The problem is, in America we have “police officers” and in other countries (such as Canada) they have “peace officers” and the difference in outcomes is startling. Granted, our neighbor to the north is not freighted down with the horrid racial history we’re saddled with here in America, but, nevertheless there’s a lot we can learn from a country that actually practices the democracy it preaches.
First, know this: Police do not prevent crime, and they often don’t solve those crimes that have been committed. What prevents crime is education, which leads to the ability to earn a decent income, which in turn allows people to have their own slice of the American pie. And when people are financially invested in their communities, they make the extra effort to improve the quality of life for everyone, since this raises the value of everyone’s slice.
Secondly, know this also: In communities where police brutality is reduced, a reduction in crime soon follows. The case of Camden, NJ — once considered the most dangerous city in the country — is a prime example. Eight years ago it got rid of its entire police department and turned the policing duties over to the county, which hired and trained a new breed of “peace” officers, and the result has been dramatic. The year prior to the change, 2012, there were 67 murders in Camden, last year there were 25, and all other categories of crime have also dropped dramatically.
What officials there did was to create a new culture. During the initial days of the uprising over the death of George Floyd, while police in New York City were making war on peaceful protestors, the chief of police in Camden was walking arm-in-arm with peaceful protestors down the main drag. And although police union officials (in a highly unionized state) screamed bloody murder and “union-busting” when the changeover to the new form of peacekeeping took place the city fathers stayed the course and stood up to organized labor.
Also, know that while I’ve been supportive of organized labor all of my life, police unions are another — despicable — animal altogether. However, from the lawmakers that pass out “Get Out of Jail Free” cards to police, to prosecutors that know how to manipulate court systems, to the juries that allow bad cops to walk free, to media that has for years fawned over Dirty Harry, there certainly is enough blame to go around when bemoaning how we got to where we are today. Nonetheless, some would posit that the police in America are exactly what a beguiled and bamboozled want them to be — no better or no worse.
Still, the majority of white Americans continue to see cops as heroes, primarily because they never have to come into contact with them in any official capacity. And while I will willingly state that I believe most cops in America are not racist, all of them are complicit in racism by their silence — and often are complicit in far worse.
A lawyer for one of the cops who were pinning George Floyd’s body to the ground is attempting to make the argument that his client had only been a cop for a few days and was only following along with what a senior officer was engaged in because he was so new on the job. So this mouthpiece would have us believe that if his client had been on the force longer he would have intervened and prevented George Floyd’s death. Total bullshit.
Start from scratch.
First, disband police departments (to get rid of those onerous union contracts), then hire unarmed officers, similar to the traffic cops in Cleveland, to perform the 80-90% of the routine duties that most cops take up their time carrying out (in hopes of screwing the city out of some overtime). Then hire a much smaller force of armed peacekeepers, but pay them so well that hordes of people are attracted to the job, but at the end of the day over 50 percent of the armed force has to be women.
It has to do with that testosterone problem men have, which leads to them being adrenaline junkies, which leads to them falling in love with tearing ass through the city streets in pursuit of real or imagined bad guys, pulling them over after a hot pursuit, and then threatening to bust a cap in their black asses if they don’t kiss the ground as the master demands. It’s as if life were a video game to them, one that only certain people are allowed to play.
In the 2010 Forrest Whitaker film The Experiment, his character is among a group of average men paid to participate in university study (yes, the film is about a real study that took place in California) where the men were taken to a prison and divided into two groups: A larger group of prisoners and a smaller group of guards. The results were very interesting.
Whitaker, who is selected by his peers to be the captain of the guards, begins to love the job of being in charge of dishing out punishment so much that, late in the film when he’s about to go brutalize one of the prisoners, he’s in the locker room looking in the mirror when a mask of sadism gradually covers his face and then the camera moves down his body to reveal that he has a tremendous erection.
Now do you understand what this is about boys and girls?
