I’m friends with a number of local sheriff’s deputies, police, and one state patrol. There is a definite culture in the profession. And even though I’ve known these people a long time, I’ve seen and heard things that make me feel… uncomfortable. I am also guessing the police other countries don’t have this culture.
There’s a lot of talk about “fixing” the problem through better training. But better training won’t help, IMO. LEOs don’t do bad things because they’re inadequately trained.
This article from Vox goes into the us-versus-them ideology of American policing and why it contributes to events like the George Floyd shooting.
Bad policing has consequences: Innocent people die.
Bad doctoring has similar consequences: People die who shouldn’t have.
Bad lawyering has consequences: Innocent people in jail, even on death row, even executed.
Bad teaching has consequences: Republicans.
George Floyd was suffocated to death, not shot.
Because it doesn’t do any good. Cops keep telling everyone that they are the only ones that understand the streets. “You try to take down a 300 pound dude on PCP and see how well your librul mollycoddling works.” We’re tired of hearing that shit. The insular culture of the police prevents change. The “Us v Them” attitude rules, and everyone not a cop is “them”.
Which is not only a good point, but it makes the “deaths per capita by police” skewed in favor of the police. There have been several deaths due to asphyxiation in AZ in Sheriff Joe’s jails. The cops were sorry then too, and promised never to do it again. Each time.
The article mentions that police misconduct goes beyond shooting civilians.
For every high-profile story of a police officer killing an unarmed Black person or tear-gassing peaceful protesters, there are many, many allegations of police misconduct you don’t hear about — abuses ranging from excessive use of force to mistreatment of prisoners to planting evidence. African Americans are arrested and roughed up by cops at wildly disproportionate rates, relative to both their overall share of the population and the percentage of crimes they commit.
Sez who? You? Who are you?
Sorry but you have offered no cite to your frothing at the mouth statement.
You claim that showing how things can be improved is useless yet have provided no documentation on how such case surveys have been presented to authorities.
How many of you have presented alternate policing techniques to police and fire commissions and training and standards boards?
Do this and show me how it’s failed before you claim you can’t do it because it will fail.
When (Presidential) administrations have raised CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, they didn’t issue 13,000 page documents that provided a road map to the auto makers as to exactly how to get there.
They set the goal, and left it to the auto companies to figure out how.
[Other examples include landing a person on the moon, or the Manhattan Project]
Similarly, if and when enough people agree that it’s time for some sort of sweeping LE (or crime and punishment, more broadly) reforms in this country, then it won’t be too difficult to look around the world for best practices (ie, nations that have better relevant metrics than we do), and set those as our endpoints.
Then, we can put the responsibility on think tanks, academics, LE agencies, and anybody else who can add value in determining the best way forward, acutely aware of, and unfailingly concerned about, the existence of unintended consequences.
“The first step in solving any problem is admitting that there is a problem.”
I couldn’t have singlehandedly told Toyota exactly how to raise their CAFE standards. But they did.
And one thing I think gets lost in these conversations, @pkbites , is the near inevitability that these endpoints create a safer job, probably an ‘easier’ job, and a better life for you and your colleagues.
There’s a system that you work within, and – I would argue – the strategic objectives in which our society functions make you subject to those priorities, too. And – as has often been said about modern medicine – both sides (ie, doctors and patients) are basically suffering excessively.
It’s Christmas Day. Never mind.
there’s a great deal of talk about what the police should do (after the fact) but that doesn’t address the origin of the problem. It starts with someone who has spun out of control.
I can come up with woulda-couldas all day long from the comfort of a chair. None of them will address the stupid actions of the people who start the problem. Anyone who has ever gotten into a physical altercation knows just how fast crap happens.
I think it’s important to say this because when someone dies in an altercation there is a universal silence on what led up to it. There is no magic training that stops bad things from happening because each situation is different.
In this case, the person 100 % responsible for creating the situation was Daunte Wright. What he did presented a danger to the police around him. That it spun out of control in the space of seconds is the result of what he started. I don’t know to what extent his actions played out in court but it should have been weighed as a contributing factor in what happened.
Stipulated. Given his actions, what level of force was then appropriate? Everyone (including Potter) seems to agree that it was a taser. Are you arguing that it was appropriate to use lethal force?
If not, you cannot say a taser was appropriate, but then say - oh, sure, but it was a bit stressful, so shooting him was fine too.
The core skill of being a police officer is dealing with people calmly and professionally in stressful situations. Police forces in other countries seem to manage to select and train their officers to do this without “bad things happening” 1000 times a year.
Because presenting alternate techniques won’t fix the problem. More and better training also won’t fix the problem.
The problem can’t be fixed with administrative changes. The problem is much more deeply rooted than that. I’ve hung out with enough LEOs to understand that there’s a definite “us vs. them” culture shared among them, and it is this culture that is the root of the problem. Even the “good cops” have this mindset.
I don’t how to change or eliminate this culture. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to do so.
It’s a side argument to what I’m trying to convey. If people agree that a taser is the right level then the case is about a mistake. The mistake wouldn’t have occurred if not for Duante’s actions. We all want better outcomes to these events but the problem to fix includes more than police training.
You haven’t stated a skill. You’ve stated a premise for a skill. This was a seasoned officer and this surely wasn’t her first rodeo. She would have had many years of acquired skills that far exceeded her training.
People have talked about holding professionals to high(er) standards and that sounds reasonable as a generic statement. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve witnessed the most highly trained people in their field make mistakes that out of shear luck didn’t kill someone. These were mistakes without the benefit of a contributing factor or a split second decision to make.
In this case there was a significant contributing factor and a very small window of time to react.
I think the culture has some basis in reality from experience. Take out the word “police officer” and put in “flight attendant” as a way of looking at what they have to put up with. In the case of police officers I’m pretty sure they have to deal with a far more aggressive group of people.
This is not to suggest a cultural change can’t improve an us-vs-them mindset but it can’t exist in a vacuum. There needs to be the same mindset in the public.
I know who I am. Someone who keeps hearing how the thin blue line continually lies to protect themselves and each other. I am someone that hears how cops steal money from the innocents through civil asset forefeiture. I am a person who see videos of cops make up laws just to arrest people on BS charges or “confiscate” (read steal) phone that put them in a bad light or committing illegal acts. I am a person that sees cops escalate a situation until some civilian is injured or killed. I am a person who in court heard a cop tell Mrs. Cad, “Who are you to drive in MY town with expired registration.”
You don’t think that shows an insular culture? That’s not Us vs. Them?
Even if I agree with you, is what he did worthy of the death penalty?
This wasn’t an application of the death penalty, by any stretch of the imagination.
Of course union reps defend those accused of misbehavior. That’s part of their job, like defense attorneys. The system needs some people who protect those who are accused, so we can make sure they actually did the wrong things they’re accused of before we punish them.
And I would expect the same of the police unions. But the problem goes beyond them. When a teacher, or a doctor, or almost any other profession, sees one of their colleagues misbehaving, they tell their superiors about it. And usually, it doesn’t even need to go beyond that, because those superiors handle it. And in the rare cases where they don’t report misbehavior they witness, they get in trouble, too. But when a police officer sees one of their colleagues misbehaving, it’s absolute silence, because police won’t break down the Blue Wall.
There’s that problem again. If we go in with the expectation that police are inherently violent, then violent police is what we’ll get. Places that don’t start from that assumption, amazingly, don’t get violent police.
You sure? He acts out (according to Magiver) and dies for it and it is his fault (according to Magiver). He was shot by an LEO. Sounds like a de facto death penalty.
No more than if someone doesn’t get out of the way of a police car speeding down a road and get mowed down. The death penalty is a judicial action.
I’m much more opposed to the death penalty than I am to the police shooting someone in some at least colorably dangerous situation. The latter is unavoidable in at least some situations. Maybe the definition of what is unavoidable is way too broad, but there is no way to completely eliminate the possibility that LEOs end up killing someone.