Headline in today's online Oregonian:
"(Note: When the cops were finally forced to accept body cameras, which departments across the country have been using for years, PPB spokesperson Lt. Nathan Sheppard had this to say: “This is huge and it’s long overdue.” That's funny... according to every report available, the PPB and union has been fighting against the idea of body cams since 2014, when the Department of Justice first ordered them to start using cams.)"
Couple of things here.
First, this is BTDT with cops. Portland cops, yes, but "cops", generally. Copaganda portrays these jokers as the "thin blue line" but, again, it's you and me who are the first and second and every other "line" against criminal anarchy. If we're not generally decent people, nothing but a full-on occupying army of coppers could hold that line.
The degree to which coppers shoot people is ridiculous given the not-Somalia-like state of American society. The cops are being trained to think and act like soldiers, and that's bad for them and everyone else.
That said...
The other part of this is that, as we've also discussed to death here, there's too many goddamn guns out there and too many dipsticks who have no business walking around strapped walking around with them.
So the eagerness of the coppers to bust a cap in people's ass can't really be separated from the likelihood that the sort of people they are forced to interact with are armed. That makes "shoot first" the sensible reaction to those interactions. The cops may be a problem, but the guns are the problem.
What's really frustrating about ALL of this is that there's absolutely zero probability that any of this - cops, guns - will change anytime in the foreseeable future. The political will isn't there. If Sandy Hook couldn't produce meaningful change in firearms law, well...
And the coppers?
The City of Portland has never really tried to do anything about the toxic mess that is Portland Police Bureau. As time after time we run into the reality that PPB is a sinkhole of incompetent and racist assholes that somehow never translates into actions that would make PPB more competent and less racist or asshole-y. We just throw a crap-ton of money at these jokers.
Like so much of our politics, there's simple and sensible alternatives that are utterly un-doable because of a hard knot of utterly impossible people who refuse to even consider doing them.
2 comments:
"The cops are being trained to think and act like soldiers, and that's bad for them and everyone else."
They are being trained to use the same tactics that the US Army used in the "War on Terror." Didn't work in other countries, aren't going to work in this country. Hopefully we won't get to the stage where we need to launch an insurgency to get rid of them.
The irritating thing is that we're supposed to be the boss of them. They're supposed to use tactics within the bounds we set them. That we let these nitwits run wild blowing away anyone who loos at them the wrong way or not is our own fault.
the "Defund the Police" thing irked me because it set up any attempt to rein in these blue bastards as a wingnut hate object and guaranteed that nothing would happen. "Reform the Police" doesn't have the same cachet but would have been a lot more on the mark.
But if we can't even do that here in the Beehive of Terror who the hell can?
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