billsfan1959

Oh, you poor thing. It seems to me you've spent much of you time here trying pass off another culture as your own. Who do you think you are, Elizabeth Warren?

Shhhhh....facts...... GregPearson will just say the LAPD didn't report the other 1 million officer involved shootings....

Says the guy who has called just about everyone on this forum a racist. Get out of mom and dad's basement yet?

C’mon NB.. I don’t know if you are better than this, but, you should be...

Yeah, I figured the closest you would ever get to interacting with law enforcement is hiding under your bed and calling 911 because you heard noises in your house....

Actually that's not true. Why don't you apply for a job with your local police force, see what the requirements are, get hired, and do your part to improve the quality of law enforcement?

Wht are you angry and emotional?

Aww, sweetie. There's nothing honest about you. You are not that smart or that clever. So why don't you drag your pasty little white a$$ out of your parent's basement and actually go do something for the "cause?"

He won't, because he can't. He's a shill who's never experienced anything close to what he's trying to pass off onto everyone here...

He's a poser and everyone here knows it.

He won't be out there. I'm sure his parents don't let him out on his own.

@Sig1Hunter This is sort of the CliffsNotes you were asking for....

I mean this in the most sincere way. I think you have real issues. Your posts are angry, aggressive, extreme, and almost non-sensical at times. I wish you the best in life, I really do. However, I have no desire to engage with you any longer. There is no point to it.

I engaged you an an entirely civil manner. I asked legitimate questions in response to posts that have extreme points of view. I have been very reasonable in everything I have said and taken a stance that both sides have their problems and need to come to the table in an honest way. I didn't need to tell you or anyone else my background and history to post. You certainly didn't. It has no bearing on the legitimacy of the content of my posts. I agree with you on one thing. Our discussion is a microcosm of the entire issue. I will leave it up to the other posters on this board to determine which one of us was reasonable and civil and which one was not. Take care.

Not that I need to; however I will answer the bolded. I served an entire career as a law enforcement officer. I have been part of that community, and the greater community of criminal justice, for the past 35+ years. Almost my entire adult life. I have worked almost exclusively in the violent crime arena (still do in retirement as a consultant) and have been in many emotionally charged and potentially dangerous situations. I am well educated and have provided training to law enforcement officers, criminal justice professionals, and mental health professionals in the area of offender and victim characteristics/behaviors in violent crime, particularly homicide, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence. Over the last 35+ years, I can tell you that there is no institution in this country that has made a greater effort in that time to eliminate what people refer to as "systemic racism" than law enforcement. I have seen bad LE Officers and personally investigated a few (each one convicted and sentenced). They have always existed and always will exist - as they do in every other segment of society. I have also seen racist LE Officers. But I have also seen them slowly and surely weeded out of the profession. Weeds are weeds, however, and it takes time and effort to completely eradicate them. Over the years, I have personally interacted with, literally, thousands of LE Officers. I have watched the profession evolve, for the better. As a group, they are men and women who take an oath to protect and serve, and the vast majority take that oath seriously and try to serve and protect every citizen out there, regardless of race. I am open to new and innovative ways of policing. I recognize problems exist in law enforcement and I am also aware that problems exist in the communities they serve. As always, solutions to problems can never be arrived at without first accurately defining the problem. We have not arrived in a place in this country where those on both sides are willing to do that. I am in the habit of engaing posters who are interested in civil, intellectually honest discussions. You are intersted in neither.

Actually, I never said your opinion was unqualified. I have been very civil during this discussion and asked legitimate questions. But now that you bring it up, not having been a law enforcement officer is not what disqualifies your opinion. Your ignorance and your extremism is what disqualifies your opinion. Personally, I think there are many changes that could be made in law enforcement and the communities they serve. There are problems on both sides that need reasonable voices to express and reasonable discussion to solve. You are an extremist. Every post you have written vilifies law enforcement. You want to tear it all down because the entire system is racist and corrupt. You have absolutely no clue what law enforcement officers do in this country on a daily basis. To you, they are simply armed racists who kill black people. Let me ask you this: When you villify a group of people based on the actions of a few, when you attribute motives and characteristics to an entire group, when you paint an entire group of people with the same brush stroke, aren't you the very thing you are railing against?

Out of curiosity, have you ever had to respond to an emotionally charged, domestic violence situation? Do you have any expertise in domestic violence? I only ask because you seem to be completely ignorant of the dynamics of many domestic violence situations.

What if he is armed with a knife or a gun? Is he not arrested for physically assaulting his wife? What happens when he or his wife refuse counseling?

Also, I forgot to ask. When the merry band of unarmed mediators respond and they find the husband has beaten his wife to a pulp: What exactly are they going to mediate? I assume they are going to arrest him, right? What if he refuses to be arrested?

Of course, I am sure you are aware that responding to domestic violence calls is one of the more dangerous responses for police, right? So, when your unarmed band of mediators show up and the man confronts them with a gun or a knife, what do they do?

And would these civil servants be armed? I looked at the site you linked and most of that already exists. But let's look at just one area that was talked about: domestic violence. I didn't see anything in the "alternatives to policing" that addressed what to do when the neighbors hear the man next door physically beating the hell out of his wife/girlfriend. Who do they call and what is the response?

Can you provide a link for your assertion? Given some of the things you have posted, I am not inclined to take your word for it. I sourced all of my information. So, please do the same. Provide us a link showing "these numbers are very very very very commonly cooked for political purposes." I will also ask you again, just where in the process of reporting actual murders do you think the police are inaccurate? Do you think they are changing the race of the offender or the race victim in their reporting? Do you think they are reporting murders that didn't happen? Do you think they are hiding murders that did happen?

The requirements for law enforcement agencies to provide statistics on crime has been around for a long time now, is pretty standarized, and not much about it is subjective. This thread is about killings. Murders reported by police departments are based on actual dead bodies declared to have been homicides by medical examiners. Arrests are based on actual people being arrested and the demographic information they provide. Just what information do you think is missing or inaccurate?

There is no fatal flaw. I didn't provide any research relating to motives or any other subjective information about police violence. I provided statistical facts about violent crime in general. The actual statistics about people killed by police didn't even come from the police, it was research from the Washington Post, which could hardly be considered pro law enforcement. Even that information wasn't subjective. Those people actually died. Everything I provided were statistical facts. Unless you are saying those murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, arrests didn't occur? Please detail for me which statistics I provided that you think might have been manipulated.

- Law enforcement officers, on average, are more educated than they have ever been - They are better trained than they have ever been - They are more diversified than they have ever been - I believe body cams should be standard. - The is a standard for the use of deadly force that already exists. Trying to set completely objective standards is unreasonable given we are talking about human beings making, what are often, split-second decisions, based on various criteria and fluid dynamics. - Almost every police killing is reviewed by outside agencies and every one should be. What I don't believe should happen is leaving the decision on the legitimacy of the actions of the officer in the hands of a civilian review board. I have no problems with such boards existing and working with departments; however, they should not have that authority. I also think there isn't a group in this country that has tried harder to genuiinely reduce the effects of racism than the law enforcement community. That doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist in law enforcement. The question is, does it exist to the level of systemic pervasive racism, being alleged, where, as a group, they have no qualms with killing a person, condoning the killing of that person, and actively protect the officer(s) who killed that person as long as that person is black? I personally do not believe that. The history of racism in this country regarding blacks is all too real and much of it in the not too distant past. Black communities have been suffering for years and years with lack of opportunity, lack of resources, lack of hope, and violent crime spiraling out of control, while politicians on both sides refuse to do anything to actually help. Honestly, the people that are in those communites, every single day, trying to help the people who live there are law enforcement officers. Anger and frustration is real and where is it easiest for that anger and frustration to manifest? In interactions within the communities with the only ones there who are from outside the community and an easy representative of everything that angers them: law enforcement. The fact is, there are many reasons that black communities are disproportionately suffering and if you were to honestly list the reasons, law enforcemnent would be no where near the top of that list. Yet, they are the face of the problem. It isn't helped when you see what transpired with George Floyd and other similar disgusting, senseless, violent acts. However, hostilities in the black communities between residents and police go both ways and there is culpability on both sides. And, any aggressive violence on the part of police officers don't represent the entire force any more than aggressive violence on the part of black residents represent the whole community. I wish this country could engage in real honest dialogue about this. There is enough culpability to go around. However, solutions to the problems cannot begin until there are honest and accurate definitions of those problems - and, unfortunately, nobody wants to look at themselves honestly on either side.