Will Seeing Both Sides Of The Issue Help End Police Brutality?

SummerMadness

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Will Seeing Both Sides Of The Issue Help End Police Brutality?
For people on either side of it, police brutality is an issue that only has one side. Supporters of law enforcement maintain police have a job to do, and tragedies are sometimes collateral. On the side of the victims, most visible in movements like Black Lives Matter, the actions of police amount to a fundamental disregard of their victims’ humanity.
Plummer says, is that in the years since 2014, when Garner, Ford, and Crawford lost their lives, there’s been very little change in the conversation and very little progress in the realm of police-community interactions. In 2017, 987 people were killed by the police–24 more than the previous year. “We know there are bad cops out there,” Tennon says. “But by showing all perspectives on the issue, we wanted to have a conversation around: What can we do to change these things?” Understanding law enforcement’s processes, the points at which decisions are made and in response to what governmental or intra-agency pressures, will give community members another lens through which to view the reforms they’re pushing for.
 

Landon Caeli

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Nope. It's not going to end. Nothing we can say or learn will ever make bad people good. And there will always be bad cops because it's just in the nature of many people who seek to be in positions of power over others.
 
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Landon Caeli

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The name of the demon associated with 'wrath' is Satan.

Classification of demons - Wikipedia

240px-Codex_Gigas_devil.jpg
 
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Ana the Ist

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The conversation on police brutality has a lot of problems...and not listening to the "police" side of the equation is really just one of them.

The first problem is the underlying assumption of the conversation that nobody has bothered to figure out....is there actually a problem of "police brutality"? and if so, how big is the problem?

The metric used in the OP is the number of deaths at the hands of police...and while certain groups have done a great job in recent years of tracking recording the number of these incidents, I've yet to see any of them break those annual death tolls down into any meaningful statistics. If a significant number of those deaths are either because the police used more force than necessary or made a mistake/broke the law...then yes, it's safe to say that there's a problem with police brutality.

If, however, only a small number of those deaths are from excessive force or mistakes/illegality...then "police brutality" isn't really the problem that some make it out to be. The real problem is criminality and the question should change to "why do so many people risk their lives trying to hurt/kill police?"

The third option is to look at the individual circumstances of each case, and figure out what laws are at play when a cop legally kills a civilian. If, for example, self defense is at the heart of the issue...and it looks as if the legal standard for self defense is being met and not stretched in some way...then perhaps it's worth considering that the law itself needs to be changed in order to reduce the number of deaths.

This is, in my opinion, where the conversation needs to begin...but it doesn't...and instead, those people who have some emotional or financial investment in the controversy are being allowed to steer the conversation towards their own ends.
 
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Nithavela

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Another factor is that there is a lot of police brutality that doesn't end in the death or life-threatening injury of the victim. German police has a real problem with excessive violence.
 
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Johnny4ChristJesus

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Not any more than "seeing both sides of the issue" will stop criminals from doing what they do. And, when criminals randomly attack cops to somehow "get even" with unrelated parties for another travesty of justice, how can you consider that right? But, you apparently do by your post. There are people who are looking for a reason to riot. If an officer (who is sworn to uphold the law and has criminal background checks done on him to get the job) turns out to be a racist who is brutal toward others, then he should be fired and go to jail. And, the media is more than happy to expose this stuff.

But, then the gossiping begins and the people just looking for a reason to travel and cause a riot kick in. We aren't talking about people like The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We are talking about people who are choosing to do wrong--to take justice into their own hands and seek retribution from people who are unrelated to what actually happened. And, it isn't just blacks who are wronged by the justice system, sorry. And I, as a white person, know that for a fact and experienced it myself.

Some of my best friends are African Americans. But, they would never get involved in rioting and killing of unrelated cops and emergency workers just to get even and create fear among all those who work in law enforcement. How on earth does that seem right to you?

There are still racists in this country--of all races. And there are racists who profess to be Christians, but aren't really. And, I guarantee you that there are racists within the movement "black lives matter!" So, isn't it hypocrisy to act like one is standing against racists when that person is one him or herself? And, if you walk side by side with racists and do nothing to expose them--regardless which side of the issue you are on--aren't you part of the problem? Yet, because they live by hate, the use fear to control others.

"Blue lives matter" isn't an anti-black movement. It is an anti-criminal movement. There are cops of all races. NOW, if someone were to start a movement "White lives matter!", I would have as much as issue with it as I do with a movement that exclusively promotes black lives. That would be the real issue--race to race. COPS ARE NOT A RACE; yet, you act like they are. A cop who does nothing wrong shouldn't have to worry about getting shot simply because he is a cop. A black man who does nothing wrong, should not have to worry about being beaten or killed just because he is black; and neither should a white man, an indian man, a hispanic man, a yellow man, etc.

The idea that the "hate" is one-directional is an absolute lie. Why not name the movement "All lives matter"--and talk about all incidents of police brutality with equality? That may certainly expose more situations where the brutality was against blacks; but, it would be something all could rally around. Why does it have to be, specifically, "black lives matter"? Highlighting one race only makes racial divides worse.
 
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Ana the Ist

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Another factor is that there is a lot of police brutality that doesn't end in the death or life-threatening injury of the victim. German police has a real problem with excessive violence.

Agreed...one can't really figure out the extent of a problem if everyone defines it differently.
 
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Albion

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I cannot see that any change will end the claims of police brutality and racism, since this issue has been so helpful to the organizing efforts of groups like BLM which moved swiftly from being a movement that was sounding an alarm about this particular problem...to becoming something much more extreme.
 
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