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I grew up in the late 90s in NYC, and spent a lot of time hanging out "on the streets". I think on average, I saw an act of gross police misbehavior about once
by m_fayer 5y ago
I grew up in the late 90s in NYC, and spent a lot of time hanging out "on the streets".
I think on average, I saw an act of gross police misbehavior about once a month. Sometimes it was quite savage. Always racist. I'm white, but many of my friends weren't. 20 years later I still have intrusive memories of standing by helplessly while terrible things were said and done to my not-white friends, and I still have violent fantasies about those cops getting theirs in kind.
Sure, this was often aimed at young people who may or may not be smoking pot or engaged in other mildly truant behavior. The police were not reacting to the truant behavior. They were targeting the minorly truant young people because they wanted to get their rocks off, and these victims were easily available and had no recourse.
- MathCodeLove 5y agoI don't doubt your experience but let's not pretend that there haven't been any changes in the past 2 decades.
- m_fayer 5y agoWhat makes you so sure? Even if there's data showing improvement, this would be data from a supremely untrustworthy source with a long history of manipulation and deception.
- MathCodeLove 5y agoI mean you're making an argument that does nothing to facilitate discussion on the issue. It's basically saying "No it hasn't changed. And if you have evidence or data showing otherwise, it can't be trusted." At the point you refute any provided data or evidence the conversation just devolves into an argument instead of a debate or conversation.
- m_fayer 5y agoDiscussion isn't what's needed here. It's reconciliation. This is what it looks like when abuse has built up and trust destroyed. The only way to claw back from that is patient humble hat-in-hands dialogue and persistent incremental trust-building measures. I haven't seen anything that looks like that from any major US law enforcement entity.