Today in cops gone feral

I really like the idea of potential police recruits needing a person of color who is a friend, a former co-worker or boss as a reference. It would also be nice if every three years they went through a bias assessment. The job can take a toll and even the best police officers can let stuff creep in.

 

Not sure how you could codify that into a hiring practice. But maybe you should give hiring preference to people who grew up in the community with excellent people skills as opposed to people from outside the community with macho, bullying traits. Don't automatically disqualify lawbreakers as opposed to criminals.

If the cops in question had said "how are you doing tonight sir, can we talk to you for a minute?" instead of hysterically screaming "HANDS HANDS HANDS GUN GUN GUN !!!" there might have been a better outcome.

 

I just think someone who has zero life experience with people different from them, dealing with them usually in an unpleasant time can lead to some dangerous behaviors and assumptions. I know more than a few officers who quickly develop an us v. them mentality. And it isn't just people of color, but people from different socio-economic groups.
A lot of police officers do go in with the best of intentions, but unprepared for the baggage that comes from wearing a badge that they had nothing to do with.

 

It’s how they’re trained. They’re trained to have absolutely no common sense in that moment. It might as well be the fog of a foreign war, the way they’re trained.

This is why I would disarm cops in most situations. They’d have to punch a code to get a gun and justify getting it. It’d force cops to solve basic crime situations without the gun, and that alone would make them more effective and put the public more at ease.

I do not think most cops go into situations thinking about the person’s race or thinking “tonight’s the night I’m killing someone.” I think it’s their training to consider their own safety over that of the suspect and I think it’s the gun. You can’t tell most cops to leave their gun out of a church. There’s something wrong with that.

 

And yet, here we are again.

 

Cops don’t have to “think” about it. They’re reacting to it without any thought whatsoever (as we all do).

 

This is the most egregious shooting I’ve seen in a long time, and had it been a black man, it would have triggered nationwide protests.

Graphic bodycam footage shows Arizona police fatally shooting man

So what’s this cop thinking about? That some white dude, bawling on the floor, crawling, was going to try and shoot himself out of a AR-15 standoff with a handgun.

It’s nuts. Completely nuts. And the cop was acquitted because that’s how he was trained.

America has a race problem, and some cops are racist. But the shooting in that link - which might as well be from some dictatorship in 80s Eastern Europe, is not about race. It’s about a police culture gone mad with guns and violence.

 

Alma's observation, presented by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic.

A Police Killing Without a Hint of Racism

 

Cops gone...something.

Cop sucked suicidal man's toes and sexually assaulted him at hospital, Chicago police say

 

When police shoot, they shoot to kill. Center mass. Keep firing until the suspect drops. I took part in a "shoot-don't shoot" training exercise. It was a video game pretty much. You have a plastic gun, a video of a person turns around or comes out from behind a fence or whatever and reaches. Sometimes it was a phone, sometimes a gun. In one example, I fired until the person on the video dropped and then he reached out and pulled a gun and fired.
So I understand why someone is shot by police 30 times if there are multiple police on the scene. I also think more training should be done on when to use the gun.
In the Sacto case, the police were in a protected position in any case.

 

Meanwhile, BLM marched in downtiwn Sacramento Thursday night, leading to a lockdown at the Golden One Center, where the Kings were playing. The Vivek got the Mike after the game ...

Golden One is hosting state finals Friday and Saturday. Who know what will happen next.

 

Oh - high school basketball parents and people protesting the shooting of an unarmed black man. This will go well.