After Decades of Police Brutality, What Has Changed?

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/after-decades-of-police-brutality-what-has-changed/article_85a1be62-a000-11ed-aa83-a32c442689ac.html

On June 20, 1940, Sheriff Tip Hunter and Officer Charles Reed took 31-year-old Elbert Williams from his Brownsville, Tenn., home, and he was never seen alive again. Three days later, Williams' corpse was pulled from the Hatchie River. Eighty-three years later, and 54 miles away, officers killed Tyre Nichols. Eighty-three years of cops killing Black men — 83 years where we know the identities of the cops who did it — and what has changed?

Are we supposed to take comfort in the fact that, though police remain as brutal and dangerous as ever, at least now people of every race and gender can become cops and be our quasi-legal lynch mobs? Is this all the progress our society knows how to make? Let’s let everybody kill Black men with impunity, not just white people? It’s sickening.

What reforms would have fixed this?

I mean this question sincerely. Tyre Nichols was killed by Memphis police for no reason, or, worse, for fun. He died hollering for his mother, and that basic, instinctual crisis prayer wasn’t enough to move the killers or their bystander buddies.

What more or better training could possibly address this?

And, you know, fuck this idea of better training. We keep expecting these mothers living through the nightmare of their children being killed to go out and, with no training, talk grieving communities out of rioting. And again and again and again, the mothers of people killed by police in the middle of their own tragedies take on this further responsibility with no training. And they do it successfully.

*snip*

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. K&R.

[brush]

2. Ubiquitous cell phone and securtiy cameras everywhere...

has changed our awareness of the pervasiveness of the police brutality. They also prompted LEO departments to mandate body cameras, for when officers chose to turn them on.

Not much else has changed though in regards to reigning in police violence.

Abolishing qualified immunity would make big difference but that's a hot button no-no to the maga republicans.

[JanMichael]

3. Video is about it. 1990 two steroid cop goons beat a guy to death...

...with a big 8 cell metal flashlight by striking the guy in the groin repeatedly. Well after a regular beating. Then one held him while the other swung the flashlight like a baseball bat.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1990-12-30-9003050042-story.html

The two thugs were charged but got off. Only one eye witness....

One recently retired with honors from the WPB PD while the other goon took off to other districts who didn't care.

Maybe video would have convinced a jury to convict?

[cbabe]

4. No. Rodney King video and cops walked free.

[JanMichael]

5. I didn't say it always worked just that it is about the only change.

With no video getting any kind of justice is even harder.

But ultimately no real changes.

Did just find this:

https://www.aclu-wa.org/story/police-killings-are-down-62-2021-and-policing-legislation-key-driver-decline

Also ditching non speeding, or reckless, traffic stops also reduces the odds of death by cop.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

18. The cops did not walk free from federal charges,

but I get what you're saying, they walked free from state charges, which should not have happened.

[Hekate]

6. Powerful essay. More here...

And, you know, fuck this idea of better training. We keep expecting these mothers living through the nightmare of their children being killed to go out and, with no training, talk grieving communities out of rioting. And again and again and again, the mothers of people killed by police in the middle of their own tragedies take on this further responsibility with no training. And they do it successfully.

What garbage line of thinking do we have as a society where we just expect a person in the raw pain of losing a family member to also know how to and be able to function as crowd control, and we don’t have any expectations of cops being able to refrain from killing people unless they have copious amounts of training and constant psych evaluations and money, more money, always more money?

I’m a middle-aged white woman with a boring life. My run-ins with the cops have either been disappointing and frustrating …. or positive and helpful. So it’s taken me a long time to wrap my head around the concept of abolishing the police.
Let me be clear: It's not that it took me a long time to come to the conclusion that we should abolish the police, but rather it took me and is taking me a long time to even understand what that would mean. Who would protect us? Who would investigate crimes? Who would keep the peace? Who is going to ticket the people who drive like escapees from Grand Theft Auto?

Here’s the hard truth, the thing I have a tough time looking squarely at and accepting as real: Those things aren’t happening now. We give police the impunity to act how they like and all the money we can shovel at them on the off chance they will occasionally do some of these things, sometimes, for some of us.

Her concluding paragraphs are so chilling and so spot on: that the system isn’t “broken” and the officers aren’t “mentally ill” — it’s designed to be what it is (and a big sarcastic cheer for now being an equal opportunity employer), and people who are attracted or adjusted to it are happy. It’s those with a conscience who are sickened — and they leave. Mental health evaluations will yield the info that some are happy and fulfilled in their work and others are depressed and anxious — it’s just that the happy are sadists and the depressed are those with a conscience.

[maxsolomon]

7. Are things good? No. Are they better? Yes.

There are actually consequences in some cases now. Police brutality is less frequent now.

[aocommunalpunch]

8. Make the pigs personally liable and this shit will change.

We just don't want to do it. I guess it's too hard.

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[Hekate]

10. Will someone please send this article to Nicolle Wallace, and any other righteous media person?

[Mr.Bill]

11. Police brutality is not increasing.

I't just being filmed.

[Nevilledog]

12. Do you have a source for that?

Police don't even report all their use of force actions, so how would we know?. Plus, more police, more opportunity for abuse.

[Mr.Bill]

14. It's obviously an opinion

I have developed from 69 years on this planet. Cops beating the shit out of people is not a new phenomenon. It's been happening since the first badge was issued.

[Nevilledog]

15. I was talking about the idea it's not increasing.

It was common during my career as a defense attorney that cops reporting use of force was not the norm, and when there was an "investigation" it was a joke.

Without any type of regulated reporting we can't say it's not increasing. Cops set a record for killings in 2022.


‘It never stops’: killings by US police reach record high in 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/06/us-police-killings-record-number-2022

[FakeNoose]

13. "Better training" shouldn't turn them into "better killers"

If the cops actually do get better training, it should make them empathetic and more human. If not that, then they should at least be able to ask the appropriate questions and listen carefully to the answers before reacting.

[IcyPeas]

16. If it was one cop beating someone... maybe that would be a case of mental illness, but

when all the other cops join in on the beating what is that? What comes over all of them? Not one will say "stop". This is what I can't get my mind around. Is it peer pressure? Mob mentality? Did none of them have an iota of empathy?

Is it an Amygdala hijack*?

*An amygdala hijack is an emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and out of measure with the actual stimulus because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat.

...

Amygdala hijack refers to the situations where the amygdala overrides control of a person’s ability to respond rationally to a perceived threat – the logical brain gets impaired due to emotional outbursts caused by the amygdala.

[Hekate]

17. Darrin Bell has this to say about the Amygdala...

*With thanks to JHB for posting this first