I thought about writing about what I believe should be considered for police reform.
But hell, I've been at this blogging gig for a very long time. And, as you might have expected, I have already written about this.
Nine fucking years ago.
Much Groom For Improvement
18 minutes ago
2 comments:
Speaking as an Outlaw, an Outsider, outside the "protection" of "the law", I think it sucks that we live in a society where cops are necessary. A society where we all behave as civilized adults, rather than the rutting, rooting, rip offs we are. If only in self-defense.
I have crossed the line, I think it overblown but I've earned my reputation, though I never intentionally hurt anyone. I'm just saying it doesn't have to be this way. All we gotta' do is stop doing what we're doing. It isn't working. And that isn't gonna' happen.
This isn't an endorsement of the cops, nor is it disrespect. I tend to view most as just another armed gang roaming the countryside terrorizing the population with impunity, not unlike the Crips and the Bloods of yore, or not so long ago the caravans of that Latino gang everyone's panties were knotted ore (MI6?), but I also know that it isn't so. It just sucks that they're necessary.
(1st rule of being an outlaw: don't break the law. 2nd rule: if you're gonna', don't involve "the law")
I still feel like we have to address the underlying problem of drug prohibition laws if we ever want to have a civil relationship with our police.
Countries such as Portugal have had good and well enough documented success with decriminalization of drugs to serve as examples of how we could tackle this self-created problem.
I was an outlaw myself, also, and I have seen the attitude the inhabitants of poor neighborhoods have towards the police who are hired to protect them.
When everyone in a community has either been in trouble for drugs or knows someone who has, and the typical result is years of incarceration, there is gonna be wide distrust of the police.
And cops are human beings, and will respond to being hated and feared just as you would expect them to.
As much of a personal beef as I have had with the cops, I still have to admire the professionalism many of them manage in the face of the hatred they are on the receiving end of.
That's just what I've seen myself, and I don't claim to have any other specialized knowledge about how policing should be done.
I feel like it's human nature in an intractable situation to look for any excuse available to gain more power over it, and that it's a grave mistake to put them in that situation.
All of your ideas for demilitarizing them follow from this, also, and I have read some more radical ideas that may or may not be good approaches to turning us back from the police state we are approaching in some areas and have already achieved in others.
Among the administrative reforms being tossed around (which, going by the example of the OPD, I have limited confidence in) is the honey bee concept, which states that if a police officer kills someone in the line of duty, that police officer can no longer be a police officer. Fault, evidence, testimony, whatever, if you kill someone, you're out, and you can never get back in, anywhere, ever.
It would raise the stakes in the use of deadly force, possibly enough to change the culture that has grown up around policing that has the cops defending their own personal safety above all else to an unworkable degree.
I know the job of police officer is risky, and they have a right to personal safety, but by the numbers, I have worked at jobs where a higher percentage of workers are killed and injured than police officers are, so my empathy for their violent approach is limited.
I feel that expanding what we have, which just isn't working, is a bad idea, and other ideas should be seriously considered.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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