A strong statement of resistance to police abuse of power surprised me this morning as my position on that has felt quite lonely (i.e. barren like a desert island).
Flogging the nature of police abuse of power is pointless since you already know if you pay any attention at all to the news. The second problem is the whitewashing of cop crimes by Republicans to pretend it didn't happen, it was justified, etc. One of the biggest problems is the People will probably never hear anything unless a citizen captures video of cops committing the offense.
Those problems exist so what will you do about them but keep in mind fixing some problems is made complicated when the solution is actually relatively easy. For example, the best way to get the problem-plagued Lockheed Martin F-35 to work is to get Russian engineers to fix it.
That way may not come in under budget but, wtf, it doesn't come in under budget now and it doesn't even work. The MiG-31 is the fastest fighter interceptor in the world and it's been in production for years so Russians definitely have the qualifications and Lockheed Martin has shown less than admirably it does not. Give Russians a Lockheed Martin budget and the world will see a jet fighter like it never saw before anywhere.
(Ed: so we bring in Russian cops to solve the problem with American cops?)
Probably not but it would be spectacular to watch on TV, wouldn't it. That would be as Wild West as it gets only with assault weapons and urban assault vehicles. "Gunsmoke" was never like this.
Presumably it's not necessary to confirm the fact that black men are killed at a disproportionate rate by police and, as yet unverified, the areas where the most killings of black men take place are also the ones where there has been the highest voter registration activity. Note: research that as I read the article in WIRED but that's hardly a gold standard.
So what problem are you trying to solve. Is it the police abuse of power or the racism underneath it. I submit there's not likely much progress to be made in terms of abuse of power until the racism used to justify it is addressed strongly. Right now there's lots of tap dancing about racial equality but it really doesn't make much difference if black people make a lot of money as tennis players now when most people don't give a rat's ass about playing tennis. So what if black musicians have a greater level of acceptance when most people won't be musicians. Those things don't address racism through the society as a whole and we can see from this election just how bad the problem has become. It's even expanded to include Muslims and they aren't even a different race from the good white people in Washington.
Unless you're clear on what problem you're trying to solve, you're never going to solve anything and will just end up multitasking yourself into the dry cycle with your laundry. You will spin around as much as you like but you will never really go anywhere. This is from decades of project management and I was good at it. Many of my meetings started out with the same question of 'what problem are we trying to solve.' If there is no clear problem, we have no reason to continue the meeting. That is all.
For racism, I'll take an easy path to say I want the Equal Rights Amendment restored and ratified. That may not solve problems but it's a substantive step toward a solution. By law, you can't discriminate against anyone and that makes it Federal. Break this one and the FBI is coming after you or at least it will be once they lose that pasty poltroon, James Comey, and concentrate on dealing with actual problems in America rather than trying to invent new ones.
First off we have to convince people we're serious about doing anything about the problem and right now people don't have a reason to believe it. America even elected a black President but what changed with civil rights. If anything they got worse with harassment over voting. There's no reason to believe America is serious about equality until it takes substantive steps to show it and that goes far beyond bullshit blather in predigested 'debate.'
Show me, bitches!
Because otherwise we have to get some Russian cops and then things will really get weird.
Flogging the nature of police abuse of power is pointless since you already know if you pay any attention at all to the news. The second problem is the whitewashing of cop crimes by Republicans to pretend it didn't happen, it was justified, etc. One of the biggest problems is the People will probably never hear anything unless a citizen captures video of cops committing the offense.
Those problems exist so what will you do about them but keep in mind fixing some problems is made complicated when the solution is actually relatively easy. For example, the best way to get the problem-plagued Lockheed Martin F-35 to work is to get Russian engineers to fix it.
That way may not come in under budget but, wtf, it doesn't come in under budget now and it doesn't even work. The MiG-31 is the fastest fighter interceptor in the world and it's been in production for years so Russians definitely have the qualifications and Lockheed Martin has shown less than admirably it does not. Give Russians a Lockheed Martin budget and the world will see a jet fighter like it never saw before anywhere.
(Ed: so we bring in Russian cops to solve the problem with American cops?)
Probably not but it would be spectacular to watch on TV, wouldn't it. That would be as Wild West as it gets only with assault weapons and urban assault vehicles. "Gunsmoke" was never like this.
Presumably it's not necessary to confirm the fact that black men are killed at a disproportionate rate by police and, as yet unverified, the areas where the most killings of black men take place are also the ones where there has been the highest voter registration activity. Note: research that as I read the article in WIRED but that's hardly a gold standard.
So what problem are you trying to solve. Is it the police abuse of power or the racism underneath it. I submit there's not likely much progress to be made in terms of abuse of power until the racism used to justify it is addressed strongly. Right now there's lots of tap dancing about racial equality but it really doesn't make much difference if black people make a lot of money as tennis players now when most people don't give a rat's ass about playing tennis. So what if black musicians have a greater level of acceptance when most people won't be musicians. Those things don't address racism through the society as a whole and we can see from this election just how bad the problem has become. It's even expanded to include Muslims and they aren't even a different race from the good white people in Washington.
Unless you're clear on what problem you're trying to solve, you're never going to solve anything and will just end up multitasking yourself into the dry cycle with your laundry. You will spin around as much as you like but you will never really go anywhere. This is from decades of project management and I was good at it. Many of my meetings started out with the same question of 'what problem are we trying to solve.' If there is no clear problem, we have no reason to continue the meeting. That is all.
For racism, I'll take an easy path to say I want the Equal Rights Amendment restored and ratified. That may not solve problems but it's a substantive step toward a solution. By law, you can't discriminate against anyone and that makes it Federal. Break this one and the FBI is coming after you or at least it will be once they lose that pasty poltroon, James Comey, and concentrate on dealing with actual problems in America rather than trying to invent new ones.
First off we have to convince people we're serious about doing anything about the problem and right now people don't have a reason to believe it. America even elected a black President but what changed with civil rights. If anything they got worse with harassment over voting. There's no reason to believe America is serious about equality until it takes substantive steps to show it and that goes far beyond bullshit blather in predigested 'debate.'
Show me, bitches!
Because otherwise we have to get some Russian cops and then things will really get weird.
5 comments:
I didn't say it's all racial but the numbers are clearly disproportionate. I don't have immediate stats to quote but I know they exist. My biggest problem with cops isn't so much the bad ones since they will obviously do bad things but the good cops don't turn them over so the system can't purge itself.
It would be hard to show that it is so disproportionate. The crime rates by all minoritites is much higher because of tje economic issues. And there is no doubt the gangs skew these numbers even higher.
I disagree that good cops do not try to purge the bad ones out. They are constantly purged.
Most of these shooting are done by younger police. So the training issues should surely come into play. A new police officer is on the street with only 4 months training. It takes 11 months to get a license to cut hair .Also the hiring pool probably plays into the issue
The number of shootings in general. Nashville used to have very few shootings. Today we have about 2-3 per day usually one of which is fatal. So police react to all encounters as ones that are instead of potentially violent as now probably violent.
Since we have so many non lethal devices one wonders why they are not the first line of defense for police. Nashville could have looked at these but instead spent $1.5m on new body armor.
I dont dismiss the racial side to this but I dont believe you will ever solve this as the blue peolpe will arrive soon
I do believe it can be solved and one thing with spectacular success has been cop body cams since complaints drop near zero. That study was UK where probably not too many guns so in US I'd be inclined to approach any vehicle with my Taser drawn and ready to fire. That seems prudent if I'm to remain a non-deceased cop. Where I believe we agree is they're way too fast to gunfire and poor training seems a huge part of it because I've seen one incident after the other in which the cop unloaded the entire clip in rapid succession. Where the hell did you learn that, Flatfoot??
Seems the trouble is lots of pieces. Racism is a piece but so are a billion guns all over the place. The violence seems symptomatic of a lotta, lotta problems.
Last study that I saw listed 3% of the population owns 50% of tbe weapons. They call them super users owns on average of 24 weapons each
I've heard of the trend and it shows also the actual number of Americans owning guns is going down but these super-size psychos collect arsenals. There's probably no way to fix those ones but they don't seem to be the shooters in crime situations too much so who knows how psycho they really are.
Post a Comment