Black and Unarmed: Behind the Numbers
What the Black Lives Matter movement misses about those police shootings.
Without question, police officers must be constantly retrained in courtesy and respect; too often they develop boorish, callous attitudes towards civilians on the street. Some are unfit to serve. Some are surely racists. And if de-escalation training can safely reduce officer use of force further, it should be widely implemented. But the Black Lives Matter movement’s focus on shootings by police should not distract attention from the most serious use-of-force problem facing black communities: criminal violence. In 2014, there were 6,095 black homicide victims, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks are only 13 percent of the population. The black homicide toll will be even higher in 2015. In over 90 percent of those black deaths, the killer was another black civilian. By all means, we must try to eliminate unjustified use of force by police. But as long as crime rates in black communities remain so high, officers will be disproportionately engaged there, with all the attendant risks of such deployment. Indeed, the incessant refrain that cops are racist could well increase the likelihood that black suspects will resist arrest, and that witnesses will be reluctant to cooperate.
7 comments:
Anyone who has been employed as a cop and has worked at that job for ten years or more and on the streets where the 'action' is, and not in some safe out of the way back room within a police station, will tell you just how dangerous those 'streets' can be.
One of the best aspects of being a cop that I enjoyed was never knowing what kind of a shift you were going to get - would it be a routine patrol without any incidents at all or would it be full on to the extent that you had to be relieved at what you got involved in so that you could terminate your shift?
The general temperament of the officer is very important. Knowing one's temper limits goes a long way in being able to control and then effectively deal with most incidents. It takes a brave cop to stare down those who wish to do you harm without resorting to the use of pepper spray, taser or drawing your firearm.
A good cop is one who can deal with the 'incident' at the time without unnecessary force or resort to legal avenue - a good clip around the ears or a kick up the backside of a 'young offender' and in a general sense, has a more profound effect on that kid than any amount of court time or detention will ever deter. If you can catch 'em young enough then they have a better than even chance of no more wrongdoing.
But try telling that to those who now 'know better'!
However, societies 'victims' are a different kettle of fish altogether to deal with because they are 'victims' to anything they wish to become 'victim' to.
All cops, no matter how well trained or experienced, have a 'breaking point'. Their breaking point may be at a higher threshold than the untrained civilian, but nevertheless, they will break if pushed hard enough!
So if the Black Lives Matter crowd truly value what they still possess they had better start to re-think their victim status.
Civilians? Aren't we all civilians? Except, of course, our active duty military.
Ultimately, the entire concept of professional police forces has turned out to be incompatible with fundamental American values of limited government and self-government.
Professional police forces as we know them were invented by corrupt urban 'machine' politicians to wield control over their disarmed poor immigrant constituents. This system was eventually normalized and spread to non-urban areas of America, displacing the tradition of an elected peace officer who called upon the local citizenry at need, but mainly settled disputes by appeal to the laws. For communities with a low incidence of violent crime and a high degree of integration in common cultural norms and morality, the alteration appeared more superficial than fundamental, a matter of more money spent on patrol cars and uniforms.
As America has become more heavily urbanized and a greater proportion of the population becomes habitually disarmed, the original intention and design of the professional police as a paramilitary force existing to serve the corrupt urban machine politicians need for protection from the anger of the constituents has become more prevalent. The main difference is that, by and large, the constituents being suppressed are not recent immigrants.
But they are no longer really Americans either. They are serfs of a rising feudalism in which the rulers are drawn from an entirely distinct class from the ruled.
Ultimately, professional police forces must be eliminated completely, and communities return to Constitutionally sound reliance on the armed body of the citizens for enforcement of the laws. But this will not happen peacefully. Those who seek to exercise power without accountability seek every opportunity to disparage and eliminate the militia, and they decide whether cops get to keep their gun and badge.
The #BlackLivesMatter movement has never been more than a false-flag organization designed to push social conservatives into embracing the police state as an alternative to letting armed blacks police their own communities. It has been immensely successful.
But when TSHTF, the habitually disarmed who seek to shift the burden of defending themselves onto 'professionals' are pretty much all going to die.
I know at least some people here think it would be a fine thing indeed if most blacks were among that group. And whether or not it is a good thing, it is a thing that I can do little to alter at this point.
Bullshit! Give 'em more guns, wall the place off and let 'em blast each other to hell. That'll lower welfare liabilities on the rest of us.
Chiu ChunLing, much of what you write on this subject is true. Professional police forces have become just another arm of the government through the gradual process of politicizing an office that was always meant to be an independent body whose sole responsibility was upholding the law of the land.
Police forces are now beholden to the will of the politicians who use officers to raise revenue through fines, etc, and who care little to the point of being indifferent to maintaining the law of the land unless it suits their purpose.
However, only a moral and armed people who respect what God intended and the law of the land will abide in communities where police are seldom required. The process of corrupting the peace officer into a law enforcement officer has been a gradual process over many decades, and the capture of the individual whose aspiration used to be to serve his/her community into becoming one of working for the state, has been done under such a blatant misuse of political power that I am surprised I do not read more on this. And this has occurred throughout all Western countries.
Some years ago, I got into a heated correspondence with the acting head of the police academy where I did my training at many years before. My point in writing to him was to argue the direction that then cadet police officers were being herded/indoctrinated into which seemed to me at the time, was not in the best interests of the communities they would have been sent out to serve in.
Anyone wishing to become a cop today has to complete a university course where they become politically indoctrinated to the ways of the state. Even the officer's use of discretion is now being curtailed to that of the bureaucrat - who has none!
They're turning out robots and we are the ones who get their unwanted attention.
I hope I don't sound too much like Anonymous at 2:36 PM when I say that, if a people cannot be trusted to respect and enforce the laws among themselves, I see little enough benefit in imposing it on them from without. I know that it is a bloody process for an uncivilized people to learn that modern firearms make it injudicious and imprudent to always act on their worst instincts.
But I really don't see any better alternatives.
And I'm not willing to continue to sacrifice the freedom of those who abide the rule of laws rather than tyranny to the marginal good keeping the unwilling in an artificially imposed peace.
The problem is that the peace-loving people of the West adopted the "new improved" model of law enforcement by professional police forces without closely examining the fundamental presumptions of such a system. At one time (at least, in less urban areas), the uniforms and squad cars and issue sidearms and so forth were really just superficial trappings on what was essentially still a member of the community serving as law-enforcement. But the end outcome was implicit in the fundamental assumption that being a cop was a job, a personal identity, and a community, all in its own right.
The transformation of professional police into what they were originally designed to be was an inevitability. The entire point was to create an enforcement class and mechanism more amenable to the designs of political corruption and outright tyranny.
I have quite a few career Law Enforcement officers in my family. I have watched several of them become increasingly jaded over time performing the job. I would like to preface this comment by stating truthfully for the record that I am not a bigot, and that I weigh a persons individual character on the merits of their actions and words. That being said, my two cents are thus:
Many officers start out the job without any racial animosity. As the demographics of this nation change, so does the job of Law Enforcement. A large part of the reason so many black people are in prison is because so many black people are out there committing violent crimes. I have gotten to the age where I value honesty above diplomacy or PC crap. Officers get jaded by dealing with black people...because they spend so much time dealing with black people. For those of you who have never lived around a predominantly black area, I can tell you that nothing makes you realize the harsh reality of the situation more than being a white person in a mostly black neighborhood. Racism IS alive and well today, and is being fostered and encouraged by those who continue to tell lawless thugs that THEY are the victims. Media plays a game of never reporting black on white crime as such, but making a parade out of headlines on the rare occasion they are the other way around. I know some fine upstanding black folks, including some diehard Patriots who value the same convictions that we hold so dear. I would fight by their side, and be honored to do so. Though they would be the first ones to tell you that black culture has been led down a dead end road by the Democrat Plantation mentality that dictates that to remain in power Liberals must increase the numbers of poor disenfranchised immigrants and minorities in order to maintain support, and then to attempt to weaponize those cultures against ever assimilating into true working class America. Many Black people I have met have been the most virulent racists imaginable, and for the most part they are encouraged by the media to believe this way.
This is now a numbers game. They must use mass immigration to dilute our population enough that we do not have the numbers to effect any further meaningful change. I cannot imagine being a White Police Officer in a predominantly black area today. The only solution I can think of is to hire Black police officers to patrol those areas. That way they can at least function as Police Officers without being accused of racism everytime they try to do the job. Cause we all know that Dindoo Nuttin is a good boy, it's those evil police officers trying to make him look like a criminal when he just wants things he isn't willing to work to pay for.
Trey O.
San Antonio, TX
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