 |
| Rodney King beating... |
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - "Who watches the watchmen?".
The answer in this world is simple: WE ALL WATCH THE WATCHMEN.
Today we have this sad moment in Minnesota. It is just as heartbreaking though less clear as to the cops actions, but what is clear to me is that there will be no brushing this incident, or many others, under the rug as cops surely have so many times in the past.
So if the police don't know it yet - they are now living in a world where they must be much, much, much more professional. There can be no more mistakes. Every encounter must be beyond "by the book". And frankly, with law enforcement, that is how IT SHOULD BE. That is what we as a society SHOULD expect.
We have set the bar just too low for those who would aspire to be peace officers. Typically from my experience, there are some exceptional cops out there, but most are middling at best in terms of their level of professionalism. And how can we be surprised when as a society, we have basically subcontracted out a life and death professional position to a group that has reached the lowest levels of
Let me ask you - would you let a person little more than a high school diploma operate on you? Take out your tonsils? No? Why not? Because it would be fucking suicide, that's why not. Even if it's a simple operation, simple operations go wrong sometimes. And then you need someone who has a higher level of intellect, able to understand and quickly process situational information and synthesize this with rote procedure and come to reasonable and managed solutions with the best outcome for all involved. Injury or death being really bad outcomes.
With our police hiring practices that's basically what we've done. We've subcontracted it out frankly. In this stark piece of reporting from 2014 it is clear that among other things we need more educated - i.e. more professional - police force.
I've personally seen this up close. Back home after college (which I would drop out of btw), I was dating a sweet girl from the the south side of St. Louis. Her step-father was a homicide detective. This guy was not stupid, he'd done a couple years of community college law enforcement program, but he was not a man of the world. He was not intellectually curious and rarely capable of understanding the differences in choices and options people from different parts of the city lived with. Now - this was not a beat cop - this was a homicide detective for crying out loud! His cop buddies, several of whom I got to know well, were pretty openly contemptuous of the african american part of the city (and that's putting it nicely). And on more than one occasion relayed to me, in the colorful prose of the south-city cop, that were more than willing to let those parts of town go to hell. That they saw little or no value in playing a role in creating safe, well policed spaces. Clearly this is just personal, anecdotal - but even now in NYC my interactions with the police lead me to much the same conclusion. It's a good job, that someone with a HS diploma can qualify for, and that is generally unencumbered by a need for true professionalism.
So you get the sort of policing that you pay for so to speak. And in a world where we can now have police behavior live streamed around the globe instantly - and should - we need to have a police force that can operate on that stage.
