Originally Posted by
Darth Rotor
Real simple, my friend. This thread is about more than your local problem. Your projection doesn't sell your point, and I do not disbelieve that where you live there are people who cover up wrongdoing.
(Happens where I live too, in freaking spades, even though I don't live in some exalted and precious large city like St Louis).
Read the title of the thread if you want to understand my response. Or, don't.
I read your posts. I think that if you go back and read my response that I acknowledge that your are very close to the Ferguson case. Seems to have blinded you . (An understandable response, I suppose, given that it's a frustrating thing and you live close by). You wanna play skeptic? Park the emotion.
I don't understand how that negates what Upchurch stated.
Justice has to be impartial and to be seen to be impartial. Internal investigations are not independent, and are unsuited for serious potential wrongdoing because they fail to be seen to be independent.
I also don't see why you think that Upchurch *should* look at the wider picture. As Dave Rogers said, there is no acceptable level of wrongful shootings. Similarly there should be no acceptable levels of bent police forces or police officers.
The situation in St Louis certainly fails on the "being seen to be impartial" front.
That on its own is sufficient to say that the system is not working. Especially as Ferguson's statistics for vehicle stops were not unusual (in fact they were slightly better than the whole state of Missouri) but still individual cases were unjustified when investigated by the DoJ.
Homan Square was another situation that shows the system is not working. As does the report into Baltimore Police Department.
We can't say how large the problem is because we haven't looked, and we haven't got the centralised statistics analysed, but we can see sufficient cases to show that there is a systemic problem. At the very least - oversight has failed in the cases I have mentioned, and at a departmental level.