Policing Is Hard Work

[Forestluv]

16 minutes ago, Epikur said:

You could say for a guy who planned and killed his wife I guess I would give 20 years. The drunk driver I would give 5 years. 

My point is that I can’t give an answer to the question “What is a fair sentence for a murder?”. It depends on the situation. There are various forms of murder. That is why there are different degrees of murder in law. There are a lot of facts to consider. 

Even in the examples above, we still need more information. What if the guy who killed his wife was mentally ill and had been tortured by his wife for years? . . . What if this was the fourth DUI for the drunk driver and he had previously killed someone and already had served 5 years? . . Sentencing is not cut and dry. It involves variables. 

We also likely have different personality types. I take a long time to make decisions. I like to consider lots of different possibilities, perspectives, options etc. Other personalities are more decisive-oriented and prefer to make quick decisions. . . . For those playing at home, I usually type as an INFP, which is definitely not “The Decider” personality type. 

[Epikur]

7 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

My point is that I can’t give an answer to the question “What is a fair sentence for a murder?”. It depends on the situation. There are various forms of murder. That is why there are different degrees of murder in law. There are a lot of facts to consider. 

Even in the examples above, we still need more information. What if the guy who killed his wife was mentally ill and had been tortured by his wife for years? . . . What if this was the fourth DUI for the drunk driver and he had previously killed someone and already had served 5 years? . . Sentencing is not cut and dry. It involves variables. 

We also likely have different personality types. I take a long time to make decisions. I like to consider lots of different possibilities, perspectives, options etc. Other personalities are more decisive-oriented and prefer to make quick decisions. 

That is why policing is so hard. You have to make decisions with limited data. 

Let's say you have to make these decisions now or the country and the world
will end in war with 1 billion death.

Let's make it simpler make your own thought experiment:

Under what circumstances would you give a murderer 20 years and under
what circumstances 5 years?





 

[Forestluv]

41 minutes ago, Epikur said:

That is why policing is so hard. You have to make decisions with limited data. 

Yes, and police also need to make quick decisions. This is why I would suck as a police officer. I don’t like making quick decisions on limited data. In some contexts this is good, in other contexts this is bad. 

41 minutes ago, Epikur said:

Under what circumstances would you give a murderer 20 years and under
what circumstances 5 years?

I appreciate these types of exploratory, contemplative questions. It’s something I love to see on the forum. However. . . I could literally spend hours contemplating this and could write pages worth in this thread. Unfortunately, I need to go to bed now and I don’t want to totally derail the thread. Thanks for your thoughts. You got me thinking in new ways and I like that. 

[Epikur]

11 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

Yes, and police also need to make quick decisions. This is why I would suck at a police officer. I don’t like making quick decisions on limited data. In some contexts this is good, in other contexts this is bad. 

I appreciate these types of exploratory, contemplative questions. It’s something I love to see on the forum. However. . . I could literally spend hours contemplating this and could write pages worth in this thread. Unfortunately, I need to go to bed now and I don’t want to totally derail the thread. Thanks for your thoughts. You got me thinking in new ways and I like that. 

That's nice

[Akemrelax]

Exactly what I said. America needs fewer guns.

[Preety_India]

 

Look at how these cops don't even know the laws. 

 

[Lyubov]

4 hours ago, Preety_India said:

 

Look at how these cops don't even know the laws. 

 

"cosmetology license takes 2 years but it takes 6 months to become a police officer" 

what the hell is that massive policing budget being spent on?

Edited June 27, 2020 by Lyubov

[Hank Galaxy Brain]

As someone who usually leans left on these issues, I really agree here. Policing is really dangerous work. Not all cops are bad people.

The problem is that slavery and its repercussions backed the black community into a corner with nowhere to go, in many cases, other than crime, violence, and drugs. And then punished them for being backed into that corner.

From the outside, I can see that the police don't understand this going into it--neither do most Americans have a full grasp on the suppressed history of civil rights and slavery. All the black community knows is that it's backed into a corner; it doesn't know why, and it's had enough. (My projections of course, I'm not black and cannot speak for black people, although have been reading and drawing conclusions from a civil rights autobiography).

So if you're backed into a corner, and someone won't stop hitting you, well basically all you can do is defend yourself. And if that doesn't work (defending yourself against police is a big no no) then eventually you get hit hard enough you break and go on the offensive. And you make such a scene that someone will have to do something. This is warranted when you don't have equal access to official avenues of change.

Do something! They scream. What? We say. Make them stop hitting me, I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

It's a very practical first step. And we should absolutely do it.

But it will lead to more issues. Police can't risk on the one hand dying in the line of duty and on the other losing their job (or even the death penalty) at the slightest misstep under the highest stakes. What happens when you try to wedge them onto that tightrope?

Well I've actually worked in a similar situation, as a mental health tech in a prison mandated rehab program for juvenile offenders. We often faced threats, intimidation, threats by sexual predators to rape your whole family, and even in some cases violence and injuries. I was also taught in (extremely inadequate training), that if a kid was biting my arm and wouldn't let go, I had to be collected enough to act in the exact way, pulling his head at the correct angle, lest I be charged with child abuse while defending myself. Likewise, restraints had to be carried out in professional wrestling form against potentially wildly violent assailants (we got 5 hours training total, maybe 1 of those was actually practicing restraints), lest we, again, be charged with child abuse.

Any lapse in 24/7 supervision, even for 5-10 seconds, was a potential child neglect charge. We would self report pre-emptively. All of this and we were perennially understaffed, and underpaid, and working bizarre hours, and being called in for overtime, and enforcing an unjust criminal justice system on those we were trying to rehabilitate, and.... the list goes on and on.

The result? The rules were nigh unenforceable and inhumane when they were. The kids hated us. NO mental health work was done when we were mostly just battling to maintain a very shaky order with our jobs (and statuses as non-child-abusers) constantly at risk. Not to mention our own mental health.

The average person lasted 6 months. Turnaround was 90% in a year. You can't just put people right between the unstoppable force and the immovable object for $15 an hour and expect them to figure it out. Oh and crazy shit happened too, when staff got tired of it or couldn't handle the rules.

Solutions:

We have to get to the root of the problem: reparations for slavery. This would be (as proposed in H.R. 40 I believe) in the form of a New Deal for black communities resulting in an investment in those communities, and in property, equity and education for black people. As long as the races are unequal, we will have racism. Period. We've got to take a crack at the underlying inequality and own up to the trauma we've caused.

In the mean time, I would advise doing something to break the line of white supremacy tracing back to slave catching that is modern policing. And starting with something new. We WILL need police. With guns. With combat training. Period. But it would help to totally get rid of leadership and start with a new breed. We should send a social worker on every police call as well, to work together. Sort of like a mom dad approach. The social worker tries to de escalate and advocate for the citizen, even auditing the police, and the police is there to protect the social worker and community from bad actors. I learned from that job: a social worker can't do their job without assurance basic physical safety. And offering the care of a social worker and the protection of a prison guard is a two person job, not one.

So, how are we going to do this? Not at all without a sustained movement with lots of organization and discipline to see it through. Which hasn't been seen on the left in ~70 years.

Shit looks rough.

But again, these protests are doing the first step in doing that. And if we head towards a depression with this virus we may very well see one re-emerge.

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text, I've just had this all bouncing around in my head lately and it's good to get it out.