Institutional racism in policing and how to rectify it.

[Farm Boy]

Oh, perhaps I should point out, the 45 years was a "minimum of 45 years".

In UK terms that's really as harsh as they go, apart from a full-life tarif. Unless you're criminally insane of course. In which case they just mumble something about public safety issues.

Ah, sentencing minimums. Fun.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Ah, sentencing minimums. Fun.

That was a sentence with a minimum term. Sentencing minimums are a different thing.

Minimum term=judge says it will be at least this long before anyone can think about releasing this guy.

Sentencing minimums=congress says you judges aren't giving out long enough sentences to keep the private prison industry booming and the prison guards union at full employment. Due to their willingness to support campaigns their needs must be met, so here are some absurd minimums that we require you to impose for relatively petty crimes.

As a result of 'minimum guidelines' small time drug dealers are routinely sentenced to longer prison terms than killers, even if the killers aren't cops.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Related to sentencing minimums is California's "3rd strike" law that has resulted in them doing things like imprisoning people for minor crimes and creating an overcrowding crisis in their prisons. It's a big pile of horse[manure] that even cops, judges and prosecutors shake their heads at. I think the governor had to issue early releases to some prisoners just to make space.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Related to sentencing minimums is California's "3rd strike" law that has resulted in them doing things like imprisoning people for minor crimes and creating an overcrowding crisis in their prisons. It's a big pile of horse[manure] that even cops, judges and prosecutors shake their heads at. I think the governor had to issue early releases to some prisoners just to make space.

Three strikes is just one of many contributing 'mandatory minimum' schemes the private prison industry foisted off on California et al.

 

[Farm Boy]

That was a sentence with a minimum term. Sentencing minimums are a different thing.

Minimum term=judge says it will be at least this long before anyone can think about releasing this guy.

Sentencing minimums=congress says you judges aren't giving out long enough sentences to keep the private prison industry booming and the prison guards union at full employment. Due to their willingness to support campaigns their needs must be met, so here are some absurd minimums that we require you to impose for relatively petty crimes.

As a result of 'minimum guidelines' small time drug dealers are routinely sentenced to longer prison terms than killers, even if the killers aren't cops.

Good. I think. Either way, yes, our sentencing minimums are generally horrible.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Three strikes is just one of many contributing 'mandatory minimum' schemes the private prison industry foisted off on California et al.

Yeah, frack, private prisons. What a [crap]show. I once saw an episode of "Law & Order" about a corrupt judge who was sentencing teenagers to maximum sentences for silly crimes in exchange for kickbacks from the contractor operating the prison. Turned out the story was based on an actual event.

 

[Smote]

Embedded police: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-hindsight/201412/does-utopia-have-police?tr=HomeEssentials

"Embedded police are part-time cops. Today, with a small police force, the individual cop works full-time. Increase force size a hundred-fold while keeping the budget the same, then each cop works only a fraction of the day on policing. The Chicago Police Department has about 12,000 employees for a metro area of about 10 million. Multiply by a hundred, and you have a police force of over a million, or about a tenth of the population. The embedded police force needs to be massive to achieve a key objective: policing is not the main thing on each cop’s mind. It’s living and working and interacting with the community as a regular citizen."

 

[ParkCungHee]

[*]More diverse police maybe? But I don't know if that would really matter initially. Would they see a fellow black man, or just a "sell out" cop?
[*]The community members themselves also need to step up and be more involved. They cannot just wash their hands and refuse to engage with local government.

I think these two need to be linked. The local governance, and the local police force, must be local. If you have local police, you get a good representation of the community, barring some blatant power disparity.

When police are drawn directly from a society they are policing, they are more likely to be concerned for the locals well being. Prejudices are exacerbated when the situation is alien and unknown, because all you have to fall back upon is prejudice.

Many modern police forces work like Gallowglasses or Jannisaries. They are loyal and professional, because they have no attachment or fondness to the locale. The reality of most black communities isn't just that they are governed by a police force that is of a different color, but they are occupied by an foreign power.

 

[ParkCungHee]

You do endeavour to save the life of somebody who has been shot by police, but SFOs (I don't know about other routinely-armed officers like those who guard important buildings or NI policemen) are trained not to try and 'shoot to incapacitate', because aiming shots at 'non-lethal areas' (which don't really exist) makes you much more likely to miss altogether and potentially hit someone else. I suppose it is somewhat paradoxical but it does make sense.

It also has to do with the idea that if you don't want to make this man dead, you should NOT be shooting at him. Teaching someone to take "less-lethal" shots teaches him that the gun is not the most lethal tool in his arsenal.

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

I don't think that economic contraction will do it. As Warpus says, we are too well off...even the poor. There is very little concern that the US government is just going to let people starve, or not be able to prevent it.

The British TV journalist Paul Mason has argued that revolutions are not caused by the poor starving (that's normal) but when lawyers starve. The Arab regimes did not realized how the economic crisis, on top of years of corruption, had pushed their upper middle class to the point where they had nothing to lose. Young middle-class Hong Kong people feel they have nothing to lose - they can't afford a place to live and they're being undercut by Mainlanders. Compare 1789, 1848, Philippine people power, etc. By this measure, the key people are the black middle class lawyers.... and Mr Holder and President Obama hardly seem ready to revolt.

You have to justify approaching someone, but you don't have to justify not approaching someone. Since you can justly say that the black man with the bottle was possibly going to attack someone, you can justify approaching him to check - you don't have to justify not approaching the white one, because he's not so obviously going to attack someone that it would be negligent not to do so. Of course, that's how it holds up in court, not in front of your boss, who would probably call you out if he found out. I assume that's the logic at work here.

This is a clear-cut case of institutional racism and demands root-and-branch reform.

Not really, no. I just find it interesting that someone can get 21 years for killing ~70 teenagers, and two other people get 45 years and full life for killing 1 adult.

As you say, it's a different country. And maybe they don't have the option in Norway for a full life term. Who knows what will be the case in the UK in 45 years time. The show's not over till the fat lady sings, as they say.

And a full life term, for all I know, may contravene some EU human rights legislation. I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Oh, perhaps I should point out, the 45 years was a "minimum of 45 years".

In UK terms that's really as harsh as they go, apart from a full-life tarif. Unless you're criminally insane of course. In which case they just mumble something about public safety issues.

I think the 45-year tariff will carry the possibility of the usual one-third off for good behaviour. Then it's up to the Parole Board in 2042. By that time jihadists could be as irrelevant as Soviet Communism is now, in which case he might get let out. More likely, there will be a Muslim Home Secretary who's determined not to appear soft on Islamists......

Re EU law: this is a long and ongoing saga. In the last few rounds, the ECtHR ruled whole life tariffs incompatible with the prisoner's human rights because it meant there was no possiblereward for rehabilitation and repentance. The UK Supreme Court recently ruled that the ECtHR had 'misunderstood' English law and if Strasbourg had understood it correctly, they would have realized that there is always the possibility of release on extraordinary compassionate grounds (as was done for Reggie Kray of all people). The idea that an English court could decide a European court had it's facts wrong is a completely new legal doctrine and I think Westminster and Strasbourg are now staring at each other to see who will blink first while they decide whether they really want to take off their wigs, roll up their gown sleeves and step outside to settle this....

The fact that a few illiterates decades ago decided to term it as such does not make it correct. It is a distortion of the truth, at best, and intentionally misleading, at worst.

The quotation I cited was written fifteen years ago by these gentlemen:
Sir William MacPherson of Cluny MA Oxon QC, former High Court judge (and, in his spare time, a decorated Lieutenant-Colonel in the SAS).
The Most Rev'd John Sentamu LLB BTh PhD Cantab, Archbishop of York, Primate of England, and former advocate in the Supreme Court of Uganda (i.e. he made it to the top of two professions on two continents)
Dr Richard Stone, Visiting Fellow in Criminology at the University of Westminster (the doctor title is in medicine, so again two unrelated fields)

I cannot fathom how you can describe them as illiterates.

We are clearly not talking about Condoleezza Rice and Michael Steele, in this case. Yes, the Allies were wrong to cooperate with the Soviet Union in WWII. There was very little to distinguish the Communists from the Nazis.

I am not opposed to the UN.

I oppose cooperation with China while it persists in its aggressive posture toward its neighbors.

I am glad to see that you are consistent in your opposition to Communism. Can I ask whether you are currently boycotting Chinese goods and how that affects your life?

Clearly not, but the use of violence by law enforcement is almost always justified whereas the use of violence by private citizens is almost always not.

I agree wholeheartedly that private violence is abhorrent and almost never justified, but isn't it the
<apologies, end of post lost>

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

Apologies, Tapatalk has really exceeded itself in mangling that post. I will try to repair it when I get access to a laptop/desktop, mods are welcome to step in for the same purpose.

 

[Flying Pig]

This is a clear-cut case of institutional racism and demands root-and-branch reform.

It is, but it's also quite difficult to get rid of without causing even more damage. Police officers need a high degree of initiative to do their jobs properly - once you've got five or ten years of experience, you can instinctively read people in a way that wouldn't stand up in court but may well prevent a lot of crimes. If you reduce it to strict rules and force the policeman to justify every action, you take away his power to decide to approach the man on the left because he looked more dangerous than the one on the left - even though most of the time that will be the best course of action for all involved. The same happens when people try to standardise things like sentencing or prosecutions to avoid unfairness between forces: a lot of good policing is having the judgement to know when people just need the short, sharp shock of being thrown in a cell overnight by a scary man in uniform to put them back on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, there's a case to be made that many more of those are reasonably affluent (and yes, white) than those who will reoffend in the same circumstances - after all, that doesn't work if you're shoplifting to feed yourself.

In summary, I think it's as much a societal issue as a police one, and it will only be fixed when the people going into the police forces are genuinely free, as far as possible, of racial biases. The most blindingly obvious 'reform' to bring this about, which is only making quite limited headway in some places, is just to make sure that it's not always a white officer having to deal with black civilians!

 

[Angst]

(Not quite following the thread, this issue has probably been posted already)


Link to video.

 

[Colonel]

I've seen it suggested in the past few pages that we train officers to shoot in a less lethal way? Really? Thats become the suggestion? You want them to aim less vital areas. Ignoring that more officers would be going home in a body bag if they tried this idiotic approach. The reason they shoot center mass is to stop the threat and avoid hitting others!! I'm all for reasonable changes to police tactics if it is agreed upon that there is an issue but trying to take "less lethal" shots as one poster said in this thread. You seriously have to be kidding me! A gun isn't meant to be non-lethal, if you point a gun at someone or something then you had better be ready to kill that someone or something otherwise you should never have been given the gun in the first place.

 

[JohnRM]

The quotation I cited was written fifteen years ago by these gentlemen:
Sir William MacPherson of Cluny MA Oxon QC, former High Court judge (and, in his spare time, a decorated Lieutenant-Colonel in the SAS).
The Most Rev'd John Sentamu LLB BTh PhD Cantab, Archbishop of York, Primate of England, and former advocate in the Supreme Court of Uganda (i.e. he made it to the top of two professions on two continents)
Dr Richard Stone, Visiting Fellow in Criminology at the University of Westminster (the doctor title is in medicine, so again two unrelated fields)

I cannot fathom how you can describe them as illiterates.

I am going to take the bold step of admitting that I was wrong here. Upon further examination, I think the word (institutional) simply strikes me one way, but has alternative interpretations that are clearly accepted by a large number of people. I still think it is a poor choice of word.

I am glad to see that you are consistent in your opposition to Communism. Can I ask whether you are currently boycotting Chinese goods and how that affects your life?

Whenever possible, I avoid the purchase of Chinese goods. To avoid them altogether is impossible as Chinese goods are frequently labeled as "Distributed in the USA", if labeled at all. The only case I have come across where I have been unable to avoid a conscious purchase of Chinese goods are my shoes, because virtually all shoes are made in China. The ability to walk comfortably trumps any and all principles that I might have in regard to trade policy.

I agree wholeheartedly that private violence is abhorrent and almost never justified, but isn't it the

Sentence fragment.

The police are using violence in a lot of (not most) cases in which it is clearly unnecessary or excessive. I am not arguing that at all. I have only ever argued that in many cases, civilians are putting themselves in that position by resisting arrest and fighting with cops. It is a two-way street.

 

[Borachio]

I think the 45-year tariff will carry the possibility of the usual one-third off for good behaviour.

Well, no. I don't think that's right. That's the whole point of stipulating a minimum of 45 years.

Whether the guy will in fact be in prison after 45 years is another matter. My guess is he will. But that will depend on how successful subsequent appeals against the sentence are, or aren't.

As it stands at the moment, he has been sentenced to a minimum of 45 years, which means he won't be eligible for parole or time off for good behaviour before that time has passed.

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

In summary, I think it's as much a societal issue as a police one, and it will only be fixed when the people going into the police forces are genuinely free, as far as possible, of racial biases. The most blindingly obvious 'reform' to bring this about, which is only making quite limited headway in some places, is just to make sure that it's not always a white officer having to deal with black civilians!

I agree with your first point that police need sensible discretion and dealing with institutional racism does not mean removing that. You're quite right to say recruitment reform is a key point. In Northern Ireland it is a (legal?) requirement that exactly equal numbers of Protestants and Roman Catholics are recruited into the police service. It's easy to think of some places in the US that might be wise to adopt the same policy.

A gun isn't meant to be non-lethal, if you point a gun at someone or something then you had better be ready to kill that someone or something otherwise you should never have been given the gun in the first place.

The Atlantic journalist James Fallows has been arguing for a new policy that any law enforcement officer who kills* automatically loses the privilege of carrying firearms. The arguments are that (a) if someone dies, the police service as a whole have failed to their job and someone should be held accountable (b) being a front line armed police officer is not a right, it's a duty and a privilege (c) the honourable officers will still do their duty to the public, but the dishonourable ones who do it for the kicks will be deterred, while those who fire first and think later while be reassigned to a more suitable role. The officer who killed can transfer to educating schoolkids about crime (and courage!) or the detective squad or whatever, in fact she might get a medal and become Police Commissioner of their force, but she will never carry a firearm in the course of duty again. If you end someone's life there must always be consequences. That gun is meant to be used to deter violence, if you end up killing you had better be ready to face the consequences, otherwise you should never have picked up the gun in the first place.

*Fallows might have a caveat like "kills except to prevent a killing", but IMHO it should be automatic to avoid posthumous trials of the deceased's intentions.

 

[Colonel]

The Atlantic journalist James Fallows has been arguing for a new policy that any law enforcement officer 1. who kills* automatically loses the privilege of carrying firearms. The arguments are that (a) if someone dies, the police service as a whole have 2. failed to their job and someone 3. should be held accountable (b) being a front line armed police officer is not a right, it's a duty and a privilege (c) the honourable officers will still do their duty to the public, but the dishonourable ones who do it for the kicks will be deterred, while those 4. who fire first and think later while be reassigned to a more suitable role. The officer who killed can transfer to educating schoolkids about crime (and courage!) or the5. detective squad or whatever, in fact she might get a medal and become Police Commissioner of their force, but she will never carry a firearm in the course of duty again. 6. If you end someone's life there must always be consequences. 7. That gun is meant to be used to deter violence, if you end up killing you had better be ready to face the consequences, otherwise you should never have picked up the gun in the first place.

*Fallows might have a caveat like "kills except to prevent a killing", but IMHO it should be automatic to avoid posthumous trials of the deceased's intentions.

1. It is a mandatory requirement for Police officer in the US to be able to carry a firearm.

2. The nature of a Police officers job is to ensure the public safety of the mass, thus sometimes due to safety concerns it become necessary for the public good for him to discharge his firearm.

3. Ever heard of Justifiable homicide? Its not always wrong or illegal to end another persons life. It shouldn't be a first resort but if necessary for public safety it isn't illegal.

4. Officers who as you say "fire first and ask questions later" would already be in violation of Police tactics and would be committing a crime.

5. See #1

6. See #3

7. A gun has one function, to protect the officer and the community from harm. Sure an officer having a weapon is a deterrent to a criminal but its function is not to deter it is for protection. Your thought process is basically that we issue the Police weapons and tell them never to use them. Though I wish an officer would never have the need to use it, I live in the real world where that simply isn't always an option for them.

 

[Angst]

Resisting arrest doesn't legitimize the police to kill the resisting.

I've seen it suggested in the past few pages that we train officers to shoot in a less lethal way? Really? Thats become the suggestion? You want them to aim less vital areas. Ignoring that more officers would be going home in a body bag if they tried this idiotic approach. The reason they shoot center mass is to stop the threat and avoid hitting others!! I'm all for reasonable changes to police tactics if it is agreed upon that there is an issue but trying to take "less lethal" shots as one poster said in this thread. You seriously have to be kidding me! A gun isn't meant to be non-lethal, if you point a gun at someone or something then you had better be ready to kill that someone or something otherwise you should never have been given the gun in the first place.

Of course the police should aim not to take away the life of any sort of suspect? How is this in any way difficult for you to understand? The lethality of a gun isn't an argument for this. Then give the police something less lethal.

 

[Colonel]

Resisting arrest doesn't legitimize the police to kill the resisting.



Of course the police should aim not to take away the life of any sort of suspect? How is this in any way difficult for you to understand? The lethality of a gun isn't an argument for this. Then give the police something less lethal.

Resisting arrest can lead to a point where an officer needs to use a potentially lethal level of force to subdue an individual. It is however completely on the suspect at that point to surrender to the arresting officer. As to the giving the officers something less lethal, they have the best non-lethal weapons possibly but they don't always work in every situation. Nor would I expect that if the suspect had a weapon that the officer would draw anything but his own gun.

As far as aiming to not take life away? Trying to get officers to aim where its less likely to kill the individual is inherently dangerous and pointless because even a shot in the leg or arm can be deadly. Ignoring that fact for a moment lets think about this. More then likely a center mass hit from a 40 cal is going to stay in a thicker portion of the body like the chest cavity that officers aim for. Shooting for an arm or leg the bullet will more then likely pass through and retain its speed and force. Now lets follow that bullet as it hits the ground and ricochets into the window of the house where the child is sleeping.

Congratulations, your proposal just killed a child. Would you like to continue with this suggestion since clearly anyone suggesting it has no understanding of how guns/bullets operate nor of marksmanship.