Originally Posted by
Darth Rotor
What you are missing is two things:
1. The US isn't St Louis, nor is it East Saint Louis. It's a whole lot bigger than that.
2. Projecting upon all cops in the US your frustrations with St Louis/Ferguson is, IMO, an argument from emotion. I understand you feeling strongly about what happened there: it's local, and that which is local tends to touch us deeply.
Now answer me this: who besides the currently sitting judges and DA are you asking to sort this out? That's who is in the job, just like in my county.
We just got rid of a DA in the past election -- he's been in office 4 years, is a Democrat, and I voted for him because I believed he'd do a good job and was a whole lot better of a choice than his opponent -- because he was found not to be up to the job. (This is one of the benefits of certain posts being elective). Let's say that a lot of us in this county were very disappointed.
Now we have a new one.
Hopefully, he'll do a better job. But if he doesn't, then in a couple of years our county gets to try again.
I am wondering at whether or not you view police officers as people, or as some objective force for injustice. From your posts, it is unclear.
Cold hard facts for you, Uppie. The DoJ hasn't the budget to come to every county in the US and do as you demand. Just out of curiosity, why did you leave your state government out of this? Did you forget a layer of government and Law Enforcement?
Bull. Cops are people, and people screw up. It sucks but its true. All that can mitigate that is training, good leadership, and professionalization. (The same is true in aviation).
I do not accept your absurd notion that zero defects is a realistic standard. You can argue about what "rate" or "percentage" one can live with, or that a society accept as the bounds of human error. To demand zero defects in a human endeavor? That's not rational.
All this can be true and also be irrelevant to the question as to whether the current system is fundamentally flawed and allows corrupt police forces to exist - despite local campaigners highlighting malpractices... until some particularly newsworthy event causes an external investigation.
That tells me that the system isn't working. In as much as it works, it relies on the goodwill and professionalism of the police officers - most of whom are indeed trying to do a good job.
Personally, I don't regard that as adequate, especially as the problem with too many too-small police forces is well known.
ETA: And the issue of lack of statistics on use of force, or racial biases let alone the collection of statistics that can be compared.