Body cams on police and actual consequences for misconduct. Some of the videos of people (of all colors) being unlawfully murdered have led to absolutely zero consequence for those responsible. Those with authority granted by the public should have HIGHER accountability and more severe consequences, not be able to subvert them altogether. It's not difficult to imagine the level of misconduct that is likely occurring in the cases where no video evidence is even available.
And while the racial component of police shootings has been portrayed in a way which differs sharply from the actual data on race/crime/police lethal force, there IS still some element of uncertainty in the exact figures. The fact that there is any uncertainty at all in police killings being reported correctly is absolutely INSANE to me. This is not an area where we can have sloppy data. If a government agent is responsible for the death of a citizen, it is unacceptable that we not have a very clear record of all surrounding circumstance.
The price for this should be massive. Doing this once or twice corrupts the justice system and destroys public trust in police. This invites gangs to become the law and order. Look how that’s worked out in Chicago.
Holding public office is a privilege that rightly should come with a different threshold of privacy/transparency.
And yes, no nation is taking the issue of police conduct seriously if it's not even recording wrongful death consistently and reliably.
Some colleagues ran a trial on body cameras and found improved metrics, particularly around stop-and-search. The success rate of stop and search increased, officers reported feeling safer. They also noted an increase in allegations but I don't think dug into that as much as they wanted to (it may be an area where the behaviour feedback loop was slow enough to need a longer study duration).
I agree with you in an ideal world. These concepts are obvious. Unfortunately, we don't see this implemented so I'm pretty sure that it isn't our timeline.
The police are not here to protect you, but to ensure the functioning of society. This isn't pessimism; it's a fact of legal precedent - they have no obligation to protect any citizen [0].
Justice only happens when the crime unpunished would lead to undesirable destabilization of society. Sexual harassment was rampant in Hollywood for decades, only now that it threatens stability does it receive attention.
Our ideals of justice and freedom only but tools and illusions to keep the gears of society turning.
I would add Education to the forefront of accountability. Police officer careers require no more education than a high school diploma/GED and the police academy, which is roughly 27 weeks. Imagine if being a police officer meant having a deep understanding of ethics, psychology (not just tactics) and law.
Stop accepting any physically fit hothead off the street because they can be trained into the role. Lastly, as a citizen, be willing to pay more in taxes knowing that the person who pulled you over cares, is qualified, and will not shoot you and try to cover it up.
> It is not just Baltimore cops. It is cops. They will shoot you in the face in front of your infant daughter. They will choke you to sleep for selling cigarettes.
The article is about people literally trying to get away with murder. The last two sentences are references to well-documented cases of police officers killing non-dangerous citizens. There's no reason to be polite about this.
> This is the tone and conclusion of this "article"
Why on earth did you put "article" in quotes. Are you questioning whether it is, in fact, an article? Because that seems quite self-evident.
You might disagree with it but be assured TFA is, in fact, an article and putting the word in quotes just makes it look like you don't know what quotes are for. Hint: quoting.
When some cops are corrupt, does it matter that the rest might be decent? An individual police officer represents the entire force. They wear the colours and the badge as a representative of the whole establishment.
Would you call the police if you knew there were such troubling corruption issues? It would definitely make me think twice - you just don't know which officer will turn up.
Zero tolerance is the only way forwards when it comes to this, otherwise the few destroy trust for the masses.
At this point I can't imagine the local community, particularly minorities, have any trust in the authorities.
Isn't that failure, why not train a new police force with new uniforms and then phase out the old?
I think the Cosmological Principle can be applied to these situations. The CP roughly states that when we observe the Universe we are seeing a representative part. We are not living in some "special place." Applied here (and in other situations where groups of people act for good or for bad), it would mean that the bad behavior is not because the police are inherently any worse than anybody else, but rather the evolution of the situation led them to this behavior, and, importantly, would lead most sets of people to this behavior.
So replacing the actors would either need to be done periodically, or would have to be done with an entirely new set of rules.
This is also my bias for things like the banking crisis. When something like that happens, it's too easy to blame something like greed. But that's missing the point. If you don't change the rules or some other aspect of the game, you are going to get the same situation again.
Since the Freddie Gray case in 2015 and the subsequent riots, Baltimore and its police force have undergone significant reforms. The murder rate is up 50% since then for the third year in a row.
Dropping the hammer on police may sound like it would be satisfying, but if I lived in a place where the community suddenly decided to cast the whole police force as villains, I'd move my family out for fear of the spike in crime that will certainly result. I can't think of a city in the US that hasn't endured a murder wave once the vilification of police became fashionable.
This isn't a problem with cops, or blacks, or whites, or anything like that. This is a problem with the USA. In some countries the entire police force of the country combined uses fewer bullets per year than the average police officer in the States. The homicide rates can be 40 times smaller in European countries than there. There's just something fundamentally wrong with that country and it would be a mistake to attribute it to something simple like race relations.
It's insane seeing videos of routine traffic stops in the US where both officers leap from their vehicle with guns drawn, ready to escalate the situation at the slightest provocation.
Future, more civilized, societies will one day study the ruins of America with bafflement. Like, what were they thinking? Was this what liberty was to them?
The problem goes way beyond the US borders, and is a clear sign of corruption among the ruling class.
When a cop is acquitted for murdering some innocent thanks to some intervention form above, he could become in the future a pawn of a private army for whoever was helping him/her from above.
Suppose you're a high profile politician who needs some dirty job to be done, who would you trust more, some thugs recruited around or ex cops who don't serve jail time because of you?
I'm glad the cops in Toronto are paid extremely well. A Constable can earn $90k. There's less likelihood of a cop going to such extents if they don't need to. Of course that's not the only reason, but is likely part of the solution.
Police in big cities get paid well to. Its the FOP union. Cops in my mid sized city make over $100K after 10 years. That's with full health and pension.
I always suspect that a big part of the problem with the US police system is that it's made up of loads of regional forces. In countries with national forces, internal investigations are easier; just bring in people from the other side of the country, who have no particular loyalty to the people they're investigating.
In this particular case, it appears that some of the wrongdoing involved a lieutenant in Internal Affairs. So yes, they do have internal investigations departments.
Ignoring the content of the article, why are so many articles on sites like these written so "weird"? There is lots of text and it seems there is very little actual content.
It is like only a few lines actually have something to say, but the rest is just filler content. It is like someone wrote an article of a few lines, and someone else just extended it with random sentences to fill a page.
To make matters worse, usually the page is also polluted with advertisements and referencing articles in between paragraphs.
Because the article is not a primary source, and it’s published on a website that rarely if ever “breaks” a story. The only way for the site to stay in business is to publish glorified rewordings of whatever primary source published a set of facts today. The further you get from the primary source, the more “filler” content is required to justify yet another piece about the same subject.
Are you talking about this specific article? I thought it was unusually factually dense for a blog site, since it is in effect a tl;dr of another, very meaty story.
Although this is a topic that is easy to get angry about, I can't honestly trust anything that I read from theroot.com since I have seen many articles that are just racially charged and completely biased. Just a few days ago, they posted something about the ousting of London Breed here in SF (https://www.theroot.com/london-breed-had-a-clean-shot-at-bec...). The problem with that article, is that it blames the ousting purely on racial issues. I feel neutral against London Breed, but I have several SF teacher friends that straight out don't like her. Why? Not because of the color of her skin, but because of some policies that she was supporting. Long story short, the teachers union had a deal with the city to finally get a super crappy raise amount. Something was better than nothing (I still think they are completely underpaid), but to add insult to injury, the raise was dependent on a new property tax to be passed. Since the new property tax is not popular for various valid reasons, London Breed had the bright idea to tell the teachers that "if they wanted the raise", they "had better go out and campaign". This ended up being completely unpopular with the teachers. Stuff like this is IMHO why she lost support. Of course, it is easier to tell a story that she got ousted because she is a woman of color that got knocked out by the rich white man... zero mention of any of these issues. That to me is theroot.com, so I can't take it seriously. Just another Fox News.
Tone aside, most of this is from the transcripts of an on-going court case. And although some of the witnesses are highly dubious, most of these accounts have come from police officers who are testifying. So yeah, they might be lying under oath but I'm not sure that helps your point much.
I think you meant to say teachers. Cops in my town get over $100K after 10 years with full health an pension. My neighbor cops down the street put their kids in private school. The FOP is a powerful union.
Hackers released a bunch of FOP/city contracts a few years ago across the country.
So basically the system is built so that officers can steal from suspects if the money they have is acquired through illegal means. Is there a racial subtext here? Obviously this could not continue unless a significant portion of the police community was fine with it. What's the common police officers pay in Baltimore? How long are they trained? Are they trained professionals (lots of training) or just thugs with guns (very little training)?
I have no experience in this field but I would guess they have a low pay (financial incentive) and very little training (leading to lack of professionalism). Is it so?
[+] [-] ralusek|8 years ago|reply
And while the racial component of police shootings has been portrayed in a way which differs sharply from the actual data on race/crime/police lethal force, there IS still some element of uncertainty in the exact figures. The fact that there is any uncertainty at all in police killings being reported correctly is absolutely INSANE to me. This is not an area where we can have sloppy data. If a government agent is responsible for the death of a citizen, it is unacceptable that we not have a very clear record of all surrounding circumstance.
[+] [-] mathattack|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richmarr|8 years ago|reply
Holding public office is a privilege that rightly should come with a different threshold of privacy/transparency.
And yes, no nation is taking the issue of police conduct seriously if it's not even recording wrongful death consistently and reliably.
Some colleagues ran a trial on body cameras and found improved metrics, particularly around stop-and-search. The success rate of stop and search increased, officers reported feeling safer. They also noted an increase in allegations but I don't think dug into that as much as they wanted to (it may be an area where the behaviour feedback loop was slow enough to need a longer study duration).
http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/trial-results/measuring...
[+] [-] abandonliberty|8 years ago|reply
The police are not here to protect you, but to ensure the functioning of society. This isn't pessimism; it's a fact of legal precedent - they have no obligation to protect any citizen [0].
Justice only happens when the crime unpunished would lead to undesirable destabilization of society. Sexual harassment was rampant in Hollywood for decades, only now that it threatens stability does it receive attention.
Our ideals of justice and freedom only but tools and illusions to keep the gears of society turning.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
[+] [-] DanBC|8 years ago|reply
Can you show me the data set that breaks down police killings by race of the killed person please?
Or can you even point me to the dataset that just lists all police killings?
[+] [-] alexwilde|8 years ago|reply
Stop accepting any physically fit hothead off the street because they can be trained into the role. Lastly, as a citizen, be willing to pay more in taxes knowing that the person who pulled you over cares, is qualified, and will not shoot you and try to cover it up.
[+] [-] ataturk|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] minxomat|8 years ago|reply
This is the tone and conclusion of this article. If you want the actual story, read the original report here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-gun...
[+] [-] pornel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sho|8 years ago|reply
Why on earth did you put "article" in quotes. Are you questioning whether it is, in fact, an article? Because that seems quite self-evident.
You might disagree with it but be assured TFA is, in fact, an article and putting the word in quotes just makes it look like you don't know what quotes are for. Hint: quoting.
[+] [-] Vosporos|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] talldan|8 years ago|reply
When some cops are corrupt, does it matter that the rest might be decent? An individual police officer represents the entire force. They wear the colours and the badge as a representative of the whole establishment.
Would you call the police if you knew there were such troubling corruption issues? It would definitely make me think twice - you just don't know which officer will turn up.
Zero tolerance is the only way forwards when it comes to this, otherwise the few destroy trust for the masses.
[+] [-] jopsen|8 years ago|reply
At this point I can't imagine the local community, particularly minorities, have any trust in the authorities. Isn't that failure, why not train a new police force with new uniforms and then phase out the old?
[+] [-] arethuza|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Service_of_Northern_Ire...
[+] [-] dhimes|8 years ago|reply
So replacing the actors would either need to be done periodically, or would have to be done with an entirely new set of rules.
This is also my bias for things like the banking crisis. When something like that happens, it's too easy to blame something like greed. But that's missing the point. If you don't change the rules or some other aspect of the game, you are going to get the same situation again.
[+] [-] SaintGhurka|8 years ago|reply
Dropping the hammer on police may sound like it would be satisfying, but if I lived in a place where the community suddenly decided to cast the whole police force as villains, I'd move my family out for fear of the spike in crime that will certainly result. I can't think of a city in the US that hasn't endured a murder wave once the vilification of police became fashionable.
[+] [-] gk1|8 years ago|reply
Where are you going to get the people and money for a “new police force”? BPD is already severely understaffed.
[+] [-] bedhead|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nukeop|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikepurvis|8 years ago|reply
Future, more civilized, societies will one day study the ruins of America with bafflement. Like, what were they thinking? Was this what liberty was to them?
[+] [-] mclightning|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daedlanth|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squarefoot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitlax|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jagtesh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Clubber|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thriftwy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucozade|8 years ago|reply
See Day 2 of [0].
[0] http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-gun...
[+] [-] andrewjl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NiklasMort|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sheraz|8 years ago|reply
I can cast sweden in a similar light. Or even Disneys magic kingdom.
[+] [-] kelvin0|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wallace_f|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jopsen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Judgmentality|8 years ago|reply
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/09/world/fg-autopsy9
[+] [-] cafard|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobyhinloopen|8 years ago|reply
It is like only a few lines actually have something to say, but the rest is just filler content. It is like someone wrote an article of a few lines, and someone else just extended it with random sentences to fill a page.
To make matters worse, usually the page is also polluted with advertisements and referencing articles in between paragraphs.
[+] [-] chatmasta|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaroth|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rburhum|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epmaybe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jotra7|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] RickJWagner|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] smcl|8 years ago|reply
Or are you saying that they're excused from behaviour like this because they have a hard job?
[+] [-] lucozade|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Clubber|8 years ago|reply
Hackers released a bunch of FOP/city contracts a few years ago across the country.
[+] [-] corecoder|8 years ago|reply
They also put other people's lives on the line every day.
[+] [-] fsloth|8 years ago|reply
I have no experience in this field but I would guess they have a low pay (financial incentive) and very little training (leading to lack of professionalism). Is it so?