Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackadar
Now I agree when you're talking about the responsibility of respect that should go both ways, but is primarily incumbent upon the officer since they're supposed to be the professional. Unfortunately, all too often this doesn't happen in minority communities. It's not every officer or every interaction, but it doesn't have to be. Even witnessing one overaggressive, power-hungry, racist encounter with a cop will color your interaction with anyone in uniform for the rest of your life. Witness 10 and you'll think you never saw a good cop in your life. See 25 and you'll see them as the enemy.
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If that's acceptable than maybe we shouldn't bother. Pull the police out of these cities. You can do all the right things as a department, have the best hiring practices, hire from the community, train on racial tolerance and understanding, fire bad officers, appropriately represent minorities on the force. You're still going to have occasional bad incidents because of the nature of the job. You're still going to have fuck-ups. And you're still going to have bad situations where it's not clear if something's criminal, a innocent fuck-up, or justified (but which a certain portion will always assume, no matter what, that it was a race-based execution). Communities with more crime are going to have more police activity and more bad incidents, and bad officers, statistically.
If good officers are seen as the same as bad in these communities, and the same tension is going to be there no matter what, then it makes sense to put the better officers on different patrols where they can actually do good.
I'm being cynical for the point of emphasizing this point, because I don't really believe that at all. I'd never give up wanting to improve a police department, never would want to lose pride and stop trying to be a good officer or an ethical and professional member of the law enforcement system, I'd never want to be so cynical that I don't recognize that most people don't try to increase this hostility, but actually want mutual peace and respect and understanding. But when you read threads like this, and the assumptions people make, you do wonder what the point is, for just a minute.
You talk about expecting more from police officers because they're the professionals, and I agree, but as we saw earlier, that's a minority view in this thread. Only a couple of us said we'd trust a random police officer over a random citizen. The majority trusted officers less. In that environment especially, we should expect more from citizens, or else we're actually putting them lower on the totem poll than the police.
Edit: Imagine you're an objectively good cop in Missouri, by whatever standard you want to judge that, beloved by everyone. If you're working in Ferguson, don't you want to get the hell out there? Where not only is there this guilt by association in the community, but among the national media as well. It's a place where black people can be hostile to officers just because of their role, and people broadly agree that that's the correct thing to do. (Not all black people of course, I believe most want good police officers and a better relationship with the department, and are as frustrated by the cycle of hostility as I am, and actually want to end or reduce it, as opposed to fanning those flames for whatever personal goal). But if you're a good cop and you have options, fuck Ferguson, right? The crazy thing is, a lot of cops would welcome the challenge. And it's too bad so many automatically would see them as racist just because they put themselves in a tough position and wanted to take on that challenge. It'd be easier to go to the suburbs and leave Ferguson for the younger officers and those officers without options. A few posters have made cracks about how officers only have these jobs because they can't get better ones. I think a lot of the ones with options would glady take those rather than work in Ferguson, so that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we see police as a collective evil, judge them as a group, validate or encourage hostility by minority communities - then more officers with other options are going to take them.