Justice to investigate Spring Valley incident

[mirth]

It's wrong to deflect from the behavior of bad LEOs by saying most are good. Not that it isn't accurate, but it's like saying that most citizens are law abiding so why do we focus on the few bad apples? There's a reason why we focus on the bad apples.

Mirth, sometimes you pull stuff from my mind and express it far better than I can. Scary, but I love ya.

If you think like I do, you probably should be scared :P

[Steelgrave]

It's wrong to deflect from the behavior of bad LEOs by saying most are good. Not that it isn't accurate, but it's like saying that most citizens are law abiding so why do we focus on the few bad apples? There's a reason why we focus on the bad apples.

Mirth, sometimes you pull stuff from my mind and express it far better than I can. Scary, but I love ya.

If you think like I do, you probably should be scared :P

I frighten myself shaving every morning when I see my reflection  O0

[Bison]

Humans are imperfect.  Always have been.  Always will be. 

[Steelgrave]

^ It's why we eventually create Cylons   8)

[mirth]

Eventually...yeah that's right. We eventually create them...

[LongBlade]

About a year ago I had the opportunity to spend some time on a training sim used by cops et al.

Since I went through that I have a great deal more sympathy for how quickly these things can go crazy and how difficult it is in the "heat of the moment" so to speak to make a quick decision.

There are far more good cops and they have my support in these situations. The exceptions will get figured out in time.

[Staggerwing]

^ It's why we eventually create Cylons   8)

Eventually...yeah that's right. We eventually create them...

This has all happened before...

[LongBlade]

Hundreds of students at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S.C. staged a brief walkout on Friday in support of the school resource officer and football coach who was fired earlier this week after video emerged of him dragging a female student out of her desk and slamming her onto the ground.

The students donned t-shirts reading "Free Fields" and "#BringBackFields" in support of the officer, Ben Fields.

source: http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/30/students-stage-walkout-in-support-of-deputy-fired-over-viral-video/

[Swatter]

Agreed.

Waging war on law and order and those who enforce it is wrong on every level. Inflammatory rhetoric more often than not has little to do reality. Getting rid of cops who abuse their authority goes a long way towards solving the issue and restoring community confidence in our police. But the issues do exist.

Here in OKC, an officer was just fired and charged with assault and battery when school security footage showed him striking a student repeatedly......after stopping the student for not having a hall pass. There is no sound, so the student may have smarted off at him but there was nothing physical until the cop struck him in the face two or three times. Another incident in nearby Moore involves a special needs student with a bruise in the shape of a hand mark after the student (a 14 year old with the mentality of maybe someone 7) says he was struck by the school resource officer, who did not file a report. It's being investigated. And this is just local news pulled from the last week.

Unfortunately, I think there are a lot more bad cops than the theoretical "1%" that gets thrown out, but I still believe 95% of law enforcement are good people trying to do a difficult job. If all of this focus on badge-heavy cops does anything positive, maybe it will be that departments finally clean out their ranks of the people who shouldn't be there. Afterwards, when they go into a community meeting to combat the "Snitches get stitches" mentality, they will have set the standard within their own ranks.

A couple of things:

The police are scapegoats for wider societal problems and this is where I think your argument falls short. Even if we had perfect police forces, they would still be arresting much higher rates of minorities in the inner cities (because they are the ones committing crime). This is what all this institutional racism stuff is about. The police are the bad guys for enforcing the will of society as a whole. Having less bad cops will help, but the wider problems will still exist and cops will continue to get a bad wrap for being a bunch of racists.

On the other hand, I think your right, it is more than 1%. I think the hiring process does a good job of keeping the more dangerous elements of society out of our police forces, but the job (as I said before) wears people down and I think makes them more violent in the long run. Human beings just can't mentally ignore the shit police have to deal with day in and day out. They just can't wash all the grim off. I think we are seeing what happens to people who have to endure violence as a daily part of the job description. They become violent themselves.

[LongBlade]

We're probably venturing into territory where some good old fashioned statistics would help. I have no doubt that stressful jobs stress people and that some don't do well in those situations and others can't take it.

But before we start painting too broad a stroke we probably ought to start digging into numbers to get a handle on what really is or is not happening.

[Steelgrave]

Agreed.

Waging war on law and order and those who enforce it is wrong on every level. Inflammatory rhetoric more often than not has little to do reality. Getting rid of cops who abuse their authority goes a long way towards solving the issue and restoring community confidence in our police. But the issues do exist.

Here in OKC, an officer was just fired and charged with assault and battery when school security footage showed him striking a student repeatedly......after stopping the student for not having a hall pass. There is no sound, so the student may have smarted off at him but there was nothing physical until the cop struck him in the face two or three times. Another incident in nearby Moore involves a special needs student with a bruise in the shape of a hand mark after the student (a 14 year old with the mentality of maybe someone 7) says he was struck by the school resource officer, who did not file a report. It's being investigated. And this is just local news pulled from the last week.

Unfortunately, I think there are a lot more bad cops than the theoretical "1%" that gets thrown out, but I still believe 95% of law enforcement are good people trying to do a difficult job. If all of this focus on badge-heavy cops does anything positive, maybe it will be that departments finally clean out their ranks of the people who shouldn't be there. Afterwards, when they go into a community meeting to combat the "Snitches get stitches" mentality, they will have set the standard within their own ranks.

A couple of things:

The police are scapegoats for wider societal problems and this is where I think your argument falls short. Even if we had perfect police forces, they would still be arresting much higher rates of minorities in the inner cities (because they are the ones committing crime). This is what all this institutional racism stuff is about. The police are the bad guys for enforcing the will of society as a whole. Having less bad cops will help, but the wider problems will still exist and cops will continue to get a bad wrap for being a bunch of racists.

On the other hand, I think your right, it is more than 1%. I think the hiring process does a good job of keeping the more dangerous elements of society out of our police forces, but the job (as I said before) wears people down and I think makes them more violent in the long run. Human beings just can't mentally ignore the shit police have to deal with day in and day out. They just can't wash all the grim off. I think we are seeing what happens to people who have to endure violence as a daily part of the job description. They become violent themselves.

I agree with much of your second point, with the added caveat that our massive increase in LE since 9/11 has certainly led to standards slipping across the board. It's simple math, prior to 9/11 we already didn't have enough qualified bodies to fill police slots across the country. And I agree the job wears you down. But I don't think we can ignore the militarization of our police departments as part of the aggression issue equation. Lots of old time cops look at the departments today and say they don't recognize what passes as "police work" anymore.

To your first point, I don't think I've address institutionalized racism at all in my posts. I'm simply talking about the levels of unneccessary violence we are seeing in police/civilian interactions, and at that, I've barely scratched the surface. The few videos that make it to mainstream viewing represent maybe a percentage of what you can find online at any given time. But again to racism, I don't believe police are any more biased than the population they serve, good or bad. Crime levels are higher in minority neighborhoods and minorities commit more crimes per capita than non-minorities. That's simply fact and I'll leave it to sociologists to debate the cause and effect.

[Steelgrave]

I was referring to the rhetoric that is being thrown about regarding police action in general and the overall resulting anti-police sentiments in media coverage.  I'm talking about the activist rhetoric calling for the death of cops and active resistance to them.  The implications for example that any police action against a minority is race driven and has nothing to do with enforcement of law.  The result is every cop and sheriff is tainted.  They are all considered bad apples just looking for the right opportunity to abuse their power.  I don't believe that and I also think the inflammatory rhetoric incites violence and unnecessary confrontation.  Nothing that happened in this situation needed to happen.

Well, if this doesn't frost your Wheaties, I don't know what will. Iran paying expenses for 20 American leftists to participate in an anti-American police brutality seminar. Two weeks even. How I would love to see the US cancel their passports and leave them stranded in the wonderland that is Iran.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-hosts-u-s-activists-conference-police-brutality-n452171

[Bison]

Not surprised.

[Swatter]

What a circus that must have been. The stupidity of it all requires very little comment. This would be very much like prominent American conservatives being invited to a conference in North Korea to discuss the institutional liberal bias in the American news media. There needs to be an arrow that reminds you which way is up.

[Bison]

For some anything that is non-American is considered a good thing even if most of those attending would be imprisoned in Iran for various offenses.