Racial profiling and discrimination thread (1 Viewer)

Sweet J said:

get rid of the bad ones.  ZERO TOLERANCE.  I don't know how we get rid of the bad ones.

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As long as they are unionized i dont think this is possible.

parasaurolophus said:

As long as they are unionized i dont think this is possible.

  

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Yeah.  I'm not sure any of it is possible.  This would be a massive undertaking that middle and upper-middle class people don't really seem to care a lot about. 

Edit:  we can't even get rid of crappy teachers.  I doubt we are going to get rid of crappy police. 

Sweet J said:

I'm glad you asked the question.  It may not seem so, but I'm not against police as people.  I'm against the government having power over me in general.  It makes me uncomfortable.  It should make all citizens uncomfortable. I have relatives who are police.  Those relatives are good people.  They shouldn't have to live with the reputation that the few bad ones create. 

The first thing we should do is openly admit and discuss just how much power police have.  And openly admit that *some* have wielded that power in improper ways.  And the conservatives and the liberals should discuss *real* criminal justice reform. Including reform of police practices. 

Off the top of my head:

More professionalize police force.  This includes:

- Spending money on better training for police.  Much, much, much better training. 
- Better pay and benefits for police.  We only want the best, most capable officers.  And we should pay them accordingly.  We are quite literally putting our lives their hands.  We can't afford to have bad police anymore.
- get rid of the bad ones.  ZERO TOLERANCE.  I don't know how we get rid of the bad ones.  But the right to act as a state approved power over me is a GOD DAMMED PRIVILEGE, not a right.  If someone thinks you are bad, you are gone.  If you sneezed at a citizen the wrong way, you are gone.  I mean it.  We need to set an example - Only the best should be left to have that kind of power.
- More training. 
- Real investigations to allegations of improper police behavior.

I guess I'd then work on other criminal justice reforms, such as decriminalizing many things.  And having less people in prison.  Getting rid of the bail system as we know it.

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You have a concern about the government having power over you, or that we have laws that you don't want to follow? Are the police making the laws up, or just enforcing what we as a society have asked them to enforce?

You talk about the negatives that a few LE officers have brought to the entire field. I still don't understand why some think it's okay to lump all of them together as though they are a problem. We don't accept it when we do it with race, gender or religion. Because we know it's not true and is just a lazy stereotype. 

As to your suggestions, I think everyone needs to have more training and more pride in their job/career. There is a lack of this in every profession, from the McDonald's to CEO's. Which is why the actions of a barista at Starbucks doesn't surprise me. I also don't agree with your zero tolerance suggestion. We know people lie all the time. There will be a lot of people that will use that angle to get the someone fired. There should be transparency. Whether it's what is expected of LE before, during, and after public interaction. I also think we need to fund body cams for all LE. They should be on all the time. Turning them off would result in a warning. X number of warnings and you would be removed from service. 

Let's not forget what we are asking our LE to do each day. At this point there are some getting fired for doing too little (not running into a mass shooter situation), while others are being fired for doing too much. I don't know how you can fix this problem 100%. There is no way to train these people for every scenario. There's no way to simulate the stress and adrenaline situations that they have to face. While I agree that we should have the best people in the job, it's nearly impossible to determine that in the academy. Even if you find the best person and they perform exactly how we want them to act, they are at higher risk for suicide. 

It seems to me that we are asking for the impossible, expecting perfection, and treating them like crap when a few bad examples are brought to light. While the good examples are risking their life and their sanity to make society safer. 

Name another profession that's treated the same.