Professional development De-escalation techniques De-militarization More funding for non-police needed services (unhoused, evictions, etc)
But that won't counter the social conditioning and the decades of TV shows and movies that represent black people as drug dealers and gangstas. One of the biggest problems is the decentralization of police. It doesn't matter how much effort the LAPD or NYPD put into addressing these issues, if Chicago or Oakland doesn't it's going to make cops look bad. And there's always those rogue sheriff's departments in Eastern California or Arizona, or Tennessee that don't give a shit. - There is a national professional police certification and training, and more and more PDs are requiring it, but there'll always be those law enforcement agencies that resist. - De-escalation, do you watch bodycam videos? It's amazing how patient cops are with people, even in the face of provocation... the cameras help. But there are bad cops and there are those that have had enough and snap. There are people out there provoking incidents with cops for clicks and views on social media. And if they provoke hard enough they may be able to file a nice juicy lawsuit. - De-militarization. I think we make too much of the surplus army equipment and not enough of the military style "no-one left behind" training. A cops life isn't worth more than someone else's life. That's something cops in other countries get. The danger is part of the job description. However, cops in other countries don't have to deal with every other driver being armed (in some places). - non-core activities. This is when they unfortunately invoked the word "defunding". There are definitely activities that are left to cops that shouldn't be. You question why armed cops are checking parking meters in NYC when in Philly it's done by civilians. Mental health is obviously the big one but do we really need cops being used to discipline kids in school? I'd also add: - drug testing: we all know that steroid abuse is rife in some PDs and fire departments. I wouldn't be surprised if Adderall is widely used given the nature of the job. - education requirements: policing is a blue collar job. Some departments even reject applicants for being over-qualified. That should change. - automation: there's so much pushback on this in the US because of course, the state is trying to monitor us. But if we had more speeding and red light cameras it would actually reduce the number of police interactions, reducing the number of negative confrontations.
Not if you are expecting overnight results. Like everything social, it takes time. All of those are good ideas. I would also add "school resource" personnel get removed. Because, let's face it, they are police first.
You'd just end up replacing them with someone of similar authority. You don't want a classroom teacher handling the discipline of student who deliberately refused to put her phone away. Cops handle people like her, and they should. No teachers needs the hassle of an assault trial.
Then you're going to need someone to do police-type stuff when they ain't there. The most active resource officer I ever saw was at a very White school. He was the one they got to look for Juuls (which I think was the wrong approach). I think they're better for getting rid of Shaquithia when she decides to get an attitude.
You could not pay me to paddle a kid. Best left to admins. Corporal punishment isn't the law of the land anymore anyway, never was. You(r parents) could always opt out. I got paddled for the only time in my life by my band director in seventh grade. My dad met with him and told him that if I ever did anything again that merited a paddling, he was to be called. I never gave that man any reason to call my dad, and I never got another lick from a teacher. I think he was really angry because we had just left a school system where corporal punishment would have been unthinkable, and returned to one where it was fairly common. It was my first year in public school in that city (I had done first and second grade in an Adventist school and third in a Catholic one), so there were a few surprises about the somewhat backwards culture. Additionally, your school days may not have been as filled with the possibility that some kid would show up strapped and willing, or somebody would share the vodka in their water bottle with a classmate who falls down the steps and breaks her arm- or her neck. There's all kinds of legal shit that schools used to let go because wrongdoing got overlooked. People don't let shit go unpunished and uncontrolled any longer. I'm not looking thru lockers for illegal drugs or for legal ones (alcohol, vapes, THCA) that are illegal for the age of the student or for the location. Those are crimes. I don't have any business handling crimes. I don't think they should search. But if something comes up, I think the law should go after parents who buy for their underage kids.
Resource officers are just tools for the school to prison pipeline. It's how we get 5 year olds being hauled off to jail in handcuffs. Which I'm sure won't have any negative impact on them at all.
Shots fired! How many? LOTS & LOTS! Texas woman mistaken as a home intruder by two female cops said she saw holes appear in the wall before she realized what was happening. The two female cops mag dumped the instant they saw her, and then some. pic.twitter.com/LFal9UrBSy— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 22, 2024
Based on some of the right wing accounts twitting about this, they are making it about gender based hiring. Anything to avoid talking it about police reform.
Considering the woman they shot is Black, I'd definitely say it is going to be race and not gender. It's also about White Supremacy, which means that women are back at home raising the babies.
The tweeter, Ian Miles Cheong, is a right-wing "journalist" who takes things out of context all the time. The goal of this tweet is to make it look like women aren't capable of being cops. It's part of the anti-DEI playbook where right wingers are saying thing like "black pilots aren't qualified, they're only there because of DEI and flying is less safe because of it."
He's not wrong tho. This will likely be called a justified shooting. The officers were responding to a break-in call and claim they saw a screen that was removed and a broken window as they approached the apartment. Upon arriving they claim they knocked on the door, announced their presence, and saw someone approaching the door with a gun when they opened fire. https://abcnews.go.com/US/dramatic-...ed-officers-shooting-woman/story?id=107171359
That he mischaracterizes the problem is not going to stop me from saying the obvious though -- that this was nutso behavior that we see all too often from the police of every stripe. It was just as nutso as the behavior that finally got a MALE cop fired a week or two ago, after he opened fire on his own police cruiser -- housing a person he had just arrested --- when he heard what he claims he thought to be a gunshot towards him. So, of course, he assumed it must be the guy he had handcuffed in the back of his cruiser, and unloaded into the vehicle. His doing so prompted another cop to do the same. He claimed to have believed he was hit. As it turned out, it was reportedly the sound of an acorn dropping on top of the hood/roof of his car from a nearby tree. Thank goodness the detained man was not killed. The problem isn't DEI, obviously. The problem is too much power and too little accountability for police.
Not to be a dick or anything & I know it's a tough job, but was watching an FDNY presser today of an apt fire in Manhattan and jeez it was like a PR show. "ah fiahfightas are some of da best in da world...one was a probie and dis was quite da introduction to start his careah" Firefighter steps up to podium "just wanna thank Louie fo droppin' me down to da window" I'm of the Roger Grimsby school of reporting - give us the facts and move on. "John Lennon of The Beatles, has died. Shot outside The Dakota. He was 40. Now let's go to Storm Field for the weather"
Not far from me in Bradley Beach, a hammered police chief interrupted a DUI stop and gets into it with the sergeant. Chief was one who got suspended when all was said & done
Well done Syracuse PD: Cops detain little boy for stealing bag of chips pic.twitter.com/OFlonJekry— CCTV IDIOTS (@cctvidiots) February 27, 2024