Quote:
Originally Posted by wittynickname
Just stop with this. Police are given a huge amount of responsibility, and when they do their job improperly, people can die. If anyone at any other job screws up that badly--they get fired, and if they're responsible for someone's death due to negligence, they get arrested and prosecuted. Yet police are allowed to jump to conclusions and kill innocent people and they get a paid vacation and desk work? Bad police need to be punished for their actions, period. Saying that bad police deserve punishment isn't supporting cop killers.
|
This is true.
I do think there needs to be a more nuanced understanding of the issue, though (go figure, I'm interested in the details). For example, as I said above, I'd bet that this guy wasn't properly trained in the use of force generally or the use of that weapon specifically. That's a failure of the system to put the police in the best possible position in scenarios when the stakes are at their absolute highest; life and death, as you rightly point out. This in turn is a failure of funding and prioritization within police departments I'm sure, but that raises its own questions: do you want to put this million bucks of public funds into better police training, or education or health care?
Along those same lines of officers not being equipped, a lot of BLM supporters will casually denigrate the average quality of officers, insinuating that the worst sorts of bullies tend to go into policing. The thing is, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Over the past several decades, the general esteem of being a police officer has steadily gone down the toilet, with the result that there are fewer quality applicants over time - you're not getting nearly as many people with post-secondary educations anymore. Meanwhile, demand has increased. If you manage to convince the country of your central message, that Policing as an occupation has devolved into a broken cesspool of violent, racist #######s... who's going to apply tomorrow? No one you want doing the job. And no one is suggesting that we don't need police.
Taking that one step further, from the perspective of the good police officer, can you imagine how it feels to watch the news every night and see a job you take pride in dragged through the mud? Sure, you're probably right to say that the blame there is properly placed on the cops who screw up, but it's also amplified by BLM and cable news in an understandable effort to draw attention to the problem. Can you put yourself in that capable, conscientious officer's shoes and understand why you might become a touch resentful at doing a job where you put yourself at risk to keep your community safe, and are excoriated by moralistic white knights who have never spent a day of their lives behind the gun, just for putting on your uniform to protect them from bad guys? I can only imagine how that could make an idealist into a cynic pretty damned quickly, a good cop into one who- if they don't quit outright - just doesn't care all that much anymore.
Just some things to think about... it's always more complicated than populist movements want to make it out to be.