I'm still here. Not on fire. No TV's missing, no property stolen.
Probably don't have much to worry about, personally, with regard to these things, unless you live in the inner city.
I can neither see the smoke nor hear the sirens from my modest property in my quiet suburban neighborhood, and it would be all too easy for me to keep these problems out of mind--if I ignored my own past, my family history, and what my friends and family across the country are facing right now--until the next time I have to deal with police wondering what I'm doing here.
same with many of the protesters though.
Whataboutist arguments of relative privation aren't helping to put things in perspective.
On one side we have police, who are sworn to protect and serve their communities, and to uphold the law; who have vast sums of public money allocated to them; who are given extreme power over civilians; who benefit from preferential legal treatment in almost any conceivable scenario; whose words are still taken at face value, excepting those cases where blatant proof exists to the contrary; who, no matter how monstrous, can generally rely upon the other members of their organizations to protect them against all comers.
On the other side, we have the people, who are extorted to pay for the above, but who won't see anywhere near equal protection, or often any protection, under the law.
Even if people were trying to excuse wanton property damage, theft, and unprovoked assaults, which is by and large not the case, holding these individuals to the same standards of conduct as police would be comical.
Indeed I saw that on TV during lunchtime, absolutely disgusting, the man was not posing any kind of threat, he was shoved and the otehrs just passed by while he was bleeding out on the ground. A 75 year old man for fart's sake.
Two of the officers involved were suspended, without pay, once video of the event surfaced, and will probably face charges. However, if that event hadn't been clearly caught on video, it's unlikely that it ever would have been anything other than an 'accident'.
See, that's the problem here; it's not a few bad apples, it's an entire system of bad apples that shield and enable the worst of them. Unless the evidence is so overwhelming that it cannot be dismissed, and the victim acceptable enough to society that the victimization cannot be downplayed or justified, there are rarely any consequences for police victimizing those they are supposed to be helping. Fifty police witnesses, sworn to protect and serve, and the odds of even one of them speaking up? Probably next to nil. The real crime here is the passivity and negligence.
This is an exemplar of the sort of stuff I'm referring to:
The entire force of the Buffalo Police Emergency Response Team has resigned as of Friday afternoon, in support of the two officers who were suspended without pay following an incident in Niagara Square on Thursday evening.
www.wkbw.com
If you are ordered to do something counter to your oaths, you have a duty to refuse those orders. If you witness another officer shirking their duty, you have a duty to report them if not to stop them. That's pretty much the low bar for being a 'good cop'. There are more police who would protest the punishment of these officers than give an honest account of what they saw, and more still who will just look the other way.
That said, I'm not going to blame them for leaving the man to trained medics...that was probably the sole rational and compassionate part of their response.
I wonder what kind of criteria (if any at all) is used on admissions to the police force
If you have no felony record (and if you have any sort of privilege, being charged with a felony is pretty hard) and can pass a modest physical fitness test, that's usually good enough for most PDs. You also have to be a team player, which is why 'good cops', outside of the small and disconnected localities, are unicorns.
Positions of authority attract bullies; without real standards and oversight, that's who is going to fill them. Once these sorts of cultures become entrenched in these positions, it's time to start over.
Makes you wonder how many people the police see trip and fall near them.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
If anyone in this topic is able to come up with meaninful arguments against the study I linked above I'd love to hear it.
The study seems fine, from a quick skim. Turning a study about vitamin K deficiency into an article about cheese is kinda strange though.
www.theguardian.com
