Should People of Color trust the police?

First of all, let’s tackle the question in the thread topic:

Suppose that one answers “no” to the question. What does one propose should be done as a result?

When I see a flashing blue/red light in my rear view mirror, I pull over as required by law. When I do so, I assume that I’m going to be treated relatively courteously, and professionally, by an officer who will comply with the requirements of the Constitution and the relevant state laws in interacting with me. I do this despite the fact that on more than one occasion, officers who have pulled me over didn’t do that (thank-you, Kansas). I do this because the alternative options aren’t very good. What should I do if I [don’t trust that things will go well? Not pull over? Bad. Not interact with the officer? Bad. Get belligerent with the officer, and challenge what I think is wrong? Bad.

People who are interacting with officers of the law in these situations are not at their best, obviously. It’s stressful. It’s also stressful for the officer. But you have two basic choices: comply with the officer’s requests or refuse to comply (maybe doing something else instead). If you comply, you might still have your rights abused; some officers do bad things. But if you don’t comply, you almost definitely will have something happen that you won’t like, because failing to comply is going to get a reaction from the officer in order to obtain compliance. So anyone who tells someone that they shouldn’t comply with the request of an officer (unless that request is clearly illegal) is not giving good advice.

So what do we mean by “trust” the police? If by “trust the police” we mean believe that the police will do the right thing, then I think that’s going to be up to the person and their experience. But if by “trust the police” you mean “act in compliance of their requests when you interact with them”, I think the answer to that is, yes, you should “trust the police.”

But the OP was really raising a different question. The OP is asking America as a whole when it intends to address these issues in a systemic way. Because, the OP says, to fail to do so will result in a large segment of our society refusing to treat officers of the law with the necessary respect for an orderly society.

As to that, I can only say that, so long as we maintain an “us against them” mentality about things, it’s not going to happen. Complaining about what some officers do is not an attack on all police, any more than the fact that some officers do bad things is an indication all police are bad. I’ve never understood why it is that people who want to defend police cannot accept that police organizations might need to re-think how they handle their interactions with minorities in this country. It’s not going to make things worse for the police who do things the right way, after all. And those officers might end up having a much more enjoyable job once they get to interact with a community that trusts and supports them as a whole.

While I’ve got plenty of concerns with our criminal justice system in general, and police actions in particular, I don’t think this is a remotely realistic concern, and I don’t think you do our side any favors by presenting it as such.

I don’t disagree, and I have had a few encounters with the police, most were fairly cordial, as I can present a very charismatic face, and I am good at deescalating situations. I have delth with a couple of real ashole cops, but it may have been that they mistakenly thought I had committed a crime.

So, yeah, in a police encounter, it is best to be polite and cordial, if you are white, it means you get off with a warning, if you are a minority, it means you get to live.

However, this is when cops are initiating the encounter, and you have no choice but to go along with it.

The problem is that people do not seek out police, if they have reason to believe that they will be abused or raped because they made the mistake of calling the police. They don’t want to see their friends or family arrested or shot because the cop is having a bad day. So, you have a situation where people are not reporting crimes, they are not turning to the justice system to resolve their grievances, as the justice system has shown to them that it does not care.

As a white guy in a relatively nice area, I consider calling the police to improve a situation that is not within my control. If I were a minority in these areas, I would see involving the police as just making the situation worse.

And if any of this guy’s victims had gotten ahold of his gun and shot him in the head, do you really think anyone would have believed their side of the story?

Or, alternatively, and hear me out here, because this is a radical idea, the police officer could have not shot the fleeing innocent man in the back 8 times.

Dude, what even is the point of this statement? No, really, what the fuck is the point here? Yeah, if he had just stayed in the car, he might not have been murdered. Just… No. You’re technically right. You’re also being a murder apologist. Stop it.

If you obey what the police said and don’t fight back or run, 99.999% of the time you’ll be fine.

Let the legal process take care of the rest.

This could very easily include things like being stopped for DWB, baseless pat downs, kids told to move along while playing a game, etc – relatively minor sorts of mistreatment that result in damage to ego and dignity, but not to bodies, and would be unlikely to make the news except when it’s someone with a high profile. And various high profile black folks being stopped for DWB or similar sometimes do make the news.

Do you have a cite for this very specific number? And do you think this was always true in American history? If it wasn’t true at some point, when do you think it started to be true?

And before the DoJ reports on Ferguson, and Baltimore, and Chicago, I might take this seriously. After all, it’s just half of a marginalized population reporting mistreatment or abuse.

This is a bit like the difference between the number of people who claim to be raped and the number of rape convictions, and I think a lot of it comes down to the same thing. Let me ask you this. How many of the major #BLM cases led to any kind of criminal prosecution? By my count… One. And not because a jury convicted the guy (in fact, a jury didn’t, despite literally having the murder on tape), but because he accepted a plea deal - presumably not trusting his luck again, despite the willingness of the defense to strike as many African-American jurors as possible. Consider also the case of Michael Bongiovanni, who has had something like 20 disciplinary complaints but had them all dismissed… right up until someone caught one on tape. You can file complaints all you want. You can claim the cops mistreated you. But in most cases, it’s your word against the officer’s, and the court system will always always always favor the officer’s testimony. So why bother? Sure, you can prove you were tased, but if you complain, chances are good it ends not with the officer losing their jobs, but trumped-up criminal charges against you - after all, if you were tased, there was probably some reason.

Seriously, take a step back and wrap your mind around the absurdity of the Walter Scott murder case. That should be a five minute case. Play the video, jury deliberates, comes back 30 seconds later. And yet, instead, we end up with a mistrial and a hung jury. That’s insane.

Maybe the abuse is overreported in this survey. But I think the futility or outright danger of reporting is a far more substantial issue.

This is hopelessly naive, and ignores everything we’ve learned from Ferguson, from Baltimore, from Chicaco, from New York, and from countless other cases around the country. Or maybe you forgot: “if you’re white”.

So the FBI interviewed a bunch of cops about what they thought and then published a report listing those opinions, and you want us to consider it… what?

Yes, I do. There was plenty of evidence corroborating their stories, that would have come out during the homicide investigation.

So you’ve learned from Ferguson and Baltimore that you should not do what the police say, and you should fight back or run, if you’re black.

Thanks for doing your bit to make us all safer.

Regards,
Shodan

“don’t fight back or run” wouldn’t appear to be an accurate description of the incidents in Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, or New York.

ETA: I don’t know what it is, but BLM and their supporters seem to pick the absolutely-shittiest causes celebre. There are some really sympathetic black victims of police violence out there, but Michael Brown isn’t one of them.

YMMV, but I disagree.

Considering he was up to this for years, before he finally ran into a victim that was believable enough, and without a criminal history that someone took notice, I don’t think that his victims would have been believed had they come forward, and I’m having trouble tracking down the cite, but I thought I remembered during his trial that one of his victims did come forward, but was not believed at the time.

In any case, you are really telling me that you think that, had his first victim managed to get ahold of his gun and kill him, that her story would have been believed at all? Maybe the second victim, you say, as there would be a second witness to his activities?

How many victims did he have to rape before he would have created a pattern enough to make his victims believable?

Not sure what surveys are you using.

Leave Brown aside and review the DOJ report - it shows appalling behaviour from civil servants.

That’s not quite what I said. It’s perfectly constitutional to arrest people pursuant to a valid bench warrant. Moreover, it’s perfectly constitutional to issue a bench warrant when a fine is unpaid and ignored.

It’s true that Bearden v. Georgia and its progeny don’t permit arrest or incarceration when the accused has made a good-faith effort to pay. But as a general rule, bench warrants won’t issue when the accused has made arrangements with the court to set up a payment plan or to show insolvency. It’s the people that simply ignore the fine that get arrested. And that process (so far as I am aware) is inoffensive to constitutional guarantees. I welcome correction on the point.

Maybe; the comparison would need to control for other factors like the general financial health of the town.

If I don’t trust the police, and my house is broken in to, am I going to call them? It’s all good and dandy to consider how to act when interaction is forced on you (getting pulled over, stop and frisk, etc). When it’s my choice? I might just call my cousin, a member of the local street gang, to help me out instead. Instead of a criminal being caught, now there’s more crime. Crime going up is bad.

It’s the same issue that “sanctuary cities” are arguing. If people are afraid to call us when they are victims of a crime, because they are afraid of deportation, crime in the ciy is going to go up. Crime going up is bad, for everyone involved.

You are correct that the report indicates blacks are not shot by police more frequently than whites. You are not correct if you’re extrapolating from that that blacks aren’t more mistreated by police than whites.

Emphasis added.

It’s going nothing really to do with the pattern. Homicides, especially dead cops, get investigated a whole lot more thoroughly than accusation of misconduct by skittish victims.

I didn’t know anything about Daniel Holtzclaw before today, but just looking at his Wikipedia show lots of circumstances that, if he were gunned down in the middle of them, would exonerate the victim

It may not be true in all cases (for example, the earliest victim might have some difficulty proving that she shot him for “forcing her to expose her breasts”, which I assume was verbal coercion), but at least a lot of them.

Victim #2: “He drove her home and when they arrived he forced her to perform oral sex and then raped her.” If she grabs his gun and shoots him during the rape, the homicide detectives show up, he’s dead in the victim’s house, pants around his ankles, rape kit shows evidence of victim being raped, no legitimate reason for him to be in her house, etc. Probably an easy sell for the victim.

Victim #3: He “pulled a woman over saying he was taking her to detox in jail; he instead drove her to a field and raped her”. If she shoots him in the middle of the rape, homicide detectives are called out to a field, Holtzclaw is lying there, face down, pants around his ankle, victim says he grabbed her and drove her out there, they can verify at least that her abandoned vehicle is where she said it was. There are going to be a lot of pointed questions about WTF he was doing in a field with a strange woman and how did his DNA get inside of her.

Similar circumstances for the victims on May 7, May 21, June 17, and June 18. The basic question that’s going to be asked by homicide investigators is “WTF was he doing in this druggie’s home / field / behind an abandoned school / girl’s mom’s house / etc” and it’s going to look very favorably for the victim(s).

To provide another example, Joe Gliniewicz managed to embezzle money and do all sorts of shady crap for years, but all of that came out in the course of investigation of his purported homicide. Police generally take homicide investigations with dead cops very seriously, and they are quite thorough. If it happened in the middle of a rape in some weird location, I don’t think the victim’s going to get charged.