Quote:
Originally Posted by kirklancaster
There is far too much evidence LT for me to post to be honest.
'Legal Evidence' is NOT the 'be all and end all' LT, nor is it infallible - as the dozens of PROVEN innocent men still serving life sentences in the USA (and other countries) attests, as do those cases of belatedly freed and pardoned wrongly convicted 'murderers' such as ex-World Champion boxer, Ruben 'The Hurricane' Carter - himself a victim of the most appalling and blatant racial victimisation by a police officer.
No Judicial system - anywhere - is free from corruption, because such a system, like all systems, relies on the scrupulous fairness, impartiality and honesty of MAN, and that, I am afraid, is one rather big 'ASK'.
From my perspective, 'Empirical Evidence - that evidence collated by my senses - is evidence, and I personally trust my own logic and powers of judgement based upon the overwhelming and wholly convincing wealth of empirical evidence pertaining to this issue, than I do ANY Court or 'Official Report' anywhere in the world.
I think that it must be well known on here, that I am NOT some anti-Establishment, anti-police nutjob - far from it - because I lean to the Right and The Establishment, but not so much that my leaning distorts my view or my balance of judgement.
The EVIDENCE that the USA has a real, tangible, palpable INCREASING problem with psychotic, racist, POLICE OFFICERS venting their agendas without fear of RECRIMINATION is absolutely IRREFUTABLE - in my opinion.
I cede that the percentage of such bastards is low, but percentages by themselves are meaningless; 90% of 100 is 90, 10% of 4 billion is 400000000, but when it comes to the unnecessary taking of HUMAN life. ONE is too many.
I also cede that the vast MAJORITY of Police Officers are NOT racist and that we should ALL laud the highly dangerous and thankless job which they do in both SERVING and PROTECTING the public, but to DENY or REFUSE TO SEE that there is a problem with racially motivated unlawful killing of POC's by serving police officers, for fear of tarnishing the reputation of those Police Forces as a whole, is wholly unacceptable.
These murderers could NOT flourish or even ACT unless the system which they are part of was not ALSO racially corrupt and tolerant of this practice to some degree - hence the blatant reluctance to hold any kind of 'OFFICIAL' inquiry following a lot of these 'incidents', AND the even more blatant 'Whitewashed' verdicts of 'No Case To Answer' in most cases when an inquiry is held.
The problem is NOT going to go away, and the more it is denied or ignored, the GREATER it will become.
Incidentally LT - I am making these points in a response to your question to me, but they are NOT meant intend to refer to you specifically.
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Well said, kirk. I also can't believe we are still having a discussion about whether or not A or B problem exists. Of course police brutality and abuse exists. It will always be something that needs to be kept an eye on and in check. A corrupt government and a corrupt police agency often go hand in hand.
One obstacle I get frustrated with is the way some of these agencies handle policy. To the extremely bureaucratic ones,
policy is equal to efficiency. Therefore officers are expected to follow as much as they can to the letter, keeping everything neat and clear, black and white. The problem is, context and circumstances vary and sometimes things don't quite fit in the box the way they were "expected" to. The chain of command will very often have one way of handling things, which is usually micromanaging from up top from an office with no view of the field, and I'm beginning to think they purposefully choose to remain this blind so they don't have as much culpability when things go wrong.
So then the sergeant or direct supervisor does things differently than the mucky mucks up top thought they were destined to be done and in all that report writing, there's a lot of creative chatter back and forth in order to "justify" things that didn't exactly go along with policy...
Well... a lot of creative reports get written and eventually these officers start to become
too good so good at it that that becomes the default way to explain situations that maybe should be handled differently or policies need to be changed. They've learned also that there are ways to explain certain things without falling on the wrong side of policy, so while up top those officials have no clue whatsoever the loop holes they've left opened and set up that eventually the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. When something does go wrong and there is a scandal they claim later on they didn't know about what was going on because even though it was in the reports, it obviously wasn't made clear enough. Therefore it isn't their responsibility so they pass it to someone else in the chain until eventually someone is stuck holding the bomb.
We had a major issue recently with an elected official, they claimed they had no responsibility because they were simply unaware... even though they were in charge of day to day operations, because they could hide behind the chain of command, they instead promised an investigation and that they would without a doubt find the people at fault and "make them pay".
It's frustrating to work within such organization as someone lower on the chain, and even more frustrating if you're the officer who wants to see things change for the better and to do things right. You have no idea who to talk to about improving or changing any policy or situation that is causing problems until you find that one guy who is willing to not only commit to the paperwork, but put his stamp on it to see it get done. When there is a lot of public scrutiny in the media and no good leadership in your org, then that one guy becomes even more difficult to find.
American culture too itself has major issues and I'm glad it's taking a beating, because let's be honest, a lot of problems begin there as well.