My baseline metric at least has something to do with equivalencies. Look at it this way: If you have a million dollars, and you lose $500 bucks, you probably aren’t going to be all that upset. But if you’re like so many people that live paycheck to paycheck with never more than a grand in the bank, losing $500 can be…

The way they are trained to not get shot is to shoot people they think might shoot or harm them, regardless of whether or not the person is actually armed. That’s not training. That’s just giving someone a license to kill.

Why not? Why exactly should be respecting a racist institution that shows time and time again that it does not value the lives of a significant segment of the population of the people it is tasked to protect? Fuck the police.

They may not have had military weapons and accessories 50 years ago, but in these areas that have the poverty and “culture” you speak of, they were just as disrespectful of the populace, and treated protestors the way they treated criminals. It’s an issue of respect, and the militarization is our generation’s version…

You mean if he was a cop? I wouldn’t want to send him out anywhere without proper psychological training of deescalation. And I would hope that I would raise him to treat fellow human beings with respect, and I bet he would get treated with respect in equal measure.

When was the last time you heard about a protestor aiming and firing at a uniformed police officer? Why on earth would ANYONE do that if the police were treating them with respect? You don’t think you’re more likely to behave like a criminal if you’re already being treated as one?

The cops involved in the firefight last night weren’t uniformed or bodycammed. So it’s not any indication at all.

If your itchy trigger finger doesn’t have a trigger to pull...

It works in my (quite diverse) community. They do “coffee with cops” once a month and the community has a chance to come in, have coffee and a bagel with some members of the police department, and talk one-on-one about community issues. And I’ve seen members of my local PD in action - and they do treat all races with…

It’s been a while since I read any of the contemporary reports from those times. I wonder if there are claims alongside those photos that those protestors weren’t “angels” or if they tell us that those kids may have smoked pot once or twice.

So you’re saying that because one black guy started shooting at someone else, that’s why it’s okay for the police to show up armed better than members of our military walking around in Iraq?

Would there be criminals posing as protestors if the police weren’t effectively treating all the protestors as criminals?

The only person hurt in the fire fight was not a police officer. But you didn’t really address the crux of the question: if police were treating people with respect, would violence occur at the protests? My argument is that their military stance IS what brings the violence.

I worked direct care in a residential group home for kids with behavioral problems. We took a lot of abuse, some of my coworkers were seriously injured. My wife worked in a residential school for autistic kids who were too severe for public schools. Some of her coworkers were seriously hurt too. We were both paid a…

Beautiful essay, thank you. As a white southerner, I often think exactly this.

As a recent dad, I hope that kid’s okay.

traveling

I wonder if the fact that the concert had to be 99% white had anything to do with the police’s response. I don’t know if the cops in Green Bay handle identical situations the same if there is a Jay-Z concert going on.

Well, duh. White people!

Chopping off her hair. What kind of fucking medieval punishment is this? That’s what they did to women who slept with Germans during the French occupation. Getting drunk or whatever doesn’t warrant this hateful treatment. This is horrid.