If I report to my boss that my code works only 8 out of 10 times,If your restaurant tells you they wash their food even 9 out of 10,If your bank tells you your assets are safe 9 times out of 10, people would be livid and not be ok with it. Everyone involved would push for change so that this is remedied asap.
For the longest time I’ve given the policing industry(globally) A LOT of benefit of the doubt (not excusing them though), but with all the facts presented in many years, you can’t help but admit there’s something wrong with this system.
With the examples above, you can’t even use the “there’s only some bad apples” excuse any more. It doesn’t work. You can be a legitimate police officer that prevented 2 thefts, but if another one of you kills a civilian, you really think your achievement negates or even compares to the crime? Like seriously.
It’s out of hand already AND THEN add institutional / systemic racism…god damn…AND THEN you give them guns and immunity oh my fucking lord.
And this is not just North America. Here it’s racism, in Asia it’s classism (probably racism too).
Trying to get to the root of it all…
What is it that sets this up? We’ve formed the process wrong here. Is it the the low barrier to entry (educational/academic attainment) that causes “low-effort-high-ego” ROI on this? Doctors take years to even graduate and then master a specialization in the medical world to process one person at a time. How about policing? As for police officers, you’re processing multiple individuals at a time. Not only are you processing physical but also mental and emotional. “But doctors save lives”. Well fuck, look at our news right now. Literally a police can save lives and possibly prevent others too right now. One can argue that they have a higher responsibility, so why not higher qualifications?
Too much perks
Cops do not need immunity and omfg here we go again with guns. You don’t need immunity because this allows civilians to sue you. This gives you accountability. Being sued doesn’t mean you automatically go to jail. Let’s use the “if you’ve done nothing wrong, there’s nothing for you to worry about”, how stable do you feel with that boat huh? Being sued means you are subjected to court where it’s an equal battleground, then you can dis/prove your case. You’re not guilty and sent to jail right away. That whole logic of “that’s disempowering cops” is bs. If you’re a cop who’s chasing a criminal who is coincidentally black and then another civilian sues you for being racist, you can easily explain yourself to court, have and present evidence, and then it’s all good; just a misunderstanding. The system works, you’ve done your job, a criminal was apprehended, a civilian exercised accountability on you, and the court provided the space and mechanism in allowing all of this to happen and clear the misunderstanding. Which part did you say you were disempowered? You can’t pass law and shit just for you to have less brain processing power…c’mon man. You fucking asked for this job man, no shit it’s gonna be mentally and physically exhausting.
Guns omfg, guns. You don’t need guns. I would assume that for most situations cops are probably just dealing with domestic dispute, stupid shit on the street. You don’t need guns there. In those situations it’s just a shortcut method for you for an auto-comply. What you need is communication skills and at best, jiu-jitsu lessons. What do you call those bullet-proof riot shields, at best, those! Need to incapacitate someone? tasers. Want an ego-boost addon? rubber bullets. Those are still damaging already btw and they do the job, but no, you want guns. You were fucking creative enough to kill a person with a knee bruh. You REALLY don’t need guns.
“but there are valid situations like illegal guns or drug busts, major crimes, etc”
Ok fine, then there should be a tiered approach to this then. Regular cops attending to every (light) needs of civilians should be unarmed. Ok then for escalated situations, they should have this 911 service for cops, but instead of ambulance, armed officers. Let them handle it. Let it be used sparingly. Isn’t this how SWAT is set up? You need more fire power to that? Isn’t that what National Guard is for? You’ll realize (hopefully) that at most situations you don’t need guns to diffuse a situation. You can’t? Well dafuq are you good for?
Worst-case scenario a criminal actually kills someone (god forbid). As far as you’re concerned–and let’s be selfish here–it’s not your fault. It literally is the criminal’s crime. Even if the victim’s relatives come back at you with:
“but you could’ve prevented that crime if you were armed”
REAL TALK: Would you have though? You think the criminal would not have held her hostage and used that person as human shield? You think you would’ve had a clear shot? You think there would not have been a standoff? In that minutes of adrenaline-fueled encounter, how do you know this is not due to mental health? With the current setup, what would you have done? Tail them, maybe pull a gun, maybe corner/immobilize them, and also call for backup. It’s the same thing that I was suggesting!!! gfdi. Did you personally resolve the entire situation and prevented death JUST because there was a gun in your pocket? Could you not have done what you had to do (chase, call for backup) without a gun? You just eliminated one step, albeit an irrelevant one.
Here’s another example:
AGAIN, here I am giving the cops benefit of the doubt and again, you will see why it just doesn’t check out even if I try to explain the police.
Here’s the story that you know.
Here’s the actual body cam footage.
The kid comes out of the car, panicking borderline crying, lying on the ground, clearly unarmed. There was no one else in the car, anything posing a threat, his only defense is a fuckin grandma with a stick! But still, guns a’blazin, locked and loaded and pointed to a person. Let’s say worst-case scenario the guy has a gun. Bro, you’re behind a bullet-proof car, you can’t say “guns are for defense”. There is no point to draw your gun (just to scare people) because you can’t “fire until fired upon” anyways. If he shoots, then have at it.
Scared he might own a gun? I dunno, maybe ban guns? I’ve told you many times how useless it is already right?
Saw those flocks of cop cars and backup? You did all those for “running a red”? Even on a capitalistic-greedy-money, or even asset management perspective, that’s not good use of resources. Too much resources deployed for a red?! Also, if all of you are there, then who’s guarding the city? omfg.
Saw the girl who was handcuffed for trying to help? I know that can be interference of police work but the situation happened, she was trying to help, the situation ended and you’ve verified that she was just trying to help…but still, cuff right? You know that’s just more people to shuttle and process. You could’ve just got that one guy, called it a day and just go straight for a donut.
And again, this all assumes he did in fact ran a red (not proven, body/car cam was “conveniently” off during that part).
This assumes the cops are not racist.
“easy for you to say. Hindsight is 20/20”
This material is afforded and accessible to everyone.
This has been happening for a while. The same thing keeps on happening again and again that there are patterns that generate statistics already.
Well fuck if the police system is properly monitoring, reviewing, and doing something about these, maybe there wouldn’t be these types of situation anymore. Ok I’ll be realistic, there are people in police departments that MAY have done things already, who may have tried to improve the system. I’ll give you that; credits to who are qualified. But alright, let’s turn on TVs and social media? Can you really look at us straight in the eye and tell us it’s enough? that it’s working? that the core problem has been solved?
You don’t even know what you’re up against. You don’t know what causes crime. Economists, psychologists, and science people can’t even hone on that, I sure as hell don’t think you have the answer right now. You have a problem, so you have to find the solution. How? Ask people specializing those fields and run research and don’t just drive around looking for tickets. Sounds familiar? Yea, defunding.
I haven’t even added racism into play yet.
I haven’t even added police brutality into play yet.
I haven’t even added recorded, provable, pattern-inducing data to this yet.
I HAVEN’T EVEN BROUGHT UP FLOYD YET.
BRUH. This is why people don’t like you. This is why we can’t have nice things.
No shit’s the kid’s gonna rush home for fear of death. You know your track record right?
No self-respecting professional criminal would drive home, lead the police to his primary address, and ask grandma for help.
“It’s inhumane to expect a person to try and overcome that fear to just be labeled a felon,” he said. “This speaks to a trend of overpolicing black folks in America: You can’t even be afraid without being labeled a criminal for it.”
Words of the lawyer, not mine. A LAWYER GUYS.
You can throw America under the bus here, but let’s not blow smoke up our asses here guys: this happens everywhere.
I really wanna empathize with the cops but damn you guys are NOT helping your cases.
Just running it by numbers, between:
-empowering (law, lethal weapons, etc) police in the event of RARE, high-tension situations BUT delivering a lot of false assumptions(e.g.: shoots someone because you think is a threat but turns out they’re just jogging), causing policing “accidents” frequently
vs
-disempowering (law, lethal weapons, etc) police for FREQUENT, common lesser false assumptions (e.g.: you think shits gonna do down hard and you need guns, turns out someone’s running lights because they have to poop) and just calling for backup for high-tension ones (see, still accounted for)
I’d go for the latter.
There is only one practical, primal excuse that I will accept: that is, when you’re in a high-risk, high-tension situation, adrenaline or whatever takes over, you can’t think straight (even though SCIENCE says otherwise). You can also use panic, or fear (so you shrink down to your basic [limited] human-dealing training — which is worse if the fallback you have are racist tendencies).
But that’s the thing. It circles back to what I started with: If this job requires you to be in a high-risk, high-value, high-tension, life-or-death, high-consequence, it sounds important so why is the bar not that proportionally higher?
Doctors can turn off their politics, ego, and allegiances, even helping an enemy all in the name of saving a life. People in the STEM industries know to set aside their emotions and biases and adhere to science, logic all in the name of innovation. So why not hold police in some higher standard. Why not have more humanistic qualities in there instead of “oh shit we have to be prepared because shit can go down any time any where”. If anything your job description should be a cross of priesthood, psychology (for the humanity of it all), and project management (for when shit hits the fan).
Another argument is that maybe the police has just too much responsibilities on their hands. It’s the similar case why there’s an emergency service team, or a fire fighter team to handle those cases accordingly.
This can actually be true. But then it just further supports the idea that there should be systemic change to this. We give the individual officers a little bit of slack and point it more to the system/management. Either way, things have to change guys.
The comeback for PDs on this is “right, we agree, that’s why we need the funding to accommodate more social response services”. Objectively, I see your point and you’re trying to solve it too. The problem is you’re trying and wanting it to be under your umbrella. We just fucking established you have too much so dafuq?
Also, the whole police branding and identity are shot dead (ha) right now so it is in YOUR best interest to actually disassociate any new services from any PD.
“Oh yea, so what’s your great solution?”
I just said it in the entire article lol. Read. Also if you’re asking a web developer for policing strategies you’re just setting yourself up for failure 😂 I can take on the responsibility, research, etc, but pay me. Conversely if I hit some nails on the head right now, dafuq are you good for.
Wrap-Up
Police credibility has been shot hard (no pun intended). In the next coming surveys of how much do you trust or feel safe with the police, the average should just be at most 10% would say yes. Any difference above that I would assume are uneducated or ignorant. Sorry, not sorry.
I am not inciting chaos nor a complete collapse of the police system (duh, we need them). I am advocating for obvious things like #blacklivesmatter, against all sorts of injustices, power abuse, disregard for social health and order, racism, and complete dumbass-ery. Unfortunately we have laid out the structure for the civilian-police transition in a very not sustainable way. We need to change that.
Need more details for solutions. No need to ask me. More experienced victims have better, more important things to say. Contact Black Lives Matter. There are lots of data out there. Learn to do some leg-work and fact-checking.
