Police Brutality: Not Just for America Anymore

I'm going to say I tend to be one of the most vocal supporters of the relatively hands off approach of British policing but they don't always get it right.

This is wrong on so many levels.

As @matthunter rightly points out isolating members of a crowd then putting them in confined spaces with others they would otherwise have likely not encountered is dubious to say the least.

Make that doubly so when the vigil was a peaceful memorial by women, for women, for a woman who had been killed by a police officer. Even if a case could be made for the legality of the arrests the whole approach was not only counter productive but completely tone deaf.

My hope is that at the very least charges will be dropped against the "protesters" and a public apology will be made. Better still a full internal review.

Policing should never be the cause of violence.

Not to mention that they were kind of rough in the way they went about it. (For British police, that is. For American police, that way of dealing with the situation would just be "business as usual" in too many places.)

Too many American police are trained only to escalate. The idea of "de-escalation" either isn't taught or runs counter to their macho sensibilities.

FIFY

Do you know any cops? I do and they aren't on a "macho trip". And what about female cops, are they on a macho trip too?

I know several. Two are family members. But, unlike you, I don't judge an entire group of people as being all the same.

Nothing Fash about that.
Nope, nope, nope

Excessive noise? Damn maybe they do have silent firecrackers in England. So how do they determine "excessive noise"? Do they run around with decibel meters or what?

Shhhhh

"Not all, not all, not all..."

Yes, I know cops. I know good people who are cops. That does not in any way change the fact that policing in this country -- and apparently in others too -- has major, major problems.

Ask my mixed friend who got a gun pulled on her by a lady cop.

This was a chick who when I knew her tried to downplay the fact that she was black at every opportunity when we served together. She was basically if Candace Owens and Carlton Banks had a baby...that level of ignorance.

She sure has woken the fuck up this year.

No. And I do not wish to. The one time a friend brought a friend to my house and introduced him to me and told me he was a cop, I asked both to leave. The number of stories regarding "bad cops" far outweigh any stories I've heard of "good cops". I have never had a good experience with a cop. But, then, I've never had a good experience with school age hall monitors, either when I was a child. and, yes, I equate any cop as an overgrown hall monitor.

Does that make me judgmental and ignorant? Who cares. I do not wish to know any cops on a personal basis. Period.

Absolutely, there are systemic problems across a score of issues, including racism, over-criminalization, over-incarceration, the corporate slave prisoner complex, the drug war, the militarization of the police, all of these things are intertwined. The system is broken, and violent, and whether the original intent was there now operates for profit and exploitation. Most of this can be addressed to legislatures writing bad laws, and the inevitable unexpected but all too forseeable consequences of those laws. It's crushing our people of color and it has to be stopped.

But I have far too many liberal friends that go to the extreme of ACAB - All Cops are Bad. Again, stupid messaging that's easily disputed, because they are looking for a pithy saying that sums up the above, and in of itself is transformed because of the messaging - they have convinced themselves that the messaging is true, and if you want to be police, you are a bad person.

Which, of course, is insane.

If you have 187 bad cops at a precinct and 1301 who protect them, you have 1488 bad cops

Or to paraphrase from something I saw about #notallmen : I know it's not all cops, but I don't know WHICH cops will be good until it's too late.

Ya might wanna go with basic math & statistics. In 2011 for example there were just under 63 million encounters between police and civilians. I think you'll be okay, I really do.

The DOJ’s Policing Statistics Don’t Lie | National Review

Tell us again: What's the purpose of police? To protect and serve? Or to stalk women and kneel on suspects' necks?

Take your time.

Overly simplistic. The people that encounter bad cops certainly know the difference. Rarely do the ones that do their job but don't control the politics get mentioned. I don't blame a patrol officer for what IA, the police union or the DA's office does. He has very little control over that.

And I'm not particularly pro-cop. But we see ones like Eugene Goodman, clearly there were major issues with bad cops in the capitol police on 1/6, but I won't say he's a bad cop - and really what we mean by that is a bad person - because he couldn't overcome the biases of his leadership. He did good that day.

I don't disagree that the 'blue line' needs to be changed, and being afraid to speak up because of retaliation absolutely needs to be addressed. But that doesn't mean that any one officer doesn't go out and try to do good on a regular basis. The system is bad, and needs to be changed desparately. That doesn't mean every cop is bad.

And how is that different than the white woman that grasps her purse a little tighter when the black teenagers in hoodies walk by?

They are more likely to mug her, as much as most of us don't want to admit that.

Ask my mom. Happened to her.

My take away though is this - my mom was mugged by black teenagers. I was attacked by a black gang for walking through the wrong neighborhood in DC.

My mom reacted by being fearful of black people the rest of her life. Yes, she was clearly a racist.

I just blame those particular people on that particular day.

You can take steps to protect yourself without going the extra mile and saying 'All X are bad.' That's prejudice.

And on the other side... Let's take a look at this one passage of that piece:
Of the 40 million Americans (16.9 percent) who had a face-to-face encounter with law enforcement in 2008, only 1.4 percent reported having force threatened or used against them. Three years earlier, the number was 1.6 percent, and in 2002 it was 1.5 percent. As a percentage of the population, averaged from 2002 to 2008, blacks (3.7 percent) have been slightly more likely than whites (1.2 percent) and Hispanics (2.2 percent), but the rates for each racial group have remained approximately flat.

Notice it says the percentage of population blacks are 'slightly more likely' to have force used against them.

But that's not what that number says - it says that blacks are 3 times more likely to have force used against them than whites. That's a HUGE disparity, why the news is filled with violent images of police brutalizing POC, and why BLM exists. While not all cops are racist, there are a very disturbing number of racist cops.

And that doesn't even address the enormous overcriminalization of the US with the drug war, the fact we have an exploitive penal system, or the fact we have more people in our prison system both in total number and per capita than any other country on Earth. It's not just the danger we see with our militarized police to life and limb, it's also the fact that our laws are so punitive and harsh and getting put into the penal system has huge negatigve impacts on virtually all other facets of life once released. Let alone the fact that we then often make it impossible for these people to vote when they've 'paid their debt to society'.

Cheap prison labor and disenfranchisement are the norm in a great many places, particularly in the South, and while the laws might not have been originally intended explicitly for that, that's absolutely what they've become.

The system IS bad, and needs change.

And while 'defund the police' is a bad slogan, what they mean by that is the right tack as we've seen in many other countries. De-militarize the police, and spread their current functions out across more useful fields, like having specialized mental health response units that are better trained and less likely to have tragic outcomes.

We've seen a LOT of unintended consequences. It's easy for a legislature to use the percieved hero status of cops in many communities (and that's most often bullshit too) to lobby for expanded police powers when what they actually should be doing is creating better services that shouldn't fall under the police AEGIS - it's just easier to get that legislation passed because conservatives want police but don't want to fund other things.

The difference being people can quit being cops. I can't quit being black, short of having whatever work done on me that Michael Jackson did

Good for you.

Anyway, all cops are bastards that form a Human Centipede of racism and authoritarianism that trickles down from the heads and enforced by the middle management of the precincts, thank u for attending this Ted Talk.

Wow, sounds like Brexit took a turn for the worse.

Sure.

Why should they have to?

True, so people shouldn't be cops. That's reasonable.

Not particularly.

Yep. Absolute piece of human trash, this guy.



Or the guy that got shot in the face protecting a high school basketball game last month.

They aren't all heroes, hell most of them aren't, but they aren't all villains either.

When you start saying 'all' just about anything having to do with people, you are generally full of shit. People are too complicated for that nonsense.

To spare me the hassle of corpse disposal.

The black cop in question was also wearing Thin Blue Line masks six months earlier. He did one good deed once and it was more than his white co-workers and leadership did in that situation.

This is a conversation black folks are having in our own circles about how involved, if at all, we should be in a system that is entrenched in white supremacy. You can't deny that it is just because a few of the "good ones" get in.

I have a cop uncle and I can tell you nearly all of them regardless of race, were bullies and wife abusers. One of them had a stroke and the wife took the chance to get outta the marriage ASAP. At least two of them were creeps that stalked my mom or popped up unannounced at random times. My uncle was a "good" one in that he only ignored his chdren after his wife died and got engaged to some chickenheads four months after she kicked in and blew through their money from the wrongful death suit and didn't beat them.

But I do wanna ask something because my unfortunate long memory of WF shit is way too long: I seem to remember a conversation about your cancer and the medical abuse you experienced and I made a comment saying that most doctors are well meaning. You replied with a long list of bungles including among other things, how there was a do not feed order meant for another patient that they would not fix for three full days. I remember the last line of that post being, and I quote verbatim, "Dont defend doctors to me."

I bring that up because that's probably the best analogy I can use to describe where marginalized people--not just black folks, but Latinxs, Native Americans, the queer community but largely trans women and abuse victims who call police among others--are at with being told "Don't paint all of them as bad UwU " When all of us have had bad experiences that transcend along lines of class, education, and how well we've assisted into white culture in other ways....it's an epidemic. And I know after your experience with cancer that you don't trust doctors on their word after they brushed you off and treated your death as a foregone conclusion. Nor should you.

I'm just asking that people understand where we're coming from.

Don't defend cops to me.

Yeah, I know, he's a comic. But he's right.

Some of his white coworkers did just fine - one of them died defending the building. But Goodman is a bad guy because he wore a pro-his own profession mask. Again, seems reasonable. But then, I guess your point later on is I shouldn't expect you to be reasonable on this issue.

I've already stated that the system is indeed bad and needs to be drastically overhauled. But we still need good people to be police to mitigate it as best they can until the laws get changed - and yes, some good ones are already in, of all races and backgrounds.

And the ones who are good husbands and wives? Again, you are defending the statement that they are ALL bad, by definition. I too have law enforcement in my family - from the sound of it quite a few more than you. Some of them are crap, some of them are great people. They all likely serve in a broken system that needs drastic change. Even that is not a consistent, because the laws are so varied from state to county to city to town.

I don't remember that particular interaction, likely due to all the botched chemo, but sounds like something I would say while I was in the middle of what constituted direct and personal abuse.

Outside of that perspective of course I understand there are good and bad doctors, and the fact that I got a series of bad ones that literally came close to killing me unnecessarily colored my interactions with them while it was going on. Guess what? They are still making mistakes and killing people - and at a far, far higher number than bad cops.

That's not animus, that's just being aware of the stats. 1200 dead at the hands of the police a year, even if every single one of those was unjustified (and they aren't) that's dwarfed by the 250,000 medical malpractice deaths in the US - one finding showing that was almost 10% of all deaths per year in the US.

And I can want both things addressed so fewer people suffer and die.

I don't dispute there are enormous problems that need to be resolved in the criminal justice system, and that some officers are absolutely, objectively evil people and have no business being in a position of authority.

But some of them are trying to do the right thing, and chose the job because they believed they could do good. If you are personally subject to abuse because of the bad ones, my sincerest sympathies and I can understand that perspective. Hell, I can understand it due to the 'epidemic' you speak of, and I agree, there are wide-ranging and systemic problems.

But just like when I was dying at the hands of careless and callous doctors, that doesn't change the reality, even if in that moment with my perspective I couldn't see it.

Because we still have a systemic violence problem in our society, and like it or not, sometimes we need those officers to protect the public.

America is broken in a lot of ways. If we drive out the good people who want to serve, you are only going to be left with the ones that go into the job for the wrong reasons.

Because at the end of the day these are people too. Hell, do you think Elwood is bad? Seems like a pretty upright guy to me, even if I don't always agree with him.

I understand you have rage against the system. I guess what I'm asking is you remember that the system includes people, too, not just faceless entities.

No worries, I was able to find this exchange from 2013. This was well after you had recovered and after the doctors screwed over your kid too.

As for Elwood, I'll he honest and say that while I don't remember him discussing his work when he was active, his outspokenness on how shitty the system is has really only been in the last few years. I don't say that to dismiss his work but to say he has gotten this perspective once he left. If I'm wrong, Elwood can correct me on it.

So Febrary 2013 - evidently in a thread about when Sokar found out that he was dying, didn't tell anyone and asked what others would do with 2 months left. Whoa.

So that would be what, 5 months after they nearly killed my son, after nearly killing me, and 2 months after they found the materials they left in my dad that caused him to have an open wound for almost a year. I think it's fair to say I was still processing the trauma at that time, and honestly, probably still am. That was not a fun read.

But I went back to check context, and the first quote on that wasn't whether doctors were bad.

It was this:

And yeah, that hasn't changed. In that it's similar to what you said - I don't know which ones are good at their job vs the ones that aren't, that might kill me. My wife had surgery and there was a mishap and she got a massive infection that could have killed her. It required multiple additional surgeries to fix. And we live in a wealthy area with supposedly good medical services.

But I still go to the doctor, I'm just much more proactive about my treatment, and don't immediately trust a diagnosis. And I've found several good doctors I do trust, even if there's a chance when I need to go to a new one that they are problematic. This is one of thoser more than one thing is true moments. When I found the right doctor he definitely saved my life. But I'm still dealing with some bad doctors. I have a bad shoulder and went for an appraisal, and ended up talking to three different doctors in three weeks and got three different answers to what the issue was and what I should do. It's depressingly consistent. At least one of those doctors recommended a type of surgery I didn't need.

But back to the point, I wasn't saying 'all doctors are bad.' Just I had more than enough reason to be cautious around doctors, and still do. I certainly see the correlation between the black community and dealing with policing in particular. I absolutely understand it when pretty much anyone says 'I don't trust police', let alone bipoc folks. They have much less reason to be trusting than I do. But it's still true a good cop might positively impact their life, like a good doctor finally saved mine.

I do apologize for that response at the time though. I can see why that post stuck with you. More anger came out in that answer than was justified - I was sharper with you than necessary, and for the most part you were right.

Hey, I'll take it

(Also, I thought for some reason you treatment had ended in '05 and the infor you posted was years old. My bad on that one)

My cancer started in 2005, and I wasn't cured until 5 years later,

But then we had more fun with them having to medevac my son in 2012 because of a mistake the hospital made - telling us over and over again that he wasn't allergic to a medicine and giving it to him despite our protests. The kid had to be med-evac'd to a new hospital when he was ALREADY AT THE HOSPITAL, and then the doctor warned the medevac team that I was irrational. You know, because I didn't want him to kill my son. They gave him an antihistamine like we told them to and then the kid was fine, but then had to be at Children's Hospital for another two weeks because they believed the doctor who lied to them. The first hospital paid for everything so we wouldn't sue.

Anyway, better times now. Thanks for the talk.

Yikes.

(I'm sure I don't need to tell you that if this is how they treat you guys as a fairly well off white family, imagine how much worse BIPOC are getting it. That's another discussion entirely and just another reason I don't rush to have children)