Atomic Playboy
Lifer
- Feb 6, 2007
- 16,432
- 1
- 81
The officers are not on scene to make friends with protestors. They are there to prevent violence.
I would argue that the police are there to protect the community. Obviously, that means taking steps to ensure that peace is maintained and any violent action is prevented. However, you will never convince me that the steps taken the day after the shooting were warranted; appearing in full military gear, aiming weapons with live ammunition at peaceful protesters, firing teargas at assembled protesters absent any violence from citizens, arresting members of the media and threatening to shoot or kill people is not in the best interests of "protecting the community," it is escalating a non-violent situation purely as a show of force, and that is not what I want from police. Ever. Period.
I don't have any knowledge of police training, I just know that some times the only way to get a crazy person to not do what they intend to do, is to act crazier than that person.
That's idiotic. You're saying the best way for the police to deal with a deranged lunatic is to break out the weapons and start screaming? I'd argue the best way is to engage in a deescalation of hostility, and if the lunatic remains unresponsive, belligerent or violent, engage a non-lethal method to subdue and detain the person, all the while ensuring the safety of onlookers. You can do that without escalating hostilities. Police do it all the time. I've seen them bring down crazy people on drugs in my own city without waving guns around and threatening to kill someone. So I completely reject your idea that the police should "act crazier" than crazy people.
The officer doesn't know for 100% sure which person in the crowd is just there to sing kumbaya and which person is about to throw a molotov cocktail.
Absolutely true. Is that to say that all protests should be disallowed because someone may turn to violence? If all we're worried about is security, why allow freedom at all? Freedom allows dangerous people an opportunity to harm us. We have to weigh the cost of harm against lost liberty. The founders of the country did, and they decided that the people should be allowed to peaceably assemble. So while it may be difficult for police to gauge who in a crowd is likely to incite violence, I don't believe that means giving them carte blanche to declare when a protest is allowed or not. It's a shitty position to put them in, but is it moreso than restricting our Constitutional rights?
And here is the flip side to your rant - Who is qualified for police work, and why isn't that person joining the force? Holds true for any organization or business, you don't have the luxury of picking and choosing the best people in the world, you have to get by the best you can with the resources available to you.
If police are having a problem staffing departments, perhaps they should offer better incentives to encourage the right kind of people to join the police force. Lack of applicants shouldn't mean we have decided it's OK for police officers to abuse their position of authority. "Yeah, he keeps threatening to shoot civilians, but... he's got tenure." That's an insane reason to keep the status quo, especially if the status quo is resulting in the unnecessary injury or death of civilians.
I don't actually dislike police; I think they're asked to do a hell of a demanding and thankless job and most of them do a great job at it. But we do need a better system of weeding out the bad apples, because they ruin the credibility of everyone else on the force. And if a community doesn't feel like it can trust its police force, everything falls apart (as is happening in Ferguson).
