Policing police is far easier than policing bad guys because, at a minimum, you know where the cops work and how much they’re paid.
Every jurisdiction that has a PD (or sherriff or whatever) also has a prosecutor’s office. Even so, every PD operates within the purview of states’ DAs offices. Simply put, there’s no shortage of resources & expertise available - now - to reign in, retire or jail shitty cops and their shitty bosses. The only thing lacking is the will.
Imagine, if you will, how much a small town could recoup in budgetary funds by confiscating the taxpayer subsidized slushfund that is police retirement funds (as a 1st step in prosecuting shitty cops).
I have no idea why there has been no bill introduced that states that if the only charge they can make stick is “resisting arrest” then that automatcially makes it a false arrest. Or at least drops the charge, as clearly your resistance was fully justified.
What would you rather see in our driveway; A) the mailman bringing something for you or, B) a cop car coming to get you?
The mailman is a higher caste in my book.
No argument about reducing the number of guns. I’m sure the US police shoot first and cover up afterwards because they have an expectation that everyone is armed and dangerous. [But why not be even more radical] (The case for disarming America’s police force) as you disarm the public? Policing by consent with armed backup in reserve works nicely for the UK, NZ, Ireland and Norway. And the number of people (and dogs) shot for no reason in those countries is reassuringly low.
It’s way more dangerous to be an EMT or a Firefighter than a cop anyway.
If that was the case, they’d be shooting just as many white folks as black folks. They aren’t.
US police mostly seem capable of acting no worse than the police forces in other Western countries…so long as the subject is white. They only turn into hair-triggered homicidal cowards when there are black and brown people around.
It’s very strange that the cops rolled up on him, got out, then shot him 2 seconds later. That only makes sense in the context of the cops never intending to de-escalate in the first place, going straight for lethal force as a first result.
Then there’s that cop in the Salon video, where he outright says “I’m not coming near you until you put your gun down. I’m not going to die today because you got a little mad.”
Sort of. The police shooting death rate in the USA is higher for blacks than whites. In total numerical terms they shoot nearly twice as many white people as black (according to The Guardian’s 2015 numbers at any rate. Which given that the US doesn’t even bother collecting the data properly is probably the best source). The upshot being, suppose we’re both in the USA and you happen to be black and the police roll up next to us; you’re more likely to get shot than lily white me. But being white isn’t any guarantee of safety either.
I’m just glad to live somewhere with many less guns and an unarmed constabulary who police by consent. If that was the case in the US, I’m sure that far fewer black people would be shot by police.
