Some will attempt to change the culture as will some white and female officers. It is the culture of us against them that needs to change.
As police forces represent the make up of the community things will get better however this situation is more to do with seeing minority male citizens as suspects or criminals by police officer of all races. The war on drugs is a large part of this problem.
Blake says officer should be fired. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/nyregion/james-blake-says-officer-who-arrested-him-should-be-fired-for-a-start.html
Tom, this is where I think you are wrong: “while the white middle class and wealthy community in fewer and fewer numbers continue to support the police. I believe the tide will turn because white America will not be able to deny that there is a community of people that is subject to mistreatment.” Rather, the pattern seems to be that minority protests lead to greater fear among the police which leads to more calls from well-off whites for the police to get control of the situation (especially around election time). This will be a green light for abusive police to continue to be heavy-handed with black people and any others they disdain. I think the only thing that may bring real change is prosecution of abusive police based on body cam and other video evidence. Maybe we should advise every black man in America to carry some sort of videocam with him at all times.
Mr Blake is correct except for one thing the way he was arrested is a condoned action in police departments all over the country. It should not be and the brass and politicians will act like it is not proper procedure but it is.
Hopefully that will change.
I saw James on CNN yesterday with Don Lemmon. Lemmon asked him several times if he thought this was a racial incident and he responded each time that no, he didn’t think it was a racist reaction. He said he thought it was an inappropriate reaction by a rogue policeman to use violence in the context of mistakenly confronting him as a non-violent offender. He reiterated his respect for most police, but indicated that he was going to use this to press for reform and responsibility in the police ranks. They ran tape of a police official indicating that the appropriate reaction in confronting him (giving his remarkable resemblance to the real offender) would have been to start a conversation with him, rather than lunging at him and taking him down. I’ve always thought James was classy, but even more so now.
Whether Blake thinks this particular instance was racial profiling or not, the fact is that racial steroetypes influence police decision making a lot more than many of us want to admit (see the article linked in post 20). Blake may simply be erring on the side of caution because he has no concrete evidence that the officer was motivated by race. But that doesn’t mean that this was not the case.
Blake understands that he can not state that this was racially motivated without it backfiring on his career. I do think that if the suspect was white the officer MAY have proceeded differently. I am only speculating as a former New Yorker and the actions I’ve witnessed from the NYPD. The black officers aren’t any different. The cops have a “them vs. us” mentality and they are careful to pick and choose who they disrepect. The cop would have never behaved this way if the suspect was a Hasidim in Crown Heights
^^Never lived in NY. Do cops walk on eggshells with the Hasidic community? If so, why?
They have power
The answer is found in Justonedad’s defense of the cop, that stuff like this happens because blacks are disproportionately involved in crime. Racism isn’t necessarily the N word using redneck, it is someone who deep down has associated black, especially a black man, with crime. If the crime involved a white suspect, and the cop saw a white guy outside a decent hotel in a nice area who seemed to fit the description, texting on a phone, I doubt he would have thrown him to the ground, but a black guy who fits some description, must be a hardcore criminal and he acted instinctively. It is why the cops have the training they do, in appropriate use of force, it is supposed to override other instincts.
As far as @justonedad’s questions about who is tolerating this kind of behavior, if a fine and a slap on the wrist and training isn’t an appropriate response, the answer is that the cops themselves do. For example, the kind of guidelines we are talking about go back decades, these weren’t just put in place this year, because of incidents over the years, so this isn’t like a new rule, it is drilled into cops at the academy, has been for years, so where is the gray area here that requires a slap on the wrist? If he had been searching for an armed robber or a violent suspect, there would be a gray area here, but in this case? Plus the cop already had other charges against him, so this isn’t exactly a first time.
Who tolerates it? Fellow cops, who when stuff like this happens, would claim 'the suspect showed aggressive tendencies " (now with video, they can’t do this as much any more). The same cops that when some bozo got drunk coming off duty and ran over and killed a young woman, made sure he didn’t get a breathalyzer or get to the hospital for a blood test until 8 hours after the incident. Then, too, the police department itself, where you have a bratten snarking that there are ‘two sides to a story’ (like, yeah, obviously blake was really an nefarious drug lord who had killed 10 people). The PBA is especially bad, as a union they are supposed to represent their members, but they go out of their way when cops misbehave to claim that it is 'a witchhunt" agains the police. Want proof? Read the book Serpico sometime, and read the laughable comments by the PBA, who in effect justified the corruption and whatnot as 'the word of criminals", as “liberal whining”, and it hasn’t changed much. Basically, the PBA mantra is that no cop is dirty, no cop does wrong, and if they do, it is persecution, and it is part of the reason the cops have such a bad image. Put it this way, there is only one case in recent memory where the PBA refused to defend a cop, it was a guy accused of trying to act out cannibalistic fantasies against women, cops accused of shaking down drug dealers,cops accused of working for the mob? Automatic coverage. That “Thin Blue Line” covers almost everything, and it is a dangerous mentality.
It really is ridiculous. Honestly. Even if he was mistakenly identified, he clearly was just standing there. Absolutely nothing about him warranted that attack.
Putting aside race, what blew my mind about this physical arrest is it was for a non-violent crime, selling stolen goods. Standard police procedures do not involve violent confrontation of non-violent, non-threatening offenders. Of any race. That is partly what Bratton and DiBlasio are talking about when the refer to training, but I find it difficult to believe officers need to be trained to carry out a regular arrest on a street in Manhattan of a person suspected of a non-violent crime and who is standing still. The usual way to do that is prepare by getting cuffs and weapon ready along with your badge - which is supposed to be readily available (because you need to pull it out, sometimes to uniformed officers) - and then you approach the guy. You don’t tackle him if only because the lawsuits cost so much to pay.
“selling stolen goods”
No, allegedly the fellow they thought he was is part of an identity theft ring.
Not relevant for your point, @Lergnom, but I like to keep things accurate.
What I heard on the news is he was identified for delivering a stolen cellphone about an hour or so earlier.
So, let me understand this. You’re saying the way the cop took Blake down is something he was probably trained to do? And that it is in common use at other police departments?
@musicprnt You’d have to show us where I defended the cop.
@justonedad:
You basically were wondering why people wanted the cop fired after seeing the video, and making it sound like at worst the guy was guilt of violating policy and the worst he should get is a fine and slap on the wrist (why do I say that? When you asked what would be wrong if the cop got fined and sent for further training). You also came up with this long statement about how this happened because blacks make up such a large percentage of the population in jails, and implied that the cop was justified in tackling him because (I would assume), odds are if he was black, he must be a criminal or something. Otherwise, why would you come up with blacks being a large percent of the arrests and such, if not to try and justify what he did?
“So, let me understand this. You’re saying the way the cop took Blake down is something he was probably trained to do? And that it is in common use at other police departments?”
No one was saying that cops are trained to do this, condone doesn’t mean trained. What the poster is trying to say is that they may as well train them to do it, that when cops do things like this, especially with black or other minority group members, that they don’t do anything to the cops, that the higher ups and the PBA and fellow cops either look the other way, or give the cop a slap on the wrist, and that translates to condones. To give you an analogy, the Catholic Church has had policies about reporting priests accused of sexual molestation, no one would say anyone in the church hierarchy approved of priests molesting children, but it is also true that when it happened, the hierarchy covered it up and left offending priests as priests, which means de facto they were condoning what the priests did. Policy doesn’t mean a tinker’s cuss if there is no teeth to the penalties for violating it, and that is what people are talking about, that cops routinely do things like this, beat up some guy they decide is a suspect, shoot someone running away, otherwise mistreat someone, and the higher ups and the PBA and fellow cops pretend like it didn’t happen or was no big deal. Policies and procedures on paper are all well and good, and cops are trained to use force properly, but if there are no repurcussions for violating those policies, they might as well train cops to do crap like this.
If you look back, the poster did, in fact, term it “proper procedure” and my question (to him) was asking for clarification on that.
Never crossed my mind in that fashion. Even if I did “wonder”, would that constitute a defense of the cop? What I’m not doing is rushing to judgment. That can often appear to the pitchfork and torch crowd as “defending” someone.
There is probably insufficient evidence to definitely say either way whether race was a factor in this particular incident (unless there is a pattern indicating such in the numerous previous complaints about this particular officer), even though it is obvious that law abiding black people are generally more likely to encounter problems with police than law abiding white people (and not just because of bias issues among police officers, but also because of bias issues among those who call the police about a “suspicious person”).
However, whether or not race mattered in this particular incident, the method of arrest shown (officer not in uniform does a violent takedown arrest without identifying himself as a police officer on a person whom he thought was a suspect in a non-violent crime and presumably not otherwise indicated as “armed and dangerous” or some such) would likely make many law abiding people more fearful and less respectful of police officers, to the detriment of both police officers and law abiding people and the benefit of typical criminals who can take advantage of less cooperation between law abiding people and police officers.
JustoneDad- do I think they taught it at the academy no. Do I think they taught him while on the job that and/or allowed him to make arrests like that previously and without consequences -yes