“Why do people who don’t present others with respect demand it so badly from others?!”
Maybe if they come to the car door with respect they might have earned some respect. Because if you come knocking and are an asshole I’m not going to forget that I have rights in return.
Kind of a non-sequitur, but, yes, and yes.
Although it seems that in the NY/NE area, most police are themselves “POC”. Yet this does not seem to affect the stats for other such people getting justice instead of abuse so much as one might hope.
So you’re saying you find it surprising that the instigators of white supremacist abuse are not only white people? (I don’t.)
Where did I say that? Are you one of those indirect communicators who need to always assume that I mean something other than what I actually say?
Since neither “white” nor “supremacy” are well-defined, I’d say that they are ambiguous enough that there is no reason to be surprised by anything with regards to these. People are probably adapting the definitions to fit their ideologies.
You say surprised, I say harrased, incarcerated, choked, shot, coerced, ignored, disenfranchised.
What about when the cop decides that perfectly normal, respectable behavior is not good enough, and they think you’re not being deferential enough? Because that’s often what’s going on. Someone standing up for their rights is not disrespectful…
Sure, he’s the guy with the gun, but his job is to protect and serve the community… a cop is a public servant. They should be treating their fellow community members with respect. There is nothing wrong with reminding them of that and it’s perfectly within one’s right to do so.
Apparently I need to spell it out for you.
If the system is working well, one shouldn’t be penalized for the behavior you’re describing.
That is my position.
Then why bring up treating cops with respect at all? If you’re position is that we need to fix the system, so that when people “disrespect” cops, they don’t end up dead in a jail cell, then that’s what you need to say. You’re discussion on the other thread seemed to suggest that Bland’s behavior was the root cause, not racism and police brutality in this particular county.
Outside of a direct threat to bystander’s or an officer’s life, they should not use lethal force. Ever. Let me give you a good example of police doing their job to eliminate a potential threat to the community without actually killing anyone. Not too long ago, outside my building, a guy pulled a knife, and I believe stabbed, a campus security officer. It was downtown, so the city police were nearby. The nearest cop pulled out a gun, shot the guy, without killing him. The campus security and the suspect were taken to the local hosptial. No one was killed and the threat to human life was eliminated. Those cops did their jobs. [ETA] the cops in the case of Bland and many, many others, have not. They should be fired and prosecuted.
Nope nope and nope. It does not suggest that, which I was clear about.
Agreed, which I’ve also said.
Except for all the probing questions about bland in the other thread? Those questions are meaningless. It’s not her behavior we should worry about/investigate. The woman is dead because she didn’t have a turn signal. Wrap you’re head around that notion. Because that’s the reality. We need to tell every cop, everywhere, that they need to treat their community with respect.
This is why we have this thread; it’s a broader discussion I am getting at.
I’m not quite sure if we have a disagreement, or just a disagreement about vocabulary:
My contention is that the police do law enforcement, they don’t do trials and they don’t do punishments(at least by design). They do have a lot of room for ‘informal’ punishment(“You can be the rap; but you can’t beat the ride”, rough driving with handcuffed people in the car, various other applications of force, petty and grave, up to and including just gunning people down). These, however, are all illegitimate functions; bullying at best, assault or murder at worst.
Unless self defense or public safety requires it, they are supposed to either issue a citation or bring you in with as little fuss as possible, at which point the judicial branch takes over, assesses your guilt, and selects a punishment.
Nobody denies that cops have a great deal of practical leeway to punish people off the record; but my contention is that doing so is contrary to their mission, illegitimate, and correctly perceived by the public as bullying, coercion, or outright threat of dangerous or fatal violence; which breeds either cringing avoidance or rebellion; but not respect.
HUMAN NATURE. When put in that situation you have 3 natural biological responses, FIGHT, FLIGHT, or SHUT DOWN/SUBMIT. The first two come easier as they are selected for survival, the latter is a “trauma response” and doesn’t come naturally to anyone with a strong spirit.
This is exactly why the police are supposed to be and used to be trained how to deal with this sort of thing. Now days they are just trigger happy, hot headed, military wannabes, with “little power syndrome”.
I think the best entry point here is to influence / incentivize the police unions to start the process.
You would need to have the greater organization of LEOs take more pride in NOT having bad cops as part of their organization and that can be done by the folks they pay union fees to. Maybe start making unions responsible for part of civil lawsuit payouts or some short term ‘stick’ to start encouraging change.
What really sucks is this whole issue is a gigantic onion and there’s very little will to delve deeper subsequent layers.
The left wants to be tough on crime for political reasons (not as much lately but the 80s/90s proved this ) and the right wants an elitist police state… and I’m just sitting here hoping I don’t ever have to interact with any of them.
Sounds like the latter, really.
I think you’ve nailed it here! And this below, in language that even a police union rep might go along with.
And this may be the key…
And that goes back to solution method goal that @caryroys has proposed before, and explicitly stated above
Maybe, just maybe, guys fresh off active duty military deployments are NOT top candidates for the police academy…
Edit in strikethrough
Admin note: bickering deleted.
Was up in the clouds and called for backup. Always watching.
I wonder how this guy dissed the police?
Native American Activist Found Dead In Jail Cell After Traffic Fine Arrest
