims apologize for their actions, because anything else is a tacit approval of terror tactics.

Yes, I realize that there is ample evidence that mainstream Islamic groups and communities and followers constantly are distancing themselves from the likes of ISIS and condemning their actions and beliefs, but that doesn’t stop people from asking for even more.

Watch those videos. It is difficult even if you don’t like BLM and are sympathetic to the job the police are entrusted to do (and you ignore a whole lot of statistics on the subject of race and policing) to come away thinking that the police did the right thing in using lethal force. And even if you feel the cries of racism are unwarranted, at best these are police officers who overreacted, got scared, let the situation or their tempers get the better of them, and they overreacted.

Even ignoring the race of the victims, this is not quality police work. It’s bad PR, it’s bad for the community, it’s bad as in they sucked at their fucking job’s basic responsibilities to diffuse situations rather than inflame them, strive for peaceful outcomes rather than bloodshed. I cannot imagine anyone looking at those videos and seeing quality police work from level-headed peace officers who were forced into taking a life in fear of their own.

Serve and Protect? They did neither regardless of motivation or reasons.

Despite this, I see the #notallcops hashtags and they make me vomit because numerous studies into the Blue Shield show that systematic cover ups for bad cops have been a part of police culture for decades now.

When a shooting like this happens, what I see from the police are not statements that distance themselves from the supposed “bad cops.” If they are saying it I don’t hear it over the sounds of them collectively huddling and supporting one another. I don’t see police chiefs making press statements about how bad these videos make their force look, I see them saying “We have to investigate” and when that’s done I don’t see them conclude “Yeah, it was as bad as that video made it out to be and this community deserves better.”

If you want to impress me, good cops? Call out the bad ones.

Because if you can’t do that under the most damning of circumstances, do we really expect you to do it when there’s not a video to watch and dead body to bury?

And to the people with their “my friend is a cop, my brother is a cop,” instead of getting angry with this post, how about fucking asking them what they think about those videos. Take that temperature. See if the words “I am sorry” pop out of their mouth or more excuses.

2

So the OP is demanding an apology from the police. Interesting.

3

Some may demand an apology, no doubt. Most people, however, myself included, don’t demand anything. What we would like, what we would find reassuring, is for moderate Muslims to condemn the actions of terrorists, and to condemn them consistently and en masse. You can condemn things without apologising for them. For instance, I’m English. I unequivocally condemn far-right nationalist groups like the BNP, Britain First, and the English Defence League. I’m happy to do this every time they fuck up because, whether we like it or not, for most people, silence equals consent.

By the same logic, I think the good cops should absolutely condemn the actions of the cops who killed Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Philando Castile, and others. They should do it loudly, and they should do it often. To condemn them is not to apologise for them. It’s to draw a clear line between them and decent, law-abiding cops.

4

Yet the Black Lies Matter folks are using a lot of islamic tactics by using violence to silence dissent & get their way.

I do have a lot of sympathy for that lady’s situation as her calm demeanor saved herself & the child in the car. She reminded me a lot of Shawna Cox who remained calm while under fire from the FBI (LaVoy Finnicum shooting). But I’m hoping more footage & eyewitness accounts come out to verify or deny her side of things.

The difference seems to be that if you’re black, you’re somehow entitled to round up a mob to destroy property & people in a wild frenzy of emotion & this event has sparked a lot more outrage at armed officials unlike the Finnicum shooting.

I wonder how many members of the Dallas mob will ultimately be prosecuted compared to those involved with the Bundy protest & stand off.

I think it’s time for the police to stop screwing around with these mobs & start nailing these thugs for their vicious crimes - whether with bullets or serious litigation against them & the people who support them. This bullshit victim mentality is the same crap islamic terrorists & their supporters pull to silence dissent.

Politically correct crap does nothing but enable evil people. They are NOT your friends, liberals. You are nothing more than useful idiots for their cause & they will gladly turn on you once you wake up & cease being useful to them.

5

For instance, I, as a member of the SDMB, sincerely condemn the post directly above this one.

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I don’t know about the other victims you name, but as for Tamir Rice:

There were several Dopers who applauded this shooting. It was a “good kill” — the cops did exactly what they should have. :smack:

… And that’s right here at a supposedly intelligent, supposedly liberal message board. :eek:

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I don’t know who those posters were, but anyone who thinks the cops did the right thing in the Tamir Rice case is an idiot.

8

The only thing going through my head to day is Tracy Chapman:

The USA is de facto an Apartheid country. It has to end.
9

That’s the first thing I do when a transgression occurs - seek apologies from those who have nothing to do with it.

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I’m really sorry about this post, I also apologize for the idiots who keep blaming the BLM … hey stupids … Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is managed by the US Dep’t of Fish and Game.

I’m sincerely contrite and I’ve already shot a nasty letter off to my Congressman about this. I assure you there will be levels of congressional investigations into this matter for years if not decades to come.

I’m very very very sorry … honest

11

Sooooooo, police shootings are not representative of an endemic problem with police? Interesting view.

12

There are a little over 1.2 million cops in the US, and I don’t think that includes many categories of quasi-cop like armed park patrols and such.

Do we have the expectation that every single one of them will live up to an ideal in training, reactions, personal history and behavior? Yes.

Is that expectation realistic?

I mean, there are only about 700 senior politicians in DC, from the Oval Office down to the most junior congressman, and they collectively make decisions that kill, maim, and economically destroy thousands of lives a day. I’d say no more than half of them, generously speaking, meet the kind of standard we’re postulating for every single cop.

I’m not defending anyone here, nor trying to excuse a single one of these shootings that lie somewhere between highly questionable and murder. But those are a microscopically small number among the millions of encounters between blues and civs every day, and may be less, for the extreme cases, than the number of police killed each year (42, in 2015). At what point do we demand perfection from a body of workers empowered to use split-second judgment for everything from threats to highly lethal force, when we can’t even elect a vastly smaller body that won’t do the same to hundreds or thousands of people at a self-serving vote?

13

I think you’re missing the important distinction here though. A group can have a problem even if a small minority are doing bad things. If it was just about that small minority of cops, we could solve the problem simply by making it easier to fire bad or lousy cops, and improve the entry standards.

But it’s not just about bad apples, it’s about police culture, poor training, and training priorities.

It is very rare that a group has a minority of individuals doing bad things where the groups’ culture is not somewhat implicated in the problem. Most politicians aren’t corrupt, but the system they have set up makes corruption too easy and too tempting. Most people in large bureaucracies care about doing a good job, but the nature of bureaucracy makes it difficult to do a good job and encourages you to not care a whole lot. And to get back to police, the “code” says that you try to do a good job yourself, but you don’t turn on your fellow cops who fall short. Which has the effect of protecting the bad apples. It’s hard not to blame that particular problem on all police.

14

If you fuck around with a gun in public, you are courting death. It doesn’t matter that you’re 13 or have a CC permit or have only benign intentions. As this train of insanity rolls up to speed, you’re just as likely to be shot by another CC type as a cop.

Yeah, gun rights. Got it.

There used to be a PSA ad about yielding to stupid drivers, even if you had the right of way. The cap line was “Don’t Be Dead Right.”

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not the time to insist on CC rights and the like, especially if you’re black. Yep, civil and constitutional rights. Got it. “We’ll send flowers.”

15

“Don’t shoot people who are complying with orders and not doing anything threatening” is not “asking for perfection”. And “if you murder someone without actual cause like is shown on the tape, you should be facing felony charges and long prison time, not paid leave and a note in your file” is not exactly an outrageous standard either.

16

No, I think that’s the way the argument has been framed, from not only the victims’ viewpoint but from the growing community of supporters who insist that no one standing on a street corner at 2 am with a pistol in their pocket could be in any way at fault if something bad happens.

Somewhere between 1.2 and, what, maybe 2 million “cops” - a vanishingly small percentage has taken action that can’t be justified. Nearly all are from a small percentage of police forces with these endemic training, attitude and race issues, in areas that have been having these issues since Reconstruction.

Turning the argument around to say that all police or even some majority have this endemic racist, thug culture is unreasonable… but that’s what we’re arguing now. Based on a VERY small number of cases.

Yes, there are endemic racial divides, often fronted by a community’s police forces. But if the argument can’t remain grounded in fact and reason, it’s just going to spiral further out of control - armed mobs gunning down cops, and cops oddly refusing to stand around and take it.

17

I’d agree, completely. But electing to carry in this highly charged time was not a wise decision (to put it mildly). There’s a time to stand up for your rights, and there’s a time to realize that the freight train isn’t going to skid to a stop just for right-eous you and your CC club friends.

It’s funny. I had a good friend who was a vocal CC proselytizer in Minnesota. I wonder if he’s collaterally responsible for this guy carrying. (He’s dead, too, so it’s a moot point.)

18

I do think that in a lot of cases they expect unreasonable patience from cops, as if they aren’t human with families they want to go home to. To me, the Ferguson case is just BS. You assault a cop, you SHOULD get killed. That guy deserved to die just for what he did to that shop owner. Sometimes I just can’t give a shit about these types of people. The world is better off without people who use their size to bully little old shopowners and then attack a cop with impunity.

But other cases, like that guy who got strangled for selling cigarettes, and that guy in Baton Rouge who was shot while down on the ground, people have to answer for that.

19

You do realize there are upwards of 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the US, don’t you? Police aren’t this monolithic, uniform entity across the country- training standards, admission standards, work conditions, racial makeup, community wealth, and many other factor vary considerably from one to another. “Police culture” probably isn’t as much of a thing as you might think; it’s more than likely a self-emergent property of being in that position, than some kind of systematic, communicated set of attitudes.

What place or right would say… the Meadows Place, TX police department (to name a small, suburban one) have calling out the cops in Baton Rouge, or even those of adjoining Houston? Other than being police in their respective communities, they have little in common- different states, metropolitan areas, crime levels, etc…

20

Here’s an article by a black ex-cop that really should be read:

It’s often comforting to say that it’s about a few bad apples, but things are usually not that easy. Bad apples can infect the whole bunch, and that seems to have happened to a large extent in many police departments.