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What bothers me about this whole conversation about Police Brutality/BLM is that really the only way that this issue is ever going to be resolved is by Black leaders directly engaging police departments. No amount of kneeling at NFL games, protesting or media play is going to save any one life more than getting down to the issue at hand in regards to police policy. Which leads me to my main point:
Many fatal shootings involving police officers could be entirely avoided if we really re-evaluated the ways we train officers/direct departments to engage civilians. Take traffic stops for example: Do we really need here in 2017 to have officers doing this? This is a waste of resources. First off, traffic stops are extremely dangerous for officers, leading to a highly charged situation to begin with. Second, with the speed camera/red-light camera technology out there we shouldn't have officers pulling over people for those things. Third, if it's things like broken taillights or improper driving that is at issue, then use the dashboard camera to photograph/flim the offending vehicle (and their license plate of course) and send the ticket to the offending address.
Another is dealing with youths. Rather than having officers be the first to respond to rowdy youth, instead we need to work with community leadership to have respected adults in the neighborhood work to de-escalate situations and try to help young people build problem solving skills rather than act out.
I have other ideas, but my main point is we need to stop automatically villifiying both police officers as well as BLM because really both groups need to work together to solve issues.
What bothers me about this whole conversation about Police Brutality/BLM is that really the only way that this issue is ever going to be resolved is by Black leaders directly engaging police departments. No amount of kneeling at NFL games, protesting or media play is going to save any one life more than getting down to the issue at hand in regards to police policy. Which leads me to my main point:
Many fatal shootings involving police officers could be entirely avoided if we really re-evaluated the ways we train officers/direct departments to engage civilians. Take traffic stops for example: Do we really need here in 2017 to have officers doing this? This is a waste of resources. First off, traffic stops are extremely dangerous for officers, leading to a highly charged situation to begin with. Second, with the speed camera/red-light camera technology out there we shouldn't have officers pulling over people for those things. Third, if it's things like broken taillights or improper driving that is at issue, then use the dashboard camera to photograph/flim the offending vehicle (and their license plate of course) and send the ticket to the offending address.
Another is dealing with youths. Rather than having officers be the first to respond to rowdy youth, instead we need to work with community leadership to have respected adults in the neighborhood work to de-escalate situations and try to help young people build problem solving skills rather than act out.
I have other ideas, but my main point is we need to stop automatically villifiying both police officers as well as BLM because really both groups need to work together to solve issues.
My only criticism of your post is that I note that you want Black leader to engage.
I think the problems are not only well understood but the solutions are actually pretty obvious.
But getting to those solutions politically--well that is an entirely different matter.
The zip codes in which there is the greatest tension are also the zip codes that have seen massive white and black middle and upper middle class flight. These places have seen a depletion in financial and human capital. What is left is increasingly poor, welfare ridden, fatherless, and lacking in good paying jobs with an attractive trajectory. In such environments, crime is not just a way of life, but the only way to survive. Those that emerge from such places unscathed are truly amazing.
In such places, philosophies of policing must be very, very different. If not, everyone will be incarcerated before too long.
The preferred solution of many as evidenced by the voting by foot, as been to exit the place altogether. Like a bank run, those who remain get stuck with a rapidly deteriorating situation.
Hey OP. How long have you been a LEO? I would imagine you are not. You have no clue how the police are trained. You have no clue on how bad police officers do NOT want to go on their shift and shoot someone. You have no clue how much training officers receive on "use of force" and "de-escalation" training. You might be shocked. How about joining a Citizen's Police Academy and maybe you'll walk away a little more educated.
"Many fatal shootings involving police officers could be entirely avoided if we really re-evaluated the ways we train officers/direct departments to engage civilians."
Hey OP. How long have you been a LEO? I would imagine you are not. You have no clue how the police are trained. You have no clue on how bad police officers do NOT want to go on their shift and shoot someone. You have no clue how much training officers receive on "use of force" and "de-escalation" training. You might be shocked. How about joining a Citizen's Police Academy and maybe you'll walk away a little more educated.
"Many fatal shootings involving police officers could be entirely avoided if we really re-evaluated the ways we train officers/direct departments to engage civilians."
If you are a LEO, I hope you do not read my post as an attack on yourself or your profession. I highly respect and admire law enforcement personnel and the profession, and this is coming from someone who is half African-American. My goal is to try and help heal the divisions between LE and minority communities. Bear in mind that my focus is also on improving officer safety as much as it is to prevent the shooting of unarmed civilians.
I welcome your thoughts, even if they clash with mine, on this issue and hope that this thread can be a place of engagement, not confrontation.
It all starts at home where the parents need to instill in the kids that cops are not the enemy, America is not your oppressor and if you keep your nose clean you will be OK.
The problem is that many kids are left to their own and they learn about life from movies, video games, rap music and their peers.
There are bad cops out there. We all know that and have probably had run ins with them but something I don't understand is when a cop shoots someone it is generally because they were threatened and the suspect was not following orders.
In the case of Michael Brown, officer Wilson gave the kid multiple chances to stop but he kept coming to attack and Wilson was left with no other option but to shoot.
The most recent case was Anthony Lamar Smith. He was a heroine dealer that should have stopped when he was caught and he would still be alive today.
I think the bigger problem is not the rare bad cop but the increasing anger in young black men that gets them in trouble and when they have run ins with the Police it does not end well.
But that's not what news media will talk about
News media will turn it into a "Black vs White" issue
I imagine most good cops detest bad cops.
The question is: do they force them out of their ranks? I see little of evidence of that.
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