KLXVER said:
Not really sure what you want me to say. You must have seen the statistics regarding crime in the US. The police interactions that ends up in someone innocent or someone following police orders getting killed are slim to none. Its hard to argue what the correct way of training a police officer is. If you can stay calm and collected while someone is suddenly pulling out a gun or a knife and start attacking you, then please join the police force. They could use that kind of extraordinary skills. |
One of the reasons crime is so high in the US is because of how broken our justice system is. For decades we have been shipping non-violent offenders to prison, which breeds a culture of criminality and increases recidivism. It is also a symptom of our failure to fund public schooling, housing, and social programs which are powerful tools to reduce criminality.
The fact that we pour an obscene amount of money into our policing systems and we still have higher crime rates than most other comparable countries should demonstrate that this is not the solution.
Further, I think "justified" police shootings are just as much of a societal ill as "unjustified" police shootings. Too often police escalate conflicts to a point where they feel they need to use force. Our police system too often is trained to view itself as warriors or militant outfits, creating an "us v them" mentality between them and the communities they are supposed to serve. This leads to things like the clip I posted a week or so ago, where a man was being questioned by police on the street when another officer came up behind him, wrapped his arms around him and threw him to the ground, breaking his wrist, only for that officer to then be told "this is the wrong guy". Even if it was "the right guy", this behavior was uncalled for. If someone has a warrant for their arrest, you don't need to tackle them and break their wrist. That is escalation of conflict.
This type of thing happens all the time. The goal of many police is not to act in a way to improve public safety, but to criminalize people. It is to look at everyone as a criminal and think "I just need to prove it". This was at the heart of "stop and frisk" which was a popular police tool for quite some time. These tactics of going after minor criminalities like possession of marijuana do nothing but breed larger criminality, and foster mistrust of police.
If we were to improve training for these officers and change how we respond to individuals who are not an apparent threat, many of these instances that lead to deaths could be neutralized or completely avoided. We do not need to view our high casualty counts as symptoms of normal policing. They are not. They are symptoms of many things: Inadequate public funding, lack of trust in police, lack of trust in the criminal justice system, poor training in de-escalation, harmful mindsets regarding policing, etc.
