Is addressing black on black crime a relevant prerequisite to fixing blue on black excessive use of force?

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mect

Platinum Member
Jan 5, 2004
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I don't agree the issues are entirely separate. Certainly higher crime in black neighborhoods will increase the number of police interactions with people in those neighborhoods. We can and should do a better job of training police to avoid the use of excessive force, and also in that training address the issue of racial bias which is a contributing factor in some of these cases.

But that isn't enough. Even with better training, there will still be some cops who are going to use excessive force. A personality disorder like being a sociopath is not something you can train out of someone and it will always be the case that 1 cop in ___ will be that kind of person. Even if cops happened to just be on the norm, 3% of US adults are sociopaths. With 2 million cops in the country, that is ~60,000 scattered throughout who have no conscience or empathy. Training will not fix that.

So what can be done to address high crime in these areas which increase the number of interactions the citizens in those communities have with police? Look at it this way, assuming hypothetically that Floyd really did try to pass off a counterfeit $20 bill, why would he take that risk for what seems to many of us such a small amount of cash? Probably because he didn't have a real one. Probably because he didn't have 2 nickels to rub together.

The problem which urgently needs addressing is widespread income inequality. Racism is an aspect of that inequality, but it is mainly down to fundamental questions of governance: how we tax, who we tax, and what we choose to spend the revenues raised from said taxation on. In that regard, there is only one practical solution in today's climate: vote for democrats. For POTUS, for Senate, for House, for governor, for state legislatures, and on a local level. All across the board. Not even mainly because the rhetoric of the party is anti-racist, but more because they support the right policies which will reduce the income inequality which is causing high crime.

Oh, and another important thing: playing up race and identity politics too much in an election year isn't necessarily the best approach to electing democrats. Nor is the looting and burning which is going on right now.
While income inequality is certainly an important component, I don't agree that we can't train our police to do better. Our police kill approximately 10x as many innocents per capita compared to the UK for example. We might not ever bring the number of wrongful deaths by police officers down to 0, but there is a world of improvement still available.
 

woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
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While income inequality is certainly an important component, I don't agree that we can't train our police to do better. Our police kill approximately 10x as many innocents per capita compared to the UK for example. We might not ever bring the number of wrongful deaths by police officers down to 0, but there is a world of improvement still available.

If you read my post closely, I never said we couldn't train them to do better. In fact, I said we should. But I also said that with police, or with any large group of individuals for that matter, that some are prone to violence and/or lack empathy which is so ingrained that it can't be trained out of them. You can't train all the "bad apples" out of 2 million cops in the U.S. Which is why reducing crime in these neighborhoods by addressing their socio-economic woes is an essential part of the solution.