| There are also tons of cops killed every year but they keep coming to work each day. What happened to these people is absolutely terrible and there's no excuse for the killing of George Floyd but visit ODMP.org once in a while and be surprised at the number of LEO who die each year in the line of duty. Somehow the media forgets to report on that. |
It doesn't matter. In this country, police aren't supposed to be judge, jury, and executioner. And the death penalty was abolished in Minnesota in 1911. |
Nice spin on facts. Cops can’t shoot because he might have a gun. I’m a cop and it’s part of every cop training. You can’t shoot somebody unless the are committing a felony and trying to flee. Not only that, you can’t even chase them. You can’t shoot because he might have a gun. |
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I wish he hadn’t tried to flee. That is never smart.
That said, unless a suspect is known to be armed and dangerous, they shouldn’t even be engaging in high speed chases. Go find him later. As to the senior officer who pulled her gun instead of her taser? Unconscionable. Maybe she has middle aged/menopausal brain fog, but she isn’t fit to carry a deadly weapon anymore. After her due process she needs to be barred from law enforcement forever. And I hope she is haunted by this - she certainly sounded distressed after she realized she shot him, so I hope that means she has a conscience. Overall I’m sick and tired of this police violence. Cops are the reason I quit practicing criminal law. What I saw in my years as a prosecutor was soulcrushing, and I did my best to balance the scales by dropping charges or going light in cases where I saw dashcam video of cops being awful. Didn’t read the whole thread so don’t know if anyone mentioned the Lt. in Virginia who was assaulted by cops over a minor traffic infraction stop (and I don’t even think they had PC to stop him), but I’ve seen that kind of rageful aggressive policing on dashcam video way too many times. We have got to weed out these monsters. We have got to hold all the so-called good cops who don’t call out the bad ones accountable too. These people have a license to use deadly force, they need to be above reproach. |
What constitutes a ton in your mind? Police aren’t even in the top ten of deadly professions in this country, and half of the cops who die are killed in motor vehicle accidents, not at the hands of suspects. |
Holy crap. You think lethal force is A-ok because someone could be doing something. Jesus f-ing Christ. The real problem here is that policing attracts the lowest quality people. The idiots, the bullies, the authoritarians. And the boot lickers that support them. |
| Now we all know how different this would have played it if it were, God forbid, my white daughter. My heart goes out to his Mom, his girlfriend, his CHILD. The police force here in US needs to learn a gun isn’t the FIRST response. |
There are like 50 cops killed each year by gunfire and they get massive local media coverage. |
So how do departments attract higher quality people? Because I'm sure the way they are seen/treated by then general public isn't doing much to convince "high quality people" they should go into law enforcement. |
There are fewer LEOs killed in the line of duty every year than there are people in mental health crisis killed by cops. |
| The dash cam footage is out. It’s bad. She thought she had a taser. |
College education Mental health tests Better pay Screen for racism Security clearance Locally stop hiring dudes from him f@ck Pennsylvania who never saw a black person except on TV. |
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Screen for racism
Mental health MAGA |
In a great many other countries it isn’t possible to become a police officer right out of high school with just a short police academy course - varies by jurisdiction but can be as short as a few weeks. A few weeks’ training to go out and have a license to use deadly force. Many countries require a university degree and YEARS of specialized police training, training that isn’t focused merely on how to use the weapons and how to apprehend suspects, but on the myriad of social issues that LEOs encounter in their work. No, not to make them into social workers - to help them mature and be capable of treating citizens from a range of backgrounds and experiences with respect and compassion. To have the emotional capability to DEESCALATE instead of always being trigger happy control freak aggressive etc. Education alone won’t do it, leadership must foster the right kind of environment in the ranks of LEOs and must encourage good cops to report bad cops. One of the biggest obstacles to getting rid of bad cops are PBAs and those need reform as well as police unions. Finally, I want to make this point: while I absolutely agree that people of color are abused by police disproportionately, there is also plenty of police abuse of white people too. I have worked in the system in two states that are overwhelmingly white - Maine and Montana - and I have seen egregious behavior directed at many, many white suspects. Certainly some police are motivated by white supremacy leanings (it is well known that both the military and the police have long been infiltrated by members of white supremacy organizations, and that many others are sympathetic to those views but don’t join themselves); however, many of these cops are just very authoritarian, aggressive, bullying bastards who get off on any opportunity to F with people. I have worked with them, I know. It is very common in cop culture. And it’s why there is such a high rate of domestic violence in the profession - lots of cops get off on hurting their spouses and children, too. And while we focus in these conversations almost exclusively on the street cops who are now being caught on cell and body cam video being abusive, please be reminded that a large number of people who go into corrections at every level - from city jail to juvenile hall to state and federal prisons - also share these traits. |
I won't argue with mental health screening and better pay. Derek Chauvin has a college education. How does one "screen for racism?" What kind of "security clearance?" Your last statement is just absurd. None of the officers involved in the recent shootings match that description. |