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Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

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Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#61

Post by jakelazaroff »

celticmusic wrote: post #53
sandworm101 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you want to understand why America's police act like an occupying army... then you have to start with the Drug War. Go back much further than that. Go back to the civil rights movement. Go back to jim crow. The history of the American war on drugs was born of racism and continues its birthright. That is the real sticking point, the source of the high emotions surrounding drugs. The drug war is a proxy for much…

The motivation for the war on drugs is not borne out of racism, but a combination of greed and public safety concern.

This is not correct. Just look at marijuana: people stoked racist fears in order to make it illegal, and today four times as many black people as white people are arrested for possession, even though usage is roughly equal. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/marijuana-prohibition-racist_...

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#62

Post by jdietrich »

celticmusic wrote: post #53
sandworm101 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you want to understand why America's police act like an occupying army... then you have to start with the Drug War. Go back much further than that. Go back to the civil rights movement. Go back to jim crow. The history of the American war on drugs was born of racism and continues its birthright. That is the real sticking point, the source of the high emotions surrounding drugs. The drug war is a proxy for much…

The motivation for the war on drugs is not borne out of racism, but a combination of greed and public safety concern.

Racism is undoubtedly a major factor.

https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#63

Post by danmaz74 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #41
dcolkitt wrote: post #9

> Cooperating with law enforcement is often morally and practically unthinkable for the city’s most vulnerable The article has a really big blind spot, in that it fails to mention the Drug War even a single time. If you want to understand why America's police act like an occupying army- the militarization of weapons and approaches, the festering hostility between the police and the policed, the heavy-handed suspicion…

Internationally, countries that export illicit drugs are countries that have a shortage of legal exports and desperately need a cash income. I think if you want to talk about The Drug War in the US, you need to talk about institutional racism and its roots in a history of slavery. There are myriad ways in which the African American community has been victimized in the US and it's all interrelated. You can't really is…

I'm curious about this link between racism and drugs. When I was growing up in Italy, during the 80s, drugs were a pretty big issue, and we had our own "war on drugs", but at the time there were basically no black people here, so it couldn't be linked to race.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#64

Post by k_sze »

drawnwren wrote: post #50
DanBC wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other places have a war on drugs, or have regulations about lemonade stands, and they don't have the pathologically awful policing that the US has. The US is extraordinarily violent. That's where you need to start: why is violence so common and acceptable in the US?

I agree with this line of reasoning as well. Drug trafficking is punishable by death in Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. Other East Asian countries _highly_ criminalize drugs and have significantly lower crime rates along with significantly higher rates of police reporting.

Nope, not Hong Kong. HK hasn’t had death penalty for anything for a loooong time.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#65

Post by HarryHirsch »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #47

It is not always brought up, but the anabolic steroid epidemic among police is having the dual corrosive effect of increasing individual aggression and reducing respect for the law among police officers.

It's not only the steroids themselves messing with your brain, it's also the fact that you work out in a shady gym and buy them from your dealer gym buddy.

Here's a shining example from Arlington, TX: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2014/02/12/ex-arlingto...

Arlington has recruitment trouble, like so many other police forces around the country. Normal people don't want to join the steroid-addled gang, that leaves only highschool bullies who don't mind the low pay and love hassling the public.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#66

Post by soVeryTired »

qekbg wrote: post #7
Ballas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider, it seems that the way the police in the US react is the consequence of interaction with the public. In places where the police have an active role in settling disputes, they also enjoy more respect from the community.

It's because you only hear about the bad things. Sure there are some crazy cops like everywhere else. But all in all I'm certain most cops are good people who just want to help citizens and remove the bad guys.

I'm not so sure: I think there's a cultural problem with American policing. I get the sense that US police expect immediate compliance with their Any failure to comply is met with escalation of force rather than with reason. This is the "Ask, Tell, Make" philosophy of policing.

Contrast this with the principles of policing by consent [0] that define the ideals (though not necessarily the reality) of policing in the UK and many other countries.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#67

Post by [deleted] »

eledumb wrote: post #16

I'm a white male, near 1% income and I live in a small town about 30 miles outside a major U.S. city and I'm terrified of the police. We've stopped holding the police accountable for their actions and it's out of control. Local government, state government, prosecutors and most of all the Unions are to blame. Yeah, the Union, I'm the son of a Union executive and Unions have lost their way. The Union is supposed to pr…

[deleted]

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#68

Post by DoreenMichele »

danmaz74 wrote: post #63
DoreenMichele wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internationally, countries that export illicit drugs are countries that have a shortage of legal exports and desperately need a cash income. I think if you want to talk about The Drug War in the US, you need to talk about institutional racism and its roots in a history of slavery. There are myriad ways in which the African American community has been victimized in the US and it's all interrelated. You can't really is…

I'm curious about this link between racism and drugs. When I was growing up in Italy, during the 80s, drugs were a pretty big issue, and we had our own "war on drugs", but at the time there were basically no black people here, so it couldn't be linked to race.

A tldr for the US would be that we tend to arrest poor people and people of color more and punish them more than we do well-heeled white people. On average, blacks in the US are a lot poorer than whites, so they get subjected to that twice over.

It doesn't necessarily mean they do more drugs than whites. It just means that "the war on drugs" is often just one more justification for a long history of coming up with excuses to throw blacks in jail and generally crap on their lives.

The US has a talent for either framing rules in a way that causes trouble for people of color or interpreting behavior by people of color differently than the same behavior by a white person.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#69

Post by CapricornNoble »

chmod775 wrote: post #2

Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing. In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and lockin…

>>>The way US police tend to operate fits well within a justice system that is focused on draconic punishment instead of rehabilitation and reintegration though.

US law enforcement agencies have conducted joint training with Israeli experts for decades. So it should be no surprise that our police forces have taken on a callous "siege mentality".[1]

[1]https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/police-israel-cops-train...

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#70

Post by DINKDINK »

Because the administration of police/defensive-forces is monopolized by the state, citizens don't have the option to hire alternative service providers that might meet their needs better[1]. Similar to a municipality selling a monopoly of ISP rights to a ISP megacorp (read Comcast, Time-Warner), the resulting lack of competitive forces degrades the service. Like most municipal-granted monopolies, the only way a citizen can get choice in those services (public schools, police, road administration) is to be wealthy enough to move, if not you're a serf.

[1] People often confuse: 1. State-monopolized administration of 'public' services. 2. Mandated spending (supplied through tax) with private administration. (This is the model Sweden uses[2])

"People Are Hiring Private Police Squads in Detroit" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pt6hnabnkU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq3vVbdgMuQ

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