Is meatheadedness the only requirement to be a cop in America ? Just saying, we have guns, wallets, cellphones, packs of skittles and black people in other countries. Has anybody compared the training officers in other places recieve to some American forces ? Or the requirements for entry ?
training for US police forces is not standardized across jurisdictions. it's not your fault but you're asking a question which cannot be answered essentially https://www.npr.org/2016/07/09/485388430/looking-at-how-police-are-trainedSETH STOUGHTON: The short answer is no. There is no federal standard. Different states set different minimum requirements for officers. And then at the agency level, different agencies can adopt minimum training requirements as well.
While kleinbl00 is doing the lord’s work arguing in this thread, he fails to address this. The lack of a robust federal standard for training state and municipal law enforcement; meanwhile the media holds each cop to a standard of national public opinion. Racist white cops can be trained to not shoot black people without cause. I work with racists and degenerates every day that make better and better decisions as they’re provided training and education that can be regulated and enforced federally. It is not the failure of a racist cop for being racist with a gun in his hand, it is the failure of his government for allowing him to serve without being trained.
Cops in the US are primed to fight the North Hollywood Shootout. Law enforcement in other countries has no reason to expect that they'll encounter five fully-automatic machine guns, a thousand rounds of ammo and body armor. As such, every time a cop in the US has to charge knowingly into a room with an "armed suspect" they are fully prepped for an Aurora movie theater. Stephen Paddock had fourteen AR-15s. 2600 rounds of ammo. 50lbs of tannerite. He was literally more heavily armed than an entire squad of Toronto SWAT. American police are required to make snap decisions with life-or-death consequences. Sometimes those choices are obvious. Sometimes they aren't. They're always terrible.
Let's not be too flippant here. It's a rare day you'll find me defending a police shooting; we're commenting here on an event that I'm sure all sides see as a needless, preventable tragedy. Nonetheless, I've been to the bank that got held up in North Hollywood. I've ridden through the neighborhood where eight cops got themselves in a crossfire over a blue SUV with a couple Mexican women in it were mistaken for a black truck with a cop in it. And I've been told "everyone has a bad day" by an LAPD cop as a justification for why Fruitvale happened. Your mistake is "basically." Your mistake is "meatheadedness." Your mistake is wanting this to be a simple problem with a simple solution - "Americans need to be less stupid." "Cops need to be less racist." Nobody is the villain in their own movie. Turning off your empathy doesn't help you understand anything. Last night, cops in Chicago shot a security guard for doing his job because last week a cop got shot doing his job. Racism is a problem. White guys are a problem. Fear is a problem. But there's racism, fear and white guys in lotsa places. What sets the US apart is the likelihood of walking face-first into a military-grade arsenal.
I disagree because when you look at the scenarios were cops are shooting innocent black men they have no real reason to believe the guy has a military grade arsenal in his back pocket. Or maybe it was tucked away in the glove compartment of the car. Last week a cop ran into a room were he knew some guy with a gun was shooting, I’m sure he had good intentions but did he even have a plan before running in ? A cop shot an innocent black man in Chicago because that’s just what cops in your country do. If this wasn’t a race thing there would be people of every race getting shot as regularly. Cops are just scared of black men not military grade arsenals and I don’t accept that as an excuse. I’m scared of men when I walk around too, so what ? Do I get a pass for attacking any that might be able to out power me ? Maybe one day it will start to happen in predominately white suburbs and, like the opioid crisis, something might actually get done about it.
You disagree that there's complexity? I said, explicitly, that "racism is a problem." What you're saying, in as many words, is that racism is the only problem. We can find data for that. Here's the incidence of police shootings in the USA by year: Here's the incidence of hate crimes: If it were "just" racism, you'd expect to see an uptick in racist violence by people other than cops. But there's no correlation. So. Did a black man get shot because a cop was itchin' for an excuse to shoot black people? Maybe. We don't know. We might find out. It's certainly happened in the past. Did a black man get shot because it's easy to panic when you're charging into an active situation? Maybe. We might find out. It's certainly happened in the past. And it's probable that he got shot for more than "just" one reason.
You know all those videos of white people calling the police on black people for going about their lives ? I have no doubt they legitimately think something is wrong and they feel afraid, I just doubt they would feel those fears if white people were doing the same thing. I don’t really think itching to shoot a black person and panicking in an active situation are mutually exclusive. I don’t think they wake up every day hoping they get a chance to shoot a black person, racism rarely works that way. Sexism doesn’t work that way either but we constantly see men and women get treated differently by people who would never consider themselves sexist. I think it’s possible to get extra jumpy around black people without realizing it. I can say with absolute certainty that they do not get jumpy around small women like myself, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say there are other people they would get more jumpy around even though many of them are innocent while some small women are god damn psycho’s.
I think there is a more important nuance here you are missing. Policing attracts people. And then those people get surrounded with the absolute worst assholes and bullies there are out there. They arrest them. They fight them in the street. They hear decades of stories from their fellow officers about the shit they have endured. And then, when they do catch a bad guy, and he gets let off with a fine and "time served", they realize the system is just fucked up, and they are powerless to do much about it. So now you have a self-proclaimed "good guy with a gun", and you send him specifically into bad situations with "bad guys", and tell him to fix it. And then don't support him after he does that job. While there are good guys in senior roles at every police department, who have weathered the storm and kept their humanity, there are far more that haven't. Ever been to a policeman's barbeque at his house? Nope. Because you aren't a cop, or the wife of a cop. Their job is so stressful, and so shitty, that they ONLY hang out with other cops, because they don't know how to socialize with people who don't see the shitty side of the world the cop sees every day. It is a fucked up system that takes good people with good intentions and turned them into jaded assholes who just want revenge against any perceived "bad guy" they can get their hands on. (Sources: Friends who were cops. Dad worked with police forces, too. And I have a close friend who is a therapist for cops and works with them after they shoot someone.)
I dated a cop's ex wife. He threw hundreds to thousands of dollars worth of her stuff in a dumpster out of spite. I've also been harassed by cops because they were admittedly bored. I'm not saying this means your wrong or that my experience dismisses your point which are good, just when I try to think of the mindset that would seek to become a cop and pull people over to search their car at 1 AM for a burnt out headlight it aligns with guy who would throw a psychotic fit because his ex wife is dating more than guy that wants to help the community. Both exist but I think the majority breaks on the side of assholes who want to be paid to be assholes or bullies who want power.