My point was that the source of the issue doesnt come from the officers on the ground. The officers who are truly bad are only there because of the top down policy issues or only get away with their excesses because the order of the day is to ignore them or even empower them. And those officers who are simply unprepared or unsuited to the job are not simply disinterested in that training they never received.
The officer in question obviously made a serious mistake, an easily avoidable mistake. And one that may amount to criminality.
But iy isn’t as if he woke up that morning and said “I am going to be incapable of dealing with the realities of my job today” while the officers around him cheered it on. And the powers that be protested, And provided everything necessary to avoid it.
He’s absolutely responsible for this incident. But the fact that this keeps happening. And it’s very particular sorts of officers. In very particular circumstances. In particular departments. Shows that this isn’t something that rises organically because cops are naturally and exclusively bad people. That’s a frankly foolish way to look at it.
The difference is entirely in accountability. Soldiers are held accountable for their actions. Police rarely so. We can hem haw about training until the cows come home but training is meaningless when there is little repercussion for breaking the rules.
It’s not, though - the “rules of engagement” are different, too, as it turns out. The set of rules governing soldiers’ behavior relative to a population they’re policing is more substantially more strict than that of US police forces - standard operating procedure for police involves doing things that soldiers aren’t allowed to do. Soldiers are looking at police not breaking the rules and talking about how they wouldn’t be allowed to behave like that in multiple ways. On top of which there’s the issues of no accountability and lack of training for cops, so A) their bad behavior is even worse because their starting point, what they’re allowed to do, is already unacceptable, and B) depending on location, police are given something between literally none to inadequate training, almost all of which is about firearms (so that becomes the means of solving any problem they encounter because they literally have no other toolset to apply). US police receive a fraction of the training (when they receive any), of the police in other developed nations, who tend to have standardized training and at least an attempt at “best practices” (US police too often either ignore or do the opposite of known best practices).
The total lack of accountability is absolutely a fatal flaw all by itself, but even with accountability, US police are still a disaster because the standard to which they’re being held is so low.
I think one of the things people don’t realise about these problems is just how powerful DAs are and just how many of the problems with our justice system sit on that end.
I think you may have misunderstood my point. No matter how involved the training, no matter the rules of engagement, without consequences it means nothing. No one is trained to plant evidence. They do it because doing so has almost no consequence.
I get your point - the lack of accountability is a fatal flaw of US policing. But there are areas that have made some great efforts of holding police accountable - but law enforcement is still completely fucked up there. In such places there may not be (very many) cases of cops deliberately planting evidence, but there are still cases of cops fatally shooting people when it wasn’t necessary because they didn’t know what else to do; there are cases of cops unintentionally framing people by using witness identification techniques known to create high false positives; where cops are routinely engaging in behavior during conflicts that actually escalates the situation; cases of police doing crime suppression programs known to increase criminality, etc. That is, police still routinely do things that get people unnecessarily hurt, killed, falsely implicated, trample civil rights and create interactions that are seen as hostile to certain populations, while actually making crime worse - all because they simply don’t know any better. Even with a lack of accountability, deliberate criminality is still probably more exception than rule - I mean sure, cops do sometimes murder people, but those cases are far outnumbered by cases where cops killed someone out of incompetence.
Plus, when the acceptable behavior for the police is dumb, destructive and counter-productive, then the unacceptable behavior (which goes on because there’s no accountability) is that much worse. Part of training is the establishment of acceptable norms (and when you don’t have any training…). Studies show that training can help alleviate some bigoted, instinctual responses (e.g. Black man->dangerous->pull trigger). If you train cops to do things right, then doing things wrong becomes a conscious choice, not the default behavior that it is for current US law enforcement.
There’s no reason to have the regular DA prosecute cops. That’s basic keeping foxes out of henhouses 101 crap.
There’s too big of a conflict of interest. The DA relies on cops cooperating with them every single day to do their job, so when a cop goes up for indictment, the DA has everything to lose and nothing to gain by prosecuting their coworker.
I can’t believe there’s no special prosecutor setup in every state for doing this work. Someone who doesn’t have massive conflicts of interest.
A large part of why you see cops going before a grand jury. And almost always for the maximum charge (typically murder when we’re talking police shootings).
Is because generally speaking juries. Even those from communities with shit PDs or poor relations with cops. Are pretty loath to send a cop to jail. Juries will often aquit even when they think the guys guilty, if the charge involves any significant jail time. And there’s tremendous pressure, even on above board DAs not to charge in the first place.
So you send it to the grand jury. Go with the maximum charge even if a lesser charge would be more appropriate or more likely to result in actual conviction. Knowing full well the jury will likely not indict, even if it’s clear that a crime was committed. You never do a plea deal that will eliminate or minimize jail time. But remove these guys from the force. And you never jump right to charging the most plausible statute.
It’s a PR fiction. You get to say "hey I tried but no indictment! " And you avoid the double whammy of prosecuting colleagues and undertaking a difficult case that could negatively impact your “numbers” in terms success rate in court.
Do you think that’s equally true for police who sign up to be cops in tiny towns, maybe ones they’ve grown up in even? Not all police are working in major urban areas which I think are a bit more “corrupt” in the way you’re describing. I agree with you, many police and forces and unions are corrupt, in a deep, deep way. But you’re being a bit extremist – especially for a scientist, wink wink – when you describe ALL people who are police in these terms.
You would think looking at the origination location of the call would be, I dunno, pretty high on the list of procedures as to how to deal with this kind of stuff. Guess that’s not always/usually/ever so…?
Then why in this particular situation, did only one cop open fire on this guy? It strikes me that the others who didn’t shoot, maybe realized that wasn’t the best reaction in this situation.
How is a single cop firing while others don’t any more or less a feature of the sort of systemic problems I’m talking about than anything else?
That officer fucked up. The frequency of such fuck ups nationwide is the result of poor policing policy, lack of public funding for whole hosts of things, and lack of accountability. Rather than some innate flaw in all cops everywhere for ever.
I don’t disagree about any of this, however I think the way a person could read your posts is, no individual cops should be blamed for these events, because they are systemic in nature.
I’ve repeatedly said that it’s innacurate to blame all or every cop for these incidents or assume that all or every cop actively seeks them out or approves of them.
But I’ve also repeatedly made reference to bad cops, problem officers. Officers who are unsuited or unprepared for the job. And refered to actions by such officers as out and out criminal.
And this is something I wanted to point out earlier but couldn’t work in. The exact same. To the word statements I’ve made here. In different company. Have seen me accused of smearing cops. Hating cops. Branding all cops as criminal. Or supporting the death of cops.
Exact same ideas.
Because that’s the horse shit. Wedge issue. Talking head on the TV take on the issue. You’re either for cops or your against them. Talking about the situation in detail, releastically. Is either excusing the bad. Or demonising the good. There can be no middle ground.
I think that one of the major factors at the root of the problem is that police have antagonistic relationships with their communities. But it isn’t the only one. A small town sheriff still has a lot of power, and is particularly in a position to lord it over the poorest residents who lack access to influence even in small towns. Race also plays a huge factor. A white person in small town American with a good relationship with their police may get lulled into believing that’s how they treat everyone. If white people could spend a year enduring the treatment POC have to live with all their lives, this country would be a very different place.
My problem is that swatting has been a phenomenon for how many years now? And the police still automatically shoot first without assessing or verifying the situation. The fact that the police are so hackable is further evidence that the police are a mindless killing machine.
Totally agree, but what I’m saying is, there are likely small towns where the local cop/dept. is chill, and it’s all white people, so frankly, in reality, racial power issues aren’t really playing out. Probably the cop in that area didn’t get involved in the dept. to lord over black folks… who aren’t there.
