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On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.
Huh. Just like the population at large (though I think it's closer to 20-20-60).On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.
I don't really have much to say on the pik in the OP, but as to the question posed, this Vox article presents a fairly harrowing answer. It's written by a black ex-cop, and while I'm usually skeptical of things that claim to be the 'real truth' about anything, he presents an interesting (and relatively balanced, IMO) case.
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And no matter what an officer has done to a black person, that officer can always cover himself in the running narrative of heroism, risk, and sacrifice that is available to a uniformed police officer by virtue of simply reporting for duty. Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo was recently acquitted of all charges against him in the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, both black and unarmed. Thirteen Cleveland police officers fired 137 shots at them. Brelo, having reloaded at some point during the shooting, fired 49 of the 137 shots. He took his final 15 shots at them after all the other officers stopped firing (122 shots at that point) and, "fearing for his life," he jumped onto the hood of the car and shot 15 times through the windshield.
Not only was this excessive, it was tactically asinine if Brelo believed they were armed and firing. But they weren't armed, and they weren't firing. Judge John O'Donnell acquitted Brelo under the rationale that because he couldn't determine which shots actually killed Russell and Williams, no one is guilty. Let's be clear: this is part of what the Department of Justice means when it describes a "pattern of unconstitutional policing and excessive force."
Nevertheless, many Americans believe that police officers are generally good, noble heroes. A Gallup poll from last year asked Americans to rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in various fields: police officers ranked in the top five, just above members of the clergy. The profession — the endeavor — is noble. But this myth about the general goodness of cops obscures the truth of what needs to be done to fix the system. It makes it look like all we need to do is hire good people, rather than fix the entire system. Institutional racism runs throughout our criminal justice system. Its presence in police culture, though often flatly denied by the many police apologists that appear in the media now, has been central to the breakdown in police-community relationships for decades in spite of good people doing police work.
But does it strike anyone else as strange that the men were fired for a picture that, as awful as it was, didn't actually kill anyone, yet police who kill unarmed civilians often get to return to work?
On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.
Unarmed doesn't mean harmless. Why should an officer lose his job over a justified shooting?
asroc said:That's not my experience at all. Twenty years ago, when he actually was a cop, I could see this being reasonably accurate, but policing has changed a lot in the last years. Hiring practices have changed. The pool of applicants has changed. The vast majority of officers I know are incredibly idealistic.
So to your mind, Officer Brelo's Dirty Harry act of jumping on top of the hood of a car hood and firing 15 rounds into two unarmed suspects is justified because he didn't know they were unarmed and therefore might not be harmless?
From this citizen's point of view it looks like some trigger-happy cowboy shit.
In other words, your experience is as anecdotal and limited as Mr. Hudson's experience.
From this citizen's point of view it does, too. That doesn't mean that's the case every time a cop shoots an unarmed person.
One of the many disturbing facts that have come to light in the weeks since Michael Brown was killed by a police officer is that for all the crime data tracked by the government, there is no central record kept of law enforcement use of deadly force. Individuals and groups have been making their own databases, but a citizen would need to file open records requests to learn about his or her community.
You may have asked yourself, “Was Michael Brown’s killing lawful? And could an unlawful shooting happen in my hometown?”
Well, good news, if you live in Houston. The Texas Observer has looked at the numbers and the answer is, no. Your police force cannot wrongly shoot you.
It just doesn’t happen. Well, deadly police shootings do happen in Houston at an average of one every three weeks. But none of them is inappropriate. Every shooting by a Houston Police Department officer is investigated by HPD’s Internal Affairs and Homicide divisions. Between 2007 and 2012, according to HPD records, officers killed citizens in 109 shootings. Every killing was ruled justified.
The 112 instances of an officer shooting and injuring a person were justified, too.
So were the 104 times an officer wounded an animal, and the 225 times an officer killed an animal.
There were 16 shootings found “not justified,” but they were all ruled accidental.
In the past 10 years, officers from Pierce County law enforcement agencies have killed 36 people.
All were fatally shot after tense confrontations. Some were in cities, some in the county’s unincorporated suburbs and outskirts. All but three of the people shot were men. Most (27) were white. Four were African American.
No involved officers were charged with crimes in connection with the incidents. All the shootings were deemed justified under state law, after multiple independent reviews and formal findings from Pierce County prosecutors present and past.
On its face, the tally is a clean score: 36-0 – every single shooting, every single fatality, justified and not a crime, according to public records.
Is it fair? Is it right? Is it legal?
Gun in hand, the officer ran between houses on the South Side, chasing a man who’d just tried to hit another officer with a stolen car and now was running away.
Officer Anthony Sebastiano was running at full speed when he saw David Richardson slow and reach toward his waistband. Richardson locked eyes with the officer, who thought he was going to get shot for the second time in less than 18 months.
“At that point, it was my understanding that he had already hit an officer,” Sebastiano told an investigator two weeks after the Aug. 30, 2012, shooting. “It just seemed at that point he had no regard for anybody’s life.”
In fear for his own life, as he later told a detective, Sebastiano fired one shot at Richardson. He missed, then fell. Other officers found and arrested Richardson about 100 yards away. He didn’t have a weapon.
Almost a year later, an internal-review board ruled that Sebastiano made the wrong decision, according to Columbus Police Division policies. The commanders on the review board voted 2-1 that he should not have pulled the trigger.
The policy they cited says that officers can use deadly force only when it’s reasonable to protect themselves or others from imminent death or serious physical harm.
The commander in the minority said Sebastiano made a “split-second decision during a tense and rapidly evolving situation.” But the chain of command agreed with the majority, and Sebastiano was suspended without pay for 16 hours.
Such an outcome — a decision by police brass that an officer wrongly fired at someone — is rare. Since 2004, Columbus officers have been involved in 174 shootings. Of the 160 in which there have been rulings, all but 10 have been ruled within policy. Fourteen others have yet to be ruled on, the oldest from April 2013.
asroc said:Yes, that's my point. His experience is as anecdotal as mine. The article is not evidence of anything.
Without the statistical evidence to back up the assertion most applications of deadly force are justified, it's a bit presumptuous to state it as an unassailable fact. Personally, I believe most police shootings are indeed justified.
"Most" is not "all." And therein lies the heart of the matter.