Cops in the US receive training to protect their own safety at all costs, even if that may endanger the lives of innocent people around them. If their duty is to protect and serve, they should not be trained and equipped like this. We don't need to fix crime, we need to fix police training, and yes, we have to be willing to increase the risk policeman are exposed to as part of their work.
On a different point, you mention "bad apples will happen". The expression is "a bad apple ruins the bunch". That is to say, if you don't eliminate all the bad apples quickly, the bunch is ruined.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/05/08/the-nu...
[2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
[3] http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html sorry this data is from 2005, hopefully it's not too different from current
It isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
> We don't need to fix crime,
We do, by making less things crimes. "Resisting arrest" should not be a crime, for example. Should a suspect attack police, we have assault laws to cover this; why do we need another law for "was not absolutely passive while being put in handcuffs"? (Genuinely curious here, happy to hear other perspectives).
Gosh, that sounds awful (both the actions of the police, and the decision of the judge). This failure to hold the police to a high standard is what brings about these situations.
Also, if you haven't done it, there's a really sobering mental exercise that you might want to try.
Median police response times in the United States are about ten minutes for violent crimes. 90th percentile is something like an hour.
Don't know the breakdowns beyond that, but I would also imagine that there's a sharp wealth divide in response times.
Imagine that a bunch of large, angry men are trying to break into your home to kill you. Set a timer for ten minutes. Wait. As you do, imagine what's happening, for those ten minutes, because that's how long it will take for police to arrive.
> 'a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1."'
> ' This second call was received at 0642 and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble;" it was never dispatched to any police officers. '
The dispatchers failed twice to notify correctly about the situation.
> Also, if you haven't done it, there's a really sobering mental exercise that you might want to try.
I'm not sure what your point is here. For what it's worth, given where I live I don't see how they could break in less than ten minutes (with a key I guess?), and without alerting neighbors in at least 5 adjacent units, who I could ask for help through the window.
My point wasn't that cops gets killed a lot, but that young black men are about 40 times more likely to get killed by criminals then cops. Stronger policing actually makes things safer for dangerous areas.
If you think that crushing a man's neck was a mistake, how many minutes of crushing his neck would turn that mistake into intentional murder? If you think those three policemen guarding the killer were also bad apples, how many policemen would have to stand guard for it to be a systemic issue? If it's not a good time to protest police murders, when should we?
In the US policing doesn’t even make it in the top 20 most dangerous jobs by fatalities [1] or injuries [2].
[1]: https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/ (original source is BLS; this source just did the per-worker math) [2]: https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/os/snr02_00_2018.xlsx (2018 is the latest data available from BLS)
But the stats aren't really relevant here; the issue is that there is a video going around in which official appears to brutally murder someone in cold blood. And a sneaking suspicion that justice won't be served. And a large population suffering under an uncertain non-economy for around 2 months now.
That is also a factor, but I'm going to interpret this as tell-tale signs of a breakdown under economic stress.
I can't see a train of thought that starts with a century of injustice and ends with "therefore I should loot Target". I can very easily see a link from "I can't afford stuff because my job just vanished" to the burning and looting.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Cities_protests#Day_3:_Ma...
But in particular I don't believe that the protestors are worried about police vs forestry fatality statistics.
It might be possible that the quarantine and economic hardships are a factor at play, but the ultimate causative factor is that non-white Americans are tired of both the veiled and bald faced racism and mistreatment that is a daily issue.
The protests aren’t just about cops killing black men; they’re about every single aspect of daily life being made more difficult because of constant racism and abuse.
What information are the people angry about the current situation missing?
> It's not about the reality of the situation; it seems like more of a tribal thing.
This seems needlessly dismissive. The “reality of the situation” is that police brutality needlessly kills people frequently, most of the people who are killed are black, the police involved are rarely held accountable, and nothing has seemed to change for years.
Only about 25% of the people killed by police are black; about 50% are white non-Hispanic.
There's definitely a tribal aspect, and unfortunately most people don't know or don't care about most victims.
That said, if changes inspired by concern for black victims improve the situation for everyone, that would be a good thing. And that seems to be happening, leading to changes like body cameras and perhaps cracks in the blue wall, as more officers seem to be speaking out against it now.
And in the US population, around 12% of people are black and 70% are white, so black people are overrepresented in police killings.
I disagree, I think it's historical context. The KKK used to infiltrate the police throughout the south. The police aided and abetted domestic terrorism against black people. There are people still living who remember this. It's not tribalism to point out that you are being targeted based on your race and being sensitive to that threat. If you want to call out tribalism, call out the group that is targeting others based on race. They are the tribal ones.
The historical context may justify the tribalism in some eyes, but it may also blind those eyes to the larger problem that affects everyone.
It isn’t just police brutality. It’s the constant mistrust, passive aggressive behavior, assumptions that you’re poor, dumb, hooked on drugs, stealing, out and out racism, and that you’re a threat that either needs to be avoided or needs to be handled with threats and 911 calls.
You should educate yourself. This comment is just shameful.
I think we are in this current presidential situation bc Hillary Clinton called people "deploarables".
"the victim was either a stain on ordered society" is particularly egregious trolling. You can't do that here, and adding a diversionary word like 'either' doesn't help.