Not if they are black
Two Dallas PD officers shot at protest
- Thread starter Kraut783
- Start date
It has been argued that militarization of the police is one of the factors that has led to increased distrust between Police and the community that they serve.
Rise of the Warrior Cop
JimMCpog
Unverified
I'd love to know what his MOS was in the Army.
BuckysBadger24
Member
Who's?
Who and do you have a source or are you thinking out loud?
R.Caerbannog
Verified Military
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2015
- Messages
- 2,380
I don't really buy into the whole militarization of the police. Noticed that a bunch of sociologists and eggheads (no offense to anyone) use that term when they try to describe the LEO community in a negative way. By claiming the LEO community is militarized they basically label them as deviant.
While it may bring distrust in the community, the safety of our officers should be more important. Do I agree that they should be rolling around in armored vehicles? No. But with the uprising of publicizing idiots in the media, it may come to this.
The dead shooter was id'd as an Army Vet (Yahoo news).
Military tactics are used every day by kids (and others) playing COD and other games.
DOJ won't say or do shit, helping racists hate mongers stir up the "oppressed".
How long before moderates call for a Police State to keep us "free and safe"?
It's gonna get worse before it gets better, I feel for the families of the fallen, and for the officers shot and having to recover/rehab.
FWIW- The Black Community will suffer more as officers wait for multiple back ups before responding to a 9-1-1 call, the rubes high-fiving this morning are too stupid to know 2nd and 3rd order effects.
It's also been argued that the former AG and the current administration, the media along with BLM, have created the atmosphere of perpetuating violence against Law Enforcement.
BTW, Don Lemon is a fucking idiot.
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policemedic
Verified SWAT
My men and women are walking beats, driving cars, and riding motorcycles and bicycles as we speak. We will not be intimidated, nor will we cease being an integral part of our community.
policemedic
Verified SWAT
The argument has been made. The argument is trash.
Here's the one shooters background, he was a Veteran.
The Dallas Shooting Suspect Had Military Experience
The Dallas Shooting Suspect Had Military Experience
R.Caerbannog
Verified Military
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2015
- Messages
- 2,380
You are right. The problem is that this argument is being touted as scripture by sociologists and the MSM. Just because the argument is wrong, it doesn't mean the public is going to accept is as wrong and take responsibility for their own shortcomings.
And this just on my local news:
"The police sent in a robot to blow up the suspect after negotiations with him failed."
The media. Not all bad, but some in it are just downright stupid and uninformed.
ETA: Actually, I'm the fucking idiot here. When this was announced, I thought (Assumed) it was so far off base, no way.
I stand corrected. Long live Johnny #5.
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Care to explain?
R.Caerbannog
Verified Military
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2015
- Messages
- 2,380
Few months ago I had an assignment on this topic. It's posted below, sorry for any mistakes on my part. Instructor wanted us to explain how LE was deviant, I tried to turn the argument on it's head and stated that the civilian populace was deviant instead.
Deviance and Law Enforcement Response in the United States
Deviance as a social ill should not reflect on the law enforcement community but at the society which labels it as deviant. The role of law enforcement branch of the government simply provides a service. It is in no means responsible for any wide scale social ills that befall society. Therefore it is being used as a scapegoat in order to misdirect the public from their own issues. Simply put the law enforcement community is not the deviant party, the public is.
In recent times there has been a growing resentment among certain social groups with law enforcement. One of the big arguments, is that law enforcement has become militarized and that the tactics used by individual departments and officers are too harsh. There has been much public backlash regarding the justification in police shootings and the media coverage surrounding them. Advances in communication and recording technology have brought this facet of society to the average person’s doorstep. With it have come questions regarding race, social strata, and sensationalization about whether or not the level of police response is warranted.
The mass medias simplification of the often complex nature of law enforcement has in many ways polarized the public. To be blunt, the public has fallen prey into believing a narrative that law enforcement is in its own way deviant. This has trickled down to individual law enforcement officers (LEO's) being labeled as deviant, which in many ways is simply not the case. Not only that, but certain social groups have also used this consensus as a catalyst to further their own political agendas (Ransby, B pg. 32). By using race and social class as their rallying forces, social activists have in essence mobilized large groups of money and people behind a disjointed cause.
In a way, this perceived deviance by the public against the law enforcement community is the culmination in how disconnected and insulated the public really is. To be blunt the public does not know what true violence is. In a large way the public's outcry over “excessive force” is but a cry of simultaneous ignorance and bliss. The reason I say this is because I have personally seen and experienced a small part of the dark side of the human experience. My youth was spent amongst the group that has been so devalued and ostracized. I've had the privilege of serving alongside LEO's that transitioned to military service, in particular those in a parachute infantry regiment and then fellow vets in VA support groups.
Our book has an example of Durkheim's view on deviance and how, “Deviance produces social solidarity. Instead of breaking society up, deviance produces a pulling together, or social solidarity” (Andersen pg. 147). But for this example to work, the public as a whole must feel the impact of deviance. During Durkheim's era men were conscripted to fight in times of conflict regardless of their political and ideological differences. The majority of families shared the loss of the male figure during times of conflict. In many ways this was a great equalizer, where the populace at large did not have the luxury of being insulated from conflict or strife caused by violence (Gilbert J. pg. 1283).
In today’s era this is simply not the case, the days of mass solidarity against deviance is essentially weakened. A perfect example would be the war on terror; how after a few years it has faded into the backdrop in the public arena. Many men and women take pride in the fact that the American public has been so well insulated from the current war on terror. At the same time this safety net has caused a small percentage of the population to shoulder a tremendous burden, while the public has the option to ignore the ugly side of society. Namely the dual nature of humankind, our propensity towards either great altruism or barbarism.
In many ways the law enforcement community is the quintessential example of so few doing so much. According to the FBI's uniform crime reports in 2014 there were 403,984 law enforcement officers that were tasked with policing a population of 268,296,362 (FBI UCR Table 71). The table provided by the Uniform Crime Reports calculates this to 2.2 officers per 1000 people. This group handled 1,165,383 instances of violent crime and 8,277,829 instances of property crime in 2014 alone (FBI UCR Table 1). Numerically we can grossly oversimplify things, lets say that each officer is tasked with handling 2.9 violent crimes and 20.5 property crimes. The problem with this oversimplification is that these are department provided numbers, at the lower levels we have no real way of knowing how many people it took to handle each individual case.
Now let’s move on to the subject of police shootings per year in the United States. The FBI uniformed crime reports do not have a table for the number of police shootings per year. The Guardian a British newspaper started one in 2015 called “The Counted”, for the 2015 year they documented 1145 people killed by police shootings in the United States (The Counted 2015). For the moment let us just ignore that this data was gathered by a foreign media source, let’s also say that there is no background bias. Compared to the 21,606 murders (FBI UCR Table 1) and non-negligent manslaughter’s during the 2014 year 1145 people seems like a drop in the bucket. So for every single police shooting there were approximately 19 murders in the United States.
So let’s keep the number of 1150 people killed in 2015 as a marker (The Counted 2015). Another missing piece of information is the breakdown of how many of the 1145 killings were justified, without the investigation reports we are missing a large piece of the puzzle. Which brings to question how social activists and pundits seem to claim that they know better than the LEO's pulling the trigger. This makes me wonder how many of these activists have had to pull a trigger or have faced the reality of making life and death decisions in mere seconds. How do I know this? Well I have been on the end of that spectrum, I have had to make those same split second choices. It is not easy or fair, but when is life like that?
In essence the outcry over police shootings in the Unites States is just a knee-jerk reaction. The numbers gathered by the FBI and foreign media outlets don't seem to support that police shootings are a widespread prevalent phenomenon. In fact it kind of points in the opposite direction. That the American public is being insulated from so called police deviance, they are protected by a very professional and competent police force. Which makes much of the anger and public outcry against the LEO's and their departments seem trite and laughable.
So one must wonder why there is such an outcry over rare and isolated incidents of police deviance. In many ways the law enforcement community is being used as a scapegoat by outside forces. In particular, for unrelated social and cultural problems within certain communities. Rampant social problems such as crime are not the fault of the police. If any group is deviant it is the communities and activists that are enabling the widespread use of misinformation to target a social minority. In particular, a social group that cannot strike back at these charlatans and hatemongers.
What is even more disturbing is how certain social activists groups and the mass media actually profited from the resulting violence. The Baltimore riots and ensuing chaos are an excellent example of this. For instance when mass media outlets sensationalized the death of Freddie Gray, they effectively blew up and monetized what should have been a non-issue. Groups like the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter movement also gained large tracts of media coverage and donor support; all over a petty drug dealer. Let contrast this with the media coverage of minors shot to death in gangland crossfires and drive by shootings, their coverage was close to nonexistent. In a sad way intolerance and sensationalism have merged together as a mechanism for profit.
Now by themselves the groups that labeled the LEO community as deviant were not active players or nonexistent until recently. There must have been some sort of social phase shift in the past few years that led to these outcomes. Marginalization, poverty, and social inequality have always been present social ills; which brings to question how this type of misinformation spread like wildfire. My guess would be that increased inter-connectivity via social media may have been a factor, but it was by no means the main catalyst. The large mobilization of people in such a quick and timely fashion in my eyes suggests that there had to be some sort of command and control element. The subsequent scapegoating of the LEO community by the people they serve also seemed very methodical and well-paced.
In many ways the polarization and growing divide between the public and the civil servants that are tasked to protect them is unfortunate. To circle back to the beginning, there is a common consensus amongst the public that the police are becoming too militarized. But in light of an increasingly interconnected world the public is being faced with threats that were simply not an issue in the past. Radicalism and terrorism have always been present in modern societies but now it seems that these threats are closer to home. Tragedies such as mass shootings and an increase in radicalism have in a way forced police and federal agencies to use new techniques to adapt to an increasingly insecure world (Campbell pg. 329) .
This rise in intolerance could be due to growing fears amongst the civilian population that they are not as safe as they were. But instead of facing the fire and trying to combat this new rise in deviance the public has instead lashed out at their protectors. Sadly for those of us who have been trying to combat this rise in deviance, the unwillingness of the public to join the fray has been disheartening. Maybe after so many years of the shielding the public from the realities of this new world, we have done them a disservice. It could be that Durkheim was right that “societies need deviance” (Andersen pg. 147) in order to evolve and move forward.
At the end of the day I think that the perceived deviance against the law enforcement community will change when society finally comes to grip with the new era. It’s funny how sometimes the group that is labeled as deviant is actually the one that is embracing new ideas and techniques. One cannot just lay blame with the public at large or the law enforcement community. The public has been kept blissfully unaware, thanks to the relative safety that has been provided by such a small group. Backlash in the form of confusion and anger at waking up to see a fractured world could be quantified as normal (Balko, R).
One must hope that this divide between the classes will be bridged. Through mutual understanding and selfless sacrifice we as a society might pull together and forge a new path. Like the pioneers of old there will be hardship and bitter tears. But on the same token there will be much joy and knowledge gained when we reach an era of peace. The public cannot be shielded forever, they must learn to face the coming storm of an increasingly interconnected world. When they do they will be prepared however and will hopefully have an easier time navigating the light and darkness that is present in social change.
References
Andersen, M. L., Taylor, H. F., & Logio, K. A. (2013). Sociology: The essentials. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning/Wadsworth.
Balko, Radley. July 2013. Rise of the Warrior Cop. ABA Journal, Volume 99(Issue 7, pg. 44-52).
Retrieved from: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=276e6d62-24c4-44e1-9c80-5b4820ddae8c@sessionmgr104&hid=101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=88788045&db=lgh
Campbell, J. Donald., & Campbell M. Kathleen. 24 Sept 2009. Soldiers as Police Officers/ Police Officers as Soldiers: Role Evolution and Revolution in the United States. Armed Forces and Society: January 2012, Volume 36 (no.2). Retrieved from http://afs.sagepub.com/content/36/2/327.full.pdf+html
FBI Uniform Crime Reports. 2014. Table 71, Full Time Law Enforcement Officers. Retrieved from Table 71
FBI Uniform crime Reports. 2014. Table 1, Crime in the United States. Retrieved from Table 1
Gilbert, J.. (2012). Review of, Of War and Men: World War II in the Lives of Fathers and Their Families. American Journal of Sociology, 117(4), 1282–1284. http://doi.org/10.1086/663089
Ransby, B. (2015). The Class Politics of Black Lives Matter. Dissent (Volume 62, Issue 4 pg. 31-34). Retrieved from EBSCO Publishing Service Selection Page
The Guardian. 2015. The Counted People Killed by Police in the US. Retrieved from The Counted: people killed by police in the United States – interactive
Deviance and Law Enforcement Response in the United States
Deviance as a social ill should not reflect on the law enforcement community but at the society which labels it as deviant. The role of law enforcement branch of the government simply provides a service. It is in no means responsible for any wide scale social ills that befall society. Therefore it is being used as a scapegoat in order to misdirect the public from their own issues. Simply put the law enforcement community is not the deviant party, the public is.
In recent times there has been a growing resentment among certain social groups with law enforcement. One of the big arguments, is that law enforcement has become militarized and that the tactics used by individual departments and officers are too harsh. There has been much public backlash regarding the justification in police shootings and the media coverage surrounding them. Advances in communication and recording technology have brought this facet of society to the average person’s doorstep. With it have come questions regarding race, social strata, and sensationalization about whether or not the level of police response is warranted.
The mass medias simplification of the often complex nature of law enforcement has in many ways polarized the public. To be blunt, the public has fallen prey into believing a narrative that law enforcement is in its own way deviant. This has trickled down to individual law enforcement officers (LEO's) being labeled as deviant, which in many ways is simply not the case. Not only that, but certain social groups have also used this consensus as a catalyst to further their own political agendas (Ransby, B pg. 32). By using race and social class as their rallying forces, social activists have in essence mobilized large groups of money and people behind a disjointed cause.
In a way, this perceived deviance by the public against the law enforcement community is the culmination in how disconnected and insulated the public really is. To be blunt the public does not know what true violence is. In a large way the public's outcry over “excessive force” is but a cry of simultaneous ignorance and bliss. The reason I say this is because I have personally seen and experienced a small part of the dark side of the human experience. My youth was spent amongst the group that has been so devalued and ostracized. I've had the privilege of serving alongside LEO's that transitioned to military service, in particular those in a parachute infantry regiment and then fellow vets in VA support groups.
Our book has an example of Durkheim's view on deviance and how, “Deviance produces social solidarity. Instead of breaking society up, deviance produces a pulling together, or social solidarity” (Andersen pg. 147). But for this example to work, the public as a whole must feel the impact of deviance. During Durkheim's era men were conscripted to fight in times of conflict regardless of their political and ideological differences. The majority of families shared the loss of the male figure during times of conflict. In many ways this was a great equalizer, where the populace at large did not have the luxury of being insulated from conflict or strife caused by violence (Gilbert J. pg. 1283).
In today’s era this is simply not the case, the days of mass solidarity against deviance is essentially weakened. A perfect example would be the war on terror; how after a few years it has faded into the backdrop in the public arena. Many men and women take pride in the fact that the American public has been so well insulated from the current war on terror. At the same time this safety net has caused a small percentage of the population to shoulder a tremendous burden, while the public has the option to ignore the ugly side of society. Namely the dual nature of humankind, our propensity towards either great altruism or barbarism.
In many ways the law enforcement community is the quintessential example of so few doing so much. According to the FBI's uniform crime reports in 2014 there were 403,984 law enforcement officers that were tasked with policing a population of 268,296,362 (FBI UCR Table 71). The table provided by the Uniform Crime Reports calculates this to 2.2 officers per 1000 people. This group handled 1,165,383 instances of violent crime and 8,277,829 instances of property crime in 2014 alone (FBI UCR Table 1). Numerically we can grossly oversimplify things, lets say that each officer is tasked with handling 2.9 violent crimes and 20.5 property crimes. The problem with this oversimplification is that these are department provided numbers, at the lower levels we have no real way of knowing how many people it took to handle each individual case.
Now let’s move on to the subject of police shootings per year in the United States. The FBI uniformed crime reports do not have a table for the number of police shootings per year. The Guardian a British newspaper started one in 2015 called “The Counted”, for the 2015 year they documented 1145 people killed by police shootings in the United States (The Counted 2015). For the moment let us just ignore that this data was gathered by a foreign media source, let’s also say that there is no background bias. Compared to the 21,606 murders (FBI UCR Table 1) and non-negligent manslaughter’s during the 2014 year 1145 people seems like a drop in the bucket. So for every single police shooting there were approximately 19 murders in the United States.
So let’s keep the number of 1150 people killed in 2015 as a marker (The Counted 2015). Another missing piece of information is the breakdown of how many of the 1145 killings were justified, without the investigation reports we are missing a large piece of the puzzle. Which brings to question how social activists and pundits seem to claim that they know better than the LEO's pulling the trigger. This makes me wonder how many of these activists have had to pull a trigger or have faced the reality of making life and death decisions in mere seconds. How do I know this? Well I have been on the end of that spectrum, I have had to make those same split second choices. It is not easy or fair, but when is life like that?
In essence the outcry over police shootings in the Unites States is just a knee-jerk reaction. The numbers gathered by the FBI and foreign media outlets don't seem to support that police shootings are a widespread prevalent phenomenon. In fact it kind of points in the opposite direction. That the American public is being insulated from so called police deviance, they are protected by a very professional and competent police force. Which makes much of the anger and public outcry against the LEO's and their departments seem trite and laughable.
So one must wonder why there is such an outcry over rare and isolated incidents of police deviance. In many ways the law enforcement community is being used as a scapegoat by outside forces. In particular, for unrelated social and cultural problems within certain communities. Rampant social problems such as crime are not the fault of the police. If any group is deviant it is the communities and activists that are enabling the widespread use of misinformation to target a social minority. In particular, a social group that cannot strike back at these charlatans and hatemongers.
What is even more disturbing is how certain social activists groups and the mass media actually profited from the resulting violence. The Baltimore riots and ensuing chaos are an excellent example of this. For instance when mass media outlets sensationalized the death of Freddie Gray, they effectively blew up and monetized what should have been a non-issue. Groups like the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter movement also gained large tracts of media coverage and donor support; all over a petty drug dealer. Let contrast this with the media coverage of minors shot to death in gangland crossfires and drive by shootings, their coverage was close to nonexistent. In a sad way intolerance and sensationalism have merged together as a mechanism for profit.
Now by themselves the groups that labeled the LEO community as deviant were not active players or nonexistent until recently. There must have been some sort of social phase shift in the past few years that led to these outcomes. Marginalization, poverty, and social inequality have always been present social ills; which brings to question how this type of misinformation spread like wildfire. My guess would be that increased inter-connectivity via social media may have been a factor, but it was by no means the main catalyst. The large mobilization of people in such a quick and timely fashion in my eyes suggests that there had to be some sort of command and control element. The subsequent scapegoating of the LEO community by the people they serve also seemed very methodical and well-paced.
In many ways the polarization and growing divide between the public and the civil servants that are tasked to protect them is unfortunate. To circle back to the beginning, there is a common consensus amongst the public that the police are becoming too militarized. But in light of an increasingly interconnected world the public is being faced with threats that were simply not an issue in the past. Radicalism and terrorism have always been present in modern societies but now it seems that these threats are closer to home. Tragedies such as mass shootings and an increase in radicalism have in a way forced police and federal agencies to use new techniques to adapt to an increasingly insecure world (Campbell pg. 329) .
This rise in intolerance could be due to growing fears amongst the civilian population that they are not as safe as they were. But instead of facing the fire and trying to combat this new rise in deviance the public has instead lashed out at their protectors. Sadly for those of us who have been trying to combat this rise in deviance, the unwillingness of the public to join the fray has been disheartening. Maybe after so many years of the shielding the public from the realities of this new world, we have done them a disservice. It could be that Durkheim was right that “societies need deviance” (Andersen pg. 147) in order to evolve and move forward.
At the end of the day I think that the perceived deviance against the law enforcement community will change when society finally comes to grip with the new era. It’s funny how sometimes the group that is labeled as deviant is actually the one that is embracing new ideas and techniques. One cannot just lay blame with the public at large or the law enforcement community. The public has been kept blissfully unaware, thanks to the relative safety that has been provided by such a small group. Backlash in the form of confusion and anger at waking up to see a fractured world could be quantified as normal (Balko, R).
One must hope that this divide between the classes will be bridged. Through mutual understanding and selfless sacrifice we as a society might pull together and forge a new path. Like the pioneers of old there will be hardship and bitter tears. But on the same token there will be much joy and knowledge gained when we reach an era of peace. The public cannot be shielded forever, they must learn to face the coming storm of an increasingly interconnected world. When they do they will be prepared however and will hopefully have an easier time navigating the light and darkness that is present in social change.
References
Andersen, M. L., Taylor, H. F., & Logio, K. A. (2013). Sociology: The essentials. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning/Wadsworth.
Balko, Radley. July 2013. Rise of the Warrior Cop. ABA Journal, Volume 99(Issue 7, pg. 44-52).
Retrieved from: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=276e6d62-24c4-44e1-9c80-5b4820ddae8c@sessionmgr104&hid=101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=88788045&db=lgh
Campbell, J. Donald., & Campbell M. Kathleen. 24 Sept 2009. Soldiers as Police Officers/ Police Officers as Soldiers: Role Evolution and Revolution in the United States. Armed Forces and Society: January 2012, Volume 36 (no.2). Retrieved from http://afs.sagepub.com/content/36/2/327.full.pdf+html
FBI Uniform Crime Reports. 2014. Table 71, Full Time Law Enforcement Officers. Retrieved from Table 71
FBI Uniform crime Reports. 2014. Table 1, Crime in the United States. Retrieved from Table 1
Gilbert, J.. (2012). Review of, Of War and Men: World War II in the Lives of Fathers and Their Families. American Journal of Sociology, 117(4), 1282–1284. http://doi.org/10.1086/663089
Ransby, B. (2015). The Class Politics of Black Lives Matter. Dissent (Volume 62, Issue 4 pg. 31-34). Retrieved from EBSCO Publishing Service Selection Page
The Guardian. 2015. The Counted People Killed by Police in the US. Retrieved from The Counted: people killed by police in the United States – interactive
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RIP to the fallen and injured officers.
When will the idiots realize that all lives matter and that a single race (Human) is who we are?
When will the idiots realize that all lives matter and that a single race (Human) is who we are?
And then, there's this:
Killer Mike: Hip-Hop Artist Comments on Fatal Police-Involved Shootings:
The Atlanta-based rapper tweeted Wednesday, "lynchings were public to keep a class system based on race intact in the Jim Crow south. Public Executions by Police 2day do the same."
Killer Mike: Hip-Hop Artist Comments on Fatal Police-Involved Shootings:
The Atlanta-based rapper tweeted Wednesday, "lynchings were public to keep a class system based on race intact in the Jim Crow south. Public Executions by Police 2day do the same."
The Mirror is reporting a Black Power Group has taken responsibility.
'Black Power group' claims to be behind police killings and warns more to come
'Black Power group' claims to be behind police killings and warns more to come
