So what would you say to the argument that the police are already too violent, and that too many people already get put in jail, especially minorities? That is the motivation behind the progressive policies of not prosecuting criminals. Every person not prosecuted is one less crime statistic; bonus points if that person-kept-out-of-jail is a minority.
I want to be absolutely clear - I am in no way suggesting minorities are genetically inclined to be criminals or asking you to speak for all minorities or anything like that. I'm just curious, given your views and your background, what you think when you hear politicians claim that they are fighting inequality by not prosecuting criminals.
I would say that those are not reasons to embrace a lawless society.
If the laws are bad, fix them. If the police are too brutal, curtail them.
This is the only path towards with a healthy society. This isn't always easy, and sometimes it seems impossible. However, sanctioning lawlessness and giving up on reform is no solution. It is a race to the bottom, and hurts minorities even more. If you think building towards equality is hard, imagine how much harder it is when theft, rape, and murder is rampant in your community.
This is represented in the opinions and surveys of minority communities. People want less bias and police brutality, but they also want more police on the streets and more enforcement of laws.
I think the police is very violent in the US in big part because of training but also because how prevalent guns are. We certainly need better accountability and better training.
I still think we need more cops. We lag behind Europe in cops per capita, and have higher crime rates.
The idea that we should stop prosecuting crimes because it affects one type of citizen or another is ridiculous for a ton of reasons, but specially because of this: minorities are more likely to be in the receiving end of a crime.
We can do both invest in the social aspect to level the playing field and prosecute crime wherever it manifests.
>I think the police is very violent in the US in big part because of training but also because how prevalent guns are.
I've heard this excuse before and I don't put much into it. Most of the videos I've seen are bad cops terrorizing people who aren't armed. George Floyd was unarmed, as were countless victims. Karen Garner couldn't hurt anyone. There are many more examples. Also, we're currently a much less armed society than we were before we had this policing issue.
The videos you see are curated to showcase police brutality. In a country with 300 million people and as many guns, its not hard to come up with a video a day depicting things going wrong. That is not the norm though. No one is going to post videos of polite, professional interactions, even though those are, obviously, the vast majority of cases.
Sure, but the police unions and departments protect the bad police and the prosecutors refuse to prosecute them. If we had a video of a teacher groping a student a day and nobody did anything about it, we'd lose our minds.
It's because these cops are bad people and there is no accountability. I'm sure in some departments this sort of thing is encouraged, many it's excused. We can agree that bad police should be fired and charged right?
I don't get the gun angle, people have always had guns in the US. There are fewer households with guns now than there were since the 1990s.
Someone did a survey of 15K police officers and gun restrictions in 2013 here:
And when it comes to finding ways to reduce gun violence and large scale shootings, most cops say a federal ban on so-called “assault weapons” isn’t the answer.
More than 91 percent of respondents say it would either have no effect or a negative effect in reducing violent crime. This is an overwhelming response by those whose job it is to actually deal with this issue on the front lines.
More than 91 percent of respondents support the concealed carry of firearms by civilians who have not been convicted of a felony and/or not been deemed psychologically/medically incapable.
A full 86 percent feel that casualties would have been reduced or avoided in recent tragedies like Newtown and Aurora if a legally-armed citizen was present (casualties reduced: 80 percent; avoided altogether: 60 percent).
It's a biased sample. American police forces attract gun enthusiasts who want to carry and use guns on people. Go to a police forum and see how often they share and gush about weaponry and moan about what their jurisdiction won't give them. It's like kids in a playground. These are people who write "you're fucked" on a gun they use to kill an unarmed person.
There are 700,000 human police officers in the United States. This is a huge bell curve of behavior and interaction. The most reasonable suggestion I have heard is a federal database for police complaints and firings, to help identify patterns and bad actors.
> The videos you see are curated to showcase police brutality
What videos did this person see, that you are referring to? Are you saying there isn't evidence of a problem of police brutality? I recall a survey of Black NY city police; most of them had been harassed when off-duty.
Cops must be under incredible amounts of stress, operating in an environment where anybody could be (legally!) armed. Maybe they start out wanting to improve the world and throw that thought out the window once the first bullet goes flying pas their heads.
I want to be absolutely clear - I am in no way suggesting minorities are genetically inclined to be criminals or asking you to speak for all minorities or anything like that. I'm just curious, given your views and your background, what you think when you hear politicians claim that they are fighting inequality by not prosecuting criminals.