Whew…. Took a little bit to read all that stuff.
Absolutely none of these show/document there is currently any training being done by departments to make citizens the enemy. If there were any such training, I submit, with over 950,000 thousand officers, there would be more than a few articles to read and substantially more that l000 people a year as “victims”. A couple of the articles affirmed what the NIJ report shows (based on officer’s opinions), that there are many departments that could use some diversity, deescalation and cultural training, more importantly, stronger supervisors and policies that deal with abuses quickly and affirmatively. Is more oversight needed? I think so when policies and supervision are lacking. That’s the point where individual officer’s decision come to play. Either they have precise rules to follow and know the consequences of their decisions or they fall into their agencies’ police cultural trap of what is acceptable.
Then there are the Vox articles, but I digress.
https://www.quora.com/Media-Business-in-2015-How-credible-are-articles-on-vox-comhttp://www.nationalreview.com/article/375600/vox-explained-patrick-brennanAnyway, the NIJ/DOJ report was an interesting read, but limited, since it was based on phone surveys of only 925 out of more than 950,000 officers from just over 100 agencies out of over 5,000. Rather small sampling to make broad brush stokes, but you got to start somewhere. This report is also now 16 years old and a whole bunch of stuff has changed since. Would love to see a follow up report done with bigger sampling and differences between accredited agencies vs. non accredited (accredited agencies are mandated to have much more training and more detailed policies and procedures), sampling between the agencies involved in the most recent incidents vs. those who have not had issues. Wouldn’t that be a good report….. What are these agencies doing right that the rest of you need to get on board with? More importantly, what policies/procedures have failed that need to be revised? This is important because Baltimore was an accredited agency. But that’s big brother for you, speaking from experience where I served on a NIJ/DOJ executive board for seven months before our work was published.
But using what we got, the NIJ/DOJ did reveal that the use of force is a relatively rare occurrence in American policing, but that previous studies suggest that when it does occur, it may escalate to the level of excessive force. Responses show that most police officers in the United States disapprove of the use of excessive force.
Since the report was done in 2000, the question is what happened with these results and what if anything was initiated or implemented? If nothing, another wasted taxpayer expense and you have to ask could the recommendations (regardless of the fiscal issues for agencies) have prevented any actions since?
But everyone is human and subject to human mistakes. The stakes just happen to be higher when it involves emergency personal, doctors, etc. Speaking of doctors…...
To keep things in perspective, the Washington Post and Guardian are tracking all of the police involved deaths. The Post reported that in 2015 there were less than 1,000 people killed by law enforcement despite the millions of contacts with individuals. Only 90 were “labeled” unarmed (explained later in a link). However, there are some 400,000 people killed each year by medical malpractice. Maybe the doctors are the one’s who need to be feared the most. But that won’t fit the agenda. Then you have to ask, with mandated health care and more people being forced/taxed to get insurance and (according to my doctors) increasing the number of people seeking medical care, will these numbers go up?
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/deaths-by-medical-mistakes-hit-recordsThen we can’t leave out impaired driving, one death every 53 minutes. That’s 9,916 deaths per year. When are we going to address these people killing innocent folks driving down the road minding their own business? The needless property damage and rise in our insurance rates?
http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.htmlThen we can’t deny the agenda.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-statistics-you-need-know-about-cops-killing-aaron-bandlerhttps://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/08/black-and-unarmed-behind-the-numbers?ref=collections#.7qhEj1YPTAnd what may be an underlying cause in the way some people are treated vs. others.
http://www.amren.com/news/2015/07/new-doj-statistics-on-race-and-violent-crime/And as this report so eloquently states...”members of any group (or community) will ultimately be affected by the actions of the other members within that group (or community)”. This would include police and how they are viewed as a whole and not individuals.
https://infogr.am/Black-34991937313As the investigations continue into Sterling and Castile, there’s new video out (released by USA Today) that (depending on which side of the isle you sit) seems to corroborate the officers involved with Sterling and in MN they were stopped in relation to a nearby robbery,
https://www.facebook.com/MNBCA/posts/10154398683668701the broken tail light was probable cause to stop and investigate. Could the officer reasonably believed he was stopping an armed robber given they were within blocks of the scene when stopped? There was NO concealed carry permit ever issued to Castile according to Ramsey County Sheriff’s office. None of this information is presented to justify the tragedy. However, the viral videos that sparked outrage didn’t tell us what happened – it showed us the aftermath, and only one side of the story. Our brains all have a form of narrative bias where we fill in the blanks surrounding an event for which we don’t have information.
I won’t even bother to go into the dangers of traffic stops as this is already too long.
So if anyone wants to hate on cops, I don’t care. But I know there’s no training to make the citizens the enemy. You have your opinion, just like I have mine. It’s still a free country, basically, at least until November. Just don’t ever dial 911 or break any traffic laws and you’ll be safe.
Me, I’m gonna go with the probabilities and worry about doctors and drunk drivers.
