Please look into these exact issues with the Portland Police Department. Instead of going deep into it here, you can find a plethora of information on how cops need to handle mentally ill people (shooting them to death is not how to do it).
"A 2012 investigation uncovered that approximately fifty percent of people killed by police have mental health issues. The Portland Press Herald states:
“In many cases, mentally ill people shot by police have threatened, injured or even killed others. Sometimes, they have threatened suicide or expressed a desire to be shot by the police. Frequently, the use of deadly force seems excessive, if not utterly unnecessary.”"
It sucks to be up against a crazy person who appears to have a knife but, you know, YOU COULD JUST GET BACK IN THE POLICE CAR. CALL FOR BACKUP? ANYTHING BUT SHOOT HIM A BUNCH OF TIMES?
There can't just be this rhetoric of "Hey, cops have really hard and thankless jobs, so if something scares them, they should be able to shoot it a bunch of times."
But that's definitely what I'm seeing in all these shitty Facebook comments.
Right, of course. I'm not saying gunning people down is right. I think I stated I am trying not to binary about this, but that last post I totally did take sides. I let my stupid American default mode come in. Sorry. I am saying the whole job and systems and training for being a cop should be rethought. I like the idea of getting in house shrinks for all the cops and constantly having them assessed. I heard some stat that was something like "there were more shots fired on Michael Brown than shot by the entire British police force last year." Lets see how they do it! I am saying it is not as easy as just saying "They shouldn't do that! What jerks!". There should be more investigation and empathy around why they do it so that maybe we can figure out a way to better mentally prepare them and give them better options.
They could get back in the car but then what if that crazy guy turns around and stabs someone who doesn't have a car to get in. All sorts of hypotheticals. When you are participating in one of those moments I bet the choices are a lot harder. Even if a guy is nuts, if he has a weapon he can hurt people. This feels like more of a failing of the mental health system and the guy getting shot and the cops are almost victimized by the situations our shitty mental health system creates.
I would also like to point out that I don't think there is a single black person or cop on this message board so what the fuck are any of us talking about?
I think I'm out on this conversation. I think I'm going to go back to just trying to understand and listen.
Tom you're right, it's a systemic problem! It's a problem of cop culture, cop training, lack of cop psychological help, etc.
You're right that a solution could be found by seriously studying other countries who don't have this problem. British police surely face just as many scary situations as American police, and yet for probably a huge complex web of reasons, they don't shoot people to death. Why??
To answer that question, we'd have to actually admit that we had a problem and needed help, which is not the American way. The American way is to say MIKE BROWN PROBABLY SMOKED A CIGARETTE ONE TIME SO IT'S PROBABLY FINE HE GOT KILLED
we are fundamentally a lazy people when it comes to morally/intellectually challenging social dilemmas, which is deeply ironic given our nation's founding history
I agree that the system of "policing" itself needs to be rethunk. The current system is based in such a weird, sadistic system of "punishment" and "authority". It's just not the best that humans can do.
These cops could have maced the dude at least instead of using guns.
The main reason British police don't shoot people is because they mostly don't have guns and neither do citizens. I don't think it's much more complex than that. A police force and populace armed to the teeth are gonna shoot each other.
I stopped taking the NYT seriously years ago. They can still print cool shit sometimes but honestly their trend pieces, their neoliberal ideology, David Brooks, Thomas fucking Friedman, give me a break, they don't speak for or to me
FUCK THIS. He was a (vulgar!) rapper, so lets cut the officer a LITTLE slack
Here's what I don't understand when I see a video like the one MZ posted, which leaves me horrified and breathless: why not shoot the "threatening" man in the leg? Why not a warning shot? I'm not saying it should be okay for cops to just fire off a warning or shoot someone in the limb whenever they feel like it, but I just don't understand why this wouldn't/couldn't be a first step. I've never understood this. Why not rubber bullets or, like MZ said, mace? Why the F wouldnt' cops have/use other options to bring someone down? Shoot them with a big net that tangles them up! Tear gas! Paint balls! Whatever!
Maybe I just don't understand because I've never had someone coming at me with a weapon, or threatening public safety in front of me. Can anyone (Tom, your brother?) enlighten me here?
I asked. It made me sorta proud of my bro actually. We don't really talk about his job much. He said I could share. Here you go.
Me Hey Dave, can I ask you a question? Not trying to start a political fight or anything. Just wondering. Did you see that video of the guy with the knife in St. Louis getting shot? Not the Michael Brown one, but the shooting the next day. The cops could have shot him in the legs or arms but just shot him a bunch in the chest. Is that because of training?
Bro Yep. There are no warning shots in law enforcement. You shoot until the threat is neutralized. I suspect that it'll be ruled a justified shooting. The man had a knife and was threatening. Doesn't mean that couldn't have done something else to stop him
Me What else could they have done?
Bro Well talk to him for one. All they did was give commands. The man very clearly wanted to die. If they really felt threatened they could move. A knife is a very different situation than a gunman Or taser if they had it, but not a lot of departments do But they didn't. They went straight to lethal. But it's very easy to look back on it. I've been in situations like that where you have to make a split second decision. It's very hard to think clearly
I bet he would take an email if you guys wanted to ask something. He actually went to college to be a cop.
Yeah, that really seems to be a big part of the problem. We need to hire cops who really don't want to take another person's life. Then they'd bother to "get creative" with ways of stopping a human besides murder.
I think there are some cops who truly want to kill people. Particularly black people. Out of some dimly intellectualized but powerfully felt sense of what it means to be an American "protecting America," or just out of anger and hatred. I think they straight-up want to shoot people, which is why they unload 6 shots into just some crazy dude waving a knife around, instead of talking to him, tasing him, whatever (not that tasing is so kind and gentle but still).
I think there are cops who truly don't want to kill people, who would be deeply disturbed if they killed ANYONE, who would go out of their way to creatively deal with a situation to avoid killing someone. We need those cops, if we're going to have cops.
I want to know what those good, solid, psychologically sound cops think about the wild bully cops who hogtie kids and beat them in their own driveways, and murder kids, and are basically just wild crazy maniacs running around with guns. Or is cop culture like, you are all brothers and you stand behind each other?
We need to absolutely STOP using the rhetoric of "but a guy coming at you with a knife/gun/whatever is scary and you only have a split second to think." This rhetoric is bullshit. First of all, as a cop, you have supposedly been trained to deal with just such a situation, so asking me--a regular person--to empathize based on how I would feel in the situation is disingenuous. It's also bullshit because as we see in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY, cops don't kill people. British cops are in just as many scary situations as American cops, I imagine, and yet they don't kill people. Somehow, their training, their gun culture (lack thereof), their idea of what it means to be a cop, etc., is different enough that they don't murder hundreds of civilians a year. I mean what the fuck is that, we PAY PEOPLE TO PROTECT US WHO ACTUALLY MURDER US IN INSANELY HIGH NUMBERS THAT ANY OTHER DEVELOPED NATION WOULD FIND UNACCEPTABLE.
Protection!
So I would like to know about how you become a cop. I have gathered that it is very easy, at least in some places, like you have one week of training and all you need is a GED or something insane. But then there are other cops like your bro, Tom, who are super highly trained and what is the difference there--how come it's so easy for some people and then other people need so much more training? And how does screening work? How is it that apparently so many men who want to kill people are making it through cop screening and cop training and are actually given guns and put out on the street? Seems like some pretty basic screening would figure out that a dude was like "FUCK CRIMINALS THEY SHOULD DIE" and maybe assess that he wouldn't be a great cop.
So I wonder if Cop Culture, generally speaking, actually encourages guys like this though. Maybe this is how cops generally (not Tom's bro, not lots of nice cops) experience the culture of being a cop. High-fiving someone who murders a black person, then being like "WHAT? he was BLACK!" when someone points out that it was fucked up what you did.
Gary read the other day about some police department who got sued for telling a guy his IQ was TOO HIGH for him to be a cop. And it wasn't even that high of an IQ. What the fuck, so that makes me wonder about cop culture, or cop culture in certain places. Does cop culture differ across America? I want to know this.
where are there GOOD police departments? Are there some example police departments in poor, racially stratified neighborhoods where the police help the residents and don't shoot them? It sounds too good to be true but if there were one we should look at it I guess
I think not having very racially representative or diverse police force actually has a lot to do with the problem too. I think people take for granted how hard it is to truly empathize with the anger against specific prejudices when you haven't experienced it first hand or don't have people you are friends with or who you work with who have. Thanks for all the bro caveats!
We need to absolutely STOP using the rhetoric of "but a guy coming at you with a knife/gun/whatever is scary and you only have a split second to think." This rhetoric is bullshit.
- I think it's probably not bullshit, actually. Obviously, it's not an excuse for bad behavior, etc. etc., but I think it's a part of the equation and should be considered. I know it's not the same, but I've had a lot of training in mental health and there's NO WAY I'd know how to deal with 80+% of the "mental health" situations out there. I have a client right now with a personality disorder and, frankly, it could be dangerous, and I'm not totally qualified to help him, and I'm up front with him about this because it's my ethical duty to be clear about that, and I have a supervisor who helps me with this so I'm doing everything by the books. But it's also true that this guy doesn't have insurance and can't pay for qualified help, so he has me. And if something goes wrong, people could certainly attack me for not being trained well enough or competent enough and they'd be right, but you know what? I'm all this guy's got because I let him pay on a sliding scale. He can't get the meds I suggest he get because he can't pay for them. So F you for screaming at me for not being competent - the alternative is to kick everyone out of my office who has serious stuff going on because it introduces me to legal risk, and THAT'S bullshit.
Anyway, it may be a stretch to connect this to the whole good cop bad cop discussion, but I do think it would make me really sad and tired and bitter if people in my profession were being called murderers (and I'm sure that happens when a client commits suicide, or a girl with an eating disorder starves herself to death, etc.) when maybe more of them than you'd think are doing what they think is right, trying to be good humans, but are part of a system that sets them up for failure.
"British cops are in just as many scary situations as American cops" -- I actually very seriously doubt this is the case. I don't know anything about the history or current state of the mental health system in Britain, but I would wager it's a LOT better than the American system. Hence, way fewer crazy people/people high on substances on the streets causing problems. I have no idea if that's true, but I'm guessing it is.
Anyway, not saying the problem isn't out there. There are probably way more "angry, hate-filled" cops than I'd like to think there are, and its easy for me to take the side of the cop-in-the-middle because I'm lucky enough to not be targeted by the angry, hate-filled cops on a daily basis.
I just always want to quell the us vs. them rhetoric. Again, maybe that's just a luxury I have because I'm so privileged. I don't know.
But they're quite rare because most cops there don't have guns. I bet the moment you start arming cops on the street there, you would see an immediate increase in police shootings.
There are just as many people on the streets there causing problems. It's just usually alcohol or drug-fueled. The streets of London are certainly scarier than the streets of Portland. But people don't have guns, which takes a lot of the "instantaneous murder" out of the question.
Although, when these guys beheaded a soldier, the London cops shot them both but didn't kill either, so maybe the British cops that DO have guns have better training? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lee_Rigby
Yeah, FL, it's good that you have such a fully developed sense of empathy that you are able to see your struggles in the struggles of cops and have some compassion for them. That's the type of person we need to hire as cops!
we are all talking about how it's so scary to be a policeman with all these violent meth-head crazy people with guns and knives on the street, but Michael Brown was literally just walking in broad daylight to his grandma's house, was not crazy, was not a drug-addict, did not have mental health problems, and did not have a weapon.
I respect that our mental health care system is fucked, but it doesn't explain all the non-crazy black people the police shoot. The only thing that explains that is racism (and guns).
And I don't like the slippage in this conversation, between "Darren Wilson shot a black kid for no reason" and "But this OTHER cop got threatened by a crazy meth-head with a gun, so it's actually scary to be a cop so that's why Darren Wilson probably shot that kid, lets see it from his perspective which is that it's scary to be a cop"
it is always a good lesson to try to be more empathetic, but I just want to point out that there is a difference between a legitimately scary situation and one that is not scary, except for the person being black.
I do have empathy for everyone who is caught in a system they didn't create, including racist cops, rich white men, etc. I do. I just have a lot more empathy for the people on the bottom of that system, who the aforementioned people torture and murder and mistreat. And I'm not interested in trying to make sure I have an equal amount of empathy for both types of person. If you are, that's great, but I don't think it's a moral imperative or anything.
I think the point is there are several things that can be true at the same time.
1. Michael Brown didn't deserve to be shot. 2. There is a lot of racism in some police forces. 3. Guns do nothing but make problems. 4. Our mental health system blows and it's shortcomings creates horrible situations that are hard for anyone to make a good decision in. 5. It is scary to be a cop and hard for them to always make the right decisions. 6. Not every shooting of a black person by a cop is racist.
I don't think anyone in any of these posts was defending Darren Wilson. Possibly the cops in that second shooting, but only in a "it is possible they were good cops in a tough situation." way. It's that whole DFW thing about that guy cutting you off in his SUV who might be a jerk or he could be rushing his kid who is dying to the hospital. It might not be likely but it is definitely possible.
Not saying you have to have equal amounts of empathy just maybe that trying to understand and fully explore all the aspects of two sides that you are not in any way experiencing directly is important. Especially in a world ruled by social media and likes and everyone stuck in their own little ad populum self enforcing opinion bubbles.
Every single cop in America should be on camera every minute they're on duty, and the footage kept for a month and reviewable by independent monitors. That would cost a huge amount of money, but also prevent so many corrupt cops from pulling shit like this (and murdering people, of course).
Also Sean Hannity. Esp when he talks about how when he is stopped by the cops, exits the vehicle, and lifts his shirt to reveal his pistol. Fucking stupid racist dumb shit SOOOO ANGRY!
Dave Titus, St. Paul Police Federation president, said Thursday, "These three cops in the skyway, you couldn't get nicer individuals. This guy was acting like a jerk."
The weirdest part about the cops is that they're incapable of ever admitting they might have handled something incorrectly. I assume because it would lead to them getting sued.
I think you're right about the liability issue of admitting fault. They're probably trained never to do so (my dad, a lawyer, had me trained as a kid never to admit fault at the scene of car accident!).
Apparently, in about half the states in the U.S., cops can arrest you if you don't give your name (and if they have a "reasonable suspicion" that you might be up to no good). In the above clip, even though the "reason" may be total racism on the part of the shop owner, I'm guessing the cops could claim they had "reasonable suspicion" just because they were called to handle a complaint.
Also, just to be clear: I thought this discussion thread was not only about Michael Brown, but about cop culture, about what makes a cop "angry and hate filled" and how those bad cops get into the system, about why cops shoot people they shouldn't, about why cops aren't trained better.
"And I don't like the slippage in this conversation, between "Darren Wilson shot a black kid for no reason" and "But this OTHER cop got threatened by a crazy meth-head with a gun, so it's actually scary to be a cop so that's why Darren Wilson probably shot that kid, lets see it from his perspective which is that it's scary to be a cop"
Do you mean the larger conversation happening in the national media, or the one on this thread?
national media! That rhetorical move is everywhere in this larger conversation---that it's scary to be a cop so maybe black people shouldn't be so scary.
But also yeah, I don't like this move very much regardless, whether we're talking about Michael Brown or some other person the police kill. The more we grant police, the less rage we have for their victims. And I just don't believe it's so much scarier to be a cop here than in England that it explains why cops kill hundreds of people here and essentially zero people there. I think it's good to interrogate the system and culture and training of cops, of course, but I have yet to be swayed from my belief that the whole "it's scary to be a cop so that's why they kill people" move isn't a bit of a red herring, meant to sidetrack us from talking about racism and gun culture.
It's interesting to me that simply acknowledging the idea that "it can be scary to be a cop" (or, perhaps more to what I was saying, "situations in which cops find themselves sometimes are very difficult, requiring quick judgement calls that often can go awry due to reasons other than the cop being a hate-filled racist") is interpreted as a means of sidetracking the conversation about the actual hate-filled, racist cops. That it's interpreted as a "move." Like, the only appropriate discussions to be having right now are those about how rage-filled we are. I don't believe that. Events like this can and should get people thinking about all SORTS of things, IMO.
I've been talking to BillMc about it this morning, questioning my desire to look at all sides of this really big issue (and big, emotional issues generally) - the hate-filled cops, the national racism, the cops who are not racist and hate-filled who make mistakes, the citizens who make mistakes when interacting with cops, etc. etc. By looking at/discussing "all sides," am I taking energy away from the very necessary conversation about what to do about cops who terrorize/murder innocent, unarmed black people? Maybe, and that might be a bad thing. But honestly, I think what I tend to do in these situations -- examining evidence and being skeptical and trying to play the devil's advocate and see "all sides" -- is important, and its more important to me, I think, than expressing my knee-jerk emotional reactions to horrible events. But I'm not a very emotional person, generally - I don't get angry or "rage filled" very easily. I tend more toward sadness/curiosity, I guess. And I can see how that might be interpreted (in real life, or on the internet) as not caring very much.
Also, it's not about "having empathy" for all sides equally, it's about *acknowledging* all sides. I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging all sides. I think it's valuable. More valuable, actually, then basically reacting with a huge FUCK YOU to...anyone (evil cops, racism, etc.). Where does that "fuck you" energy get us? It only gets us somewhere if we can use it strategically, right? And in order to use it strategically, don't we have to acknowledge as many perspectives on an issue as we possibly can?
Or maybe the fact that I don't feel a lot of FUCK YOU energy is the reason I don't put a lot of effort into making positive change in the word (let's be honest). So maybe that energy *is* necessary and I'm wrong.
Or maybe there's some dark psychological thing going on with me that I'm not even aware of, that makes me want to "look at all sides" in order to avoid the reality of what's happening. That's certainly possible, too.
"True story; this officer (John Pike) got a settlement of $38,000 because he said he got depressed after pepper spraying these kids. Oh, the depression wasn’t for feeling remorseful for pepper spraying a bunch of college kids peacefully protesting. He got depressed because he said since the media kept playing the video of him pepper spraying peaceful kids without cause, he got threats and didn’t feel safe. He didn’t feel safe. I’m not making that up. This motherfucker collected nearly 40 grand on worker’s comp after assaulting a bunch of college kids."
Comments
Please look into these exact issues with the Portland Police Department. Instead of going deep into it here, you can find a plethora of information on how cops need to handle mentally ill people (shooting them to death is not how to do it).
“In many cases, mentally ill people shot by police have threatened, injured or even killed others. Sometimes, they have threatened suicide or expressed a desire to be shot by the police. Frequently, the use of deadly force seems excessive, if not utterly unnecessary.”"
But that's definitely what I'm seeing in all these shitty Facebook comments.
They could get back in the car but then what if that crazy guy turns around and stabs someone who doesn't have a car to get in. All sorts of hypotheticals. When you are participating in one of those moments I bet the choices are a lot harder. Even if a guy is nuts, if he has a weapon he can hurt people. This feels like more of a failing of the mental health system and the guy getting shot and the cops are almost victimized by the situations our shitty mental health system creates.
I would also like to point out that I don't think there is a single black person or cop on this message board so what the fuck are any of us talking about?
I think I'm out on this conversation. I think I'm going to go back to just trying to understand and listen.
I like and respect you dudes.
You're right that a solution could be found by seriously studying other countries who don't have this problem. British police surely face just as many scary situations as American police, and yet for probably a huge complex web of reasons, they don't shoot people to death. Why??
To answer that question, we'd have to actually admit that we had a problem and needed help, which is not the American way. The American way is to say MIKE BROWN PROBABLY SMOKED A CIGARETTE ONE TIME SO IT'S PROBABLY FINE HE GOT KILLED
we are fundamentally a lazy people when it comes to morally/intellectually challenging social dilemmas, which is deeply ironic given our nation's founding history
These cops could have maced the dude at least instead of using guns.
JUST DON'T SHOOT PEOPLE SO MUCH.
FUCK THIS. He was a (vulgar!) rapper, so lets cut the officer a LITTLE slack
great work boys
"Two words — “no angel” — have become a flash point for many of the difficult, contentious, entrenched issues that have arisen in Ferguson, Mo."
Continuing to just not get it. IT WAS MORE THAN THOSE TWO WORDS.
Also, Joyce Carol Oates is on Twitter??
https://twitter.com/JoyceCarolOates
It's sad when these reports don't seem surprising.
Maybe I just don't understand because I've never had someone coming at me with a weapon, or threatening public safety in front of me. Can anyone (Tom, your brother?) enlighten me here?
Here's some good news!
Me
Hey Dave, can I ask you a question? Not trying to start a political fight or anything. Just wondering. Did you see that video of the guy with the knife in St. Louis getting shot? Not the Michael Brown one, but the shooting the next day. The cops could have shot him in the legs or arms but just shot him a bunch in the chest. Is that because of training?
Bro
Yep. There are no warning shots in law enforcement. You shoot until the threat is neutralized.
I suspect that it'll be ruled a justified shooting. The man had a knife and was threatening. Doesn't mean that couldn't have done something else to stop him
Me
What else could they have done?
Bro
Well talk to him for one. All they did was give commands. The man very clearly wanted to die.
If they really felt threatened they could move. A knife is a very different situation than a gunman
Or taser if they had it, but not a lot of departments do
But they didn't. They went straight to lethal.
But it's very easy to look back on it. I've been in situations like that where you have to make a split second decision. It's very hard to think clearly
I bet he would take an email if you guys wanted to ask something. He actually went to college to be a cop.
I think there are cops who truly don't want to kill people, who would be deeply disturbed if they killed ANYONE, who would go out of their way to creatively deal with a situation to avoid killing someone. We need those cops, if we're going to have cops.
I want to know what those good, solid, psychologically sound cops think about the wild bully cops who hogtie kids and beat them in their own driveways, and murder kids, and are basically just wild crazy maniacs running around with guns. Or is cop culture like, you are all brothers and you stand behind each other?
We need to absolutely STOP using the rhetoric of "but a guy coming at you with a knife/gun/whatever is scary and you only have a split second to think." This rhetoric is bullshit. First of all, as a cop, you have supposedly been trained to deal with just such a situation, so asking me--a regular person--to empathize based on how I would feel in the situation is disingenuous. It's also bullshit because as we see in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY, cops don't kill people. British cops are in just as many scary situations as American cops, I imagine, and yet they don't kill people. Somehow, their training, their gun culture (lack thereof), their idea of what it means to be a cop, etc., is different enough that they don't murder hundreds of civilians a year. I mean what the fuck is that, we PAY PEOPLE TO PROTECT US WHO ACTUALLY MURDER US IN INSANELY HIGH NUMBERS THAT ANY OTHER DEVELOPED NATION WOULD FIND UNACCEPTABLE.
Protection!
So I would like to know about how you become a cop. I have gathered that it is very easy, at least in some places, like you have one week of training and all you need is a GED or something insane. But then there are other cops like your bro, Tom, who are super highly trained and what is the difference there--how come it's so easy for some people and then other people need so much more training? And how does screening work? How is it that apparently so many men who want to kill people are making it through cop screening and cop training and are actually given guns and put out on the street? Seems like some pretty basic screening would figure out that a dude was like "FUCK CRIMINALS THEY SHOULD DIE" and maybe assess that he wouldn't be a great cop.
So I wonder if Cop Culture, generally speaking, actually encourages guys like this though. Maybe this is how cops generally (not Tom's bro, not lots of nice cops) experience the culture of being a cop. High-fiving someone who murders a black person, then being like "WHAT? he was BLACK!" when someone points out that it was fucked up what you did.
Gary read the other day about some police department who got sued for telling a guy his IQ was TOO HIGH for him to be a cop. And it wasn't even that high of an IQ. What the fuck, so that makes me wonder about cop culture, or cop culture in certain places. Does cop culture differ across America? I want to know this.
Here: http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
where are there GOOD police departments? Are there some example police departments in poor, racially stratified neighborhoods where the police help the residents and don't shoot them? It sounds too good to be true but if there were one we should look at it I guess
Ok really, I'm out.
- I think it's probably not bullshit, actually. Obviously, it's not an excuse for bad behavior, etc. etc., but I think it's a part of the equation and should be considered. I know it's not the same, but I've had a lot of training in mental health and there's NO WAY I'd know how to deal with 80+% of the "mental health" situations out there. I have a client right now with a personality disorder and, frankly, it could be dangerous, and I'm not totally qualified to help him, and I'm up front with him about this because it's my ethical duty to be clear about that, and I have a supervisor who helps me with this so I'm doing everything by the books. But it's also true that this guy doesn't have insurance and can't pay for qualified help, so he has me. And if something goes wrong, people could certainly attack me for not being trained well enough or competent enough and they'd be right, but you know what? I'm all this guy's got because I let him pay on a sliding scale. He can't get the meds I suggest he get because he can't pay for them. So F you for screaming at me for not being competent - the alternative is to kick everyone out of my office who has serious stuff going on because it introduces me to legal risk, and THAT'S bullshit.
Anyway, it may be a stretch to connect this to the whole good cop bad cop discussion, but I do think it would make me really sad and tired and bitter if people in my profession were being called murderers (and I'm sure that happens when a client commits suicide, or a girl with an eating disorder starves herself to death, etc.) when maybe more of them than you'd think are doing what they think is right, trying to be good humans, but are part of a system that sets them up for failure.
"British cops are in just as many scary situations as American cops" -- I actually very seriously doubt this is the case. I don't know anything about the history or current state of the mental health system in Britain, but I would wager it's a LOT better than the American system. Hence, way fewer crazy people/people high on substances on the streets causing problems. I have no idea if that's true, but I'm guessing it is.
Anyway, not saying the problem isn't out there. There are probably way more "angry, hate-filled" cops than I'd like to think there are, and its easy for me to take the side of the cop-in-the-middle because I'm lucky enough to not be targeted by the angry, hate-filled cops on a daily basis.
I just always want to quell the us vs. them rhetoric. Again, maybe that's just a luxury I have because I'm so privileged. I don't know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Mark_Duggan
But they're quite rare because most cops there don't have guns. I bet the moment you start arming cops on the street there, you would see an immediate increase in police shootings.
There are just as many people on the streets there causing problems. It's just usually alcohol or drug-fueled. The streets of London are certainly scarier than the streets of Portland. But people don't have guns, which takes a lot of the "instantaneous murder" out of the question.
Although, when these guys beheaded a soldier, the London cops shot them both but didn't kill either, so maybe the British cops that DO have guns have better training? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lee_Rigby
I respect that our mental health care system is fucked, but it doesn't explain all the non-crazy black people the police shoot. The only thing that explains that is racism (and guns).
And I don't like the slippage in this conversation, between "Darren Wilson shot a black kid for no reason" and "But this OTHER cop got threatened by a crazy meth-head with a gun, so it's actually scary to be a cop so that's why Darren Wilson probably shot that kid, lets see it from his perspective which is that it's scary to be a cop"
I do have empathy for everyone who is caught in a system they didn't create, including racist cops, rich white men, etc. I do. I just have a lot more empathy for the people on the bottom of that system, who the aforementioned people torture and murder and mistreat. And I'm not interested in trying to make sure I have an equal amount of empathy for both types of person. If you are, that's great, but I don't think it's a moral imperative or anything.
I think the point is there are several things that can be true at the same time.
1. Michael Brown didn't deserve to be shot.
2. There is a lot of racism in some police forces.
3. Guns do nothing but make problems.
4. Our mental health system blows and it's shortcomings creates horrible situations that are hard for anyone to make a good decision in.
5. It is scary to be a cop and hard for them to always make the right decisions.
6. Not every shooting of a black person by a cop is racist.
I don't think anyone in any of these posts was defending Darren Wilson. Possibly the cops in that second shooting, but only in a "it is possible they were good cops in a tough situation." way. It's that whole DFW thing about that guy cutting you off in his SUV who might be a jerk or he could be rushing his kid who is dying to the hospital. It might not be likely but it is definitely possible.
Here's a good article from Andrew WK
Not saying you have to have equal amounts of empathy just maybe that trying to understand and fully explore all the aspects of two sides that you are not in any way experiencing directly is important. Especially in a world ruled by social media and likes and everyone stuck in their own little ad populum self enforcing opinion bubbles.
Every single cop in America should be on camera every minute they're on duty, and the footage kept for a month and reviewable by independent monitors. That would cost a huge amount of money, but also prevent so many corrupt cops from pulling shit like this (and murdering people, of course).
Apparently, in about half the states in the U.S., cops can arrest you if you don't give your name (and if they have a "reasonable suspicion" that you might be up to no good). In the above clip, even though the "reason" may be total racism on the part of the shop owner, I'm guessing the cops could claim they had "reasonable suspicion" just because they were called to handle a complaint.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_Identify_statutes
"And I don't like the slippage in this conversation, between "Darren Wilson shot a black kid for no reason" and "But this OTHER cop got threatened by a crazy meth-head with a gun, so it's actually scary to be a cop so that's why Darren Wilson probably shot that kid, lets see it from his perspective which is that it's scary to be a cop"
Do you mean the larger conversation happening in the national media, or the one on this thread?
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/29/st_paul_cops_tase_and_arrest_black_man_for_waiting_to_pick_his_kids_up_from_preschool/
I've been talking to BillMc about it this morning, questioning my desire to look at all sides of this really big issue (and big, emotional issues generally) - the hate-filled cops, the national racism, the cops who are not racist and hate-filled who make mistakes, the citizens who make mistakes when interacting with cops, etc. etc. By looking at/discussing "all sides," am I taking energy away from the very necessary conversation about what to do about cops who terrorize/murder innocent, unarmed black people? Maybe, and that might be a bad thing. But honestly, I think what I tend to do in these situations -- examining evidence and being skeptical and trying to play the devil's advocate and see "all sides" -- is important, and its more important to me, I think, than expressing my knee-jerk emotional reactions to horrible events. But I'm not a very emotional person, generally - I don't get angry or "rage filled" very easily. I tend more toward sadness/curiosity, I guess. And I can see how that might be interpreted (in real life, or on the internet) as not caring very much.
Also, it's not about "having empathy" for all sides equally, it's about *acknowledging* all sides. I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging all sides. I think it's valuable. More valuable, actually, then basically reacting with a huge FUCK YOU to...anyone (evil cops, racism, etc.). Where does that "fuck you" energy get us? It only gets us somewhere if we can use it strategically, right? And in order to use it strategically, don't we have to acknowledge as many perspectives on an issue as we possibly can?
Or maybe the fact that I don't feel a lot of FUCK YOU energy is the reason I don't put a lot of effort into making positive change in the word (let's be honest). So maybe that energy *is* necessary and I'm wrong.
Or maybe there's some dark psychological thing going on with me that I'm not even aware of, that makes me want to "look at all sides" in order to avoid the reality of what's happening. That's certainly possible, too.
"True story; this officer (John Pike) got a settlement of $38,000 because he said he got depressed after pepper spraying these kids. Oh, the depression wasn’t for feeling remorseful for pepper spraying a bunch of college kids peacefully protesting. He got depressed because he said since the media kept playing the video of him pepper spraying peaceful kids without cause, he got threats and didn’t feel safe. He didn’t feel safe. I’m not making that up. This motherfucker collected nearly 40 grand on worker’s comp after assaulting a bunch of college kids."
nothing matters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!