I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

[HeyYou]

 

I've got a question. If America was stuck in the middle of Europe instead of being so incolated from the other parts of the world, whould our contry be racist.?

 

I was just thinking that the reason for such attitudes might be because of our being isolated from the rest of the world , for such a long time by the oceans that surround us.

 

I'm not trying to make excuses for it, but I'm trying to understand it, because to me I can't really fathom the attitude.

Really good question. If we look at history, we can get few things straight:

Original occupants of North America (who pushed out natives) were all kinds of people consisted of European nations mostly. Legacy of Europe were colonies, which pretty much can be translated as a form of slavery. US used black people and other representatives of different races as slaves in their country.

 

Now, to the question if USA would be less racist if it wasn't on isolated island, I think answer is: no. Because in Europe, same white people who pretty much occupies US, raised biggest racist and nationalist regime, and it wasn't only Germany, more than half of Europe was involved (I don't mention other regions outside of Europe supporting this regime too). USA has long way to walk to this level of racism in all its forms.

 

So, what am I getting at, when certain nation uses another one as slaves for very long time, and considering oppressed pop gained its rights relatively not too long ago, it's hard to imagine issue would just vaporize in the air. I'm sure some of black people still feel angry about it, and I'm sure some white people can't overcome themselves to stop looking down on them. It's very trivialized and simple-looking evaluation of attitudes, but it still be the case considering latest events. There surely might be another reason, but when you read specifically "black killed white" and vice versa, it makes you think that it's one of very valid reasons.

 

Considering cop payment issues which supposedly breeds corruption, I think it's not even half of the problem. Human is corrupt creature by nature, if anyone has access to additional resources and have power to take them without risk of backfire, most will go for it. Very few will resist the temptation, and only thing which may stop individual from it - is inevitable punishment. Corruption happens among most wealthy and rich men, it doesn't have anything to do with stress levels or working conditions.

 

And reading this thread you come to single, pretty terrible realization: there's NO solution to current situation.

 

At least, no workable solution, that society would accept.......

[kvnchrist]

edit.

[Balagor]

DOOMBASED

 

I can only tell you how it´s told in European media; exactly as you tell it..

[Oblivionaddicted]

Everytime a dictator makes a coup or gets rid of his opponents he always uses the police among other things.

 

The police has always been a strategic ally for the politicians.

The more psychopaths you find in a police the more the tyrants can rely on them to do the dirty work.

 

People have everything to win having honest persons in their police, the state has everything to lose in it. If we want to have honest persons in our police people should be educated to easily discern the characteristics of psychopaths and the recruitment of cops should include psychological tests everybody should have access to.

 

Since power is corrupting and most people are more motivated to commit crimes and bask in heir mental sh*t than acting like human beings the cops should be regularly forced to pass psychological exams to determine if they still deserve their job, when they aren't they should be automatically fired and everybody should have access to the tests results.

 

Since the criminals in uniform never suffer judicial faults and are always released when the popular pressure disappears a cop found guilty of crime should automatically be convicted to death and immediately executed without any possibility of appeal.

Edited August 8, 2016 by Oblivionaddicted

[Gracinfields]

@Oblivionaddicted just fyi certain types of psychopaths actually can pass a psychological test without even being spotted. No comment on police outside the USA as I have not interacted with anyone police outside the US.

[Oblivionaddicted]

In France our police is the same than in the USA ; an amount of fascists and neo-nazis who keep persecuting the poors for their pleasure or destroying the evidences and blackmailing the witnesses.

 

 

@Gracinfields: as you wrote CERTAIN psychopaths can pass a psychological test without even being spotted. Which means a part of them won't.

 

People have everything to win in learning the characterisits of psychopaths, the honest cops and their honest strategic allies don't have anything to lose in, the only ones who have to lose in this change are the criminals in uniform and their accomplices.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Oblivionaddicted

[RGMage2]

If you want better cops you need to pay more for the job, and invest more money in training. The videos I've watched of police shootings mostly show poorly trained cops acting out of fear. The average person wouldn't make a very good cop, you need to have the right aptitude for the job. We need to accept that being a police officer is a highly specialized profession and start hiring the right people for the job and pay them what they are truly worth, which is a lot more than most American cops are currently paid. Also need to bring back the height and weight requirements - bigger cops are less likely to feel threatened in a situation where no threat might actually exist.

 

At low wages with poor training all you get is cowboys with guns, and when they are undersized they are going to be in fear all the time.

 

Choose them well, train them well, and pay them well. And if you can't afford to pay them... buy one less aircraft carrier battle group, that would more than cover it.

 

 

[Oblivionaddicted]

It is important to pay the cops well so they have the means to live well but on the other hand the politicians and company bosses are paid with millions every month and it doesn't prevent them accepting bribes and stealing people, stealing their workers, their consumers and taking slaves in the 3rd world as soon as they can.

 

It doesn't matter how much you pay someone when this person is greedy only the infiinite will be enough for her. Paying the cops well is important, educating people to easily discern the blood-suckers disguised as human beings is also very important.

 

 

The same applies for training, yes it is important to train the cops well and it is also important to force them to act as professionnals.

 

It doesn't matter how well a neo-nazi or a fascist waste was trained, if he wants to use his job to commit crimes because he will never be punished he will do it.

 

If we want the cops to behave professionally it's also got to do they have everything to lose acting another way and since ther never suffer judicial faults, since they are always released when the popular pressure vanishes it is important to punish them with a harsh sanction, immediately feasible and with irreversible effects ; the physical punishments leaving more or less heavy consequences, death penalty and torture totally match these characteristics.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Oblivionaddicted

[JaYmZeE311074]

A couple of points I feel are worth making here.

 

Humans are not a corrupt creature by nature - this is quite simply a generalization arrived at by a life time of living within the corrupt system that we are part off.

 

The system is the problem - the role humans play within it is the miplaced believe that the system cannot be changed.

 

If we simply change the colour of skin of all 100'000'000'000 human beings that have come before us meaning that Europe was colonized by blacks - whites lived in africa - blacks enslaved the white man - whites ended up in the ghetto's with little or no socio-economic opportunity - we'd have exactly the same situation as we have now - only we'd be just about to reach the end of the 2nd term of the FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT of the United States of America.

 

As a Scot - I watched the whole run up to the 2008 American Presidential Election from the nomination of Obama to the complete disbelieve I felt when he was actually elected. A Black man in the White House - I so naively believed that a watershed had been smashed - that things would never be the same again - I felt hope and optimism then I'd yoyo and assumed he would be assasinated. From that to believing that surely this was the catalyst for the possibility of redemption for the human race.

 

In my opinion - Barack Obama is without question the most decent human being to hold such high office in my lifetime. I believe that to my core - as good a man who could ever possibly make it to a position of such power.

 

Now - never mind the fact that he inherited the Presidency at the worst of times - he's essentially achieved nothing - not for one second because he wasn't willing to try but because every call he made for non-partisan decisions to be made for the benefit of all was twisted into something else - by puppets acting on the interests of special interest groups - who are of course driven by money. You then have issues like drone strikes and someone of essentially good intentions is forced down paths that I believe will haunt him till his dying day.

 

Rather than spew examples - I'll surmise it by saying that I believe a good man has held the office of President of the United States for the past 8 years and has found himself powerless against the system - has realised that he is just the latest in a long line of puppets serving this system.

 

When a child is born - it knows no good or evil - just needs. What and whoever provides these needs - food, warmth, safety - hold huge sway over this blank canvass. The system has been at work on these caregivers for years now - they can't see the wood for the trees and all they end up doing is what the system did to them - filled them with the systems dogma - a completely false set of believes that life can never be fair - that it's us against them - through nursery, school - we are programmed to provide fodder for the system - because without our complicit acceptance of the need to "learn" just enough to provide a useful tool for the system - the system cannot survive.

 

A system that is so badly broken because of the intervention at critical junctures in human developement of vested interests that we find ourselves in the horror that constitutes modern society.

 

Imagine for a moment that rather than your first memories at school being off not fitting in - but rather of your peers being more or less equal. They have warm safe houses - just like you - they don't go hungry and neither do you - that communities are all working together for the greater good. That Co-Operation - not competition is the driving force behind progress. That material wealth is shunned because it's a bad joke right. You have everything you need - mechanization does the largest part of all menial labour meaning if your parents work at all - it's the exception not the rule. Your parents are not embroiled in this unecessary battle to provide - because the neccessaties are provided regardless of who you are or what you do. Your not bombarded with this endless torrent of false needs - your not scared into believing some malevolant false god is watching you - your not forced to view wars that make no sense but your told they do by so many sources that you start to believe it. Their are not areas you can't goto or people or groups you can't speak to or work with. Their is no evil force watching you - forcing you to follow rules and laws that are completely unfair and make no sense.

 

People - now largely free of the slavery we accept today are free to live their lives however they see fit - they've spare time - time they don't have to spend worrying about putting food on the table - or waking up in the morning hit immediately by the realisation that they have to spend the next 10 hours doing something they hate - or be considered failures and outcasts by a sick and deluded society. They wake up knowing that the majority of their lives is spent doing what makes them happy - if they take on a vocation it's for all the right reasons - not in the persuit of the accumulation of pointless material goods. The allocation of the earths resources are distributed evenly to make sure everyone has their basic needs met and stupid inferior good are no longer made & hyped then fail because they were designed to by a system that is desperately needing to be murdered and the quicker the better. Developement of technology is no longer held back by lack of investment - not because the technology is not fantastic but because it adversely effects the current status quo. Minds who choose to seek to better technology for transport energy etc - are no longer bought out and shut down never to be heard of again because it would make current vested interests obsolete.

 

Your entire life since birth has been a system where people are working towards the common goals of ensuring no one finds themselves in the kind of poverty that causes so much of the issues we face today - that if a disease - no matter how rare - the cure is persued as vigourously as any because we all matter - not because a certain drug won't be profitable. Families are able to look after older generations because their no longer part of this horrific artificial rat race that passes for human culture.

 

If all you know is poverty - if all you understand is me versus them - how the hell are you supposed to be mentally well enough to wake up and say - YES - I'm gonna just change my situation - I'm gonna get that job that doesn't need to be done - it's an artificial construct made so I can be paid in an artificial construct so I can barely survive - I'm so ill because I hate that every day I have to do something so menial and repetitive and things never get better - yet you have people who've no concept of abject poverty saying - you have to change things yourself - you've been abused and broken - faced loss and pain since the first thing you remember and suddenly your to wake up and fix your own mess. Do people consider the degree to which the most unfortunate are broken - it's not lack of will - or some failing - they ARE VICTIMS - not of a colour of skin but of a system that values you only on your ability to buy things you don't need or that have been built to fail so you have to keep torturing yourself doing a horrific job easily done by machines - only the machines are not used because they don't buy things they don't need so the progress is not made and we continue to pander to the system.

 

Yes - there are humans who serve the system - media - politicians - but they're victims of the system as well. They're only exposed to corruption because it's part of the system and it's accepted as the social norm. These people are not evil - their just playing by the stacked odds the system has rigged against them.

 

I do not fear anybody because of the colour of their skin - I fear what they are capable of because of what the system has done to them - and I accept that in most cases that if I had lived their lives I would be holding the f*#@ing gun and not sitting here typing about it. Why does anyone think their so special - that they would be considered moden day "success stories" if all they had know was povery abuse neglect and a system that clearly considered them worthless and considered their lives as worthless - not because of anything other than the hand they were dealt.

 

It's not colour of skin - it's not humans that are the problem anymore - it's the fact that we're so wired into this fake sad excuse for a matrix that we can't see past our own experiences - won't except that roles reversed we'd be the minority being demonized - hammered into us via every source of modern media.

 

I was born in Edinburgh in 1974 - I grew up in Fife and I had no idea what a pedophile was until maybe the late 90's. I've no doubt they existed but we had street parties to celebrate random stuff - I knew all my neighbours - and I felt no fear. I still feel no fear because I do not believe what I am told. My most horrendous memory from childhood was gettin caught knicking pea-pods from a guy who was going to ented them into some garden competition. I knew the word terrorism - because I lived in the UK and we had the troubles in Ireland beemed into our house every night. I lived thru a part of the cold war and knew nuclear obliteration was a possibility - Shuttle Launches were still an event and I remember seeing one blow up on the news.

 

Back then they kept on trying - no matter how dangerous. I never believed at any point that the human race was doomed. The cold war ended - Reagan & Gorbochov - Glasnost & Peristroika - the fall of the Berlin Wall - not realising at the time that this wasn't a time of hope it was just a way of exporiting "democracy" - which just means that your putting a value on everything and everyone - a CASH value - all we do is export the ability to buy or own anyone.

 

I used to drive taxi's for a living - for 5 years - I had some horror experiences during that time - about 10 in total through the thousand and thousands of hires I did - so whilst I cannot deny there will always be those among us who are irredeemable - maybe it is just their nature - that the overwhelming majority of people are just trying to get by - as agents and victims of a system that has been twisted so badly I now see it as the enemy. I wish it was like ID4 and I could just plug a USB into some goddam machine and end it so we can stop being manipulated and controlled as we are. I don't wish anyone any harm - I don't grudge anyone what they have - I don't want material goods I do not use and I'm willing to make sacrifices so others can see what I see - feel what I feel.

 

Stop blaming the victims - consider yourself fortunate your to dumb to understand that they are victims - blame the system for breaking so many of us that we either cannot empathise with others or that we are so broken we can not longer understand that anything different is actually possible.

 

I cannot stress enough that I do not believe we are chosen or special - I know were totally inconsequential in any grand scheme of sheer wonder nature has produced - but there is no reason at all for us not to reach a point where we say - NO MORE - these horrors beemed into our psych are just tools of manipulation - these unsurmountable challenges that can never be solved are constructs of agents of the system.

 

It's so easy to pass judgement and yet so easy to understand that your in no position to pass judgement - and that includes the odd one that somehow escapes - YOU THINK THEY'RE REALLY DUE ALL THE CREDIT FOR TAKING CONTROL? YOU REALLY THINK YOUR IN CONTROL OF ANYTHING EVER? That annurism could pop at any time - that disease could hit you and you find no cure available because it's not profitable - to rare - feck you - your worthless to the system now anyway.

 

I'm the product of my genetics & my experiences - I didn't get here through being in control of anything - I'm an agent of something else - I want no credit - I am no hero or visionary - I'm not a preacher - but I believe that we could be so much better - we have been in the past - but we've never been worse - now there is no excuse for not understanding - we have the internet - it may be the thing that saves us - or it may be one of the tools used to ensure our continued predudices and hatreds - we're not reliant on the local religious leader to tell us which witch to hunt - NOW WE HAVE TV - but all the tools are still available to us just now to find out for ourselves.

 

At the moment there are all sorts of media out there - films - documentaries - thesis - TV programs - constantly with the message sitting in the background - or right in your face - that WE MUST DO BETTER. Question - where does your hatred come from - why are you unable to disect the crap your fed and just see what's plain as day.

 

I hate doing this - but I'm not trying to fix the world - I'm trying to reach one person - I'm trying to open the eyes of anyone - it may be the one who knows the one who speaks to the one who lives next to the one who speaks on the internet to the one who eventually grows up and bumps into the one or marries the one who finally has the vision I lack - the oral skills to unite - I have to keep trying - I will not give up hope. This goes out to all my brothers and sisters everywhere - no matter colour of skin - misguided believes - of which I may be one - I don't care - despite my frustration - I believe in all of us - well almost all - a tipping point needs to be reached and everything can be so much better - not some utopia - but a world that makes sense - were bystander intervention is the norm - rather than worrying about what your peers think.

 

I do this for people like Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Charlie Brooker - 2PAC - Barack Obama, the founding fathers - John Henry Edin, Hancock and Robin Scott. I know my efforts are pathetic - but I will not give in until I am dead.

[RattleAndGrind]

JaYmZeE311074, you lost me at "The system is the problem - the role humans play within it is the miplaced believe that the system cannot be changed."

 

The "system" is a nebulous none entity which does not really exist. Why, because the system is the people and the people are the system. So people are the problem and people are the solution. The challenge is to figure how to convince people to self modify their behavior to affect the overall behavior of the rest of humanity, in some sort of ripple effect. Some kind of "Changing the World Starts With Me" campaign, based on the "I can only change me" philosophy. (Where have I heard that before?) :D