Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim_Gunn
I agree that the police have a tough job and that they are dealing with the worst aspects of humanity in the form of ignorant losers and criminals, people with an incentive to lie to get out of trouble, drunks, people high on drugs and the like.
But I can't ignore the daily videos I see and reports I read online of woeful misconduct that are practiced every day by law enforcement officers around the country. The whole police culture now in every agency is polluted with an "us against them" mentality that leads them to hyper aggressive over reaction to nearly every situation. They violate people's rights with impunity even for minor infractions, shoot and kill animals, shoot and kill people- sometimes people even sleeping in their owns beds- at the drop of a hat and there is no accountability or punishment for the criminal behavior except in the most egregious of cases.
The United Sates has become a Gulag nation with literally millions of people behind bars, many for things that shouldn't even be crimes, all for the sake of making money for the for-profit prison industrial complex. An American citizen in 2014 is far more likely to be killed by a police officer than he or she is by a terrorist.
I would be in favor of what some police agencies already do of mandating police officers wear those lightweight cameras to record their entire shift. Not only does it protect them from bullshit accusations by citizens, but more importantly it protects citizens from the police violating their rights or hurting people. Accountability is a good thing that would serve both sides.
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I agree 100% that police officers should all be wearing those lightweight cameras that record their entire shift. I also agree completely that the justice system is broken. It is no longer about justice and hopefully rehabilitating criminals so that they might once again become productive members of society, it is about putting bodies in bunks so corporate owned prisons can cash in.
While there are a lot of videos online, I look at it like this: there are 330 million people in this country and over 1 million police officers. There are bound to be some shitty situations. If there are 10 videos posted online one day showing police acting inappropriately it seems like a lot. We don't see the other 600,000 incidents where the police were professional and did their job accordingly.
I also think they need to revise the review board process when there are complaints against police and incidents where people were hurt or killed. They also need to modify the union rules to make getting rid of those undesirable cops easier. There are far more people who want a career in law enforcement then there are available jobs. They can afford to be picky when it comes to who they hire. Sadly, it is a job where you never truly know how someone will do until they are in it and doing it. There needs to be a better process for weeding out those who clearly are not fit for the job, but end up in it forever because it is very hard to fire them.