Hurt feelings.
It is a problem if their image is that bad. But I was wondering why you personally would not trust them. You make it sound as if the cops have actually done something to you specifically to make you not trust them. I mean I have had a few encounters with cops that were extremely irritating and made me think that they were dinguses, but I never felt unsafe or in danger in any way. From your examples above, it sounds like your distrust from the cops comes entirely what you have heard. I think that is a completely overblown representation of how an average encounter with a cop goes. Of course there are instances where cops act out of line or screw up, but so does anybody in any profession. Almost anybody who is not committing a crime has nothing to worry about.
And from friends who have tried to work with the police following sexual assault, which happened to be relevant to the threats in that instance...The issue isn't always them directly endangering you, but if odds are they'll be useless in protecting you and may even make you feel worse on top of it, why would you ever ask them for help?
Not me personally but I volunteered as a domestic violence/sexual assault victim advocate and we definitely had clients who did.
Absolutely. But I don't think wrecking the reputation for the entirety of cops is a good idea to point out a couple bad apples. Those cops should be disciplined appropriately which I understand many people think they have not been. Okay, but now we have the media ripping every cop as if they are an extension of the klan. That is not helping relations or progressing any kind of positive action. My problem is mostly with the media is what I'm getting. There's too much sensational nonsense on both sides of the issue.
I can't speak for the media, I don't even have cable.
Yes, everyone is biased to some extent whether they admit it or not (or whether they realize it). Its part of being human. Do you think that maybe the cops might have a reason to suspect low SES urban black males as being more likely to commit a violent crime? I am not going to go find the source for statistics which I am sure you have all seen if not already in this thread, but black intercity males are statistically more likely to commit a violent crime. If a cop is around these crimes everyday, is it really unreasonable for them not to develop a bias if they are seeing crimes being committed by one group more than others? I am not saying it is morally admirable, and I am not saying that it isn't at least partly due to a cops preexisting prejudice. The cops actually have some justification of being more cautious of a certain group if statistics support them and not just prejudice. Of course, I can see how this could be translated to society seeing all black males as more aggressive even if it truly is only low SES urban black males which is unfortunate. Also, high stress and intense situations, like you mentioned, probably exacerbates cop's biases to a point where they may over react. However, I do not think every instance that is being protested currently deals with cops acting out of line (I agree in a couple cases, but not with what happened in Ferguson. Please don't dispute me on this because I am not going to even bother arguing this.)
More likely to commit violent crimes or more likely to get caught?
Wait...did you seriously end this with 'please do not disagree with me'?
But why is that? Maybe politicians should focus on improving the conditions of the inner city.
I don't buy it. There are good people in bad people in every race. It's easy for data to get skewed when some police law-enforcement tactics disproportionately target certain groups of people.
How did I say don't disagree with me? Disagree with me all you want. I made a point where I brought up the Ferguson trail, and then I said do not bother arguing with me on the Ferguson decision. I am not going waste my energy debating that. However, if you want to actually pick out something else I said and discuss it instead of just trying to twist around what I am saying, then I would be happy talk about that.
Obviously there are good and bad in every race. No one is trying to say all black people are bad. That is ridiculous. But, like yanks was saying, 'studies show violent crime is linked to poverty' and there is a higher number of low SES urban black people as well as data showing that they commit more crimes. I see why you would be skeptical of the statistics though. I really is easy to twist any statistic in favor of a particular argument, but I think there is enough data to support this particular claim.
Why is the bolded a reality (assuming that the statistics are indeed correct)?
Why do you think that there are more urban blacks committing crime than say whites? Can you shed light on the underlying causes?
Technically, it only shows that proportionally more blacks are arrested for crimes.
On the flip side, if a specific group has been victimized by cops at a higher rate, then why shouldn't they be wary of law enforcement? Why should they believe in a system that incarcerates their peers at much higher rates? Imagine being surrounded by perpetual doom...
What would you do under the following circumstances?
As to the first part, I would be interested in seeing stats on crime per capita within certain socioeconomic tiers, rather than overall...crime rates and type of crime are definitely correlated to SE status, and sadly racial distribution across SE tiers is also skewed.
Drug deal gone bad, stray bullet, etc? Inner city kids throughout this country face these scenarios and people have a tendency to oversimplify their plight. So seriously, what would you do?
Right, because there are no community centers, no mentorship programs, no 'Big Brother, Big Sister', no afterschool programs, etc.
Right, because there are no community centers, no mentorship programs, no 'Big Brother, Big Sister', no afterschool programs, etc.
Come on, if you haven't run into several stories about people trying to give back to their communities, or even just older members of the community who open their homes to provide a safe place for the kids to congregate after school, you haven't been reading beyond the headlines. And you're right...these things don't make headlines. But they do happen, and people are working on those angles and tackling those problems. They're just not splashy enough for the front page 99% of the time.
Community programs, by definition, are small, local efforts. Why would that make a national headline?
In order to address police issues, however, people need to catch the attention of those actually in a position to influence the police. Plus, nothing sells like scandal...opening an afterschool program hardly qualifies, but videos of the 'stop and frisk' whistleblowers describing how they were threatened for not meeting arrest quotas and specifically told to target 'male blacks between 14 and 21' sure do. Audio recording of a kid who was walking being chosen for 'stop and frisk' being told by officers that they would break his arm and arrest him just because he was a fecking mutt...that makes headlines. But let's not pretend that headlines reflect everything that is going on in the world equally.
