Fair, and I appreciate and respect your level headed analysis on this.

The big issue I see is the leadership (or lack thereof) in the PD. The job unfortunately attracts a lot of people who want to be police officers for the wrong reasons. It attracts a LOT of good people who want to make a difference, but it also attracts people who crave power and authority. Since promotion is often strictly based on a civil service examination (doing well on a written test), it isn’t hard for these people, who crave power, to seek and end up in positions of leadership—and that leadership becomes toxic. It creates a culture of heavy handed tactics, viewing all civilians as perps, etc. It runs counter to the COIN tactics you mentioned, and creates division in the community.

So now you’ve got good cops working with and under ****ty cops. Guess how that’s going to go.

We need better leadership—leadership that isn’t afraid to weed out the *******s BEFORE the problem children end up in a bad shoot or similar. Same goes for union leadership.

We also need a national database so proven bad cops can’t department shop. The world needs Walmart greeters.

 

And ditch diggers, Danny.

 

https://images.app.goo.gl/CU8JRiCNJ3DMLYPd8

 

Thanks for the insight, it was very helpful. I know how the military works, and I'm even vaguely familiar with how police in the military work, but I don't know how civilian police depts work from the inside. All I can do is observe from a distance and apply my military lens. I've had the fortune of being in some outstanding units and a couple that are toxic. What I've seen is that when leadership at the top breaks down it chases off the people motivated by the best intentions and rewards the opportunists who'll undermine the organization, community, their bros, etc to get ahead. From what I've seen, the top leadership can be the toughest to change, especially if they've created a layer cake culture where they'll be replaced by someone just like them. This is largely avoided in the military because everyone has to move every three years, which has its own downfalls, but it does give people multiple opportunities to succeed or fail, establishing a trend. Police can't do that, unfortunately.

"not looking at everyone as perps" is key, I think. From my own experience, if I looked at everyone in AFG as a perp, I wouldn't have made it through a single mission without ending up in Leavenworth. Everyone had loose fitting clothes, acted slightly suspicious, and those damn yellow cooking oil jugs were everywhere. Sometimes there were suspicious people in Corollas with yellow jugs. The point is, even over there, I always hesitated when I took my weapon off safe. The way I saw it, if I was in a situation where I couldn't be afforded a second to hesitate, it was my fault for getting myself in that situation and I wasn't going to risk killing an innocent person over a mistake I made 30 seconds ago. The whole "I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6" will do nothing but get you in trouble and I suspect that's at the root of a lot of these issues. Our standing ROE was almost always "do not fire unless fired upon," and even though it was stressful for us, I know it saved civilian lives, which in turn, probably saved American lives. Granted, our mission was defensive in nature.

In villages kids would literally swarm us, mostly because we gave them snacks or chem lights, but it was nerve racking because we replaced a team that lost 3 guys when the Taliban gave a mentally retarded kid a backpack bomb and told him to go talk to the Americans. I probably got swarmed by kids on at least 100 missions, but once again, it was the risk inherent with the job. It's tough because you have to walk this tightrope of constantly remaining vigilant even though you've done the same risky thing without incident 100 times but not getting twitchy and overreacting on somebody, so I imagine that's what cops feel like with traffic stops. It isn't easy and the stress manifests itself in weird ways after months of it; another reason to hesitate when you come off safe (and it greatly improves your aim).

I think the most important perspective to keep in mind is that everyone wants police to succeed, most of all the communities they serve. They don't want crime, drugs, etc and they want heroes to come save them when they can't handle something themselves. What I think is the most frustrating is that message got completely lost in the bull****. There was an opportunity to fix a lot of those problems you mentioned and the rest of America witnessed, which could've resulted in recruiting, retaining, and enforcing police forces that improve their communities, but instead it looks like it was squandered.

 

OK boomer

You walked right into that one, huh? Lol

 

Minneapolis is one of the most liberal cities in the US, not exactly sure why liberals weren't able to change their own policies.

 

Looks like you conceded again to me.

 

false.
https://www.opb.org/news/article/fed...nd-protesters/

"interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration."

educate yourself. the people they grabbed had done nothing wrong. not to mention the fact that the feds and PPB used tear gas on thousands of innocent people.

it seems like you only care about the constitution when it's convenient, and that's just pathetic.

also, if you're going to make claims, it'd be nice if you had evidence to back them up. anyone can make anything up, and I think we should all try to stick to the facts over feelings and opinions.

 

You're right it was totally peaceful and no one should have been arrested.

 

Seems much doesn't change here on APC. Once again: voting has consequences...

Lions. Not sheep.