Rayshard Brooks

[jakee 1,254]

11 hours ago, Bigfalls said:

This came to me the other day.  Soldiers go through basic training and one of the things they learn is to kill people.  Not many have chance to do that this day and age.  The leave the military and become police officers and are itching to shoot someone because that is what they were trained to do and didn't have a chance.

Possibly, but I'd honestly be surprised if that applied to more than a very small minority of people with a pre-existing disposition, in which case does it matter if they joined the military first or the police? I think focusing on that is also another version of the 'few bad apples' line of thinking, whereas it's almost certainly institutional issues that contribute to the high proportion of questionable or downright illegal police violence.

 

For instance this example tracks back to the incredible fragmentation of US policing. I would think that any PD big enough to have a decent training program would spot and weed out most of the candidates of the type you mention who are just desperate to shoot someone. However, as has happened and been documented many times before, these problem trainees and officers will just take whatever qualifications and experience they managed to get before they were booted out and rejoin some other PD that doesn't know about their problems elsewhere, sometimes multiple times until they find one that doesn't have the ability to spot the problem independently. Imagine if all police personnel issues were ultimately co-ordinated at State level, and you had just 50 organisations that needed to share records instead of 20,000.

[Bigfalls 110]

1 hour ago, jakee said:

Possibly, but I'd honestly be surprised if that applied to more than a very small minority of people with a pre-existing disposition, in which case does it matter if they joined the military first or the police? I think focusing on that is also another version of the 'few bad apples' line of thinking, whereas it's almost certainly institutional issues that contribute to the high proportion of questionable or downright illegal police violence.

 

For instance this example tracks back to the incredible fragmentation of US policing. I would think that any PD big enough to have a decent training program would spot and weed out most of the candidates of the type you mention who are just desperate to shoot someone. However, as has happened and been documented many times before, these problem trainees and officers will just take whatever qualifications and experience they managed to get before they were booted out and rejoin some other PD that doesn't know about their problems elsewhere, sometimes multiple times until they find one that doesn't have the ability to spot the problem independently. Imagine if all police personnel issues were ultimately co-ordinated at State level, and you had just 50 organisations that needed to share records instead of 20,000.

I agree.  There are some people who should never be police officers.