Rioting in the streets and national protests are not actually an indication that police are doing anything wrong in policing themselves. First, those protests are primarily about shootings and violence, not about how the events are dealt with afterward. Second, just because someone protests and riots doesn't mean they are correct in their assessment of reality. We spent several threads shedding some light on the actual facts about how many blacks are killed by police, and it doesn't really support the idea that police departments nation-wide are out of control.


In the context of a civilian review board, the biases of community members don't counterbalance anything, unless you plan to have equal representation from police officers. Otherwise, those community biases are unchecked and will predictably result in cases of officers being fired, disciplined, condemned, when they actually acted correctly.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

It's not. Don't know if you missed this lesson early in life, but two wrongs don't make a right.


Aside from it being an entirely different issue, and obvious political hyperbole, you mean?


Well you just hang in there and do you best, champ.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Just because there are riots and national protests doesn't necessarily mean their subjects are completely just. I am not saying they are not, just want to make clear I am not arguing on either side of the coin, just attempting to be logical. I just feel that there are a lot of sheeple out there, just following whoever screams the loudest, and not really understanding what the actual truths are (one way or the other). I also feel the media is extremely drama driven, and shows whatever information they have to get viewership. Is it ever wondered why there are so many of this issues going on right at this present moment? I highly doubt that things have changed as far as police go, and I highly doubt there is an actual influx of events compared to the past. To me, it's the media drive (including social media) that flames all these issues.

There is so much information out there that all interacts with other information and no one anywhere has any idea of what the hell is going on (I hope this makes sense).

Maybe it's the cynical side of me, but I always find myself having difficulty imagining that all the problems going on are completely as advertised.

I just know that all the police officers I know, are part of the community the patrol and most of them grew up in the same community. Their whole life has been revolved around their community. Not saying they don't do anything wrong, clearly they are humans too.

Here is a good example of why police can't be trusted to enforce themselves. They fight transparency, the key issue here, at every chance.

http://reason.com/...-unions-endanger-min


Conservative police apologists often dismiss this frustration, claiming that police shootings are the result not of bigotry and bias by police but greater black crime rates. And to prove their point they have seized on a study by Harvard University's Roland G. Fryer, black himself, that found no evidence that police are more likely to use lethal force against blacks and Hispanics than whites. (However, the cops are 50 percent more likely to use non-lethal force such as slapping, slamming, and punching against blacks and Hispanics than whites and Asians.)
But Fryer, a careful researcher with a stellar reputation, doesn't have great confidence in his own findings because comprehensive national data about police shootings doesn't exist. His investigation was therefore limited to select areas of Texas, Florida, and Los Angeles that were willing to share their internal records. And this, he acknowledges, introduced a massive self-selection bias in his sample. "These departments only supplied the data because they are either enlightened or were not concerned about what the analysis would reveal," he noted.
So why don't national stats exist? Because America's 18,000 law enforcement agencies don't want them to.
The Crime Control Act of 1994 asked the FBI to annually compile and publish data about the use of police force in all instances so that the country could keep track of trends of police violence, identify problematic precincts, or catch enforcement bias. But union representatives of law enforcement agencies successfully lobbied the feds to make reporting optional. So most departments now simply plead poverty and refuse to comply.
This is a huge problem. In the absence of good data, it is impossible to say definitively if racism is driving police abuse in black communities. And because it is impossible to identify the size and scope of this problem, it is impossible to craft and enact a solution to it—a solution, mind you, that would not only better serve and protect minority communities, but also keep police safer, too.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

It depends on what powers the review board is granted and how extensively they get carried out, but it sure as shit would be some kind of public counterweight to the current system at least in my area, where the only oversight is the PD's own internal review ~ which ALWAYS, without fail, finds that their brothers in blue did nothing wrong. It's pretty much become a running joke; you'd think if they were smart they'd at least throw out the occasional wrist-slap bone to give an appearance now & then that it's not a complete whitewash every time. Perhaps maybe, just once in a great while, they actually DO do something that really should result in them being fired, disciplined, or condemned ~ only we can't count on them to do it themselves. In fact we can count on them NOT to as it currently stands. And I hate saying that because I actually know a few local cops and they are smart, solid people dedicated to their profession, and yet collectively there's some insecurity that they all have to cover the fuck-ups out of solidarity over everything else.

So far, what it takes now is the aggrieved party (assuming it's a non-fatal encounter) to file a civil suit against the officer and then subject everyone to a big public circus trial. I think we'd all agree that's NOT the best way to go about it, but that's pretty much the hand the PD has forced since the union won't accept any sort of lesser administrative option. I'm not doubting they probably are justified a great majority of the time even, but they can't use the "We're only human" excuse whenever they lose at trial and then turn around and go back to having their internal review board claim they're batting 1.000 so they don't need any external oversight. I want to support them more but that basic line of reasoning flies in the face of obvious fact and just insults our intelligence.

My thoughts exactly.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

Dramatic hyperbole actually doesn't strengthen your case. A very quick Google turns up numbers from 2010 that show that nationally, over a time period from Apr '09 to Dec '10, about 39% of complaints resulted in criminal charges. Of those, roughly 32% were convicted. That doesn't count disciplinary action that was handled outside of criminal prosecutions.

Whether the number is high enough or not is one thing, but it's certainly not indicative of a system "ALWAYS" finds cops didn't do anything wrong.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Well that and it's next to impossible to fire the cops. Remember the guy who cold cocked the girl on the video? Didn't it take a conviction and then another 4 years or so with repeated appeals of his termination to finally get his ass fired?

Name one city where this wouldn't happen.

So you want a new board for every action or did you mean volunteers from the city. I was under the impression that you didn't want to import non-residents for the board. If you mean independent neighborhoods, i think we have something like 40 in Chicago, so we'd need 40 review boards? That's nuts.

Define community.

Agreed. I'm a federal LEO and I read the OKC bus thread and found myself shaking my head at the majority of the responses posted. Until you've had some training, or real world experience, perspective is completely lost.

So the thought of citizens (who don't know shit about law enforcement, tactics, life and death stress) reviewing and offering solutions to things they don't understand or experience is ludicrous.

Imagine if I created a CCRB for professional sports.

"Stephen Curry, why is it that you were unable to make that game winning basket from 57' away?"

"Mr. Jeter, you struck out with bases loaded, and two outs in the 9th inning with your team down two runs. Why didn't you just hit that 95mph slider for a home run? I mean, how hard is it to hit a 95mph baseball that moves 2' away from you?"

People shouldn't advise or review stuff they don't understand.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

What's your thought's on the jury system? (I understand the point you're making, but how does that differ from the jury system? My personal take, being a Chicagoan, is that a community based review board here will be a scam used to batter the police over the head and result in more payouts further bankrupting the city).

My take on the jury system is that if I was accused of a crime I didn't actually commit, I might very well prefer a bench trial.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Any citizen living within the jurisdiction of the police. So let's say it is Phoenix PD, any citizen who lives where they have jurisdiction.

This poses a technical issue in states like Florida, where technically police can act outside heir jurisdiction without consequence. So it would be boundary based on departments.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

This was what I was thinking yesterday. People don't think twice about defending a death sentence imposed by a jury. But they can't evaluate police because they may not understand.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

That would be part of the greater reform. It is a multi step issue. Putting in a citizen review board today in most cities would be useless or show. The article I posted showed that many of the doj recommendations, which are usually binding were abandoned due to collective bargaining issues. You have to first Address those issues.

It took decades of political capitulation and apathy to get here. Reform won't happen overnight. If ever. There is a reason it has gotten this bad. Look here. Any questioning of police tactics has ardent opponents who always manage to justify or downplay the sognificance as acceptable error.

We just aren't there yet. We have seen the most momentum in my many years of questioning police administration. But it will take more murders on both sides. The reality is, the murdering of cops is counter productive. So the sacrifices have to be on te side of the people. And it can't be race focused. You want middle class America to be scared into supporting police reform, it can't be a black lives matter thing. White middle class America has to fee their sons and daughters could be murdered in a traffic stop just as easily.

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"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden