About Police Shootings (in America, Duh)

if i have an objection to the conversation about police violence, it is that its being framed in such a way as to suggest that the problem is that white cops are getting away with shooting non white suspects who simply shouldnt be killed given the circumstances

the reality that i see is that american cops have a culture of US Vs THEM and that anyone who does not instantly submit to their dominance must to overpowered forcefully because you know, they are the police. its not like they work for you or anything

in fact, despite the popular slogan, they dont even have to protect you

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/subway-stabbing-victim-sue-city-cops-didn-stop-attack-article-1.1409451

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

while minorities may be the victims of police violence more often than whites, and while racism is undeniably a relevant factor in that, its not the only or imo even the primary factor
now, thats my opinion, and i understand that others disagree and why

all that being said, this is an excellent video on the subject and one that shows respect for all sides and opens the dialogue in a way that i personally found to be pretty tactful

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tP0awqth0XI

the cops where i live changed their slogan from "serving pasco" to "we fight as one"

they have a billboard campaign that says: "if you're selling drugs, we'll be knocking" and it depicts their swat team in full battle gear including shields...

they just recently spent $500,000 on an armored assault vehicle when they never had need of one before

their patches took on a military look as did their uniforms...

in miami the police do target training using photos of mostly black inmates....so they're subconsciously being trained to shoot at people that look a certain way....

law enforcement has become militarized...and they see most of society as the enemy...

OB1Shinobi wrote: the reality that i see is that american cops have a culture of US Vs THEM

With respect, I see that just as much from the citizens toward the cops, even when the police have performed their jobs well.

The whole situation needs healing.

Snowy Aftermath wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: the reality that i see is that american cops have a culture of US Vs THEM

With respect, I see that just as much from the citizens toward the cops, even when the police have performed their jobs well.

The whole situation needs healing.

i agree with you that the whole sitiation needs healing

and im ok with starting from the premise that police are generally good people, who are doing a difficult, dangerous, and under appreciated job

that it is a job vital to the well being of society is obvious

but if the problems are that police are getting away with killing citizens on the one hand, and citizens dont trust police on the other, i think we need to deal with the first part first

no healing can begin until that happens

if cops stop killing american citizens unnessarily (or at least if it just doesnt happen every few days) then maybe we can build a case that citizens should cut them some more slack

i consider myself pro police in the sense that when these things happen, i always want to review the details and say "yeah i would have shot him too"
often i do say that, but way way too often i cannot, and that is the bigger problem

Police lives matter... black lives matter, division creates division. Police behaviour will be dictated by nature of the realistically expected threat. If everyone has a gun, then they are going to behave different then if hardly anyone has one. If everyone has a few carbines, then they are going to go to another level again. I don't think a country can have freedom with weapon access and a passive Police, as the Police need to expect the worst. Those realities aside, it seems the training or procedures are insufficient, and so therefore so is the management. But ya gotta target the problem and worry less about 'reach', as it will never seem like others feel your own pain so don't use that as a main metric.

RyuJin wrote: law enforcement has become militarized...and they see most of society as the enemy...

What bugs me is that the narrative of supposed problems is false.

Take the BLM movement, started on the premise that police are killing innocent blacks at alarming rates with impunity. The liberal media pushes the false narrative while Obama and others fan the flames of racial tension and next thing you know, low information types, black and white, believe the nonsense. Now the UN is coming out and declaring so called systemic and institutional racism in America, wow which makes me think that this was all allowed to get out of control as a pretext for something else.

In 2014 of all blacks killed, 4% were killed by police officers.

Of all blacks killed, unarmed blacks killed by police officers you ask ? 0.6%

From 1980 to 2008 93% of blacks killed were killed by other blacks.

Blacks are 6x more likely than non blacks to commit a murder.

Blacks are 12 x more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.

2013 there were 660,000 interracial crimes commited (white on black/black on Asian/white on Hispanic/black on white/etc..) of those, blacks were the prepetrators of the crime 85% of the time meaning a black is 27 times more likely to commit a crime against a white person than a white on a black person.

NYC 2014, blacks are arrested at a rate 31x higher than whites for murder.

NYC 2014, Blacks are arrested for discharging a firearm in all types of scenarios at a rate 98% higher than whites.

All this emenates from 13.2% of the population.

It goes on and on and on, facts are flipped on their head to fit a narrative. It's funny how all the time you're hearing 'right wing extremist' and all that nonsense, but in fact the radical left is much more violent and has always been more violent throughout history. BLM is a democrat movement.

Anyways, I used to be a lot more anti-LEO than I am now. I came from a small town and most of them were ex-military and they followed the laws to the letter and vacuumed up as much money as they could pulling or busting anyone for anything they could. They'd be in our business all the time as kids, always stopping to ask us who we were, what we're doing and where we're going. There was nothing going on in our small town though and that's why I didn't like them.

Moving to northern CA things are much different, you've got crazy drugged out vagrants roaming the streets panhandling during they day and doing breaking and entry at night. There's gangs and cartel activity, a lot more domestic violence and a lot more natural disaster situations like wildfires, earthquakes and hillslides covering the main roads. Their job is tough and they make the sacrifice for the general well being of the population. Granted they don't have to protect me, but I'm not relying on them to do so.

You see a lot of these shootings become a one sided story, the BLM will chant 'he dindu nuffin!' over and over, but a lot of those 'innocet good guys' have a known criminal history, on drugs, or were felons in possession of a weapon, and just knowing the statistics above is justification to be very careful in these close encounters with potentially dangerous criminals. That is not racism, that is common sense. Some of the police killings are definitely ridiculous and uncalled for, but the victims are not a victim of police brutality they are a victim of their own community's self demise in a sense and it's very sad.

OB1Shinobi wrote: if i have an objection to the conversation about police violence, it is that its being framed in such a way as to suggest that the problem is that white cops are getting away with shooting non white suspects who simply shouldnt be killed given the circumstances

the reality that i see is that american cops have a culture of US Vs THEM and that anyone who does not instantly submit to their dominance must to overpowered forcefully because you know, they are the police. its not like they work for you or anything

in fact, despite the popular slogan, they dont even have to protect you

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/subway-stabbing-victim-sue-city-cops-didn-stop-attack-article-1.1409451

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

while minorities may be the victims of police violence more often than whites, and while racism is undeniably a relevant factor in that, its not the only or imo even the primary factor
now, thats my opinion, and i understand that others disagree and why

all that being said, this is an excellent video on the subject and one that shows respect for all sides and opens the dialogue in a way that i personally found to be pretty tactful

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tP0awqth0XI

Police job in America is very hard and very dangerous. Many people dont respect authorities, many play pranks and test the police just by fun.... In a country where weapons are alowed many cops die in action, so they shoot first and ask later. Is that right? NO. But first USA needs to change the laws against weapons. Living as a police is not easy and as i said very dangerous in countries like USA.

I think it's quite simple: If one builds up such an army, then one will be looking for opportunities to use it. If one's running a hospital, one will see that the beds are full. If one's running a school, then one will see that the classes are full. And if one is running a police department, then (from the perspective of modern meritocracy), one will see that the officers and equipment are "at work", whatever the prevailing definition will be: ticket quotas, arrestings, crimes generated and "solved". The same goes for the insane private jail business. They need inmates for their cheap labour factories to be profitable.

That whole system has become nuts, feeding back on itself, losing the purpose of the police in the first place. To add on it, it has been hijacked by the interests of a few (say the 1%), because the definition is that police protect *property*. Whoever has the most property, by that logic, needs to be protected most. Most people with little money have no property, but pay to use other's property just to be able to sustain their life, thus the proprietors have to be protected from them. That's a proprietory police logic. Following that narrative, one gets all sorts of in-group and out-group biases that create "us and them". Some parts of black society (but also others, of course), anybody prone to systematic poverty, falls into several of such categrories: Using other's property, the self-feeding bias of crime statistics, some real racial prejudice that still exists (and if it's just a remaining "Ah, I am not quite sure..."), and leading a life with little comfort which is prone to alleviating with some weed every now and then.

Since criminalizing the latter, which was an effective outlet that is expected to be used in such a setting, it is also to be expected that the societal pressure will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy: Of course the samsaric rooting is aggravated in such a situation. How should it be any different. Nervous systems react. Provoke them enough, that builds tension in the system. Then one can wait with battle robots until somebody can no longer handle the crap they're given, shoot them down, and celebrate oneself as a savior.

Prejudice, from a pschological standpoint, will prevail if it is not utterly fought against at every instant, because it is the human brain default. To overcome it needs education. If one's training a police or military to "follow orders", that means uneducating them. Along with that, they become more prone to prejudice. One cannot be so blind not to see that. Apparently that is tolerated as long as those low wagers execute other people's orders. Maybe one could say that the Taylorization of society, in the case of police, leads to increase of prejudice, because one recruits less educated people into specialized teams.

We should really find back to a different understanding of what police should stand for. Right now, they could maybe defend the poor people from the shit they're experiencing day in day out. That's the big problem of society, and if police shall play a role in keeping it together, that should be a substantial part of the mission.

Best
Kc

It's more important now than ever that we, as Jedi, set the example for others to follow. We are ambassadors of peace, tolerance, and patience.