I don’t think I am. I made no claim about what ought to happen. For the record though, I think the world would generally be a better place if the police shot fewer people.
In any case, I think your point about police using tactics that tend to escalate the situation is a significant part of the problem, as is their oft-repeated mantra about going home safe at the end of the shift. It’s not that I don’t want them to go home safe at the end of their shift, it’s just that I’d prefer they did so without leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.
They’re often taught to “ask, tell, make”, and to keep ratcheting up the violence to overcome any resistance, and they take extreme views of threat perception that would get most private citizens laughed out of court (and sent to prison).
I wish we could harness all of the respect for the police that exists in society, all of the Blue Lives Matter energy, and put it into a modest tax increase so that police had all of the resources they need. They should be paid better, get better training, have plenty of backup, and great benefits. I suspect that, in the long run, it might save money.
America is a land of guns, drugs, people in need of mental healthcare, and divisions of race and class. Put it all in a pot, throw a bone in there, and baby you got a stew going.
I feel there are a lot of strawmen in this thread. Many posters are taking the extremes of
Perp is brandishing a gun at the cop and not listening to direction.
Cops calmly doing their job due to your cooperation.
As a few have alluded to, that is not the problem. The problem is when cops escalate a situation, usually quoting a law that doesn’t exist such as “show me you’re ID” or “stop filming” and then creating the assault through throwing the person to the ground to arrest them on a made up law and throwing a few more pounds of bullshit on top of that such as obstructing justice or resisting arrest. And then guess what, when it is all over
NOTHING HAPPENS TO THE COP. Read this and watch the video and try to convince me to cops were not the instigators in this and manufactured the conflict.
Then you missed the point. The issue is that cops will take someone who is doing nothing illegal, make up a crime, escalate the situation and start assaulting the person under the color of law knowing there will be no reprecusions. Now throw the cop’s firearm into the mix and you have the answer to the OP’s question.
While I dislike police shooting people, the reality is that the vast majority of police shootings are justified by a whole lot more than someone being mouthy or disrespectful, or made-up violations of made-up laws. And the handful of cases each year that aren’t justified receive significant public attention and discussion, and it’s not all that unusual to see the perpetrators punished, as in the cases of Michael Slager and Derrick Stafford, to name a couple of recent ones.
Frequent discussion like this is a very recent phenomenon, coinciding with the proliferation of cell phones and body cameras. But there are still many, many shootings without video evidence, and which rely strictly on the testimony of the shooter. I find it highly plausible that, without video evidence, Slager and Sean Groubert (and others) wouldn’t have been prosecuted. And I find it highly plausible that among the many shootings not captured on video, there are a significant number that are Groubert-esque, but nonetheless go unpunished… and without significant reform, this will continue.
I agree that some number of police shooters escape appropriate punishment for their bad acts. I suspect that number is relatively small, but concede it’s unknown. Is the “significant reform” you’d like to see just a proliferation of body cams or something else?
Training in de-escalation, mental health issues, and diversity, along with body-cams to be able to review to ensure that the officers are properly following their training.
It is not the ends that concern me. If putting on a funny hat made all the problems between police and civilians go away, I would call for that.
Body cameras are very important, as any time there is not an objective witness to a police encounter, there will always be questions as to the conduct of the officer. I would think that the police would like to wear them, so that they can show that they are not doing anything wrong.
With the number of incidents caught on camera that directly contradict the officer’s statements, it is unreasonable to assume that all officer’s statements that are not documented with video are truthful.
It’s more than that – mandatory reporting of shootings statistics, community oversight, training in de-escalation and conflict avoidance strategies, ending “broken windows” policing (which, IMO, greatly increases antagonism and feelings that police are enemies to be feared and avoided rather than allies to be trusted), fully independent investigations (i.e. not the local DA who regularly works with the department) into allegations of misconduct and shootings, and ending for-profit policing (property confiscation that goes to the department; tickets and fines that go to the department or locality; basically anything that puts a financial motivation for cops to do certain things).
Every prosecutor, every defense lawyer, and every judge has always known that a cop will lie on reports and on the stand to justify police actions without thinking twice, even if they haven’t done anything wrong. They’ll lie just in case. That’s the blue line of silence. Cops’ credibility and testimony about alleged misconduct should be treated as suspect unless there is neutral corroboration. Always.
Cops will kill any chance they get. The perp can be unarmed, restrained or innocently hanging out in their own house. It does not matter they kill with no repercussions.
This is demonstrably not true in all cases, but in related news, the cops in LA did break into someone’s house, hose them down with bullets for holding a BB gun, and just won back their qualified immunity at the SCOTUS today.
