Sure, but I’d say the cop that gets shot is bearing the brunt of it.
And at this stage, the people are bearing the brunt of things anyway, not cops or politicians.
After all laws and punishments are for us commoners. The Supreme Court isn’t gonna make up a rule to protect us. They’re too bust erasing the ones in the Constitution.
All that said, I do get what you’re saying. But also… what can we do? Because the answer seems to be “give cops more money and then pretend that helped”. We’ve discovered even if you protest for nearly a year nothing gets done other than the police get better funded.
She was fired in 2008 for her alleged involvement in a botched sex crimes investigation into the husband of an Atlanta police sergeant.
Another police employee was also fired and the sergeant, Tonya Crane, resigned before the department decided how to punish her, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
Two detectives accused Davis of telling them not to investigate Crane’s husband, Terrill Marion “T.C.” Crane, after the department obtained sexual photos of him with underage girls. A federal grand jury later indicted T.C. Crane on charges of producing child pornography. He pleaded guilty to one count in January 2009.
I wonder if perhaps part of being a cop should involve 5 civilians laying a fucking beat down on you, and if you run they go 10x harder. Maybe these people need to know what fear does to a person so they can have a little fucking empathy.
“Why you running? Comply with your beatdown!”
– A civilian, probably.
Someone on NPR this morning was making a case that “more senior” police officers are more level headed and reign this sort of behavior in, that young guys are just too “hot headed”.
I wonder where the fuck they get this warrior mentality from? Probably video games, and not their training. I highly recommend this Frontline documentary
Salt Lake Tribune reporter Paighten Harkins and FRONTLINE/Hollyhock filmmaker-in-residence Abby Ellis were allowed to observe and film scenario training sessions over several months. In the above excerpt, instructors push cadets to make life-or-death decisions.
“You’re in the wrong profession, my friend, if you can’t live with that,” a POST trainer tells a cadet who’s reluctant to make the choice to shoot in one role-play situation with an individual twirling a gun.
“We don’t want to shoot people, OK? But who makes that decision?” the trainer asks.
“They do,” a cadet responds.
“Bear with me for a minute: When you picture a criminal, what do you think?” the trainer continues. “Have you pictured somebody you love? Look in the mirror and ask yourself: ‘Can I kill a kid? Can I shoot a grandma? Can I shoot a mom? Can I shoot a dad? Can I shoot a brother?’ Because if you can’t, it’s not you that’s going to get hurt. It’s your partner.”
…
As covered in the above clip, the focus on worst-case scenarios in training has become increasingly controversial among experts concerned about police shootings.
Randy Shrewsberry, who worked as a police officer in multiple departments around the country and now advocates for training reform, calls it “fear-based training,” driven by “the possibility of an action versus the probability of an action.”
Shrewsberry, the executive director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform, says the “endless exploration of what could happen … in every circumstance of their job” creates a narrative where officers are always on edge.
*“*The reality,” Shrewsberry says in the documentary, “is that policing is as safe as it’s ever been. And so it doesn’t match up to this disproportionate emphasis that we place when we’re constantly telling officers that at any moment they can be murdered, at any moment that they can be killed.”
A powerful piece in the Washington Post about footage from a nearby lamppost security camera. I haven’t watched the bodycam footage, since I know it would just upset me too much, and I’m already plenty upset. But as an arts critic named Phillip Kennicott writes:
I’m interested in hearing more about how civilians have any control over the police. If we can force them to hire people, can we also force them to fire people?
Lol, absolutely fuck all. Even here in Portland they tried instituting a civilian oversight board to review use of force, and the police said ‘fuck you’ and refused to go along with it, despite the measure passing overwhelmingly during the election.
The review of the available footage found that officers shouted at least 71 commands during the approximately 13-minute period before they reported over the radio that Mr. Nichols was officially in custody. The orders were issued at two locations, one near Mr. Nichols’s vehicle and the other in the area he had fled to and where he would be severely beaten.
The orders were often simultaneous and contradictory. Officers commanded Mr. Nichols to show his hands even as they were holding his hands. They told him to get on the ground even when he was on the ground. And they ordered him to reposition himself even when they had control of his body.
Experts say the actions of the Memphis police officers were an egregious example of a longstanding problem in policing in which officers physically punish civilians for perceived disrespect or disobedience — sometimes called “contempt of cop.” The practice was notoriously prevalent decades ago.
To mitigate the potential for escalation and confusion during police encounters, today’s police training typically calls for a single officer at the scene to issue clear and specific commands. It also requires police officers to respond professionally and proportionately to any perceived act of defiance.
