Black Lives Matter - so please - if you are black, join the police and aim for Police Chief?

eclipsenow said:

Hi all,
this article is amazing. What a story! What a life!
What an example.
How many young black men and women will follow his example?

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Black police chiefs are quite common in the US. In fact, Minneapolis (where George Floyd died) has a black police chief.

Could maybe the most positive proactive plan BLM could adopt should be maybe to encourage young people to aim for a career in law enforcement. In other words they become cops. If a great number of them are the enforcers of the law it goes to say when there are cases which appear like abuse to a black man arrested well at least culture can have peace to know that it can't be said to be racism.

Bobber said:

Could maybe the most positive proactive plan BLM could adopt should be maybe to encourage young people to aim for a career in law enforcement. In other words they become cops. If a great number of them are the enforcers of the law it goes to say when there are cases which appear like abuse to a black man arrested well at least culture can have peace to know that it can't be said to be racism.

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Just assign black cops to black neighborhoods. Racist problem solved. Of course there may still be violence.

OldWiseGuy said:

Just assign black cops to black neighborhoods. Racist problem solved. Of course there may still be violence.

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Far from a guarantee.

Shooting of Keith Lamont Scott - Wikipedia

eclipsenow said:

Great to hear! Hear's hoping it and BLM bear more fruit.

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The "fruit," as you call it, of Minneapolis's black police chief was the death of George Floyd.

I'm really, really hoping that you are not calling for more "fruit" like that.

OldWiseGuy said:

Just assign black cops to black neighborhoods. Racist problem solved. Of course there may still be violence.

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Of course blacks are in all areas but I do get your point. Having more black cops could serve to be the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm doubtful that the concerns won't be quick to be alleviated by the system just promising to try harder. The words "try harder" could also serve to make cops hesitate to even use less force than they should out of fear of another cultural collapse.

An increase of black cops would though enable law enforcement to do what needs to be done....and the charge of racism could not be applied. Oh the charge might come that a cop was excessive but again it couldn't be deemed as racist.

In principle I don't believe this should have to be the thing to do. The real IDEA thing SHOULD BE you should be able to hire anyone and ethnicity shouldn't matter. But we have to ask ourselves the question though. Do we want to have cultural or national peace? By just staying with good principle well we can do that but the struggle of achieving peace might continually elude us.

So hiring an over abundance of black cops might be the answer. In fact I have read where some police chiefs have said this in the past.....positive change can be where more blacks join the police force, in other words don't stand against us but join with us. To me that'd be the equivalent of ceasing to curse the darkness (albeit some people's perceptions of that can be wrong) but it'd be ceasing to curse the darkness and turning on the light. Join the police force and let all the talk of defunding them go away. The police force needs to be well funded and it needs to remain a stable organization.

Bobber said:

Of course blacks are in all areas but I do get your point. Having more black cops could serve to be the light at the end of the tunnel.

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Black officers make up 12.2% of the police, which is almost exactly how many black people there are in the US population.

Radagast said:

Black officers make up 12.2% of the police, which is almost exactly how many black people there are in the US population.

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And black men make up 40% of the prison population even though they represent 6% of the national population. There is obviously a problem with the criminal justice system

GaveMeJoy said:

And black men make up 40% of the prison population even though they represent 6% of the national population. There is obviously a problem with the criminal justice system

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Or with society: men really do commit more violent crimes than women, and black men really do commit more violent crimes than white men.

Your data is incorrect, though. According to US Bureau of Justice Statistics, black males accounted for 37% of the total male prison population, white males 32%, and Hispanic males 22%. And you can't compare a percentage of men against a percentage of people; that's just not right.

Also, when you consider that, of murders where the race of the offender is known, 50% are committed by black offenders, those incarceration numbers seem a little less surprising.

Bobber said:

Could maybe the most positive proactive plan BLM could adopt should be maybe to encourage young people to aim for a career in law enforcement. In other words they become cops. If a great number of them are the enforcers of the law it goes to say when there are cases which appear like abuse to a black man arrested well at least culture can have peace to know that it can't be said to be racism.

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A lot of us oppose so many of the practices of the police that we would consider it an unethical job. Before you got high enough to change anything you’d have to go along with it all for a while. For one thing, if “good guys” are going to make it as cops, they need to be protected when they report other officers and be able to intervene when other officers are abusing their power.

Radagast said:

Or with society: men really do commit more violent crimes than women, and black men really do commit more violent crimes than white men.

Your data is incorrect, though. According to US Bureau of Justice Statistics, black males accounted for 37% of the total male prison population, white males 32%, and Hispanic males 22%. And you can't compare a percentage of men against a percentage of people; that's just dishonest.

Also, when you consider that, of murders where the race of the offender is known, 50% are committed by black offenders, those incarceration numbers seem a little less surprising.

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And the question is why? Is it the system, or is there something in their DNA?

Sparagmos said:

And the question is why? Is it the system, or is there something in their DNA?

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You answer the racial question, and then I'll answer the male/female one.

Radagast said:

You answer the racial question, and then I'll answer the male/female one.

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I was asking you about the “racial question,” not the gender one. I believe it’s the system, not DNA.

Sparagmos said:

I believe it’s the system, not DNA.

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The problem, in my view, reflects social issues within the US black community. Breakdown of the family is a major factor.

Radagast said:

The problem, in my view, reflects social issues within the US black community. Breakdown of the family is a major factor.

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Try economic deprivation and the wildly disproportionate number of black people suffering it. All those other problems stem from there.

eclipsenow said:

Hi all,
this article is amazing. What a story! What a life!
What an example.
How many young black men and women will follow his example?
As a privileged middle aged white Aussie man, I can't even begin to imagine the difficulties.
But, being an idealist, I am given to dreaming of big picture outcomes.
I hope I'm not being overly idealistic here.
I could have been George Floyd but I lived: Former Detroit police chief

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I have seen some statistics that in the USA, black policemen kill more non-whíte people than white policemen.

Kentonio said:

Try economic deprivation

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Poverty does not cause crime. Most poor people are not criminals.

Kentonio said:

and the wildly disproportionate number of black people suffering it.

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Per the 2015 US census, there were 46 million people in poverty in the US:

• 20 million white/not Hispanic
• 13 million Hispanic
• 10 million black
• 2 million Asian
• 1 million Native American

Kentonio said:

Try economic deprivation and the wildly disproportionate number of black people suffering it. All those other problems stem from there.

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It's not that simple. We need to profile those in "economic deprivation". Lots of unwed teen mothers in that group.