You have just expressed my intention better than I have. I have been reacting to these accusations of being police, while trying to say they are part of society. I think it is a larger problem than the police. I think it will take a long time to solve.
This seems like quite an unwarranted assumption. And you know what they say about assumptions.
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Given the totality of their history, i.e., brutality (ofttimes gleeful); corruption; and racism, I wouldn’t take that job for any amount of money. On those points I just wouldn’t qualify. And besides, as far as their acceptable intelligence limit, I would be a very poor fit.
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So you didn’t read the Brookings Institute piece. You might want to do that before continuing.
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Why is it that posters like this think they’re successfully stringing us along, when in fact we’re using them as a foil to educate the many thousands of people who read BB every day but never post? Those people can and will learn something from this thread, even if the poster won’t.
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I am happy to be that foil. I hope that I encouraged everyone to express an opinion. I think my opinion is much closer in line to yours than you think. We have a system where Prosecutors are elected on the promise of convicting criminals. The police are charged with catching criminals. The incentives are to catch and convict. Yet, we are all part of this society. We would like to feel safe from the police and our neighbor with a gun. True, the Justice system is adversarial putting those with the least resources at the most peril. Can there be checks and balances? What would they be?
But, I still emphasize the we, the us… those who live in this society.
My initial motivation to post was watching a police officer arrest a naked oiled white man while saying,” don’t resist”. My reaction was, what is the urgency? Why not wait and call for back up? I saw the police trying to get in charge of a situation, dominate, intimidate. Yet, police are people. Maybe, undereducated etc. I tend to think that it is the role they are asked to play.
What else has to change?
That’s a different thread. This is the “police murdered a guy while busting into the wrong house” thread.
I think you’ve at least partially answered your own questions here. Change the incentives and you change the behavior. What if police were incentivized to protect people. What if there was accountability for misconduct? What if the entire system was motivated to protect residents of their jurisdiction?
But those are long-term goals. What we can do in the short term is to demilitarize policing and scale back what police are asked to do to just what they are actually trained to do - be a violent response to a violent emergency - and stop distracting them with things they are shitty at, like solving crimes, resolving domestic disputes, helping people in mental health crisis, doing animal control, etc. Instead, lets take the bulk of the funding that currently goes to police and use it to fund departments that specialize in those things.
If that sounds good, well, that’s what defunding the police means.
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Including any from yourself.
Yeah, it makes an ASS out of U in front of ME.
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More fish, fewer rhetorical questions?
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Here’s an example where police incompetence intersects with firearm ubiquity to enable tragedy:
Crossposting on Defund the Police and Responsible Gun Owners.
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I agree with all those things. What an enormous challenge. Will we be able to muster enough people to our side to make it happen. What will also have to change? I think guns are the most important and most difficult. The adversarial justice system that is prejudiced against the poor. Politicians win elections on combating crime. Democrats enact legislation for mandatory minimum sentences; because, they are reacting against accusations of being soft on crime. And, we live in a violent society with access to guns.
I imagine being a social service worker being greeted at the door and shot because the wife thought, the only person knocking at the door is the one that wants to shoot us.
Okay, social workers make mistakes too.
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Some states have such a poor public defender system, that problem may actually gain some progress through sheer desperation. In Oregon there is such a shortfall of public defenders that criminal trials are being dropped just because the defendent has a right to trial that isn’t half a decade from starting. I expect the state to simply make it a requirement for every licensed attorney to have to rotate through the PD’s office, just to allow the system to keep moving.
Unlikely. Social workers and crisis managers are trained in de-escalation and, unlike cops, need to be able to de-escalate because they are unarmed. Cops don’t de-escalate even when they are trained to because they carry a lethal weapon on the job and practice putting holes in people.
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Social workers/crisis workers would de-escalate, there would be little alternative, training or not.
Yes, public defenders or the non-profit alternatives in NYC are mostly recent grads and not from NYU or Columbia.
I will say, I work for a non-profit. I visit some of the worst neighborhoods and housing. We have had guns put in our faces. People have been shot in front of us.
I don’t know what to say. The Police are a last recourse, but they are a recourse. We de-escalate all that we can.
Yes, we would all like them to get out of their cars and talk to people. It is more often that they sit on a corner.
The same stuff goes on.
The other week, I saw a guy stripped naked and beat. He was saying, I gave him the money. The police pulled up and left ten minutes later.
Did anyone say anything? No, we don’t want to get shot. Who would you tell? The police won’t do anything for you. Yet, you need protection, safety.
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On-the-job training is still training.
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Do you ever imagine what it would be like to be a new social worker?
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Yes. I know that I am utterly unsuited to the role, and it would be a bad experience for everyone involved.
If I wanted to talk to people, I wouldn’t have gone into IT. Just like with anything in medicine, from hospital volunteer up. It is better people than me who are suited to those essential careers, and they don’t get the recognition they deserve for it.
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I love that you said that. I am not suited to the job. I have a hard time imagining myself in those positions.
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