"I'm a black ex-cop, & this is the real truth about race & policing." (spoiler: it's the leadership)
He says 15% of police officers are always good, 15% are always bad, and the 70% will just go with the way their police department is run. So in an atmosphere that condones brutality, 85% are potentially brutalizers. In a police department that is run professionally, that 85% will be professional (but there will still be the 15% bad apples).
Let me point out that in the infamous pool party incident, the first cop is totally professional, polite, and is talking to the teenagers in a normal conversation when the bad cop suddenly starts brutalizing (about 30 seconds into the vid.)
Let me also point out that the bad cop was forced to resign soon after this incident.
Thank you for tolerating this editorial comment of mine.
I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing
by Redditt Hudson on May 28, 2015
On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.
That's a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, "I can't believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!" He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.
That remaining 70 percent of officers are highly susceptible to the culture in a given department. In the absence of any real effort to challenge department cultures, they become part of the problem. If their command ranks are racist or allow institutional racism to persist, or if a number of officers in their department are racist, they may end up doing terrible things.
PatrickforO
(14,602 posts)msongs
(67,478 posts)Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)or elsewhere, as I read had happened in the case of another policeman officer who'd been sacked.
marble falls
(57,428 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Moral Compass
(1,529 posts)this is true of any organization anywhere. Most people are followers. End of sentence.
This means that if the leadership of an organization condones brutality then most of the people in that organization will behave brutally.
If the leadership of an organization condones racism and then most people will let their racist flag fly.
I firmly believe that, in spite of some inherent and obvious problems, Police Departments need to have a civilian oversight board. In other words the power needs to reside outside of the police leadership.
I believe that really everything is tribal. We go with our tribe. And, I've got news for all of you, the police do not view us as a member of their tribe. We are the "other".
That is why when we see these incidents that there is always an automatic circling of the wagons. Shortly after that, no matter how obvious and how heinous the incident the police leadership invariably decides that it was a good shoot or policy was followed.
The McKinney incident where Eric Casebolt lost his mind and started brutalizing teenagers amazed me. The reaction of the McKinney police leadership with swift and sure. However, it is also an anomaly.