Capco

It was an eye-catching quote from the introduction that summarizes a lot of the essay. I just wanted to use the essay as a basis for discussion. There was nothing more to it than that my guy. But feel free to keep putting words in my mouth. If you think you have me all figured out, good for you I guess.

Excellent post. Thank you again for your contributions to this discussion and, especially, your service to your community. You definitely sound like you were a fine police officer.

Systemic doesn't mean absolute or unequivocal. When a disease is systemic that doesn't mean that every single cell involved in the system in question is diseased. Are all cops good? No. Are all cops bad? No. I hope that answers your questions.

On a fundamental level I disagree with this and maybe that's where some of the disconnect is. Under the appropriate environmental (read: external) circumstances anyone can be a saint or a sinner. I have some supporting arguments on this topic if you'd like to discuss it further. I appreciate you offering your personal experiences. I was just about to ask Sig to comment here as well lol. I'm not. I'm listening you as well, aren't I? So, his experiences are anecdotal. So are yours. Each can only be taken with a grain of salt, right? And yet somehow you think you can speak for the vast majority of officers when you said this: Is there something about your life experience that allows you to speak for the vast majority of officers?

With all due respect, did you read the quote? The guy came into the force wanting to do the right thing, did the right thing in training, then got called out for it instead of action being taken. If you went through that experience, what would be the lesson that you learned? Would it be that doing the right thing is what policing is all about? Or would it be to shut your mouth when it comes to the misconduct of your coworkers? That would be my guess too. But most of those people don't go through training that involves the following, do they? Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty. I want to highlight this: nearly everyone coming into law enforcement is bombarded with dash cam footage of police officers being ambushed and killed. Over and over and over. Colorless VHS mortality plays, cops screaming for help over their radios, their bodies going limp as a pair of tail lights speed away into a grainy black horizon. In my case, with commentary from an old racist cop who used to brag about assaulting Black Panthers. ... Once police training has - through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle - promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you. Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables. And remember, this particular officer didn't get to choose his training. It wasn't his personal choice to learn these lessons. They were taught to him by the system he was joining. If every police cadet "did the right thing" during their training, this police force wouldn't have a single cop on it. How is that not pervasive?

Racism aside, isn't something like this a systemic problem for accountability? In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.

I'm still in the process of making my decision on that. It's quite a complicated issue as I'm coming to find out.

Long (20+ minute) read but worth sharing: https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759 "American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth."

They fired all of the officers via abolishing their department, then allowed all of the former officers to apply to be rehired under new, more selective criteria. This allowed them to snuff out the bad officers and hire new ones. In the process, their police force served the community better and expanded at the same time. A reduction in law enforcement isn't always what "abolish the police" actually means. If only people knew more...

Tbh, I would like to at some point lol. I still need to do more to earn the trust of my community (I'm only 31 and it's hard to get elected without experience, and experience comes with age). Absent some extraordinary circumstance, I will be attending UB's School of Law this fall. My undergrad is in chemical engineering. I think after 5-10 years of working in law and in my community, I might take a dip into politics depending on the political climate at the time. My philosophy is somewhat as follows: We tend to elect politicians to solve problems. The only issue is that most politicians aren't actually trained to solve problems. Engineers, on the other hand, use principles of mathematics and science and then apply them to problem solving. I think/hope my previous engineering experience, coupled with my eventual legal experience, will make me stand out as a candidate for office. That's a LOOONG term goal though. We'll see how things shake out. First things first is getting through a grueling first-year of law school.

That seems to be a lot to ask in this day and age. There are certainly competent people out there, but getting them into politics is tougher than ever. It's a vicious cycle that needs to stop.

Saaaaaaame...

I'm a lefty and we are more in agreement than the powers that be would like us to believe. I agree that their healthcare should be the same as ours, but I disagree with your approach. I'd rather every American have better healthcare than they have now instead of reducing the politicians' healthcare to our levels (within reasonable expenditure limits of course). Everything else I agree 100% with.

Except the post I just quoted. Fair enough. This it somewhat true but it's also not the path forward. I think most people would agree that politics has become more polarized in the last couple decades. Both sides have moved further from the center, and the center is where the American tradition of compromise is most effective. Although the GOP is getting rid of the old guard in some cases, the new guard is just as bad if not worse. This is because since 2016, the GOP has shifted even further to the right, which is the opposite of what is needed imo. Instead of compromise, the GOP is becoming more hard line. And tbh, the same has just started to happen in the Democratic Party since 2018 with the far-left representatives that were elected (AOC, Omar, etc.).

Look man, I get how passionate we can get about our political beliefs. And the latest generation of politicians has been incredibly lackluster on both sides. Politics will invariably play a part in the solution, but it's a lot more than just politics. Without passing blame to one side, do you at least think I brought up some good points? Again, as other posters have said, if we can define the problem we can solve it. And the solution isn't just as simple as voting for the right guy to fix our problems for us. We're gonna have to roll up our sleeves as a nation and work together as one (E Pluribis Unum) if we want to make legitimate change in the outcomes our fellow citizens. This would be an excellent post... if you didn't fall entirely in line with the blame game they want you to play. You listed 3 Democrats and no Republicans or Independents. But that's not a blame game to you, thems just the facts amirite?

We can stop pointing fingers and fix the problem. Or we can play the blame game indefinitely with no recourse or solution in play. Which is more important to you? Fixing the problem and looking towards the future or laying blame and staying in the past?

I took the video from the OP of this thread and used it as a basis for discussion in the following post that I wrote in PPP. I thought I'd share it here as well. ============= I believe the key to fixing black-on-black violence and crime in black communities is to fix black poverty. The poverty rate for the whole country is 11.8%. For whites, the rate is 8.1%, and for blacks, the rate is a whopping 20.8%. http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html Some might say "well the reason so many blacks are in poverty is because so many are committing crimes and spending time in jail" but in fact the opposite is true. The reason so many blacks commit violent crime is because so many are trapped in poverty because of systemic, passive racism. Remember in our country that public school districts are locally funded. If your community is dirt poor, your high school is almost certain to become a drop out factory. This can affect Americans of all colors, but again due to decades of system racism in the economy, this ends up disproportionately affecting black economic outcomes in predominantly black communities. One thing I would like to see is to replace school taxes with a system of federal funding for all public school districts. Each student in the country should be allotted the same amount of funding with respect to regional cost-of-living differences or Purchasing Power Parity. There shouldn't be such massive public education outcome differences in an egalitarian country like our own. Otherwise, you are left in the situation we are currently in that is more akin to "quasi-public" schools. Imagine there's an excellent school district in your locale with fantastic outcomes. It's public, which means it's free at the point of delivery to all those who attend. But what's the caveat to attend? Well, you have to live in the district... and in this case living in the district almost invariably means owning a +$1 million home. Combine the property tax method with the value of those all those million dollar homes, and you might have several times the amount of money to spend per student than those districts that are dirt poor. The public school system in America as it stands today has financial barriers to entry, which runs counter to why public education was conceived in the first place (i.e. the Enlightenment philosophes believed that education was for everyone, not just the rich). tl;dr: Poverty causes crime. Education lifts people out of poverty. Eliminating/reducing poverty lowers crime rates, increases tax revenues, lowers the need for lifelong public assistance, decreases the need for militarized police, and can help put an end to active racial discrimination. And I didn't blame any one side or political party.

I believe the key to fixing black-on-black violence and crime in black communities is to fix black poverty. The poverty rate for the whole country is 11.8%. For whites, the rate is 8.1%, and for blacks, the rate is a whopping 20.8%. http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html Some might say "well the reason so many blacks are in poverty is because so many are committing crimes and spending time in jail" but in fact the opposite is true. The reason so many blacks commit violent crime is because so many are trapped in poverty because of systemic, passive racism. Remember in our country that public school districts are locally funded. If your community is dirt poor, your high school is almost certain to become a drop out factory. This can affect Americans of all colors, but again due to decades of system racism in the economy, this ends up disproportionately affecting black economic outcomes in predominantly black communities. One thing I would like to see is to replace school taxes with a system of federal funding for all public school districts. Each student in the country should be allotted the same amount of funding with respect to regional cost-of-living differences or Purchasing Power Parity. There shouldn't be such massive public education outcome differences in an egalitarian country like our own. Otherwise, you are left in the situation we are currently in that is more akin to "quasi-public" schools. Imagine there's an excellent school district in your locale with fantastic outcomes. It's public, which means it's free at the point of delivery to all those who attend. But what's the caveat to attend? Well, you have to live in the district... and in this case living in the district almost invariably means owning a +$1 million home. Combine the property tax method with the value of those all those million dollar homes, and you might have several times the amount of money to spend per student than those districts that are dirt poor. The public school system in America as it stands today has financial barriers to entry, which runs counter to why public education was conceived in the first place (i.e. the Enlightenment philosophes believed that education was for everyone, not just the rich). tl;dr: Poverty causes crime. Education lifts people out of poverty. Eliminating/reducing poverty lowers crime rates, increases tax revenues, lowers the need for lifelong public assistance, decreases the need for militarized police, and can help put an end to active racial discrimination. And I didn't blame any one side or political party.

Excellent post. Thank you for your candor.

Sorry I was just bored waiting for dinner (Italian sausage and pasta btw, @Sig1Hunter ?) and used that opportunity to butt in. To answer you in the simplest terms, I'm voting for Biden because he is the more left-leaning candidate. Every presidential election I've voted in since 2008 (I became eligible in 2007) has been on that premise. I'm a lefty.

If he's anything like me, he's pissed that the DNC shafted Bernie again but would still rather have Biden over Trump.

For real though man, I don't think Crayola is a right winger. Pretty sure I've liked some of his posts in the past iirc. I get your point but in this case I don't think it applies to him if memory serves me well. I might be mixing him up with another C-named poster though.

My bad too. I can come off as a real jerk sometimes. It's an unfortunate gift.

Same. That's why I'm asking around here to see if anyone might have a concrete answer rather than screaming "omg wtf defund the po-lease". If I had to speculate, I would say that the cops involved probably had a lot of pent up anger and frustration, and were taking it out on the property around them (which is basically what some of the protesters were doing as well). Neither situations are excusable, but I think it might explain their reasoning and rationale. Maybe the tire slashings are examples of that too. Or maybe the cops are afraid of vehicles being used as weapons and it's a precautionary tactic? Maybe they needed to make sure the cars were empty before proceeding and the windows were so tinted that breaking the windows was the only way to be sure? Again, I dunno either. But in lieu of a damn good reason, these acts are crimes.

Btw, this has nothing to do with the man being a Trump supporter. This incident occurred in Chicago in 2011. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/teen-punching-man-at-cta-stop-caught-on-tape/1897925/ I thought the camera quality seemed exceptionally poor. Being from 2011 would explain it. Still absolutely reprehensible.