I was all set to do a big post about the police, but then Kevin Drum went and said exactly what I was thinking:
It shouldn’t be too hard to hold two thoughts in our minds at once. Thought #1: Police officers have an intrinsically tough and violent job. Split-second decisions about the use of force come with the territory. Ditto for decisions about who to stop and who to keep an eye on. This makes individual mistakes inevitable, but as a group, police officers deserve our support and respect regardless.
Thought #2: That support shouldn’t be blind. Conlin reports that in her group of 25 black police officers, 24 said they had received rough treatment from other cops. “The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.”
“Conlin” refers to the author of this article, at Reuters. It includes nuggets like this:
What’s emerging now is that, within the thin blue line of the NYPD, there is another divide – between black and white officers.
Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.
The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.
Desmond Blaize, who retired two years ago as a sergeant in the 41st Precinct in the Bronx, said he once got stopped while taking a jog through Brooklyn’s upmarket Prospect Park. “I had my ID on me so it didn’t escalate,” said Blaize, who has sued the department alleging he was racially harassed on the job. “But what’s suspicious about a jogger? In jogging clothes?”
My students routinely tell me similar stories. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met a black person who doesn’t have a story to tell of ridiculous police harassment. Are they all liars? Am I really to believe the cops are all just competent professionals doing a difficult job, and the common perception of systematic racism on their part is just a tragic misunderstanding?
If the cops want to convince people that they are, indeed, serious professionals, they might want to avoid bush league nonsense like turning their backs on the mayor, or asking him not to attend the funerals of slain police officers. After the recent shootings of two police officers in Brooklyn, Pat Linse, who runs one of the police unions in New York, accused city hall (code for Mayor Bill de Blasio) of having “blood on its hands.”
And what terrible thing did de Blasio do to earn this reproach? Well, you’ve probably heard about the Eric Garner case in Staten Island. Garner was selling “loosies” on a street corner, which is not legal. So an army of cops went to arrest him. When Garner expressed some vexation, the cops put him in a choke hold, threw him to the ground, and then stood around and watched him die. And we know that’s what happened because it’s all on video. The grand jury nonetheless declined to indict any of the officers involved.
De Blasio then gave a speech in which he forthrightly acknowledged the history of strained relations between police and minority communities. He is married to a black woman and has a teenaged son, and he described the conversations he has had urging his son to be careful in encounters with the police.
And that is why, in the minds of people like Linse and his fanatical supporters on the right, Mayor de Blasio now has blood on his hands. His very mild and common sensical remarks constitute “not having their backs,” or they brand him as “anti-cop.” The protest rallies calling for better policing constitute “a war on cops.” When President Obama or Attorney General Holder describe their own experiences as black men, they are accused of race-baiting, or of inciting violence.
Show me a white pundit saying such things, and I will show you someone who feels confident his only encounter with police will occur as the result of a traffic accident. To deny that there is a problem here is to be willfully blind or overtly racist. And to pretend that acknowledging the problem makes you anti-cop is just standard brain-dead, right wing fanaticism.
from ScienceBlogs http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2014/12/27/cops/
I was all set to do a big post about the police, but then Kevin Drum went and said exactly what I was thinking:
It shouldn’t be too hard to hold two thoughts in our minds at once. Thought #1: Police officers have an intrinsically tough and violent job. Split-second decisions about the use of force come with the territory. Ditto for decisions about who to stop and who to keep an eye on. This makes individual mistakes inevitable, but as a group, police officers deserve our support and respect regardless.
Thought #2: That support shouldn’t be blind. Conlin reports that in her group of 25 black police officers, 24 said they had received rough treatment from other cops. “The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.”
“Conlin” refers to the author of this article, at Reuters. It includes nuggets like this:
What’s emerging now is that, within the thin blue line of the NYPD, there is another divide – between black and white officers.
Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.
The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.
Desmond Blaize, who retired two years ago as a sergeant in the 41st Precinct in the Bronx, said he once got stopped while taking a jog through Brooklyn’s upmarket Prospect Park. “I had my ID on me so it didn’t escalate,” said Blaize, who has sued the department alleging he was racially harassed on the job. “But what’s suspicious about a jogger? In jogging clothes?”
My students routinely tell me similar stories. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met a black person who doesn’t have a story to tell of ridiculous police harassment. Are they all liars? Am I really to believe the cops are all just competent professionals doing a difficult job, and the common perception of systematic racism on their part is just a tragic misunderstanding?
If the cops want to convince people that they are, indeed, serious professionals, they might want to avoid bush league nonsense like turning their backs on the mayor, or asking him not to attend the funerals of slain police officers. After the recent shootings of two police officers in Brooklyn, Pat Linse, who runs one of the police unions in New York, accused city hall (code for Mayor Bill de Blasio) of having “blood on its hands.”
And what terrible thing did de Blasio do to earn this reproach? Well, you’ve probably heard about the Eric Garner case in Staten Island. Garner was selling “loosies” on a street corner, which is not legal. So an army of cops went to arrest him. When Garner expressed some vexation, the cops put him in a choke hold, threw him to the ground, and then stood around and watched him die. And we know that’s what happened because it’s all on video. The grand jury nonetheless declined to indict any of the officers involved.
De Blasio then gave a speech in which he forthrightly acknowledged the history of strained relations between police and minority communities. He is married to a black woman and has a teenaged son, and he described the conversations he has had urging his son to be careful in encounters with the police.
And that is why, in the minds of people like Linse and his fanatical supporters on the right, Mayor de Blasio now has blood on his hands. His very mild and common sensical remarks constitute “not having their backs,” or they brand him as “anti-cop.” The protest rallies calling for better policing constitute “a war on cops.” When President Obama or Attorney General Holder describe their own experiences as black men, they are accused of race-baiting, or of inciting violence.
Show me a white pundit saying such things, and I will show you someone who feels confident his only encounter with police will occur as the result of a traffic accident. To deny that there is a problem here is to be willfully blind or overtly racist. And to pretend that acknowledging the problem makes you anti-cop is just standard brain-dead, right wing fanaticism.
from ScienceBlogs http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2014/12/27/cops/
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