It happens regularly in the United States... in every state. It raises lots of serious questions about our nation and, for the most part, those questions go unanswered. Why do we allow the police to murder innocent citizens with impunity?
There is always the thing about the 'good cop' and what changes (improvements) come from having 'good cops' in the system. But, the 'good cop' never seems able to corral the 'bad cop'. In almost every situation the 'good cop' stands witness as the 'bad cop' brutalizes and/or murders people. As citizen captured films demonstrate, the 'good cop' rarely even lifts a finger to restrain the 'bad cop'. Often, the 'good cop' can be seen cheering and encouraging the 'bad cop'. Is it that "brotherhood" thing?
If the 'good cop' can't or doesn't act out the role of the 'good cop' can we claim that there are any 'good cops'? A 'good cop' can't simply be a bystander. If a 'good cop' sees criminal activity on the part of other police officers, duty compels the 'good cop' to do good... that's what 'good cops' do if any of them are ever around.
The evidence indicates that the idea of a 'good cop' is just a myth. Clearly there are those rare exceptions, but the weight of evidence is sufficient to dismiss the concept of the 'good cop'. The 'good cop' is no more than one of those mythologies that surround and protect the police in their wrong-doing.
An appropriate question is, who is likely to go into a line of work where one goes around in society with a badge and a gun?
If one walks down the street with a gun strapped to one's side, is it unreasonable to be fearful for one's life?
The training program for police officers is over-weighted with the prejudices and misconceptions of society. The training doesn't include enough decency and respect for people as human beings.
There are many important questions about police brutality in America that are not being asked by the mainstream media.
What sort of police officers would behave this way? Are they driven to this type of negative behavior by their training? Or do police have a psychological (and political) predisposition that encourages such actions? Are police officers channeling quintessentially American values, or are they petit-authoritarians, outliers of a sort, who self-select into police work? There are many reasons these questions don't get asked by major news networks in primetime. Primarily, answers to those questions consists of racism, classism, and how so much of white America is largely in agreement with white on black and brown police violence as a matter of public policy. But criminologists, psychologists and other social scientists have compiled a large amount of data on the relationship between police behavior and authoritarianism.
Only superstition, apparently, has never been used to describe policemen. Otherwise the dimensions of authoritarianism seem to describe many police officers very well. In fact, the typical policeman, as he is portrayed in the literature, is almost a classic example of the authoritarian personality.
Balch highlighted the following quotes from interviews with police at that time: If people in general are no good, then "coons" and "spics" are worse. All they like to do is drink, make love, and collect their welfare checks: "These scum aren't people; they're animals in a jungle....Hitler had the right idea...."
According to Banton and Tauber, American policemen cannot rely on the authority vested in their uniform to gain compliance. Instead they feel compelled to assert their personal authority.
The citizen may take offense at the policeman's intimidating manner, and the stage is set for a violent confrontation in which each party is struggling to maintain his self-respect in the face of a perceived threat by the other. Westley adds that the lower the status of the citizen, the greater the threat he poses to the officer's uncertain self-esteem. In this context police brutality is indeed understandable.
Truthout reviewed the websites for each state's standards and training commission and/or state statute and found that 22 states' commissions and/or state statutes do not explicitly mandate that a licensed psychologist administer a psychological evaluation as a minimum qualification for a potential police recruit.
Are there any standards that must be met before one gets to carry the badge and gun? The Cleveland police officer who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice to death within two seconds of arriving to investigate a complaint, was previously deemed "unfit" to be a cop, after having served only six months as a police officer with the Independence Police Department in Ohio before resigning under pressure.
The cop in question, according to internal records, was also found to have failed the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department's written cognitive entrance exam when he applied for a deputy sheriff position there. He also couldn't make the cut at police departments in Akron, Euclid or Parma Heights, failing similar exams.
Cop Shoots, Kills Woman With 7-Yr-Old Girl in the Car Police Were Called Over 20 Times Before Police Officer Executed His Wife.
Why didn’t police ensure that the wife was safe, after 21 calls to report problems? Is it because the abusive husband was a fellow cop? Local police produced 21 reports, some involving domestic violence and police Sgt. Philip Seidle, before the officer shot his ex-wife to death on an Asbury Park street. One report was filed less than a month before the killing. Documents of the Seidles’ marital discord show that police reports were produced with the number of reports increased as the couple came closer to a final divorce decree in late May, for a total of five in 2015. Raw footage of the execution has been posted to YouTube. You can see the cop walking toward the victim’s car as gunshots ring out. This footage is extremely disturbing, but many readers have pointed out something even darker and more twisted. If you look carefully, you can see cops run up to the active shooter — but they did not shoot him. Did they refrain from shooting him because they knew he was a fellow cop? Even though he was murdering a woman in cold blood? When Sgt. Seidle [the active shooter] did finally surrender he was met not with a hail of bullets, but with hugs and reassuring pats on the back. He shot her again AFTER the cops were on the scene and they did nothing to stop him. She might have been saved but cops were more concerned with talking him out of killing himself than using necessary force to stop him from sending a second barrage of bullets into his ex-wife. The little girl was in the front seat of the car watching and screaming as Sgt. Philip Seidle aimed the gun at the woman, and shot her to death, according to reports. Apparently Sgt. Seidle had been chasing her through the streets. A prosecutor described the situation as follows: “As Tamara Seidle was trying to flee, her vehicle crashed into a parked car on Sewall Avenue. Philip Seidle’s car then crashed into hers, and he got out of the car, pulled out his handgun, and approached her car, immediately firing into the driver’s side several times.” It is a tragic and painful reminder that domestic abuse among police families nearly double that of normal families. The national average for abuse of wives is 1 in 4 woman, but if they are with a cop that average becomes 1 in 2 women.
Cops twice as likely to abuse their spouse than the average person. Does this give us any insight into the mind of police officers... And, where exactly were those supposedly 'good cops'?
The increase in police brutality in this country is a frightening reality. In the last decade alone the number of people murdered by police has reached 5,000. The number of soldiers killed since the inception of the Iraq war, 4489.
SWAT teams conduct over 40,000 military style “knock and announce” police raids a year. If we look at the most recent numbers of non-military US citizens killed by terrorism worldwide, that number is 17. You have a better chance of being killed by a bee sting, or a home repair accident than you do a terrorist. And you are 29 times more likely to be murdered by a cop than a terrorist! Think of it, you are safer fighting in the war in Iraq than you are living in the presence of the police in the United States of America... and that' the truth !!! |
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
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