I agree that it is a problem. Part of it is probably the way we train cops and the culture around it.
Part of it too is the criminal cultures we have in the US. To be fair, Iceland doesn’t have MS-13 or a city like Chicago to deal with. I bet more meth gets made in my little town than all of Iceland (we were number one in the US for awhile).
And while I do think a portion of the violence is from one form of racism or another (from conscience discrimination to unconscious priming), I don’t think this is the only explanation.
Strangely, in other countries, the populace isn’t walking around either armed or with the presumption of being armed. That’s not to say that US police don’t often operate by putting their own safety above the population’s, and thus end up killing a lot of innocent people (and not-so innocent people completely unnecessarily), but we have to admit that the fact that guns are prevalent enough in the populace to change the way police operate compared to, say, England.
Obviously. Fucking dirt-peas. (Sorry if that offends any hypogaea-lovers out there.) Why do they get called nuts? They’re not nuts. What are they trying to hide?
(Seriously though.) Still, the issue is that we’ve turned our culture and constitution inside out because, essentially, of something that happened once and is unlikely to happen again, whereas we’re weirdly sanguine about things that are far more common, even though they’re ultimately more devastating to our society.
The main differences aren’t that we have more crime or drugs or racism. The main differences are
The people who commit crimes here are more heavily armed
Largely as a result, the police here are more heavily armed
We treat drug offenses (like your town’s aforementioned meth labs) as something to be dealt with using military-grade levels of force and draconian sentencing rather than treating drugs as a social health problem. This ups the stakes for everyone involved. Nobody is likely to commit multiple murders to get out of attending a court-ordered detox program, but they might to avoid a life sentence in prison.
Please point to any case of public outrage decrying non-terrorist (i.e. the “normal” majority of) Muslims condemning terrorist Muslims. (And non-terrorist Muslims have condemned terrorist Muslims publicly many times over the years.) Then, and only then, can you go back to your arguments about good cops not really needing to condemn bad cops because reasons.
Isn’t that what already happens? Isn’t that why folks in the US can be 100% sure that their cops are 100% infallible? Y’all must just have more people who deserve to be shot to death than terrorists bent on genocide have access to.
Boingboing conveniently has posted on this in the past, but it’s hardly isolated:
Obviously, Non-terrorist Muslims have condemned Terrorists many times. That is not the point. The point is that we find it unacceptable to require the Non-terrorist Muslims to do so.
I am drawing a parallel to illustrate that it is the same reasoning on why it’s not reasonable to expect the good cops to publicly decry the bad cops, on an individual basis. By all means, put the screws to department heads. I could be mistaken, but I think the press does a pretty good job of accosting such figures during press conferences.
There’s a variety of reasons why some one might not want to publicly decry, or even act as a whistleblower. In the former case, I am suggesting that it’s a double standard to require (potentially risky) public statements from people that have done no wrong. In the latter case, if individuals don’t feel comfortable whistleblowing, then better policies need to be put into place to facilitate it. Even so, not even corporate America has worked out a system where whistleblowing consistently lets you keep your job, even if you are completely innocent of any wrongdoing.
In short: Change the culture, Change the system. Expecting or mandating individual action is unfair to the parties who aren’t breaking the rules.
You don’t make the rules here, yet for some reason you are unjustifiably smug. Make polite debate, or sit down and shut up.
[quote=“caryroys, post:32, topic:55483”]
It’s a nice sentiment that good cops should publicly condemn bad cops, but we tend to get outraged when the same is asked of Muslims and Muslim terrorists.[/quote]
I think it’s to do with punching up vs punching down.
It’s outrageous - to use your term - to expect the weak to stand up to the powerful. That’s punching down; hitting the weak because they’re weak.
It’s not outrageous to expect people with power to do their jobs. That’s punching up; hitting the powerful because they’re abusing their power.
Says who? One comedian? In point of fact one really cannot compare the two as non-terrorist Muslims are not charged with reining in their crazies, whereas the police in point of fact are required to do so as a matter of law.
Not smug at all, simply pointing out the logical fallacy in the original post. (See above for more.)
C’mon everybody, don’t turn this into (metaphorical, disingenuous) dick-swingin’ and nit-pickin’. It’s an attention-grabbing headline that makes a point. I wouldn’t want to mansplain on behalf of Xeni, but . . . we spend billions and kill millions(-ish) because “terrorism”, but we have cops who routinely and with very little consequence kill civilians who haven’t been tried and convicted. There’s a societal disconnect in the reaction. Honestly, she could have used the peanut allergy/killer cop combo, and it still would hold. I argue that there has been more social-freakout over food allergies than police killings in the U.S. (generalizing, but in terms of mainstream social response leading to change . . . ?)
Now, back to cute videos and totally unsolicited product recommendations . . .
No, I think you might have misinterpreted that remark. The outrage is because muslims are being asked/expected to denounce muslim terrorists. Muslims denouncing terrorists is fine, expecting them to is not.
Examples of the outrage caused by people expressing that expectation are fairly easy to find.
I think you’re over-burnishing your (valid) point with the inclusion of Iceland. This is a country whose entire population is smaller than that of Minneapolis (and still way, way more Scandinavian).
A police progrom for effective crime prevention should do the trick. Somewhere the “locals” are hostile to the local constabulary. There was that place recently … what was the name again?
Does any US police department have their own tactical nuke yet?
Police violence and other problems endemic in US society stem from the same root.
US governmental agencies (local, regional and international acting) an the US public sees violence as a viable mean to solve problems. In other western societies violence is only the last resort when everything else fails.
