NinerSickness wrote:CrimsonCrew wrote:You excuse the behavior of sworn law enforcement officers because "people are corrupt," and you can't stop them from being that way. You have demonstrated no issue whatsoever with images and videos of police violence, or with fellow officers standing passively by while it occurred, or actively participating in it.
I don't excuse anybody.
I just refuse to lump all cops in with the people who killed Floyd & Walter Scott. And the fact that cops have stood by while violence is being committed proves the points I've been making; Democrat mayors are letting the violence happen and calling off the cops. That's pure, brown-shirt fascism. They want it to happen. I don't. I refuse to make this generalization that there's this overwhelming willingness to kill black people when the statistics don't back that up. And I also refuse to make excuses for people who resist arrest with weapons; if you do that and get shot, it's your own, dumbass fault.
What's your position on the cops? Because it seems like if I don't accept that there's a culture of racism in police forces (the data doesn't back that up), then I'm making excuses for them. So if that's your position, then all I can say is you're wrong, and I'll do everything I can to oppose you on this. Racism is
EXTREMELY rare in 2020. It's like seeing a Mountain Lion. In fact, George Floy's death wasn't even racist! That was a personal beef between 2 people who used to be co-workers (I'll bet you didn't even know that).
Stop & Frisk: cops didn't decide to implement that. A Democrat-run city decided that.
So explain your position on cops, and what's your solution?
That's my point. You have not problem whatsoever lumping all BLM into one mass that is responsible for any action taken by anyone even remotely connected to it. But if it's a cop, we can't possibly expect those guys to take accountability for the "bad apples" in their midst.
Cops are standing by while OTHER COPS are perpetrating violence. As for Democrat mayors sitting idly by while their towns fall to ****, the Portland PD - with the mayor's consent - made such free use of tear gas prior to the feds arriving that the state court ordered them to stop.
https://katu.com/news/local/judge-extends-order-limiting-portland-polices-use-of-tear-gasThe local authorities were handling things. The Feds showed up and escalated the situation to help Trump distract from his abject failure combating Covid.
My position on cops is...lengthy and complicated. But the short(-ish) version is that they are by and large good people who joined the force for the right reasons, but like many people in systems or institutions with deeply ingrained biases and flawed practices, even the good guys have a tendency to fall into prevailing patterns in the system, with the result that they routinely engage in practices that they probably never dreamed they would when they got into the work. They frequently demean the members of the communities that they police. They use violence far too frequently, and in too great a measure. They escalate when they should de-escalate. They approach their jobs with an "us versus them" mentality.
These are gross generalizations, of course, but I believe they are fair generalizations understanding that you can't paint a group of people with one brush. And that's just the "good apples," a very few of whom will actually assertively buck the system and speak out against their colleagues - and arguably with good reason knowing how they'll be received by other colleagues if they do so. The bad apples are thieves, bullies, and murderers who all too often get cover from their brothers in blue. There are also guys who fall somewhere in between. The adrenaline junkies who joined for the thrill. The small-time bullies who joined for the power. They aren't as big a problem as the true bad apples, but they are still a problem IMO.
I realize I'm coming off as extremely critical, and I don't mean to. It is an incredibly demanding job. We don't fund all other sorts of services that should be addressing community needs, and then we send the cops in whenever there is any sort of a problem, even if it's not something they're trained to handle. They work long hours at odd times. They see awful things on a daily basis. They are often vilified regardless of their actions or intentions. They have ridiculously high divorce and suicide rates. They suffer from alcoholism and drug abuse. I am sympathetic to all of that. But they are actors of the state who can legally carry out extreme uses of force, including deadly. They must be held to a high standard. And if they do abuse their position of power and use force without cause or disproportionate to the situation, I think they should be subject to punishment for that. They need some protections to exercise discretion in a reasonable fashion, but I've seen a whole hell of a lot that isn't reasonable lately, and too few cops speaking out against it.
Saying racism is rare in 2020 America...I mean...there's just no point in us having that conversation so I'm going to move on.
As for Floyd and Chauvin, I am aware that they both worked security at the same night club. I don't know that they knew each other, or knew each other well enough to have beef. The guy who claimed they repeatedly had conflict at the club later stated that he was confusing Floyd with someone else, though admittedly that recant seemed a bit odd.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-floyd-derek-chauvin-nightclub-bumped-heads-changes-story/Maybe the case will go to trial and that question will be clarified. As of now, I don't think we can draw firm conclusions either way, though please let me know if I'm missing additional information.
But let's assume that you're right and Chauvin did it for personal reasons. What's the excuse for the other three cops who knelt on Floyd, clashed with the crowd that was calling for Chauvin to get off Floyd, and didn't intervene in any way while Floyd died on the ground? While he lay still and unspeaking for MINUTES with Chauvin's entire body weight on his back? Again, those guys would probably be considered "good apples," but they sure as **** failed to do the right thing when a bad apple was doing the wrong thing.
Stop-and-frisk is a prominent example because it was an explicit program that involved tons of press. It was cops making the day-to-day stops, so I do think the police department was responsible for a lot of the racial disparities, but I haven't done the research on that. But things like that happen all the time. Pretense stops - stopping a car for a busted taillight, lack of registration, going through a yellow light, or no reason at all - happen all the time, and there is just no doubt that they are disproportionately directed at Black people. We know that Black people are arrested at much higher rates than white people, but what those stats don't show you is that Black people are subjected to contacts that fall short of arrests at an even higher rate. And every one of those contacts carries risk that they'll be the next Philando Castile, for instance, who was not arrested nor was there an attempt to arrest him.
As for a solution, if I had a ready solution to that, I'd be in a much more prominent position than I am. But I'm confident simply going forward the way we have been is not the answer. I think there's something to be said for the Camden model of just getting rid of the existing department and starting over from scratch - while allowing the officers from that department to reapply. I would like to see more community outreach. I would like to see more services for the mentally ill, for drug abusers, for the homeless (which have a lot of crossover with the first two groups). I think the police should be trained extensively on options other than violence for dealing with situations. I absolutely do not support defunding the police in the way the term is used by the right - and to be fair, it's a terrible term that almost never actually means what it sounds like it means - but I do think we could stand to cut police budgets and direct those funds to other areas that would be effective in preventing crime before it occurred rather than enforcing the hell out of it after it occurs. Again, I don't know what those programs are. I'll leave that up to smarter people than I.
So what's your position on police, Sick? And does anything need to change, or is it all good the way it's going?
Same with political leaders; they're all a**holes, so let's just see them as the same. To each his own, I guess. 
