Good cops need to cross the Thin Blue Line.
I don't know if it is the unions or exactly how it works, but you can see videos of a cop using unnecessary force, even in the rare cases where it was deemed illegal by a court, and other cops will be around doing nothing to stop it, or they join in. Once the smoke clears everyone appears to have their story straight, even if multiple officers' reports differ from video evidence.
Part of the issue is money and the War on Drugs. Early on, in the 70s and 80s drug dealers were considered to be too dangerous for normal police courtesy. No -knock raids were invented. The federal government is now selling local cops the leftover military equipment from our wars overseas. They have MRAP vehicles, full armor, assault rifles, etc. Once upon a time the police would show up on a drug bust, do some surveillance to have the best idea of what they are running into, and create a plan. Now they have big guns, armor, and a warrant for a no-knock raid. Surveillance falls to the wayside. They bust open a door and toss a grenade blindly or run in without looking. Cops have been killed because of this, as well as innocent civilians. No-knock raids are performed around
20,000 times a year. Of those, 80 percent are search warrants, not arrest warrants. And when they do find drugs, guess who gets to keep the cash, cars, and other assets found in the investigation? They are being incentivized to find and take whatever they can. They don't pay attention to anything, which is what allows
Swatting to take place. In a world where police used intelligence and surveillance swatting would be too rare to catch on.
If you don't think money and the War on Drugs aren't tied together just look at what
legalized marijuana as done to police budgets in those states.
Those are the easiest deaths to pick out, where the War on Drugs results in uninformed and poorly planned police actions.
There is also the issue of excessive use of force in general. Things like guys getting choked to death in a stop and frisk (how the hell is that even legal in the US anyway?) or an
elderly man being beaten due to medical conditions making it hard for him to understand and comply.
I've never been even close to being shot by the police, that is strange. Must be 'cause I'm white.
Must be it, as I never brought race into it.
I am genuinely curious, do you have any statistics over the past 10 years or so to see if unjustified Police shootings have increased or decreased?
Well, you could read posts from the last 24 hours to see where I posted FBI statistics. Granted those are just the "justified" killings, but in light of cases like the guy holding a toy gun in Walmart and being shot within seconds of police identifying themselves being considered justified, I think justified has a looser meaning than most of us would give it.
As a side note, I hope incidents like this encourage Police Departments all across America to get body cams for their Officers. Not only will it help Officers in situations like this, it will make it easier for Law Enforcement agencies to get rid of all the asshats who make us all look bad.
I often wonder why some cops don't want them. It seems to me that a good cop would be happy to wear one and would never harass a bystander using a camera. Or shoot tear gas at a news crew.
Of course, good cops crossing that thin blue line would help. A cop that won't report an asshat is barely better in my mind.
I think perhaps some people have gotten more brazen, even in the face of a gun. At the same time, perhaps officers are more afraid than ever. Or they're desensitized to the killing power of their guns. Kind of like the military mindset of, "I don't give a **** about these Iraqis I just want to get home in one piece."
Which one results in
cops killing mentally ill people they were called to assist? Or
calling dogs to them and then shooting them?
When were were in the academy we performed various active shooter drills in order to try to recreate what we'd feel in a real situation, unfortunately there is no proper way to do that but even with the added stress of a drill we knew was fake, our accuracy decreased.
How do they prepare you for
this?
What's hard about these kind of cases for me is that I really do agree with
@FoolKiller about the big picture when it comes to the insane increases in police shootings over the years. But in both this case and the Trayvon Martin case, I don't see any issue with the actual outcome.
I don't understand why these things seem to happen over cases where the validity of the shooting is justified by legal standards, or at worse, any wrong doing is not present in available evidence. We have plenty of cases, like Rodney King, where it was all caught on video. If you are going to go insane over it pick one that is much more obvious.
I genuinely believe there is significant institutional racism that seriously impacts the black community in America (not trying to be the smug Canadian either, there's plenty of
problems here too). What I struggle with is that I don't think there was any justification to charge either Wilson or Zimmerman, nor do I think either case is representative of systemic racism.
I honestly believe that systemic racism is related more to prosecution than excessive force. I can point out plenty of cases of excessive force against non-black innocents. A quick perusal of PINAC and Cop Watch would find that.
I still don't understand why (it seems as if, correct me if I'm wrong) you are coming from a point that Brown didn't cause anything or do anything wrong... He went up to an officers car, punched him in the side of the face, struggled for the gun, and as a result got killed. How is a cop supposed to not
I said it before, I will say it again. The fatal shooting did not take place during the struggle. I have no issue with those shots being fired. If the testimony from Wilson, that McLaren posted above, is valid then Wilson himself says that Brown was all the way over by the street corner before he turned back. After that is when it becomes very fuzzy, as he says he can't remember how many shots he fired. Wilson even painstakingly explained why he didn't reach for a non-lethal weapon during the struggle, but once out of the car and with distance between them he just started pulling the trigger at the perceived threat, losing focus on what he was doing. He couldn't even say where he was aiming. That raises a lot of questions. Was he under such stress at that point that he just freaked out?
And for the record, I never said Brown did nothing wrong. I have worded everything around the idea that he did fight with Wilson, but then ran after Wilson fired the first two shots, and turned back.
See, this is the problem. We can't have proper discourse. I have been accused of saying Brown did nothing wrong and saying race was involved. I did neither, but just by questioning the officer those who have a different opinion create their own perceived prejudices about the person they are debating. It would be the same as me calling people racists, cop lovers, or whatever. Don't assume that because someone asks questions about the way you perceive the situation that they think it was open and shut in the other direction or had some hidden, unjust purpose.
