8 ms·

Given the numerous police shootings, typically of blacks, but not always, which are obviously excessive uses of force, why is absolutely nothing being done abou

Given the numerous police shootings, typically of blacks, but not always, which are obviously excessive uses of force, why is absolutely nothing being done about it? The cops get off, people protest, and the cycle continues. Do we not have leaders? Has the system become so inept that no one has any responsibility? Does that mean the cops are literally "out-of-control"? And no, you can't sit there and argue that the cops aren't doing anything wrong. A young man is in police custody and ends up dead from a fractured neck and no one is responsible? A woman is in police custody, a camera is turned off, and ends up needing facial reconstruction? The list goes on and on. The police have to be a notch above the average person in conduct, not a notch below. So I ask again, why is nothing being done about it?

allendoerfer 10y ago
That is one half of the problem, the other half is that the police lives in constant fear, because everybody might have a gun. And this is not being fixed because of a powerful lobby. I think police itself is hard to fix, because the system is so federated. There is nobody, who can just say: "Alright, now the standards are a, b and c."
- gkop 10y ago
  If this were the reason, I would expect police unions to speak up in favor of gun control.
  - jMyles 10y ago
    They may yet. This is, to my way of thinking, a seriously dystopian situation.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    Since some of their members would lose their jobs or at least some nice toys, I don't think so.
- jMyles 10y ago
  I must admit, I don't understand this view. If "everybody might have a gun," why are police, who also have guns, more likely to live in fear than anyone else? In the USA, especially in certain parts such as suburban Michigan, where my wife is from, there are a huge number of guns being carried all around at all times. But I don't feel the least bit unsafe; to the contrary, I like knowing that the people I'm meeting or hanging out with are able to defend the group without our having to call the police. I assert that, at this moment in history in the USA, with gun ownership being what it is and police militarization having gone so far, disarming police will bring greater peace than disarming non-police.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    " I don't understand this view. If "everybody might have a gun," why are police, who also have guns, more likely to live in fear than anyone else?" Really? It's not hard to understand at all. That you might have a gun, doesn't really assuage the fear that some normal person in a bad mood might pull their gun on you. I live in Canada. Cops are chill here. They are not skittish or scared they might get shot. When cops pull me over in some places in the US, they act like a goddam swat team.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    In my country police definitely has to act more concentrated and alarmed when dealing with drunk people in a bar or in a bad neighbourhood, where somebody might pull a knife or in very rare cases even a gun. In the US this risk is several magnitudes higher, so I expect them to be even more alarmed and trigger happy.
  - csallen 10y ago
    Police are more fearful because their role towards people is often adversarial. They are constantly fed stories about random people shooting at them in broad daylight during routine traffic stops, etc.
  - macspoofing 10y ago
    >I must admit, I don't understand this view Yes you do. There some seriously bad areas in American cities. Places where you can get mugged, robbed, assulted or murdered by virtue of just being there. Cops do die on the job.
- washadjeffmad 10y ago
  I think the 'federated' part of your comment is being far overlooked. In the US, police forces are local and independent in much the same way that DAs are. Hence, there's not really a way at a federal or even state level to correct the prosecutorial/enforcement dynamic that's driving a lot of the problems. Outside of merging precincts to create larger areas of oversight, training, and policy parity, it's a really hard sell to make to all of the thousands of police organizations independently and pretty difficult to monitor and enforce. I don't even think police unions, as effective as they are at organizing internal activities, would be successful in getting blanket reforms to stick. The changes, as currently structured, have got to be from within.
whatever_dude 10y ago
I personally believe things like this have always been happening. We're only now learning of such acts, and being forced to face it. Most people would still like to see that as isolated incidents, something that happened, a one in a million thing that you cannot prevent. It's hard for us to accept that it is indeed a side effect of something a culture that was allowed to grow, and to understand what should be done. For people in a situation of comfort (politicians, rich people, most whites), it's easier to turn away from the Bad News than to confront it. If anything, the increased awareness will have an impact. I want to believe we, as a society, will grow out of it. But the realist in me does not expect overnight results. It takes time to sink in with the powers that be, and for deep changes to take effect. It's not just prosecuting individual cops. It's changing a whole system of abuse.
- DasIch 10y ago
  One in a million, among hundreds of millions, is still quite a lot.
noonespecial 10y ago
Isn't it really "Why am I not doing anything about it?". And the little voice inside answers "because there's nothing I can do about it". So does everyone else's little voice inside. And there you go. Right from the article: "What, however, can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by word and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by this racial bias. I do not believe there is a way in which this deeply entrenched evil can be quickly healed. But until this goal is reached there is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of the good cause."
Humjob 10y ago
What I find interesting is how the media presents little to no statistics to back up their claims of blacks being subject to de facto police genocide. Here are some statistics: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ADqQNfjf4zKAJ%3Awww.forcescience.org%2Fforcepresentation.ppt+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ADqQNf... A couple key points: - More people in the US are struck each year by lightning than are killed by police. (373) - Of the 1,491 persons that died from police use of force from 2009-2012: 915 (61.4%) were white males 481 (32.2%) were black males 48 (3.2%) were males of other races 28 (1.9%) were white females 15 (1.1%) were black females 4 (0.2%) were females of other races - Of the 56,259 homicides from 2009-2012, 19,000 (33.8%) were killings of black males. Comparisons by types of homicides of black males: 481 (2.5%) were the result of police use of force 152 (0.8%) were the result of a negligent accident homicides (i.e., child playing with a gun) 648 (3.4%) were the result of a justifiable homicides by private citizens acting in self-defense 17,719 (93.3%) were criminal homicides (murders) More blacks are killed in justifiable self-defense scenarios than are killed by police. And overwhelmingly more are killed in homicides, mainly by other blacks. Also note: According to the US Department of Justice, blacks accounted for 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and "Other" 2.2%. The offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher. Most homicides were intraracial, with 84% of white victims killed by whites, and 93% of black victims killed by blacks. (Whites are being lumped in with Hispanics here.) It's fairly clear that there isn't an epidemic of wide scale police violence against blacks. Instead, a few incidents have been blasted onto social media, and uncritical leftists have picked them up and ran with them. I see Black Lives Matter more as an expression of intergroup competition and aggression against traditionally white power structures. Other leftist groups take the same approach, e.g. with feminist fabrications about mass rapes on college campuses - college campuses are in fact among the safest places in the world, but feminists treat them as though they're some Mad Max-esque raping dystopia by claiming nonsense like 1 in 4 college girls get raped. They're mysteriously silent about places where real mass raping occurs, such as Africa and the Middle East. I could go on, but suffice to say, I believe we're in a period of mass hallucination and hysteria, with entire movements justifying their existence on statistically nonsensical claims. This has happened many times throughout history, and it's leaned to both the right and left axes of the political spectrum. This time the wind just happens to be blowing to the left.
hermannj314 10y ago
Something is being done about it, lots of people are protesting and demanding change, writing letters to politicians, many are standing up to the police and refusing to let their rights be infringed, and some people are actually sacrificing their own lives and committing murder just to make their point be heard. What specifically do you want to be done to change a increasingly militarized institution with unlimited resources and hundreds of thousands of people in it that has unwavering support of tens of millions of people that nearly all accept the myth of their infallibility? I'm doing nothing and I don't know why. I asking myself why I don't stand up to police when they give orders I don't legally need to follow. I am asking myself why I don't fight back when police departments ask for more money, more officers, more body armor, more guns. I am asking myself why I am complicit (through non-action) in allowing culture of hero worship to circle all uniformed occupations and how this may create the very God Complex of infallibility that needs to be curtailed. What are you doing?
- Aoyagi 10y ago
  >they give orders I don't legally need to follow It seems to me that a love of Americans believe in this "sovereign citizen" nonsense. No wonder American police has to use more force than that in any other civilized country.
  - dgacmu 10y ago
    There are more likely - and more charitable - interpretations of the comment. Specifically, police often ask for things they're not legally entitled to compel. ("May I look in your glovebox?" During a routine traffic stop with no probable cause for such a search, for example.) As. 40 year old white male with the financial resources to defend myself, I now say no to such requests. But I also don't get asked... When I was 17 and found cops terrifying, I didn't stand up for my rights. And funny - I received more unreasonable requests when I was more obviously vulnerable.
    - Aoyagi 10y ago
      I don't see how opening a glove box for a cop to look in is unreasonable.
tptacek 10y ago
Even for someone who (probably) agrees with you, this is a poor way to argue. "And no, you can't sit there and argue..."? If your own argument is strong --- and, in this case, it should be --- you should have no trouble calmly dismantling rebuttals. It's weak arguments that demand to be propped up with bogus foreclosures like this. It's not, however, the flimsiness of your rhetoric that compels me to respond. Rather, it's the implication that merely by reading your comment I must somehow be complicit in an argument that police violence isn't problematic. You probably didn't mean to suggest that literally everyone on this thread disagreed with you on police violence. But that's what you wrote. I object.

allendoerfer 10y ago

That is one half of the problem, the other half is that the police lives in constant fear, because everybody might have a gun. And this is not being fixed because of a powerful lobby. I think police itself is hard to fix, because the system is so federated. There is nobody, who can just say: "Alright, now the standards are a, b and c."

gkop 10y ago
If this were the reason, I would expect police unions to speak up in favor of gun control.
- jMyles 10y ago
  They may yet. This is, to my way of thinking, a seriously dystopian situation.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  Since some of their members would lose their jobs or at least some nice toys, I don't think so.
jMyles 10y ago
I must admit, I don't understand this view. If "everybody might have a gun," why are police, who also have guns, more likely to live in fear than anyone else? In the USA, especially in certain parts such as suburban Michigan, where my wife is from, there are a huge number of guns being carried all around at all times. But I don't feel the least bit unsafe; to the contrary, I like knowing that the people I'm meeting or hanging out with are able to defend the group without our having to call the police. I assert that, at this moment in history in the USA, with gun ownership being what it is and police militarization having gone so far, disarming police will bring greater peace than disarming non-police.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  " I don't understand this view. If "everybody might have a gun," why are police, who also have guns, more likely to live in fear than anyone else?" Really? It's not hard to understand at all. That you might have a gun, doesn't really assuage the fear that some normal person in a bad mood might pull their gun on you. I live in Canada. Cops are chill here. They are not skittish or scared they might get shot. When cops pull me over in some places in the US, they act like a goddam swat team.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  In my country police definitely has to act more concentrated and alarmed when dealing with drunk people in a bar or in a bad neighbourhood, where somebody might pull a knife or in very rare cases even a gun. In the US this risk is several magnitudes higher, so I expect them to be even more alarmed and trigger happy.
- csallen 10y ago
  Police are more fearful because their role towards people is often adversarial. They are constantly fed stories about random people shooting at them in broad daylight during routine traffic stops, etc.
- macspoofing 10y ago
  >I must admit, I don't understand this view Yes you do. There some seriously bad areas in American cities. Places where you can get mugged, robbed, assulted or murdered by virtue of just being there. Cops do die on the job.
washadjeffmad 10y ago
I think the 'federated' part of your comment is being far overlooked. In the US, police forces are local and independent in much the same way that DAs are. Hence, there's not really a way at a federal or even state level to correct the prosecutorial/enforcement dynamic that's driving a lot of the problems. Outside of merging precincts to create larger areas of oversight, training, and policy parity, it's a really hard sell to make to all of the thousands of police organizations independently and pretty difficult to monitor and enforce. I don't even think police unions, as effective as they are at organizing internal activities, would be successful in getting blanket reforms to stick. The changes, as currently structured, have got to be from within.

whatever_dude 10y ago

I personally believe things like this have always been happening. We're only now learning of such acts, and being forced to face it. Most people would still like to see that as isolated incidents, something that happened, a one in a million thing that you cannot prevent. It's hard for us to accept that it is indeed a side effect of something a culture that was allowed to grow, and to understand what should be done. For people in a situation of comfort (politicians, rich people, most whites), it's easier to turn away from the Bad News than to confront it. If anything, the increased awareness will have an impact. I want to believe we, as a society, will grow out of it. But the realist in me does not expect overnight results. It takes time to sink in with the powers that be, and for deep changes to take effect. It's not just prosecuting individual cops. It's changing a whole system of abuse.

DasIch 10y ago
One in a million, among hundreds of millions, is still quite a lot.

noonespecial 10y ago

Isn't it really "Why am I not doing anything about it?". And the little voice inside answers "because there's nothing I can do about it". So does everyone else's little voice inside. And there you go. Right from the article: "What, however, can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by word and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by this racial bias. I do not believe there is a way in which this deeply entrenched evil can be quickly healed. But until this goal is reached there is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of the good cause."

Humjob 10y ago

What I find interesting is how the media presents little to no statistics to back up their claims of blacks being subject to de facto police genocide. Here are some statistics: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ADqQNfjf4zKAJ%3Awww.forcescience.org%2Fforcepresentation.ppt+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ADqQNf... A couple key points: - More people in the US are struck each year by lightning than are killed by police. (373) - Of the 1,491 persons that died from police use of force from 2009-2012: 915 (61.4%) were white males 481 (32.2%) were black males 48 (3.2%) were males of other races 28 (1.9%) were white females 15 (1.1%) were black females 4 (0.2%) were females of other races - Of the 56,259 homicides from 2009-2012, 19,000 (33.8%) were killings of black males. Comparisons by types of homicides of black males: 481 (2.5%) were the result of police use of force 152 (0.8%) were the result of a negligent accident homicides (i.e., child playing with a gun) 648 (3.4%) were the result of a justifiable homicides by private citizens acting in self-defense 17,719 (93.3%) were criminal homicides (murders) More blacks are killed in justifiable self-defense scenarios than are killed by police. And overwhelmingly more are killed in homicides, mainly by other blacks. Also note: According to the US Department of Justice, blacks accounted for 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and "Other" 2.2%. The offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites, and the victim rate 6 times higher. Most homicides were intraracial, with 84% of white victims killed by whites, and 93% of black victims killed by blacks. (Whites are being lumped in with Hispanics here.) It's fairly clear that there isn't an epidemic of wide scale police violence against blacks. Instead, a few incidents have been blasted onto social media, and uncritical leftists have picked them up and ran with them. I see Black Lives Matter more as an expression of intergroup competition and aggression against traditionally white power structures. Other leftist groups take the same approach, e.g. with feminist fabrications about mass rapes on college campuses - college campuses are in fact among the safest places in the world, but feminists treat them as though they're some Mad Max-esque raping dystopia by claiming nonsense like 1 in 4 college girls get raped. They're mysteriously silent about places where real mass raping occurs, such as Africa and the Middle East. I could go on, but suffice to say, I believe we're in a period of mass hallucination and hysteria, with entire movements justifying their existence on statistically nonsensical claims. This has happened many times throughout history, and it's leaned to both the right and left axes of the political spectrum. This time the wind just happens to be blowing to the left.

hermannj314 10y ago

Something is being done about it, lots of people are protesting and demanding change, writing letters to politicians, many are standing up to the police and refusing to let their rights be infringed, and some people are actually sacrificing their own lives and committing murder just to make their point be heard. What specifically do you want to be done to change a increasingly militarized institution with unlimited resources and hundreds of thousands of people in it that has unwavering support of tens of millions of people that nearly all accept the myth of their infallibility? I'm doing nothing and I don't know why. I asking myself why I don't stand up to police when they give orders I don't legally need to follow. I am asking myself why I don't fight back when police departments ask for more money, more officers, more body armor, more guns. I am asking myself why I am complicit (through non-action) in allowing culture of hero worship to circle all uniformed occupations and how this may create the very God Complex of infallibility that needs to be curtailed. What are you doing?

Aoyagi 10y ago
>they give orders I don't legally need to follow It seems to me that a love of Americans believe in this "sovereign citizen" nonsense. No wonder American police has to use more force than that in any other civilized country.
- dgacmu 10y ago
  There are more likely - and more charitable - interpretations of the comment. Specifically, police often ask for things they're not legally entitled to compel. ("May I look in your glovebox?" During a routine traffic stop with no probable cause for such a search, for example.) As. 40 year old white male with the financial resources to defend myself, I now say no to such requests. But I also don't get asked... When I was 17 and found cops terrifying, I didn't stand up for my rights. And funny - I received more unreasonable requests when I was more obviously vulnerable.
  - Aoyagi 10y ago
    I don't see how opening a glove box for a cop to look in is unreasonable.

tptacek 10y ago

Even for someone who (probably) agrees with you, this is a poor way to argue. "And no, you can't sit there and argue..."? If your own argument is strong --- and, in this case, it should be --- you should have no trouble calmly dismantling rebuttals. It's weak arguments that demand to be propped up with bogus foreclosures like this. It's not, however, the flimsiness of your rhetoric that compels me to respond. Rather, it's the implication that merely by reading your comment I must somehow be complicit in an argument that police violence isn't problematic. You probably didn't mean to suggest that literally everyone on this thread disagreed with you on police violence. But that's what you wrote. I object.