Policing in America

This thread is intended to discuss issues of policing in the US.

I saw this video of Tim Scott talking about the desire to create a police reform bill being torpedoed for political purposes and I thought some here might find it interesting. When I looked for a “policing in the US” thread, I noticed there wasn’t one (at least not a recent one I could find). Most of this conversation seems to be happening in other threads devoted to other topics. So anyway, here is the video I wanted to share…it’s a slow build…the first 7 minutes or so are about his background, and the next 10 are about negotiations regarding the bill which reveal the real intent behind the obstruction.

It gets torpedoed because the police union is very powerful and they are the ones that got them the immunities in the first place. So it’s going to be a very hard fight to not only get the law passed, but also get it enforced in the first place.

Two democrats, 1 independent, and all GOP voted to debate it. All it needed was 4 more democrats, and it’d probably be law already. But I think Scott is right…the democrats want this on their agenda for the election.

It’s probably far more likely that the protests will be put down violently than any police reform to be passed. The government wants power and they will fight hard to keep it.

You see police killings continue and there’s no sign of it slowing down.

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Is that true? 9-15 killings (not necessarily unjustified) of unarmed people last year. Is that higher or lower than historically?

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Most police killings are not reported anyways and there isn’t independent investigation into this (basically just internal affairs and maybe the FBI) so who knows? But the fact that they are inadequately trained, and the amount of presumptions they have, not to mention trust and “benefit of the doubt”, it’s a surprise they are not more corrupt.

In Taiwan cops have to go through far more training, like passing a hard exam, going through rigorous training, complete a college degree (all cops in Taiwan have at least a bachelor’s), and held to a really high standard not to mention have very limited powers. I think it’s not unreasonable that cops in the US should go through huge amount of training and deescalation training, considering that the average citizen could be armed there.

Cops should never be trigger happy, and those that are needs to be shown the door.

Do you have evidence of this?

If you’re talking about qualified immunity, I’m on board.

I don’t know how much training, deescalation or otherwise, but I agree with this sentiment as well.

I agree completely.

Bullshit.

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Maybe the citizens need huge amount of training and deescalation first.

I’ll take any excuse to break up a public sector union.

Privatized police would be… interesting. It’s a cliche in some SF genres, but it’s sort of implied to be a result of societal decay, not a contributing factor.

Political power flows from the barrel of a gun. A monopoly on guns is a monopoly on power. If you don’t know which house has a gun owner in it, the prudent thing is not to break into any of them.

The NRA offers training.

That doesn’t work in real life though. Places with higher rates of fun ownership have higher rates of gun fatalities. So no mutually assured destruction there.

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It should be mandatory. And every so many years.

I’m all for fun. What I’m not for is all the murders going on in the gun control cities and the gun free zones.

And some people wonder why Black citizens are afraid to stop for the police. Watch the video

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For any gun control to work the police must first disarm themselves.

And any cop who wants to become an armed police must go through psychological screening to weed out those who have fantasies of killing someone.

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That fat guy is one seriously disturbed nutcase. He appears to think he’s in a Hollywood movie, or possibly a computer game. He is most definitely not living on the same planet as the rest of us.

How are people like that even allowed out in public, nevermind in uniform and entrusted with lethal weapons? It’s bizarre.

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That’s an interesting point. On the news last night, the driver said he kept driving for two minutes after they put on the lights (which would make ANY cop nervous) in order to get to a well lit gas station (which makes complete sense in my book).

Opinion: The Chauvin trial underscores two very different approaches to policing

At Derek Chauvin’s trial this week, the jury heard from Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, the city’s former training commander and expert witnesses, all of whom testified that Chauvin’s treatment of George Floyd violated widely accepted use of force standards as well as Minneapolis Police Department policy, which calls for commensurate force and requires respect for the “sanctity of life.” But despite those standards, Chauvin also had a history of kneeling on suspects’ necks for long periods of time, and none of those incidents resulted in discipline. It’s an apt illustration of how, for about the past 10 years, two contradictory philosophies have been at war in American policing.

On one side are the de-escalationists, a product of the criminal justice reform movement. They accept police brutality, systemic racism and excessive force as real problems in law enforcement, and call for more accountability, as well as training in areas like de-escalation and conflict resolution. De-escalationists believe police serve their communities by apprehending and detaining people who violate the rights and safety of others, but must also do so in a way that protects the rights of the accused.

Even before Floyd, Minneapolis has been a battleground for these warring police philosophies. When officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop in 2016, news outlets reported Yanez had previously attended a lethal force class called “The Bulletproof Warrior.”

The class was taught by a company called Calibre Press, which claims to train nearly 20,000 officers per year. Until recently, one of Calibre’s most prominent speakers was retired Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a former Army Ranger whose lectures paint a grim, good-vs.-evil world, where terrorists blow up cities, gang members compete to kill cops and maniacs shoot up school buses. His curriculum includes Bible verses that he believes augur when it’s moral to kill. The documentary “Do Not Resist” includes footage of him telling a class of cops that when you kill another human being, you can expect to go home and have the best sex of your life.