Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), former Orlando cop and currently the congresswoman representing the Florida 10th in the House, wrote an op-ed in The Post entitled, “My fellow brothers and sisters in blue, what the hell are you doing?” It’s pretty good. Here’s an excerpt:
As a nation, we must conduct a serious review of hiring standards and practices, diversity, training, use-of-force policies, pay and benefits (remember, you get what you pay for), early warning programs, and recruit training programs. Remember, officers who train police recruits are setting the standard for what is acceptable and unacceptable on the street.
Law enforcement officers are granted remarkable power and authority. They are placed in complicated and dangerous situations. They respond to calls from people with their own biases and motives… As law enforcement officers, we took an oath to protect and serve. And those who forgot — or who never understood that oath in the first place — must go. That includes those who would stand by as they witness misconduct by a fellow officer.
Everyone wants to live in safer communities and to support law enforcement and the tough job they do every day. But this can’t go on. The senseless deaths of America’s sons and daughters — particularly African American men — is a stain on our country. Let’s work to remove it.
“You get what you pay for” is an important point. As we were discussing in the morning thread, police force professionalism is a real issue. Demings says we need to review hiring standards and practices, and she’s right about that.
But beyond recruiting and training issues, our police problem is enormously complex, in part because it intersects with at least two of our most intractable cultural pathologies: racism and gun nuttery. I don’t know how to fix it, but Demings’ suggestions are a good start.
Baud
Even if she’s not Biden’s Veep, she’s going places.
Immanentize
Last night in class, a student asked why the police officers involved in the George Floyd death haven’t been arrested. Such a simple question, yet such a not simple answer. After stumbling a bit, I landed on — who exactly will arrest them? Others in his same department? The State Police who are out arresting newsmen? The Feds can’t yet (no federal crime) and now we know Trump has put the military chess piece on the side of the killers. Who is there to arrest them?
Betty Cracker
@Baud: For selfish reasons, I’d love to see Demings run for governor in 2022 and unseat DeSantis. We haven’t had a really good governor in Florida in this century, and lord do we need one. Republican governance is ruining the state.
Immanentize
@Baud: I think these recent killings probably increase the Harris chances of becoming VP.
ETA I admit that incidentally aligns with my preferences.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
I’m still fuming about that comment by Freeman that there is other evidence that does not support criminal charges.
WereBear
When someone in George runs a campaign ad telling white suburbanites they need an assault weapon to guard their potatoes… well, you get my drift.
It’s why racism and gun-nuttery go together. It’s a co-morbid condition.
Something like 80% of the public doesn’t know the crime rates have been going down, for decades.
Immanentize
@MomSense: I didn’t see that. Where was that? Although there are always “reasons” not to charge a police officer. Amirite?
Chief Oshkosh
I think the “you get what you pay for” only holds a small bit of merit here. In my communities, there has never, ever been a single instance of law enforcement not getting the budget increases it requests. Ever. Yet, like other communities, ours is full of total fucking morons. On a good day.
And all of this talk about culture and diversity and whatever. They of course play some role. But in my limited experience (I know lots of cops for various reasons), it all boils down to two things. First, training. Most training includes programs that either use or are heavily influenced by a bullshit SWAT attitude and bullshit “our lives above all else” (which often translates into “my convenience above all else”). Second, repercussions for committing crimes while undercover of law. That will be the toughest nut to crack. DAs, judges, and jurors need to do their fucking jobs. Hasn’t happened in my 6 decades on earth. I don’t know what it’ll take.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The political class (and I do point the finger of blame and shame at both parties) needs to spend less time worrying about police department morale and a lot more about instilling a climate of accountability – with accountability to the public and command being primary. The union has long seemed focused on protection from mistakes to the exclusion of all else – issues of pay, benefit and advancement are all very distant considerations.
Want better police?
– Smaller forces with longer shifts but greater pay so as to eliminate the constant need for moonlighting;
– Get rid of the military equipment for the majority of the department;
– Prohibit the act of crime creation in human trafficking and narcotic squads (no more stings, no more controlled buys);
– Restoration of revolvers as the sidearms of regular squads;
– Two year rotations in each unit, and that includes SWAT – and everyone gets cross-trained;
– Persistent rotation of beat officers throughout the community – no more episodes of contempt bred by familiarity;
Of course, this means an end to empire building and more time spent on training, so it won’t ever happen.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
At that horrific press conference yesterday afternoon.
prufrock
@Betty Cracker: It is shocking that Charlie Crist is the most competent, ethical governor that Florida has had since Walkin’ Lawton walked off this mortal coil. If you told me in 2007 that Chain Gang Charlie would flip to the Democratic party and that I would vote for him to represent FL-13 in 2016, I would have thought you had either smoked some really good weed, or snorted some really bad meth.
CliosFanBoy
@WereBear: the potatoes were in Virginia. No one touches our potatoes!!!!
Barbara
@Immanentize: I would have answered this by pointing to the debacle that followed the attempted prosecution of the Baltimore police implicated in the death of Freddie Gray. Marilyn Mosby got way ahead of herself and ended up losing every case she brought. You do not proceed in haste in a case like this.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: That’s an important reason.
@Immanentize: I also like Harris for Veep. Just seems like a good fit and complement to Biden.
HumboldtBlue
Fuck Val Demings and fuck her husband as well. Combined they sent some 60 years in law enforcement and they’re part of the fucking problem and yet here she is trying to use yet another example of murderous police brutality to pretend she’s working for some meaningful change is just the sort of “law and order” distraction we’re going to see here form the same people who will go right back to abusing the public.
This same shit gets written following every reaction to an extra-judicial killing and it’s just as fucking useless and self-serving today as it was in 2014 or 1968.
When Val the fucking cop Demings can demonstrate some meaningful work is ongoing to change the culture of violent and militant policing in this country maybe we’ll pay attention until then she’s just another fucking cop embarrassed at what the rest of the slave-catchers do.
Barbara
@MomSense: Freeman is now apparently and maybe conveniently on “medical leave” after displaying admittedly “erratic” behavior, not including this press conference.
JCJ
@MomSense: as Zack de la Rocha and Rage Against the Machine said so well:
“Some of those that work forces
Are the same that burn crosses”
Then adapted by Prophets of Rage:
“Some of those that hold office
Are the same that burn crosses”
Cheryl Rofer
@Immanentize: The district attorney is reviewing the evidence. Sloooowly
anon
Gun ownership. what highly educated person would be a police officer given how armed to the teeth civilians are? THey are aggressive because 1) thats the type of people you end up hiring because of the guns out there 2) because when they encounter you, they assume you’re carrying
MomSense
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I’d like to see drug testing. Steroids and law enforcement are not a good combination.
Immanentize
@Barbara: That is a very good point. Thank you.
Elizabelle
Val Demings will be in conversation with Moms Demand Action and Everytown [against gun violence]. Noon today, EDT. She will discuss the role Congress can play in addressing gun violence and the COVID pandemic.
https://momsdemandaction.org/demanding-women/
This page has archived videos of previous “quarantine conversations” with Stacy Abrams, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, NM Governor Michelle Lujan Griffin, and Kamala Harris. They’re uploaded to youtube.
HumboldtBlue
@anon:
Get the fuck out of here with your cop-excusing nonsense you fucking boot-licking bitch.
lamh36
Kamala Harris called for Chump’s Twitter to be suspended last October. She even wrote a letter to Jack at Twitter detailing why. Folks scoffed at her. Liz Warren laughed at her calls on the debate stage. Dudebros called it a stunt. Forward 7 months later and Chump is essentially threatening citizens in Minnesota and pushing lies about voting. Next time maybe listen to Black women!!!
Now Minnesota State Police arresting black reporter and his crew but not the white one in the same vicinity!
https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/1266325037914697728?s=21
Listen here folks, Chump WANTS a race war. It’s exactly how he won election the first time and it show he’s going to try to win re-election and while members of the Republican party and their voters supported it the first time and will support it again next time! Dems gotta be ready to VOTE THOSE FUQERS OUT in November!!!
Biden camp can just give up ghost and pick a Black woman as VP.
The Dems are not going getting the majority of the white vote in a “race war” strategy. I mean they have barley win it without the other side playing race wars …but they can damn sure shore up the voters that do have and maybe pick up enough never trumpers to boost them over the top
Barbara
@HumboldtBlue: “When she can show me that things have changed then I will listen to her.”
The single biggest impediment to changing police culture is police unions. If you can’t fire people there is no meaningful accountability. But sure, go ahead and blame Val Demmings if you want to.
anon
@HumboldtBlue: well that was nice. You misread me. They should either 1) pay more for better cops or 2) restrict guns so better people will want to be cops
Barbara
@anon: Oh come on. George Floyd clearly wasn’t “carrying.” Nor was Freddie Gray or Eric Garner. That might account for no more than half of these incidents and that is being really charitable.
anon
@Barbara: I didn’t say what they did was right. I said thats what cops assume when everyone is armed to the teeth. They should not assume that, but they will , because guns.
HumboldtBlue
@Barbara:
I didn’t blame anything on anyone, I said fuck Val Demings, I’m tired of the fucking abusers telling us how bad the abuse is and that if we just slow and down and wait change will come and all will be better.
Today is not the fucking day I want to hear cops lecture us on what needs to change. It’s just not the fucking day.
Betty Cracker
@HumboldtBlue: Feel better? Now shut the fuck up until you have something sensible to say. I’m not saying this as someone who moderates the blog; I’m saying this as someone who has read your comments for many years and usually finds them amusing, insightful or both but who is now seeing you lash out for no good reason at people who are trying to address a really complex problem. Go take a walk or something.
anon
Around 15-20 years ago, there was a newspaper article about a very wealthy southern suburb that needed to hire ONE police officer. They did the recruiting and interviewing, but in the end they hired no one because they couldn’t find anyone who met their standards.
Immanentize
@anon: Please edit — Police “assume” POC are carrying, even when they are not (Tamir Rice). Even when they KNOW white people are carrying (Wisconsin), police are all kindness and deferential charm.
lamh36
@lamh36:
HumboldtBlue
@anon:
Motherfucker I don’t give a flying fuck about your feelings and I’m tired of hearing excuses about why traditional slave-catchers have such a tough job.
Barbara
@anon: And my simple point is that even given that assumption, it was clearly not the case in the most flagrant incidents. When people are carrying guns what happens next will be perceived as much more ambiguous. These cases are outrageous in part because it is so clear that these men were not armed and were not threats to anyone and it didn’t matter.
Josie
@Barbara:
I listened to an interview yesterday with a Minneapolis official yesterday who made the same point. He said you can do all the things that people suggest, but, if there is no accountability, nothing will change. He wanted police officers subject to the same laws and punishments that govern the rest of us.
anon
let me save everyone the consternation and take my line of thought to the logical conclusion. Look at UK. They have mostly unarmed police. Thats what I’d like to see. and how do you get unarmed police? Unarmed populace
HumboldtBlue
@Betty Cracker:
Ain’t no feeling better today and taking a walk isn’t going to do a fucking thing and Val Demings can still take her cop ass and fuck right back to the fucking police station. This shit isn’t a fucking intellectual exercise in my family or for millions of others and I’m not gonna listen to the fucking pigs today.
Immanentize
@lamh36:
First — funny pun! Second, you do know that ‘give up the ghost’ means “die,” right?
MomSense
@lamh36:
It is the black vote in the Midwest that matters – not those fucking white make diner food eaters.
Immanentize
@HumboldtBlue: Is Kamala a cop too?
Baud
@Immanentize:
*I* didn’t know that.
I’m glad it’s not a phrase I use often.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara:
He specifically mentioned Mosby and the subsequent acquittal, didn’t he? The defendants in that case waived their right to a jury trial, IIRC? the cynic in me thinks they knew a judge would be more friendly to cops (based on what I remember from the cop/procedural shows I used to watch)
Zounds! that seems like a big development
indycat32
anybody else picturing Trump campaign “America is burning” ads? I’m afraid this is going to get him re-elected.
Elizabelle
@lamh36: From twitter: A Daily Show recounting of Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren re Trump and Twitter.
Host Trevor Noah concludes that we should regard Twitter as a baby monitor for Trump, because it’s the only way we know what he’s up to.
Baud
@indycat32: A million different things could get him reelected. Focus on what you can control, which isn’t Trump’s ads.
Elizabelle
@indycat32: Oh shut up.
lamh36
@Immanentize: meh??♀️ the dreams of an all white ticket can die even more so now…so “give up the ghost” fits does it now
and yes I do know what it means
MomSense
@anon:
I want an unarmed populace as much as anyone. but that is not what is causing this.
This has been going on for generations, long before the prevalence of gun nuts. The people who are hoarding guns are not the ones who are being victimized by police brutality. This is about state sanctioned ethnoviolence.
indycat32
@Elizabelle: thank you so much for your considered and well-reasoned response.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Betty Cracker:
Two things: That’s a feature, not a bug to the modern GOP and secondly, “Republican Governance” is an oxymoron.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know whether Marilyn Mosby ever could have succeeded, but it would have depended on one or more officers telling the truth about which officer actually might have put Gray into whatever position or hold that made his condition deteriorate — or whether they just failed to heed his distress and waited too long when his condition began worsening, which is possibly what did actually happen. Here, there is no real doubt about what happened and which officer is directly responsible (rather than failing to intervene). But what charges you bring against which officer will definitely contribute to the potential success of any prosecution.
anon
@MomSense: if the police were unarmed, don’t you think some of the bystanders would have done something rather than just film it?
Elizabelle
I do think that the police are more trigger-happy because they’re aware of too many guns out there. (Thanks, NRA.)
But it is greatly a recruitment, selection and training issue as well. It would seem that too many are not emphasizing de-escalation.
But, WRT police, police unions, and police-humping prosecutors, as MomSense commented, this did not happen overnight.
I think it’s good to have this discussion out in the open, now. Trump is exposed as the arsonist and racist he is.
Elizabelle
@indycat32: I am serious. Everything that happens does not mean — waah, Trump gonna get re-elected! I’m skeered. You be skeered, too.
Courage.
Wyrm
I like Val Demings, but that was pretty weak sauce. We need to do better and “train” better is nice and all. However, all the training and body cameras etc… in the world isn’t going to change the fact that cops can basically do whatever they want and know that unless they happen to go viral, there is zero chance of any meaningful punishment.
Derek Chauvin will probably get some time in prison (maybe) because 1) It was caught on tape, 2) It was absurdly obvious that there was no threat, and 3) because it got attention.
The 3 cops with him will be rehired, or get jobs 3 towns over.
I get being a cop is a hard job, but when there are no consequences for misbehavior, the misbehavior won’t stop.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Until then, let’s harshly criticize her for calling for meaningful work to change the culture of violent and militant policing in this country.
Barbara
@Josie: Which for me is why it was so important for the NYPD to finally get rid of the officer who killed Eric Garner. Which it did, after a failed prosecution and forcing him to work at a desk until the process finally played out. Most police officers do not have alternative career plans.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense:
Some of them are the police, though.
SW
My Dad was a cop in the Chicago area for 34 years in the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. He never made $20K until I was in High School. He worked two jobs all the while I was growing up. He was an honest cop. With one exception. He knew a lot of dishonest cops. The ones that didn’t work two jobs because they didn’t have to. Because they were into something crooked. And he never would have dreamed of ratting them out. Because that was the code. It still is. And that is the problem. The fucking code. It is as old as the profession. The nature of the job, the fact that you have that power means that it is always going to attract a certain number of pure psychos. People who shouldn’t be walking the streets let alone carrying a badge. And the god damn code means that no one is going to rat them out. No matter what they do. You think you’re going to fix policing in this country you’re going to have to go after the code. But be prepared. The god damn thing is 200 years old and feeds on human flesh.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: Those white, male diner denizens in Watertown, WI (etc.) were always voting GOP. To win states like Wisconsin, you need to do two things. First, maximize turnout in the blue areas (voter registration, absentee ballot applications, making sure people can get ID). Second, keep it as close as possible in the counties that go red but aren’t complete one party places (add to the total where you can). The diner people are irrelevant.
MomSense
@indycat32:
He hasn’t exactly been running the kind of campaign or administration that signals he wants to expand his base of support. He’s been playing to his base (who are incredibly fucking base) and racial resentment and racism are major motivators. We know from exit polling in 2016 that it was racial resentment, not economic anxiety that motivated a lot of those white voters in midwestern states to choose trump.
He lost his good economy message, and the pandemic response has been disastrous. He’s going to double down on racial resentment and count on GOP voter suppression, Russian interference, and media incompetence.
We have to fight hard not to let it work, but pushing for a race war and more “lawn order” is his best play.
WereBear
@SW: Serpico was almost killed by it.
And yet it lives.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
Speaking as someone not crazy about either of the two white men who were the only ones to gain traction in the primary, or it may be more properly called inertia, just…sigh.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree with you about the diner people – they are what media and pundits have been obsessing about.
Citizen Alan
@HumboldtBlue:
I’d forgotten what a wanker you are. Pie’d.
indycat32
@Elizabelle: I’m not scared, I’m angry.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@Matt McIrvin:
Gun nuts are a known quantity, but any random black individual just may have a gun /policeStateMind
Seriously, though, why do we expect more composure and discipline from civilians in fraught situations with state officials than we do from state officials?
MomSense
@anon:
I don’t think police should be armed. I don’t think they are armed and trigger happy because people have guns. The fact is that gun ownership is still not a broad swath of the population – gun owners own a lot of fucking guns.
Betty Cracker
@indycat32: It’s not an unreasonable fear, IMO. Nothing triggers us white folks in quite the same way. Trump doesn’t know much, but he does know that. We’ll need solidarity and courage to face it down and insist on change. I hope and believe we’ll find it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Yeah, it’s from the Bible.
Betty Cracker
@SW: Great comment.
Elizabelle
@indycat32:
That’s good. (Righteous) anger can be channeled into better results.
Citizen Alan
Dang it! It’s my first time to pie someone on the new site. How do you do it again?
Baud
@Citizen Alan: Click on the photo of the pie underneath the main post.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
Right now, my philosophy is that PoC can be as mad as they want and I do not have the right to judge them. This is grotesque and I am not the victim and can’t imagine how they’re feeling, but I do know those feelings are well earned.
Elizabelle
@Citizen Alan: Head up to the pie graphic just above beginning of comments.
Click, and type in hum — or whoever is going into the pie/catcake filter. Names of commenters with that will come up. Click, and they’re pied.
You can also hit the pie graphic later and unpie the folks. It’s not permanent. But it makes a good timeout.
And the cupcakes and seal chow are adorable.
mrmoshpotato
@Citizen Alan: Hit the pie at the top of the comments. Click nym.
Citizen Alan
@Baud:
Lol. I’ve scrolled past that pie picture a 100 times and never thought about it except as picture that made me hungry for sweets. Thanks!
mrmoshpotato
@Citizen Alan: Hahaha :)
Elizabelle
@Frankensteinbeck: Right. We should all get on here and tear our hair out and scream at black politicians — they’re cops! — because that’s the way to making progress. Yeah.
Do you think the rest of us are good with this murder and its aftermath? That we don’t have sympathy with the community, and a desire to see change to reduce/eradicate police murders of their residents?
Betty Cracker
I don’t understand the argument that guns aren’t part of the policing problem. It’s not the primary issue, but guns definitely contribute to the militarized mindset, even though the most recent incident involved yet another unarmed victim.
Widespread civilian access to firearms is part of what creates the atmosphere of danger and “us vs. them” that poisons police culture. How could it not?
Hell, I live in Florida, and I think twice about flipping other drivers off in traffic because I’m aware that there’s a decent chance they’re packing. It amplifies the overall perception of danger for everyone, including the cops.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: I was stopped by a very young white policeman — might have been a state trooper — in Virginia for searching for a puppy on the hill above an interstate.
I could tell he was afraid of me, even though I am a middle aged white woman who is old enough to be his mother, and had only a cell phone, my car keys, a leash, and a can of dog food in my possession. I was just not where anyone expected me to be.
A county policewoman arrived as backup, but he’d ascertained I really was just looking for a dog at that point.
But I definitely picked up on his apprehension that I might be dangerous, and that was alarming
The kicker is: he told me I might enjoy taking up shooting sports as he drove me back to my car (after a stern warning to stay off the area around interstates). Fear and enjoyment of guns is not a good combination.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker:
Yup,
senyordave
@Barbara: I live about 20 miles south of Baltimore. Mosby never had a chance. I had a friend at work who was good buddies with a Baltimore cop (ironically, they met when my friend was in a bar fight in college and the cop was off duty in the bar and vouched that my friend was trying to break up the fight). He said that every Baltimore cop knew that Freddie Grey was taken for a “rough ride” that went wrong. A rough ride is where a suspect was handcuffed and cuffed around the ankles, and then thrown in the back of a police wagon and the driver proceeds to drive at a crazy speed, making sure to take turns as sharp as he or she possible can. The suspect is thrown around the van with no way of protecting himself. People said Mosby overreached by charging second degree murder, but she could have charged the cops with jaywalking and the cops would still have lied. My friend’s cop buddy told him that almost every cop will lie to protect any other cop if they think they can get away with it. Apparently, the one lasting effect of Freddie Gray’s death is that rough rides are a thing of the past in Baltimore.
cope
@SW: One of my wife’s brothers-in-law was a Chicago cop and then a Cook County cop in the same time frame as your dad. Having know some other cops previously and realizing what a shitty job it can be, I asked him once why anybody would become a cop. He said “To make money”. To be fair, he had a life-long involvement with plenty of shady people and I wasn’t too keen on learning much about his ethically challenged life so I never heard more than the basics. He was a nice guy to me and his family but not somebody I would ever have willingly pissed off.
Elizabelle
@senyordave:
So Freddie Gray bought something, with the sacrifice of his life.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: Pretty sure he’s a white dude, but regardless, he and I have been shooting the shit on the internet for over a decade, so I feel like I have standing to comment on what he said, just as he has standing to tell me to fuck off.
I get being angry because family members are endangered by this awful shit. It’s not an abstract danger in my family either, despite me personally being a white lady.
kindness
If police agencies could filter out the Nazis & racists from the people they hire that would be a good start. Somehow I don’t see that happening anywhere.
Anonymous At Work
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Get rid of military equipment and change the military-to-police pipeline of recruits. Or require proof of good conduct discharge in hiring veterans. I would want to see facts on non-good conduct discharges against disciplinary records.
ronno2018
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: those are great ideas although I am reading the Glock book and sort of wonder if your thought on revolvers might be less safe (accidental discharge etc), maybe a modern pistol with fewer rounds possible in the magazine? Really the solution is nationwide laws that limit gun ownership like in more normal modern countries…
Booger
@Barbara: FYI, Freddy Gray was the victim who was handcuffed (IIRC) and put, unsecured, in the back of the transport van while the driver deliberately drove roughly and erratically over roads chosen for their poor condition to bang him up. He sustained (IIRC) a head injury which led to his death. Nice way to spread the culpability around.
Matt McIrvin
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: Our protocols for interacting with cops resemble those for dealing with dangerous wild animals.
Gvg
Is there a law making it a criminal act to not stop someone deliberately endangering someone else. I’m thinking of how to make it not work for the Freddy Grey cops spreading guilt around.
Matt McIrvin
@indycat32: He’ll try. Anyone running against him needs to be out in front of it, because white resentment over BLM did, I think, help him in 2016 and Republicans in 2014.
But who knows, the times are a bit different. In the second Obama term this was actually the biggest hot-button thing going on. Now it’s happening in the context of a killer pandemic and an economic meltdown, and of course it’s all connected. Also, Trump is the guy in power nationally; most people won’t think of him as a hypothetical alternative or an outside critic. That makes a difference as well.
Aleta
Last night my partner said every police person he’s ever had an interaction with has been (iho) a sadist.
Policing is a culture with at least 200 years of U.S.-condoned cruelty and murder of specific targets. My thoughts are idealistic given what’s been accepted behavior in Vietnam; during the Jim Crow era (and before and still); in Iraq; toward some white males with long hair in the 60s and early 70s; unconventional women; Palestinians and other Arabs after 9-1-1. But anyway:
Hiring and training needs to specifically take into account that jobs in security and policing naturally attract a lot of people with oversized control issues (anger quickly if they feel their authority challenged, and tend to misjudge that). It also attracts people who enjoy delivering pain and torment. And fetishists who like to train their reflexes to snap into aggressive moves (including western martial arts) but don’t train in inhibiting their impulses, recognizing distress and redirecting it.
Sending more police on a call doesn’t help deescalate if one of them is so vengeful and controlling that he’s taught the others to never interfere with him. Some people may be great at delivering force and authority but should never be hired in the first place.
Military training and attitude shouldn’t be an automatic plus. It may be a detriment in many applicants. And police and security training shouldn’t mimic military training.
Changes in hiring and training would need so much more money and time that it seems impossible. I’ve thought for quite a while that (sadly) huge monetary settlements may be the only thing that can convince towns and smaller cities to invest in prevention.
But without also convictions (and firing w/o rehiring), individual police have no reason to change. Bullies insist on being protected and seek out those environments; policing wouldn’t be attractive to those types if this extreme protection is ended. Ending that would also increase the odds that coworkers would intervene before the bully escalates.
apocalipstick
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: I think perhaps it’s the cultural trope that black people don’t feel pain and have superhuman strength and reflexes. You must be armed against Black Hulk, who is by definition, any black person.
Doc Sardonic
@HumboldtBlue: Pull your Fucking head out of your goddamn ass. You don’t have a clue what the fuck you are talking out your ass about. Normally you make a little bit of sense, not much, but a little , not this time. Since you apparently live in Cali, and do not live in the Orlando/Orange County Florida area you know less about what transpired here than a pustule on Trumps ass. So go take a fucking hike or another bong hit and fuck off.
@HumboldtBlue:
Wapiti
@SW: A possible answer to the code, to find dishonest cops who have unbooked income: audit cops (and others with similar authority and opportunity) at a higher than normal rate.
As someone else said above, cops should make enough that they aren’t permitted to moonlight as armed enforcers for third parties. Violence should be reserved to the state. That also means we might need the state/city to have more police to provide police – not off-duty police – to do crowd control, etc.
Aleta
@Betty Cracker: The NRA (at least some places) gives members of police free access to local gun ranges they’re associated with. They also connect to established youth programs and through them (and by wooing influencers) sponsor kids’ training at ranges the NRA has links to. I assume that mingling with adults (who may work in police and security) works to train kids’ attitudes as they grow up. Probably encourages some kids to consider policing as a job where they can practice racist and authoritative attitudes and receive obedient “respect.”
Kent
HS teacher here. Over the years I have watched MANY MANY young kids move on into the real world and start careers at both a highly diverse urban HS in Texas and a more white suburban HS in Washington.
The few kids I have taught who’s career aspirations were law enforcement? Pretty universally white and often kids of cops. Often the same ones in JR ROTC who are planning stints in the Army. In my experience it is EXTREMELY rare to encounter young people of color who are interested in law enforcement. Especially the smart ones. They tend towards business/medicine/tech if the are financially ambitious, or teaching/social work if they are “bleeding heart” types. Never law enforcement.
The kids who are into the tactical gear and guns are often the ones who want to be cops. I’ve had kids, for example, be able to give astonishingly detailed analyses and history of the evolution of police tactical gear from the 1960s to the present. How they wear their belts, how the holsters work, what goes on the belt, all that crap. It’s like the same kids who obsess about the 16 different variations of assault rifle carried by German troops on the eastern front in 1943. That kind of shit.
I don’t have an answer. But I have watched how fundie crazies have managed to take over school boards and city councils in parts of the country. I think there needs to be a similar takeover of police forces across the country by folks who aren’t militant gun nuts. I don’t know how that happens. But it is going to be a fight.
Like with so many other things (pandemic response, social welfare, etc.) the model is really overseas. Cops in places like Scandinavia don’t tend to beat and kill. The culture is entirely different. They often work more like social workers. I was interested to watch the Icelandic police show The Valhalla Murders on Netlix and noticed that the police sidearms were maintained in locked safes in each patrol car and the officers had to radio in for a one-time unlock code to even access their weapons. Imagine that in the US. Of course it is all connected and we need to deal with the gun culture and military worship in this country as well.
J.
@Betty Cracker: I LOVE the idea of Demings running for governor in 2022! Has she talked about it?
Ruckus
@anon:
Does that happen in the UK?
I don’t think it does. And the UK does have armed officers, just not all of them. They do seem to go through a lot more training than the not armed ones. But I think if you were a cop you’d probably not trust that a person was unarmed just because they usually aren’t. There are a lot of weapons or things that can be weapons other than guns and they can often be used to kill just about as easily if not differently. And a criminal probably really doesn’t care all that much about guns being illegal. Remember that guns are available in the UK, just not as easily or readily. Do you think that would stop a criminal? George Floyd was not killed with a gun.
Ruckus
@SW:
That code is Us Against Them.
With the sub heading of Whatever It Takes.
Us is easy, Them is not. Them is anyone who questions anything about Them. What they do, how they do it, who they do it to.
It is an abuse of power and it isn’t going away easy.
LongHairedWeirdo
@MomSense: Actually, I believe the gun nuts have been making it worse, because they are too-frequently making it seem normal for a person to need a firearm to defend themselves.
When cops are trained in gun use, they’re given scary statistics, like “a man can move 20 feet and stab you with a knife before you can shoot them (under some not-unreasonable set of circumstances)”. This is true, I believe – I’ve been told it’s demoed in firearms classes, and it really makes sense (just realizing “the circumstances have changed” takes time), except….
Who, when facing a police officer, will draw a knife and run at them, betting they’ll be able to kill the officer?
I mean, first, unless a person has practiced sudden attacks like this, they’d have no reason to be confident they could do it, with adrenaline coursing through them like the caffeine from a triple espresso.
Second, to do it, they’d have to want that officer dead (or at least clearly hors de combat). There are people who will kill cops, but they’re rare.
Take away either one of those, and the risk is probably much lower, and a cop who tries to deescalate to a standard arrest (rather than feeling they’re in a stand-off with risk of instant death) will probably lead to fewer bodies. It *is* true that a few cops could die here, and, obviously, you don’t want a hundred cops to die to prevent one mistaken shooting. But “some” cops dying, to greatly reduce accidental shootings? Say, 100 fewer needless shooting deaths by cops, per extra cop who gets killed by being too slow to shoot first?
I think that would be a fair trade to anyone who believes “to serve and protect” is more than a marketing slogan. Of course, we don’t have the ability to make *that* trade… I just made the number big to establish (in the minds of anyone who *can* be convinced) that there *is* a trade to be made.
I mean – I heard a rapper was asleep in his car, and his gun on his lap. Six officers ended up shooting him dead. And I got angry, and then I thought “if I had 5 fellow officers, and wanted to approach that car, how would I have done it?”
I realized that having an officer approach from the passenger side would allow the officer to drop to the pavement, and scoot (forward, toward the rear of the car, I guessed) – the officer is now not visible and *really* hard to shoot at – at the first sign of trouble (remembering the suspect might jerk into wakefulness). Two officers could stand so they’re behind the driver’s door if it opens, and can have their hands on their holstered guns, ready to draw if they see the approach officer drop to the ground. I’m sure I had a use for the other two, but I’m blanking on it now.
Is that a decent plan? I I don’t know, but I came up with it in about 5 minutes. If I can come up with a plan that seems a lot better that quickly, I’m sure someone has a good plan, that has nearly no additional risk to the officers, but reduces the risk to the unconscious rapper.
And that’s my point here. The tactics they used were great if “your most important job is to survive your shift”; they were bad if “your most important job is to protect the public, while surviving; and be aware that sometimes, doing the first means failing to do the second.”
That’s an even tougher sell, when there’s a class of people who are constantly hammering home on the idea that “people *need* guns to protect themselves” because that really only makes sense if the average (or perhaps median) person will be in a situation where their possession of a firearm will provide needed safety (and not substitute-courage). And most people simply won’t.
But if most people won’t *need* a gun, well, wow, that makes Second Amendment absolutism sound a bit whacky(/ier).