I wonder if this could be turned into an opportunity for positive change. Imagine if someone organized a concerted effort to fill small city police departments with women and minorities, similar to what happened with all those judicial seats in Harris County, Texas last month.
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I’m starting to agree with people who believe the entire system needs an overhaul. We’ve seen DAs give officers the benefit of the doubt look the other way, only to have it come back to bite the office itself and the taxpayers. However, the officers involved aren’t always punished:
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Or not get into the job at all.
A good friend of mine had $ concerns, and the local PD was offering quite an attractive deal. She applied, only to be rejected because she scored too high on the entrance tests, and she has a degree beyond her undergrad degree. Yup, rejected because she’s too intelligent…
Let that sink in.
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Adding surface diversity to fundamentally oppressive systems does not improve them.
https://psmag.com/social-justice/black-cops-are-just-as-likely-as-whites-to-kill-black-suspects
They’re still cops.
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I think there’s probably a tipping point where increased diversity would actually change the culture rather than forcing every new recruit to adopt the existing racist norms, but I couldn’t tell you exactly where that point lies.
The black women who just swept Harris County’s judiciary are still part of a frequently racist justice system but that doesn’t mean the change won’t bring about any good.
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Real talk; change has to start somewhere.
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Or end up as one of those Good Cops who have unfortunately laid down their lives for public safety. It’s dangerous out there!
I take it you weren’t around for Jim Crow. Or Chicago, pretty much any time. Then there’s New York (ever hear of Serpico?)
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The NYC police dept. was caught favoring people who stopped educating themselves at the high school level, and turning down more qualified applicants who had some college or college degrees.
They have guns. They can do anything they want to you, anytime they want. They have always been loci of corruption, racism, brutality, and oppression (remember the pipeline protest last winter?), and all with obvious impunity. Is it any wonder that people are staying away in droves?
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You misunderstand me. I agree that police work is one of the safer occupations, unless you rock the boat – in which case you may well be found, foully murdered, by some convenient brown fall guy.
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And a pretty key myth. You stick a bunch of reasonable people in a situation where they’re constantly told that everyone is out to deliberately kill them. They’re at war. They have to be prepared to do what’s necessary. Every interaction is a threat to life and limb. They’re gonna get a little jumpy.
And hey look everyone is saying is all these urban types. And liberals. And thugs. And urban thugs. Urban LIBERAL thugs even!
Law enforcement people are being put at risk, but its by lack of training. Shit relations with surrounding communities. A militarized approach to policing. Lack of equipment and training in approaches that work. Pretty much the same shit reformers and BLM are asking for. A lot of the Unions, the ones that aren’t as compromised by the very same corrupt leadership as the rest of it, are asking for all this shit to get fixed. And either willfully ignore or don’t realize that’s what reformers are also asking for.
But they’re being told constantly day to day that the risks are Death Wish style risks from the communities around them. There’s a huge bubble there, and a massive effort to engineer opinions with in it. “Everyone around you is being killed all the time” is the key story line in that. For the politicians and leadership setting policy. The sort of people who like it this way. You don’t need to exclusively recruit people who agree with you. You don’t need mostly sociopaths and white supremacists. If you can keep everyone else scared and stupid. Then your “boys” can do what they like, and everyone else will go along.
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I don’t think numbers are the big change driver for culture. LAPD is about 65% non-hispanic non-white. Same for Cincinnati, and neither department is renowned for their racially sensitive forward thinking policies. http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/police-department-officer-demographics-minority-representation.html
Or, s a halfway introduction to that, stop police patrols. Firefighters don’t drive around town looking for fires to put out. EMTs don’t drive around looking for people to take to the hospital. You call 911 when you need them.
We could apply that same logic to cops, and it would dramatically reduce their opportunities for malfeasance and abuse of power.
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