(January 19, 2016 at 2:39 am)Bella Morte Wrote: Wow, what the fuck is it with you Americans and your shitty cops? I mean our cops suck as well but not the scale that yours do.
In terms of racism, I suspect it's always been this bad. Organized drug crime hasn't helped. Upping the penalties for drug use was the wrong solution. We went from open season on minorites to open season on the poor and minorites. Reducing funding for treatment of mental illness extremely and limiting involuntary treatment sure didn't help either. Lastly as armed drug groups moved up from South America the militarized SWAT team was born.
What's new is cell phone cameras and dashboard cams documenting the problem. It gets harder and harder for those of us who never see it to ignore it. It's why this thread is such a damned good idea.
As a young attorney in Oregon in the late 80s I saw two sides of this brewing simultaneously. On the one hand meth manufacturers were moving into seasonally used rural buildings, making the property unusable, and firing on the owners. Rural Oregon had never seen anything like it. The local police mostly dealt with traffic, bar fights, domestic desputes, and out of season hunting. They were way out of their depth and out gunned. Out legal budgeted too. State and local funds helped militarize them. That wasn't a bad thing.
The same SWAT teams in Portland were.
I also saw seizure laws in action. We represented rural police but also lenders who were losing their collateral on the Mexican boarder. Car loan interest rates climbed through the roof.
Does it sound third world? It felt that way.
It happened differently elsewhere in the county. The US is a large and diverse place. But racism, the drug war, seizure laws, mental illness defunding, and the militarization of the police was always the big picture. Add gun culture and we have one hell of a mess.
The thing is though that most of us only see nice well behaved polite suburban police. To the policemen I deal with, and I rarely deal with them, I'm ma'am. Yes ma'am. Sorry ma'am. How can I help you ma'am. That's why the camera is such a good idea.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.