Ferguson / Staten Island Decisions -- No Indictments

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

On the one hand, we have some of the least powerful, least influential people in the country.

On the other, we have the group legally empowered with a monopoly on force and the people responsible for wielding governmental power.

If your response to abuses by the second group is to try to distract away from it by focusing on the failures of the first group, then I have to question what kind of fucked up worldview would lead to that sort of priorities. The people with the most authority have the most responsibility.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

For the sake of the argument, let's stipulate that all of what you say is true.

Can the people in authority change the reality in these communities, simply by reforming themselves?

Doesn't real change require a buy in from the community as well? The police cannot properly do their job without the support and respect of the community. Do they have to earn that? Yes.

Will the community allow them to earn it? I think that's an open question.

If you want to argue that one side bears more responsibility, that's fine. But for any real change to occur, both sides need to take responsibility.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

They can absolutely change the part of the reality that they're responsible for. Like all the shooting and killing they do.

Which again leads us to the fact that we're having a discussion about how police in this country can't seem to go a week without killing an unarmed black man and some people want to turn it into a discussion on liberal politicians or failures of black culture in America. Which, to me, is fucked up as shit.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Apathy is a helluva drug.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Is there a single American city that is less safe than it was 25 years ago?

Police tactics and deployment have only improved over the last 25 years.

Show me some definitive evidence that police involves shootings -- let alone the killing of unarmed black men is up.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

I don't recall saying it was going up.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Whatever.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

So, shootings aren't up, and crime is down. Is that right?

That sounds like a record of success.

When you factor in that police tactics over the last 25 years have resulted in far more "contacts" between cops and the community, we can only conclude that interactions that result in a cop firing his weapon are way down.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Things used to be more fucked up. Now they are still fucked up but possibly less so in one specific way.

Hooray?

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

So, crime is down and shootings are down (despite more interactions), and we shouldn't celebrate this? Instead we are condemning the police, and their tactics?

So, what is the solution Rick?

This reminds me of the hand wringing over the disproportion in deaths between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the recent conflict.

I think some of you will only be satisfied if more cops are killed.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

That's totally it.

 

Re: Ferguson Decision -- No Indictment

Right, the body count is way too disproportionate.