Police Brutality

Didn't see a thread for this, so I decided to make one. Move or lock if needed.

As of August 9 2015:

According to the Washington Post:

585 people have been shot dead by police this year.

219 were white.
(Whites make up 73% of the US population. These deaths account for 37.4% of the total.)

147 were black.
(Blacks make up 12% of the US population. These deaths account for 25% of the total.)

92 were Hispanic.
(Hispanics and Latino Americans make up 11% of the US population. These deaths account for 15% of the total.)

55 were other/unknown.
(4% of Americans are neither black nor white, nor Hispanic. These races account for 9% of the deaths.)

60 of the people shot dead by police so far this year were unarmed.

18 were white. That's 30% of the 60; the numbers are proportionally similar between the armed and unarmed (34% of whites shot by police were armed).

24 were black. That's 40% of the 60; the number, proportionally, is almost double that of the armed black people shot by police (21% were armed.)

14 were Hispanic. That's 23% of the 60; the number is proportionally larger than that of the total.

4 were unknown/other. That's 6% of the 60. The number is proportionally similar to that of the total (8%).

What are your opinions on police brutality? Do you think it exists in the world today? Do you view it as a race issue? Share your thoughts.

Police brutality absolutely exists in the world today. It has existed for pretty much as long as there have been a designated police force (which actually isn't that long historically speaking, since I'm fairly certain our idea of cops only really goes back to the 1800's) and it's something we do need to get a handle on.

I will also say that while I think race plays a huge part of it, I'm not going to sit here and say that it's the only problematic part. If we're going to bring color into it, then we'd also have to talk about a blue vs everyone else deal. Cops have their own culture that does become more complicated when race, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and various other things get added in, but that 'thin blue line' is real and it's less a thin blue line and more like a great wall of blue.

Location also matters. Some cities the issues with the cops can probably be boiled down to race issues. Other cities it's primarily class issues.

I personally find it nearly impossible to narrow down just one issue when it comes to police interacting with the public when we're talking about just all cops. Besides, trying to generalize to that large of a population doesn't actually help anyone. At that point it just, in my opinion, becomes a whole new stereotype that stops people from going to the cops at all, which can bring out whole new issues. For example, if everyone automatically assumes the issues with the cops are that they're biased toward a certain demographic (whether it be race, gender or whatever) then the people in that demographic are going to be less likely to go to the cops and report any crimes. That in turn makes it so that the cops can't actually investigate those crimes even if they wanted to, which then makes it easy for people to say that the cops don't care about that demographic, which just makes the problem bigger.

So to summarize for the people that looked at this and immediately went 'TL;DR': lots of things go into why there's police brutality, real and/or perceived, and sometimes the situation feeds on itself.

@ CallusedSilk
I agree! You can't look at the statistics as a whole and claim police brutality is a race issue. My brother wants to become a cop because he feels as if it'll make him "above the law" and I feel like too many people have that thought process. Not to mention the fact that cops in the US are trained to use their sidearm at anytime they feel threatened.

@ personified.
Oh god. That's terrifying. Ideally a cop should be there to uphold the law rather than be above it, but I know that doesn't always happen.

Also, the firearm fact is terrifying, especially because they also have other items at their disposal that would be significantly more effective, and arguably safer, than shooting someone. Maybe training could be improved? I mean, I definitely think an emphasis on problem solving would be beneficial. I'm not necessarily saying it'd correct all the problems, but I don't think it'd hurt to have cops do a huge chunk of their training in scenarios where they have to imagine what they'd do if a gun wasn't an option at all.

@ CallusedSilk
Yeah; I think their training should consist of hand-to-hand combat, self defense training, and problem solving skills like talking people down from tempers and stuff. Firearm training is necessary, sadly, but I think that cohesive training with tasers and batons would be just as beneficial.

(I recently read a story about a 17-year-old who was murdered by a cop; the cop claimed that the kid assaulted him and he had no choice but to shoot him 7 times. Before the footage cut out, the officer's shoulder cam shows him tasering the kid and autopsy results reveal that the victim was high on THC at the time. If a stoned 17-year-old who had just been tasered is able to overpower a trained police officer we should reform the way cops are trained. And that's assuming the cop's story is true. Did I mention that it was a traffic stop? And the officer, without announcing that the teen was under arrest, tried to physically remove him from the vehicle? He also threatened to taser the kid before announcing his arrest. You can see the video Here but the ending is heart-wrenching.)

@ personified.
True.

The cop refused to show his badge, which actually isn't something they're allowed to do. It's especially prudent for someone to request because there are people that will pull cars over and impersonate police officers in order to rob people. The kid probably should have just handed over his ID, but he wasn't exactly rude about it. The cop also probably needs to be more logical. The headlights being new or old has nothing to do with whether the high beams are on since that's shit you manually choose. The kid was tased for literally no reason though. The kid wasn't fucking fighting back and wasn't fucking moving. That was just straight up necessary and disgusting and murder. Also, seven fucking times? Why is it that cops that shoot unarmed people can't even get the job done with one goddamn bullet? Why is it always overkill? Like, you've had training to aim, so when you're less than a foot away from someone, it shouldn't take 7 fucking shots to do the job.

So the people I work with don't think we have a police brutality issue despite everything that has happened and no doubt will happen again. I'm ashamed and thoroughly insulted that I have to work with them.