If they can’t figure out the difference between “Protect and Serve” versus “Shoot First and Ask Questions Later”, maybe they need to change their training and understanding of the job requirements?
And since when does a police union get to decide what constitutes misconduct? Were specific laws broken? That’s where their ‘deciding’ ends. It (the union) can demand anything it wants - I can’t for the life of me understand why I should care.
Just enforce the damn laws please, you should be able to handle that.
Or children with toy guns.
Can’t tell the toys from the real thing? Gee, maybe we need to take a look at regulating that, if it’s really such a problem.
Don’t forget #pointergate when looking at police union response. Minneapolis Mayor Hodges had been pressing the police for more equitable treatment of minority communities, body cameras etc, when the head of the police union planted a “Mayor making gang signs” story with a local TV news show. That’s after other news outlets rejected the non story. It was clearly a case of the local police fighting back against oversight, an action meant to damage the new mayor.
In some ways it’s a common union story. By trying to protect their people in even the most egregious cases they end up damaging their overall cause.
They have every right to “think they’re doing the right thing”. I have every right to disagree.
And I do, I really, really do.
Bottom line is, the police have the right to kill people at their pleasure and suffer no criticism. We need to understand that
Here’s a separate police/community issue where there’s been a huge change: the police used to be outspoken critics of the general public having military style weaponry, such as assault rifles and armor piercing bullets. This has totally changed and has definitely made it seem like the police aren’t as interested in public safety. I’d love for TPM to give us more history on that.
I would say we need to hear more from those guys.
Silence indicates agreement, to me at least.
I believe this is a corollary to Paul Krugman’s “ma, he’s lookin’ at me funny” attitude of the super-rich:
i.e. 9-11 changed everything-all that is good in our American society is due to their special efforts and, let’s face it specialness.
Any criticism makes it harder for them to do their job, and therefore is harmful to maintaining America’s special place in the world, and it therefore un-American. It is a perfect self contented bubble, and why would they want to be roused out of this by a bunch of ingrates?
Based on his record and the evidence of that video, I’m guessing he was one of those cops who made his colleagues feel less safe when they were paired up with him on a call. But yeah, in many–though not all–states, there is a lot more more professionalism and accountability and less fascism from state police forces than city police forces. Which I guess we ought to find reassuring in a weird way . . .
“We’re still bloodletting here. We haven’t even made it to the emergency
room as a community,” he said. “Why rip the bandages off?”
Even ignoring for a moment the horribly inappropriate use of a metaphor like that when actual people were shot by police and bled all over the place before dying, let’s consider the enormous unspoken privilege in that sentence.
Other people should be careful of what they say because their words might provoke an unpleasant emotional reaction, but the spokesman of the police union can say whatever he pleases and has no responsibility to behave in a measured way what would reduce the impression that the default police officer is a dangerous tyrant.
Police unions seem to be condoning bad behavior. What I don’t understand is just who police unions are trying to impress. Each other? The white racists? Because their stridence isn’t really swaying the general public.
Stepping back from the demonization and caricature I myself have engaged in, these episodes are attributable to, and the unions are stridently defending, a 99% doctrine approach to police officers’ personal safety that has been institutionalized over the last few decades. It’s this idea that cops need to be free to use as much forces as they deem appropriate to preempt the remotest possibility that an interaction with a member of the public could escalate into a situation where a cop gets hurt that’s created situations that are resulting in unarmed people are being killed. And it is precisely that doctrine the unions feel charged to defend at all cost because, after all, cop safety is paramount to them.
Back when crime rates were peaking, in the eighties and late nineties, people (i.e. people with political power) were willing to turn a blind eye to this kind of thing because there was a generalized sense that the cities were sliding into chaos and dystopia and that if present trends continued, you’d end up with a cityscape that looked a lot like, well, the first Robocop movie. And then in the early 90s, the crime rate peaked and began a decline so precipitous that only those who were naturally inclined to seek out things to be afraid of (conservatives, in other words) were rationally afraid of random crime. And even as that decline took hold, the 99% doctrine mindset institutionalized ever more over the top behavior, extending eventually to the widespread belief that people interacting with police have an absolute obligation, on pain of death, to instantly comply with their instructions and servilely submit notwithstanding the rush of flight or fight hormones being stopped by the cops induces even in those with the cleanest consciences.
The 99% doctrine mindset is so deeply embedded in the doctrine, training and culture of police work these days that cops are literally incapable of seeing any problems with it, particularly given that they’re trained that behavior in conformity with that doctrine is the only thing capable of getting them home safely at night.
That’s going to be one damn hard thing to convince them they’re wrong about because issues of life and personal safety are not things anyone is usually going to able to discuss in terms of a logical analysis of costs and benefits and social obligations. But we don’t have a chance if we don’t frame this problem in terms of the need to take a fresh look at their training and doctrine and the assumptions behind it rather than framing it an attack on cops, and some intrinsic psychological flaw in the kind of person who wants to be a cop.
But, on the other hand, if we do that and they’re still not susceptible to reason, they’re at least subject to some degree of political control.
It’s more than just the recent deaths that have eroded the relationship between the police and the communities they serve; have we forgotten the Occupy protests, and the images of police pepper-spraying protestors?
I’ll never envy the position police find themselves in, but a professional police force has to guard against devolving into a brute squad, and I think they’re faltering in that part of their mission.
Cops are not your friends.
Shorter version: black people just need to behave.
I’m going to go with the police unions on this, but not accept their narrative as such. What seems to be happening is the conflation of racism and the increased demands placed on police as social and economic inequality have increased in the US. Black people are more likely to be at the bottom end of the economic scale than white people, so cops come at this expanded duty of crowd-control and patrolling of the underclasses with a built-in bias against black people. And for the most part, the value of an underclass person isn’t much beyond the legal value. Surely the police resent this psychotic job description that says a) certain people are superfluous, b) keep the underclasses on the straight and narrow and away from our houses and clubs, c) but still extend the full range of Constitutional protections to them. It just gets harder and harder as the gap between privilege and squalor continues to widen.
It would certainly help. On the other hand, how is a black person, or anybody for that matter, supposed to know what appropriate behavior is when you see a policeman. It seems the only safe move at this point is to lay down face-first on the ground and put your hands behind your head, and scream “Yes, Massah!”
You can write that the other way as well. The Police Union is acting like the Palestinians of civil servants. Any criticism of willful violence even if directed at other Palestinians indicates only that all Palestinians are victims and anyone proposing reform hates Arabs.
Good piece. The unions are simply displaying the lack of discipline and loss of purpose that is being protested. Their leadership needs to wake up.
Matching rhetoric with those whom you classify as thugs and tend to dehumanize is not what one would expect from well-trained, public-spirited professionals. Basing your argument on the “facts” that were arrived at in the grand jury proceedings – facts that rely on evidence produced by and massaged by the police and the prosecutor is properly called begging the question.
We don’t need a bigoted, irrational protector of our freedom, lives and property.