Posted on 08/24/2014 5:03:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
I am still not very confident about what really happened regarding the shooting of Mr. Brown on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.
For all I know, the events went down somewhat along the lines as the police say. But Ferguson’s police department has been so incompetent about investigating, collating and releasing information that might make their public stance easier, one has to wonder about everything they say.
How the police handled the protests and journalists — and looters — was even worse.
Indeed, cracking down on peaceful protests, harassing and locking up journalists, while letting looters run wild, shows a remarkable set of skewed priorities.
Could it be that police lack incentives to do the jobs that most need doing?
Some temptations must be resisted. We all know that. For example, it would be easy to get caught debating the subject of race, since it is obvious that black and white populations inside Ferguson (as well as outside the suburb) react so differently to the basic Ferguson story. But, though the proverbial “frank and honest discussion about race” might be good to have (if almost impossible to conduct, given the touchiness of the subject), what America really needs is a frank and honest discussion about incompetence.
Government incompetence.
We are all aware of government inefficiency, at some level. But how widespread it usually is too often gets missed.
Some of this blindness is the result of partisan commitments.
Conservatives tend to like their local governments (at least the police force); liberals tend to cheerlead for the federal government (at least when Republicans aren’t in charge).
Bill O’Reilly, Fox News’s most popular social conservative TV journalist and commentator, flew into a rage this week over the calumnies that he felt were being directed towards the “police community.” Meanwhile, President Obama sent Attorney General Eric Holder to save the day, though there was scant reason for federal action. It appears the typical left-approved “solution”: make it a federal case, since the federal government is good, local government, bad.
Sending in the feds, of course, was premature. And pointless. No local investigatory malfeasance had emerged. The local review processes had barely begun. Even assuming Holder to be competent on this issue (I see no evidence that he is; his mind seems made up in advance of his investigation), there is simply no call for his presence. Except from “the left.”
But the right’s knee-jerk pro-police stance is just as absurd. If ever a police department proved itself incompetent, Ferguson’s has been since the moment of the shooting of Mr. Brown. Every element approaches absurdity. Were not so much on the line, we might say their antics seem to fly from the pages of a Tom Sharpe farce.
And yet Bill O’Reilly angrily floated the argument that, since there are over 12 million arrests every year in this country, and only 400 or so fatal shootings of citizens by police, the police are, O’Reilly says, “efficient.”
Strange metric of efficiency.
No mention of justice. No mention of conviction. No mention of speed of the process, or accuracy, or safety in anything but fatal gunfire.
I confess: I don’t see how it is possible to talk up police efficiency in an age when the legal system itself is oppressive to the lower classes, especially African-Americans, when America can “boast” the largest prison population on the planet, and the largest in per capita terms, too. A “free country” doesn’t mesh well with a huge captive population. Or whole subcultures living in fear.
It’s not easy bringing competence back into government. It’s hard to organize many people to do complex tasks. But there are a few things we could do.
One: Make it simpler. Narrow the purview of the police.
How? Halt the War on Drugs, for starters. It gives far too many reasons for police to enter African-American communities, as John McWhorter recently argued on Fox Business’s Stossel. And thus flavor several generations with a negative view of the police. Besides, as opponents of this insane war have been saying all along, without the war, the temptation for “easy money” through illegal activities would incentivize nearly everyone to more peaceful activity.
Two: Provide immediate oversight. Put video cameras on police.
Where it’s been tried it’s worked: police resort to force goes down, citizen complaints plummet. In the Ferguson case, had the officer who shot young Mr. Brown sported a recording video camera, we’d have better evidence than the current he said/she said.
On the bright side, there is a current campaign to bring cameras to the police force. Well, I should say to make Ferguson police wear the cameras they have already obtained, but are not being used. It’s an initiative campaign spearheaded by the Liberty Initiative Fund; citizens should get on board now.
We aren’t going to solve all our problems overnight, of course. Government is inherently a cumbersome instrument, and not uniformly for the good. We don’t recognize this, often, because our hope blinds us.
Indeed, our loyalties to our governments and our commitments to our parties and ideologies often do more than blind us. They cause us to hallucinate. And, dazed and confused, run by dreams more than reason, our political instincts do little more than provide aid and comfort to both the grossly inefficient and the astoundingly corrupt.
For my life time, the usual response to discovering inefficiency and corruption was to … increase budgets without establishing any new check or balance. That is, reward incompetence and corruption.
Hardly a solution at all.
The great truth of government, known at least since the Enlightenment, is that as much as we may want government to serve everybody, it really works better at serving some at the expense of others.
That’s why we talk about “eternal vigilance.” Good government doesn’t come easy. It requires citizens to lead.
The events in Ferguson show that all too well.
If you wanted to fix cop issues in America....four simple solutions.
1. Dump the military gear, tanks, and assault tactics.
2. Put cameras on all cops.
3. Mandate a six-month academy for all state or local cops.
4. Mandate a minimum of three drug tests per year for all state or city cops, with a automatic sixty day furlough for each failure and no pay during the period for a drug failure.
The police are frustrated because there are not enough jails. Minor thugs like Brown are always on the catch and release program. They know it, the cops know it.
I would like to see Paul Jacob work a month as a policeman or sheriff’s deputy in a metropolitan area. I’m betting he’d sing a different tune then.
How many times before had Brown been arrested and released?
His rap sheet was posted and there were alot of juvinile offenses....more than 5 I believe
We will never know because the first 10 years of his thuggery are sealed juvenile records. But, the man who strong-armed that store clerk didn’t think the move up on his 18th birthday.
Could somebody explain why the police have not released any photos, x-rays or other evidence of attack on Wilson. Not that I know of any way. Is there some legal reason? Would help to defuse things just a little bit. Not that most of the outraged would care. It seems that the longer they wait, the less legitimate evidence will seem.
Police work. Is there any other job where more people, that have never done it, can do it better than those who do?
jobs? oops that 4 letter word that clears the room
“Indeed, cracking down on peaceful protests...”
Yeah...that’s the ticket.
RACE BAITERS ...
Just in Chicago, every week end, dozens of blacks are murdered and wounded by black and nobody in the black leadership, neither Obama, nor Holder or the race pimps, care. When Blacks kill Blacks, there are not mob protesting and rioting, neither Holder’s Justice Department would send 50 special agents to investigate and prosecute the culprits of a single case.
A 2007 special report released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, reveals that approximately 8,000 — and, in certain years, as many as 9,000 African Americans are murdered annually in the United States. This chilling figure is accompanied by another equally sobering fact, that 93% of these murders are in fact perpetrated by other Blacks. The analysis, supported by FBI records, finds that in 2005 alone, for example, African Americans accounted for 49% of all homicide victims in the US — again, almost exclusively at the hands of other African Americans.
To put these number in perspective, recall that over 6,400 U.S. service men and women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the course of a decade-long war fought in those nations.
If a Black police officer in the fulfillment of its duty happen to kill another Black, an Hispanic or a white person, the media will not accuse the officer as murderer even before the details of the case are known as it happens when the officer is a white policeman and the dead person is Black.
”Perhaps it is time that Americans were finally told the truth about the police, so they might avoid falling prey to the self-serving lies of the aforementioned, self-anointed guardians of “civil rights.”
”The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that in 1998, fully 62 percent of the 367 suspects killed by police officers nationwide were white, and 35 percent were black. In fact, police killings of white suspects have outnumbered those of black suspects in every single year since 1978.”
” black officers are far likelier to shoot black suspects than are white officers. In 1998, for instance, the black-officer-kills-black-felon rate was 32 per 100,000 black officers – much higher than the white-officer-kills-black-felon rate of 14 per 100,000 white officers.”
”While part of this disparity is due to the fact that black officers often tend to be assigned to black neighborhoods, clearly no case can be made from these numbers that white officers are in any way “trigger-happy” when confronting black suspects.”
”The intra-racial nature of most police shootings has existed for many years. Between 1976 and 1998, about 65 percent of homicides by police officers were against suspects of the same racial background. The rate at which white officers shoot black suspects has been declining steadily for two decades, while the rate at which they shoot white suspects has remained fairly constant over that same period. When a white officer kills a suspect today, that suspect is usually white (63 percent). When a black officer kills a suspect, that suspect is usually black (81 percent).”
”Overall, black officers are slightly likelier than white officers to kill a suspect in the line of duty. Indeed whites comprise 87 percent of all police nationwide, but account for only about 80 percent of homicides against criminal suspects, regardless of race. Meanwhile blacks, who constitute 11 percent of American police officers, are responsible for about 17 percent of homicides against criminal suspects.”
”Some readers may find this information shocking, particularly in light of the media’s and the civil rights establishment’s disproportionate focus on instances of white officers killing black suspects.”
The rest of the history
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=22176
Are you kidding mw. If you implemented some of these rules to the White House and Federal government they would be shutdown almost all the time. It is amazing to attack the police for incompetence when Obama and his henchmen are incompetent by a factor of a 1000. Absurd.
TRANSLATION: "I am so disappointed that Saint Charging Bull deserved what he got."
When an author resorts to using Bill O'Reilly as a proxy for the beliefs of the entire "right", you can be certain that the article's premises and conclusions are complete garbage.
Releasing only the absolute minimum information is standard procedure so long as there is an on-going investigation and a potential trial in the future. Eyewitnesses can be verified by comparing their testimony to the actual facts; if the actual facts are easily found in the newspapers, can’t do that. Releasing extensive info can also compromise the jury pool. Lawyers will keep as tight a lid on info as possible.
The son of one of hubby’s best friends was killed in a shooting incident; the family didn’t know what had really happened until the trial, meaning they were just hearing rumors for something like five months. Agonizing, but they recognized that this wait is necessary for justice. The US principle of “Innocent until proven guilty” means you wait until all the facts are in and both sides have been allowed to present their case before you make a judgement. A trial is how you get that information all together in one place and worry out the details.
The media loves eyewitness testimony, but witnesses are often the weakest link in any trial case. After the investigation has been completed, many a compelling witness is obviously either confused or an outright liar, because they were behind something that would have blocked their view or their testimony doesn’t line up with the forensic evidence or whatever. Yet another reason to be wary of the media’s version.
Thanks for taking the time to explain. Figure it had to do with jury. But I’m the naïve type who thinks the truth is the truth and it is good.
Beautiful. I had never seen that quote, but it is now committed to memory. I shouldn’t be surprised this nonsense isn’t new.
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