Very well written and well thought out. But I do have a dark thought and partial rebuttal. Your point only holds together if you believe as an institution police want to act well, and are shooting people in situations they should not be firing because of lack of training and discipline. I sometimes wonder if that's really the case, and t…
Very well written and well thought out. But I do have a dark thought and partial rebuttal. Your point only holds together if you believe as an institution police want to act well, and are shooting people in situations they should not be firing because of lack of training and discipline. I sometimes wonder if that's really the case, and that if some police departments just don't give a shit if they kill the people they're supposed to 'serve and protect'.
My experience was always after the fact, when things were shaping up for trial, but I saw a lot of police misconduct that was very intentional, very deliberate. I'm talking about things like lying to judges about what evidence is available to get search warrants without proper foundation level misconduct. I mean, yeah, I guess you can offer training courses in 'don't lie to judges about your evidence, even if you really, really want to catch this drug dealer', but somehow I doubt that you can cure that sort of rot by training, you need some kind of overhaul of the institutional culture.
This is before you talk about *some* cops having BB guns in their cars to plant on unarmed victims in the event of a bad shooting. Shit like that. "Drop weapons" they're called. This is also before you talk about a lot of internal affairs units being staffed with officers who couldn't find their own assholes if they were squatting over a mirror in the nude.
I've seen that, too (intentional police misconduct at the trial level) but you are contending with humans who want to get credit for their "busts" and advance their professional positions - this is entirely human nature and you can find it in every profession. Unfortunately. I don't know a way to "train" that out of someone unless morality and character is high on the professional expectations list. And let's face it, in this culture in this day and age, doing the right thing & knowing the consequences are probably not goin to be pretty for you is a high bar than many, many people fail to overcome. The Trump era and the "it's all about me" culture hasn't helped at all.
Very well written and well thought out. But I do have a dark thought and partial rebuttal. Your point only holds together if you believe as an institution police want to act well, and are shooting people in situations they should not be firing because of lack of training and discipline. I sometimes wonder if that's really the case, and that if some police departments just don't give a shit if they kill the people they're supposed to 'serve and protect'.
My experience was always after the fact, when things were shaping up for trial, but I saw a lot of police misconduct that was very intentional, very deliberate. I'm talking about things like lying to judges about what evidence is available to get search warrants without proper foundation level misconduct. I mean, yeah, I guess you can offer training courses in 'don't lie to judges about your evidence, even if you really, really want to catch this drug dealer', but somehow I doubt that you can cure that sort of rot by training, you need some kind of overhaul of the institutional culture.
This is before you talk about *some* cops having BB guns in their cars to plant on unarmed victims in the event of a bad shooting. Shit like that. "Drop weapons" they're called. This is also before you talk about a lot of internal affairs units being staffed with officers who couldn't find their own assholes if they were squatting over a mirror in the nude.
I've seen that, too (intentional police misconduct at the trial level) but you are contending with humans who want to get credit for their "busts" and advance their professional positions - this is entirely human nature and you can find it in every profession. Unfortunately. I don't know a way to "train" that out of someone unless morality and character is high on the professional expectations list. And let's face it, in this culture in this day and age, doing the right thing & knowing the consequences are probably not goin to be pretty for you is a high bar than many, many people fail to overcome. The Trump era and the "it's all about me" culture hasn't helped at all.