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Seven Reasons Police Brutality Is Systemic, Not Anecdotal
Seven Reasons Police Brutality Is Systemic, Not Anecdotal
...the plural of anecdote is not data, and the media is inevitably drawn toward tales of conflict. Despite the increasing frequency with which we hear of misbehaving cops, many Americans maintain a default respect for the man in uniform. As an NYPD assistant chief put it, “We don’t want a few bad apples or a few rogue cops damaging” the police’s good name.
This is an attractive proposal, certainly, but unfortunately it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Here are seven reasons why police misconduct is a systemic problem, not “a few bad apples”:
1. Many departments don’t provide adequate training in nonviolent solutions.
This is particularly obvious when it comes to dealing with family pets. “Police kill family dog” is practically its own subgenre of police brutality reports, and most of these cases—like the story of the Minnesota children who were made to sit, handcuffed, next to their dead and bleeding pet—are all too preventable. Some police departments have begun to train their officers to deal more appropriately with pets, but Thomas Aveni of the Police Policy Studies Council, a police consulting firm, says it’s still extremely rare. In the absence of this training, police are less likely to view violence as a last resort.
2. . . .
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/seven-reasons-police-brutality-is-systematic-not-anecdotal/
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6. Police are increasingly militarized.
. . . Although possession of these weapons does not cause misconduct, as the old saying goes, when you have a hammer everything begins to look like a nail.
7. Police themselves say misconduct is remarkably widespread.
Here’s the real clincher. A Department of Justice study revealed that a whopping 84 percent of police officers report that they’ve seen colleagues use excessive force on civilians, and 61 percent admit they don’t always report “even serious criminal violations that involve abuse of authority by fellow officers.” . . . This self-reporting moves us well beyond anecdote into the realm of data: Police brutality is a pervasive problem, exacerbated by systemic failures to curb it. That’s not to say that every officer is ill-intentioned or abusive, but it is to suggest that the common assumption that police are generally using their authority in a trustworthy manner merits serious reconsideration. As John Adams wrote to Jefferson, “Power always thinks it has a great soul,” and it cannot be trusted if left unchecked.
The good news is that the first step toward preventing police brutality is well-documented and fairly simple: Keep police constantly on camera. A 2012 study in Rialto, Calif. found that when officers were required to wear cameras recording all their interactions with citizens, “public complaints against officers plunged 88% compared with the previous 12 months. Officers’ use of force fell by 60%.” The simple knowledge that they were being watched dramatically altered police behavior.
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3. Consequences for misconduct are minimal.
In central New Jersey, for instance, 99 percent of police brutality complaints are never investigated. Nor can that be explained away as stereotypical New Jersey corruption. Only one out of every three accused cops are convicted nationwide, while the conviction rate for civilians is literally double that. In Chicago, the numbers are even more skewed: There were 10,000 abuse complaints filed against the Chicago PD between 2002 and 2004, and just 19 of them ”resulted in meaningful disciplinary action.” On a national level, upwards of 95 percent of police misconduct cases referred for federal prosecution are declined by prosecutors because, as reported in USA Today, juries “are conditioned to believe cops, and victims’ credibility is often challenged.” Failure to remedy this police/civilian double standard cultivates an abuse-friendly legal environment.
...trends in governance (unfortunately, the corporate media are again asleep on the watch).
With regard to this particular source, it may be worth noting that not many conservative magazines have a founding editor who publicly supported John Kerry in 2004, and President Obama in both 2008 and 2012.
(While the magazine gave no official endorsements in any of these years, their published survey of the varied views of 29 contributors in 2012, has some interesting comments by founding editor Scott McConnell and by Leon Hadar.)
Fox "News" they are NOT.
