Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
I wonder about that 1% which this cop [his term] says are bad cops. Certainly that means that the other cops are turning them in, right? That you, being the expert in proper policing techniques have been especially vigilant in watching for bad cops. Turned in any bad cops? I doubt it.
The Force Science Institute were he was trained, is a shoot first program. Police are taught that every encounter can end with your death and you should shoot if you feel threatened. This "I thought he was reaching for a gun" when I just told him to get his wallet defense sees citizens as the enemy. Such thinking is especially fraught when so many police, and the general public, have been conditioned to see Black men as dangerous. So a Black child playing with a toy gun does not get the benefit of the doubt that a white one would. So a Black man dancing down the sidewalk with earbuds who doesn't respond to a verbal order is taken down, choked and drugged to death.
The man who runs the Force institute is a favorite witness for cops charged in civilian shootings. Here is the NY Times in reference to one case where the head of the institute testified, with a quote from the officer's own defense attorney
I will accept the jury verdict. But I believe that not holding police to a higher standard is wrong. We train 18 year old soldiers who do not have fully developed frontal lobes and are in a real war zone that it is not okay to shoot unarmed civilians. And those 18 year olds can learn restraint and accept that such restraint may on rare occasions be a fatal error. Part of the risk when you sign up for the military. I do not see why a 25 or 35 year old cop cannot exercise the same restraint in a city or town in this country. They have more training than the soldier and more maturity and are not in a war zone, civilians are not their enemy.
I refer you to the recent firing of three white officers in North Carolina. They apparently accidentally turned on their recording device and the audio was captured while they were talking with each other. One of the three was seemingly the worst white racist bigot, but the other two who participated in the conversation never reported him or his thoughts about Black citizens. If no one turns in the bad apples, then you're all bad apples
"Piner said he's "ready" for a civil war. According to investigators, Piner said, using the n-word, that "we are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them."
"God I can't wait," Piner is reported to have said.
Piner also said, according to investigators, that he plans to buy an assault rifle and that society needed a civil war to "put 'em back about four or five generations...In interviews with investigators, all three of them said they were venting, citing what they called the current climate for police. They also denied being racist. " Yes sir, nothing at all racist here. And nothing would have changed had not they accidentally turned on the recording device. If I were a defense attorney I'd right now be looking at any case where these three were the arresting officers, handled evidence, or testified. I think my client is going to walk.
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According to the Washington Post database, a total of 41 unarmed people were shot and killed by US police in 2019. The racial composition of victims is:
White: 19
Black: 9
Hispanic: 6
Other: 4
Unknown: 3
In some of these cases Police were charged and tried, others were ruled justifiable.
According to the DOJ Police have more than 50 million encounters with citizens every year, traffic stops, domestic violence, burglaries etc etc. Any of these encounters can turn violent. Of course you would like for the number to be zero, but Police killings of unarmed citizens are statistically insignificant compared to the number of encounters.
In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published the famous “To Err Is Human” report, which dropped a bombshell on the medical community by reporting that up to 98,000 people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals. The number was initially disputed, but is now widely accepted by doctors and hospital officials — and quoted ubiquitously in the media. More recent studies estimate the number is now more than 200,000 per year.
How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals? — ProPublica
How many Doctors go to jail every year for malpractice? Do they avoid prosecution because their insurance pays out large sums?
To err is human for some but not all?