Valued commenter CMM, a former police officer, published an article at Raw Story on the role unconscious bias plays in the split-second decisions cops make to use deadly force — the “oh shit” moment where life and death can hang in the balance. With her permission, here’s an excerpt:
[T]he incidents of the last week have been incredibly traumatic and painful for all “sides,” and I have been in plenty of deep conversations with people trying to think through and understand everything that has happened.One person asked a seemingly simple question: Is it possible that these shootings are not caused by racism, but by a moment of fear and panic? My answer is that I believe that most of the shootings have happened in a moment of fear and panic — but that panic is driven by underlying racism.
One of my nerdy friends recently described humans as “pattern-matching machines.” The ability to rapidly take in a series of cues — appearance, body language, tone of voice, and more — is a survival trait that goes back to caveman times. We see a set of cues that read “friendly” and we react one way. We see a set of cues that read “danger” and we react another. Some of those cues are hard wired and some are learned.
Here’s where I think all of us who came of age in the United States in the last 50 years can be unconsciously racially biased, without being “racist” in the traditional sense. We have all been steeped since birth in a culture full of racially-driven signifiers…
So yes, it is possible to react out of fear and panic. Most of the shootings of black suspects are not done by officers with KKK-style racism in their hearts. But the fact that black people end up dead in encounters more often than white people IS a product of racism.
As responsible citizens, we can’t just shrug and say, my bad, can’t help it, it’s my subconscious programming. We have to fight it, we have to double check our gut reactions, and we have to understand the conditioning that we have all received. It’s still racism and it is still killing people.
The whole thing is well worth a read, IMO. CMM is absolutely correct that the onus is on us to be aware of and fight our subconscious biases. That’s especially important for people who are walking around with guns strapped to their hips. I’m not sure how that filters into police training, though. Is it just left up to individuals to work this out for themselves? God, I hope not.
Anyway, Vox published a statistic the other day that points a big red blinking neon arrow to at least part of the problem, IMO: Police academies spend 110 hours on firearms and self-defense and 8 hours on conflict management. Seems that cops with better training in de-escalation techniques would be less subject to operating in the “oh shit” moment, when minority citizens might be at risk of dying due to implicit bias.
Maybe that’s a start, anyway. What say you?
Villago Delenda Est
What? Avoid gun play? What fun is THAT?
raven
There was a cop on the radio who said there was no way the officer in St Paul should have approached from the front.
joel hanes
Maybe we need a para-police force of Bobbies, armed with nothing more lethal than truncheons.
That would certainly stack the incentives in the direction of de-escalation.
Major Major Major Major
OT-ish: Betty, your link goes straight to the comments. Remove the #disqus at the end to fix.
It’s certainly well-documented that a person’s “gut” associates bad things with black people. Even a black person, since we’re all raised in the same larger cultural zeitgeist. I took a couple of those tests in college, where you hit buttons really fast and you can tell part of the prompts are racial, during my paid study period, I’m pretty sure. I got the distinct impression that my scores would come out as racist. And no surprise! I’m American!
And it’s also quite well-documented that this is exactly how people work, as CMM noted, especially in situations where subconscious reasoning is utilized. They try to duplicate this in the lab tests.
So the trick could very well be avoiding escalation in the first place. If it’s well documented that a ‘gut’ reaction is racist, you should minimize the number of times where one is necessary.
RAM
I’m pretty sure police training is supposed to address this very subject, but apparently it either doesn’t or the way it’s addressed is completely wrong. Over the past couple years, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s the latter. I think there is something seriously wrong with the way police are trained in the United States, and it seems to be systemic given the broad swath of the country where unjustified shootings by police occur. I’m not a cop; I’m just a retired newspaper reporter and editor, but it’s clear to me somebody needs to address this subject and soon.
JanieM
I would extend this point to our entire educational system.
JCJ
Is the “Blue Wall of Silence” the equivalent of “Snitches Get Stitches?”
Mike J
@JanieM: I didn’t get more than about an hour of firearms training in high school, but it was a public school.
raven
@Mike J: I’m glad you answered that!
pseudonymous in nc
I know through various sources that it’s often difficult to bootstrap that mentality. For instance, in prison environments (which generally hire from a similar pool to small police forces) it generally takes a headline-generating fuck-up that embarrasses the higher-ups to force custodial staff into that kind of training, and if those techniques then deliver results, you’ll get some buy-in — as long as old bad habits aren’t allowed to creep back in.
Trouble is, local police forces are much more autonomous than prisons, so there’s generally not a higher-up on the state level with the power to get people into a room for a day. There are carrot-and-stick approaches — extra funding for training, denial of funding if no training is provided — but there are limits to those. Who’s going to tell the Baton Rouge CoP what’s expected of him? Apparently not the (black Democrat) mayor. Does that mean it’s the job of the (white Democrat) Louisiana governor, and if so, what power does the governor actually have?
And de-escalation training is boooooooring, while Hero Cop Takes Down Threat LARP is not.
Miss Bianca
I’m just catching up on all the posts from yesterday and I have this article cued up to read!
Frankensteinbeck
Racism as a subtle lean in perception is as well established by science as you can get, and it is completely in line with how we know the brain works. No, most people don’t think ‘I hate black people’, and even very racially progressive people – even many black people – are carrying around this kind of anti-black racism.
And since Bush post-9/11 switched police department training focuses to ‘make sure you’re not the person who gets shot’, of course a tendency to see blacks as scarier than whites combines with that fatally.
NorthLeft12
I like the use of the word bias instead of prejudice. Everybody, and I mean everybody, is biased in thousands of ways. It is up to us individually to recognize these biases and make conscious decisions/actions to ensure that we account for them and do not let them “harm” others in our day to day life.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: A number of states and municipalities have constabularies in the US.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks — fixed it!
The Dangerman
OT, if you need a laugh on this kinda ugly Friday:
Linky
You’re welcome.
The Lodger
@Miss Bianca: This article is good enough to move to the top of the queue.
Mike J
@raven: My high school had an armory with bolt action rifles, live ammo and a range.
dmsilev
@The Dangerman: Ironically, that’s probably illegal in Pence’s Indiana.
MCA1
“Seems that cops with better training in de-escalation techniques would be less subject to operating in the “oh shit” moment.”
Completely agree with this. Take it even a step further, though: it seems to me that police training and culture (increasingly militaristic, us vs. them and good guys/bad guys mentality, including the above-noted overemphasis on gun usage and training) are part of the reason they find themselves in the “oh shit” moment in the first place, in addition to being a large part of the reason they act poorly when inside the crisis. We need cops to create less “oh shit” moments, as well as learn how to get out of them better.
Somehow non-strapping cops in other countries don’t seem to get themselves into those situations at nearly the pace our cops do, and it’s not as though there aren’t violent, gun-wielding criminals outside the U.S.
A guy selling cd’s outside a convenience store being complained about by a pestering homeless guy? Not an imminent threat to anybody. Guy pulled over for expired plate tags? Not an imminent threat to anybody. Some kid sassing the cops at a rally, or pissing and moaning about getting pulled over again? Write a ticket and move the fuck on. It’s not about you. Even a fleeing suspect, unless they’re firing at someone, doesn’t need to be taken down immediately. Call for backup. Do some policework and track them down later. Use some rubber bullets. Whatever.
It’s just one of the many things we need to change about our police forces, of course. But it would be a start.
raven
@Frankensteinbeck: I was reading about a restaurant in the Quarter that closed for repairs during Essence. The article was interesting but the comments, whew! Apparently it is common among wait staff, black and white, to want nothing to do with Essence or the Bayou Classic because of hobble tipping and just the general bullshit they have to put up with. Is this “anti-black” racism?
pseudonymous in nc
@RAM:
We’ve had this discussion in earlier threads. Adam’s talked about fundamental historical and cultural differences in how policing evolved in the US compared to most developed nations. I definitely think it’s related to the fragmented structure of policing in the US: I can drive for ten miles and see four or five different cities’ cops, along with county deputies, state troopers, VA cops, NPS cops, campus cops. All of those departments have their own hierarchies and budgets and training regimes and operating mentalities. A lot of the training then gets outsourced to Train-A-Cop companies, and I’m sure there’s a subconscious rivalry among forces to see which ones get the best and shiniest kit.
Aimai
@The Dangerman: thank you! No, reslly:THANK YOU!
raven
@Mike J: There was a gun club in mine but I don’t know where they shot. I was being snarky about the idea that there is firearms training in schools now.
pseudonymous in nc
@The Dangerman: Must credit @darth.
? Martin
You can’t entirely train your way out of this because we’re all swimming in a river of this kind of bias. Let’s focus just on advertising. How many ‘normal, non-threatening’ roles are played by black actors? The folks buying pants, getting a cell phone, enjoying their breakfast cereal. We’ve somewhat moved out of an era where all black actors were gangbangers but we’ve hardly moved to one where black actors are boring nerds (the part of The Martian that my daughter was most appreciative of), or where black actors play roles that simply have normal day-to-day relationships with white people. And where that is succeeding, it’s really only taking root with young people that didn’t suffer through the previous decades of 24/7 programming where black actors were typically a point of tension (or possibly comic relief) but never comfort or safety.
And you can add to that the dearth of black political leaders until Obama, of leaders of industry (I never had a black boss anywhere in the org chart until a few years ago), of how we present the news, and a ton of other things. I don’t think you can call any of them the product of overt racism, but they have the constant, cumulative effect of making even well intentioned people struggle to apply the full spectrum of labels to minorities, women, etc. How many people would word associate ‘leader’ with ‘female’? Or ‘comforting’ with ‘black’?
Culture is a set of inherited rules that govern our behavior. It takes time to change and during that process people are not immune to its effects. That’s not an excuse for any of this, rather that it’s not fair to put the entire burden of change onto the police. It needs to go onto almost everything else as well. Cultural changes have to come from everywhere, and I think we could do a lot better on that front.
Punchy
Also consider the perverse “incentive” that shooting a Black guy on the 0.004% chance he actually wants to grease you leads to a 0.00007% chance you’ll actually be convicted of a crime. Why not shoot first and make shit up later when there’s really no consequences?
Miss Bianca
@The Lodger: just did. Glad that there is a LEO (or ex-LEO, it appears, sadly) who can articulate this point of view.
Mike J
Tuesday night at Dem Convention:
JanieM
@Mike J: I should have been clearer. What I meant was that some K-12 curriculum time (anything greater than none would be an improvement) should be devoted to conflict management/exploration/whatever you want to call it. I don’t much care what other subjects the time is taken away from.
Schlemazel Khan
@Mike J:
As a public school they assume you already had training
peach flavored shampoo
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s Gun Neglect. Misty Meaner in at least 7 Southern states.
Adam L Silverman
There are two distinct issues in terms of the training averages you’ve identified. The first is the number of hours spent on firearms and self defense training and the other on conflict management training. I agree that these seem out of whack, and that we definitely need more conflict management training, however, I’m not sure you want less firearms and self defense training.
Firearms and self defense training are skills based. Using Bloom’s taxonomy they are psychomotor forms of learning. It requires a lot of repetition of tasks to actually become proficient and to maintain proficiency. And that’s just for when things aren’t stressful. It takes far more training to be able to not mess up these tasks when under stress. We definitely want law enforcement to be able to shoot accurately should they have to do so. Similarly, we want them to be able to use the minimal amount of less than lethal force, and use it correctly to minimize injuries, when they have to apply self defense techniques. As a result both of these sets of skills need to be trained for long periods and regular training needs to be conducted to maintain proficiency.
Learning how to do conflict management, unlike shooting or self defense, is not psychomotor learning. Rather, it is cognitive and affective learning. This is a very different learning process. While I certainly think we need more conflict management training, or, perhaps, more emphasis on conflict management as the primary skill set that will see law enforcement officers and the communities they police safely home at the end of the day, I’m not sure a comparison of hours to hours makes sense here. Eight hours is woefully inadequate, but the real question is how much more would be needed to resolve the problem? And here I don’t have a good answer for several reasons.
The first is that part of prioritizing conflict management over shooting/self defense responses is a policy and command climate issue. Is the Chief of Police/Sheriff and his deputy commanders, the senior officers across divisions, the shift and watch commanders, the supervisory officers and training officers, all emphasize and reinforce that the priority response is conflict management, then you are more likely to get conflict management taken seriously. And this includes giving it renewed emphasis, priority, and hours of instruction.
The second has to do with who are our police themselves. Recruiting standards have to be sufficient so that law enforcement officers have the aptitude and orientation to not just embrace conflict management, but also emphasize it as the initial interaction response with the people they interact with every day. Until we crack these two issues, just increasing classroom hours isn’t going to make a lot of difference.
Xantar
OT:
The Trump-Pence logo isn’t even really trying to hide it any more.
Shell
I know BJ cant control the popup ads, but jesus, an ad for Dinesh D’Souza’s hack film “Hillarys America”?
Schlemazel Khan
@Schlemazel Khan:
THe Secret War of Lisa Simpson. 1997
Villago Delenda Est
@Xantar: Looks like Pence is the bottom in that relationship.
scav
Tossed in, from the NYT today: Minnesota Police Officer’s ‘Bulletproof Warrior’ Training Is Questioned
whee.
Major Major Major Major
@Shell: Hey, it moves money from their filthy coffers to the somewhat less filthy coffers of John Cole!
@Villago Delenda Est: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Emma
@Villago Delenda Est: Thank you so very much. I just projectile launched my salami sandwich.
The Lodger
@Miss Bianca: Maybe as an ex-LEO, CMM has a bit more freedom to expose these truths. Or maybe I’m just trying really hard to be optimistic.
Miss Bianca
@The Lodger: Not unlikely. It’s just my personal reaction to seeing thoughtful people leave professions that need them. In the same way, I feel sorrow when teachers leaving their profession “tell it like it is” on their way out the door.
Schlemazel Khan
Anyone who has watched videos of police confrontations has seen cops escalate conflict. I belive they think they are taking control, which they need to do, but they are not doing that in a smart way. They need much more training on this for the publics AND their own safety
Villago Delenda Est
@The Lodger: It all depends on how her former comrades take the observation. Some, of course, will instantly go into the Egyptian mode (de-nile). Others will perhaps be introspective and take her words to heart.
The issue of biases we don’t realize we have is real. Jesse Jackson, of all people, confessed that he sometimes feels uneasy when seeing a group of young black males at a street corner. The important thing is to realize they are there, and to fight them. To do everything you can to keep your sense of professionalism front and center. It’s a lot of work…which is one of the reasons it gets neglected.
pseudonymous in nc
@Adam L Silverman: two quick thoughts
– Are there scaling issues for the “officer corps” of a police force? How many people need to be in command positions to establish an operating mentality that permeates the entire force?
– Does the fragmentation of forces make it easier for bad recruits to “cop shop” their way into a PD that tolerates them? The cop who shot Tamir Rice was forced to resign from one city PD for being emotionally unstable, got rejected by three other city PDs, failed the written cognitive exam to become a county deputy, but got hired by the Cleveland PD.
Villago Delenda Est
@pseudonymous in nc: Kinda reminds one of the “problem priest” scenario of the American Catholic hierarchy, doesn’t it?
Adam L Silverman
@scav: Of all the things the military, specifically the Army, could do for policing is share some hard won knowledge from having Soldiers try to maintain law and order in OEF and OIF. This has actually led to the development of a new warfighting function called Engagement. The purpose of Engagement is to assess and understand what is occurring; communicate with and to others to establish rapport in order to positively resolve the issue or problem; and develop and direct solutions (identification of ends and development of ways and means to achieve those ends) to whatever problem set or sets one is dealing with. Adapting Engagement as a law enforcement skill set, and teaching it alongside conflict management and deescalation, would be an exceedingly useful contribution.
Feathers
It’s hard. I read in one of the articles about the Dallas switch to deescalation was part of making the switch was letting go of 70 police officers who didn’t fit in with the new way of doing things. That was the part of the story that amazed me the most. Considering that most police (and especially police unions) consider a job on the force to be guaranteed employment until retirement, it is really hard to push the problem folk out. The fact that so much of the total compensation of an officer is the retirement package is another huge barrier to accountability. The disfunction is not dissimilar to an academic department where everyone knows they are going to have to work together for another twenty years. The urge to just let things slide is immense.
bemused
@scav:
Mpls Star Tribune also wrote about these seminars offered by for a profit company. Critics including those in law enforcement fields say seminars increase paranoia.
hovercraft
@JCJ:
This is truly a case where both sides do it and it is the most destructive force out there in all these interactions. The fact that there are all these campaigns to get people in ‘the neighborhood’ to cooperate with police, is a waste of time when everyone knows that when the police are in the wrong they cover up for each other. If they want the ‘community’ to work with them it has to be a two way street.
In the ABC townhall last night the Milwaukee police chief was very eloquent about the challenges facing inner city police, he did not spare anyone from criticism, he was a huge contrast between him and his county sheriff.
hovercraft
@The Dangerman:
LOL
Adam L Silverman
@pseudonymous in nc: For the former, I don’t know offhand. For the second, I think it depends on the jurisdiction. I’m still not quite sure how a trainee/cadet in one jurisdiction can be washed out for emotional/psychological problems and still retain their law officer certification from the state. It was because Loehmann retained his law enforcement certification that he was eligible to be hired in a different department/jurisdiction.
D58826
OT but Newt has clarified his comment about deporting Muslim Americans. He said that was of course illegal so he would just imprison them for sedition. Thank goodness cooler heads have prevailed. /
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: He expressed his true, “non-PC” feelings the first time.
D58826
and even further OT Mick Jagger at 72 is going to be a daddy again. Nbr 8
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Wouldn’t having police officers who are from or live in the communities they police be a good first step? If you know the community you are less likely to overreact, and they would also know you. You’re right extra classroom time I think would be of limited value, until you actually spend time with the people you are policing they will simply all be potential perps. Didn’t Petreaus basically do a version of this in Iraq to help quell the insurgency during the ‘surge’ ? If it was successful in bringing down the violence in a war zone a modified version of that should help in high crime areas. Obviously it would take a great deal of investment in additional cops and training, but the reduction in crime and incarceration would be worth it. Better relations with the police would only be a solution for part of the problem because a number of these ‘police bias’ cases have occurred outside of high crime neighborhoods where the fact that a black person is out of place is the triggering factor. In those cases the protocol for stops has to be more stringent, in the St Paul case, the initial reason given for the stop was a busted tail light, but on the radio call he indicated that the passenger matched the description of a robbery suspect. Police must be challenged to justify their driving while black stops, it is during many of these stops that the interactions go bad. People of color get frustrated for being repeatedly stopped for driving while black or brown, and then on the wrong day with the wrong cop they are not as polite and deferential as they’ve been told to be and their life may be over. Even in non lethal incidents that we never hear about, they may end up hurt or in jail for the crime of DWB and then being surly, which last time I checked are not crimes.
Just my 0.02
Frankensteinbeck
@raven:
Quite plausible, because the bias becomes noticing the shitty behavior of the black group, while forgetting the shitty behavior of other groups.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Yes, this ties into and fits nicely with the embedded community policing concept. As for GEN Petraeus and what he did in Iraq – kind of, sort of, maybe. He pushed to have Coalition Forces embedded within and work with the local population by trying to adapt the by, with, and through model of the Green Berets and move mounted, work (fight) dismounted from BG Buford’s Cavalry protocols from the Civil War. What this largely amounted to was setting up secure bases on prime real estate in populated areas, rolling off every day to do whatever one’s mission that day was, then rolling back on at night when the mission was over. So it really wasn’t functional embedding.
The other thing was to leverage the Awakenings Movement (Sawha) and organize the tribal elements, both Sunni and Shi’a, into the Sons of Iraq. Some of these groups were better than others. A lot of it was basically just paying them not to fight against us and provide some local security with a promise, that Maliki quickly broke, that they would be off ramped into the Iraqi Army or Iraqi law enforcement.
wvng
It might help if, while firearms training, cops weren’t shooting at targets with scary black men.
time.com/3671503/florida-police-black-men-mugshots-target-practice/” rel=”nofollow”
sunny raines
this is complete CRAP!!!! The majority of the scenes of note, the recent ones, Eric Gardner, others occur with the police totally dominant and completely in control, i.e., under no threat whatsoever. We’re talking about killing unarmed people, often with their hands above their heads. There is no fathomable cause for whites doing it to minorities other than racism: both deep-seated and on the surface. And while it is true that racism is pervasive in American society, the police in these cases are people with no respect for life for them to be able to act out their racism with murder. So not only are they racist, but also sadistic of the worst possible order. It is one thing to deny someone a job or other opportunity because of racism. It is a whole other level to act out racism with murder. They kill and they do so without remorse. They are racists – period.
pseudonymous in nc
@hovercraft:
The French gendarmerie model — which I believe is followed to some extent by the RCMP — is based on the opposite principle: you assign people who come from way outside the community, so that they don’t have any specific local biases or affiliations, but they’re expected to live in it, put in off-duty hours and learn its dynamics. That’s different from the situation in places like metro St Louis where cops often commute in from nearby areas with very different demographics to do their shift, then commute back, and only engage with the community when working.
(The historical reason for assigning gendarmes and Mounties far away was to ensure officers’ primary operational loyalty was to the state/Crown, but that’s evolved a bit over time.)
The gendarmerie model only really works with a national police force with paramilitary characteristics, where recruits join up with the knowledge they could be stationed anywhere the force operates.
eyelessgame
That’s what racism *is*. It’s discomfort. It’s not hate of black (or female or gay or trans or X) people. It’s not a desire that anyone be killed. It’s a tribal reaction where, even as you profess and consciously believe that black/female/gay/trans/X people are equal, have every right to be here, are welcomed as part of our society with full rights and privileges – even as you as a white (or black!) cop (or non-cop or voter) fully state and fully believe this, there’s still something that makes you uncomfortable with specific situations. You’re perfectly okay working with a black guy, but you have a moment of apprehension when you meet a black guy after dark on the street where you wouldn’t feel the same way if he was the same size and age and dress and demeanor, but white. You’re fine working with women, maybe even having a woman as your boss or senator or secretary of state, but there feels like there’s something that just makes you uncomfortable about a woman being so ambitious that she’s seeking a promotion to CEO (or running for president.) You have no problem with a gay man being around your kids, coaching them, whatever, but you find you are uncomfortable if he’s their scoutmaster for an overnight camping trip. It’s this tribal distrust that we have to get over – because that’s what bigotry is. It’s discomfort. Irrational, stupid, unjustifiable, discomfort.
sukabi
@The Dangerman: hmmmm, thought they were running on an “anti-gay” platform… that logo….lol
J R in WV
@RAM:
You’re very correct. I also have read that many white supremacists with no police record have been recruited by their group to apply for work as police officers. As long as you have no obvious tattoos (like “88” or “HH” on your knuckles) you would fit right in, and get the chance to shoot an African-American every so often, legally.
Imagine the high-fives back at the clubhouse ! “Way to go, Heinrich!”
Major problems in law enforcement, that’s for sure. I’m thinking pre-employment, renewal exams with psychologists and polygraph/speech analysis devices to determine who is a nazi and who isn’t.
Sort of like the FBI/CIA during the cold war… “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of any organization that intends the overthrow of the government of the United States?” – only with racial hatred questions, designed by shrinks smarter than me.
NorthLeft12
@eyelessgame: I disagree with your definition. Bigotry is when you act on your biases to actively harm another person because of their race, religion, gender, orientation, whatever. That harm can include exclusion from employment, social gathering, even unkind speech. If your bar is ‘personal discomfort’, you are going to be calling out a lot of people as bigots.
Forget meeting the black guy on a dark street, how about meeting any body bigger than you or a group of people on a dark street. Does that make me a bigot against people bigger or more numerous than me if I have a feeling of discomfort until I get a better read of their body language? That is ridiculous.
J R in WV
@sunny raines:
Not only without remorse, but almost for fun, in a sick way. I finally accidently saw that cop in SC who shot a fleeing black man several times in the back, then was videoed dropping a gun beside the corpse.
That black guy perceived that the cop had racist and evil intent, ran for his life, and got shot down like a deer on opening day. The “officer” not only wasn’t in any danger, he had to hustle to get his pistol out and empty it at the running guy, in a residential neighborhood.
He, at least, is indicted for murder and in jail awaiting trial, in South Carolina IIRC.
So evil, those cops.
LeeM
The use of force threshold is fairly low and subjective. If all an officer needs to articulate is a feeling of being threatened, then there is little disincentive for some officers to de-escalate force. The courts will defer to the officer’s testimony 99% of the time, barring any video to the contrary.
I spent six months on 2 grand juries, and the robotic testimony of more than a few cops showed that certain phrases were regularly tossed into the probable cause statements, reports and testimony: “furtive movements”, ” strong odor of burnt marijuana” (even during a windstorm), and “matched the description of a ___ suspect”. A year later, one of the narcotics officers I nicknamed bird-dog, who was always smelling weed from any direction and distance, was convicted of false testimony over years of cases. Many of those cases had add-on charges of resisting arrest,
sunny raines
@J R in WV:
I agree as in “those racist cops”. I do not believe for a minute that a majority of cops are of that sick racist creed; that many and probably most do as well as any human can do in an unfathomably difficult job requiring almost superhuman characteristics. But that said, “those racist crops” need to be ferreted out immediately and prevented from being cops, at least where they can act out their racism, and the cop selection process needs to be MUCH more rigorous in preventing them from ever getting started as cops.
Cmm
@Adam L Silverman:
Because he was allowed to resign in lieu of termination, which is extremely common even in cases of huge fuckups. Officers who are outright fired are either because it was over the top egregiously bad or because they were dumbasses and refused to resign when the writing was on the wall.
Because of this and because you can’t just call up to get a frank hire/don’t hire recommendation from former employers (because of litigation over the years just about all employer everywhere will only confirm employment, length of time, and say whether they hire the person back) officers who do recruiting and hiring routinely go to former departments and look at the employment file of former officers. They can see the IA reports, complaints, write ups, reprimands, etc.
Every dept in the metro area where I am does this. The most shocking thing to me in the Tamir Rice case is that they apparently hired the guy without doing that. For that reason alone absent any of the rest of it, they had to write a big check to Tamir’s family because it would have been even more costly if it had been litigated.