People disagree that the American police are routinely armed? That’s the first I’ve heard.
Does anyone actually disagree that the police have a presumption of justification for lethal force? Because literally every time I’ve seen this conversation, for longer than I’ve been online, the argument from those opposed to the protesters of the moment and in favour of the police response has been that they should have that presumption not if they have that presumption.
Does anyone disagree that the protestors face the prospect of injury or loss of life? Despite, to use one of far too many salient examples from this year alone, the video of a pensioner being knocked to the ground by one cop and bleeding from the head as the rest just walked around him without even attempting to offer first aid?
As for what ought to be acceptable grounds for firing… how many states are “at-will” or whatever the correct term is? In those places, anything goes.
I’ve had four one month long trips to the USA, three east coast, one west. I’ve walked from San Jose train station to Cupertino, from South Ferry Station to Broadway, seen the earthworks demolishing the mountains around Salt Lake City, and visited houses in Boston and Providence that are utterly alien to what I’m used to as a European.
One of the places I visited was UC Davis. The incident there has its own Wikipedia page.
In Newark, I got to see things which don’t make it into international media, like an African-American outdoor market with banners pleading the readers to treat the humans with, at a minimum, the same respect as is shown for these people’s cultural contributions to the USA.
All of this is because my ex is actually an American citizen. Heck, because of her, I’ve met Jill Stein twice.
Now, can you actually provide me with a reason to change my mind?
Can you change my belief that the police have weapons and armour, or a de-facto presumption of being justified even when they use even lethal force, or that even “bad apples” tend to keep their jobs?
Can you change my belief that the protesters are at risk of losing their limbs, eyesight, liberty, or lives?
These are not a question of “are all cops bad?”, it is a question of “is this even a remotely equal situation?”
The police do have weapons and armor, that's not disputed nor inherently bad. Citizens can also have weapons and armor for self-defense per our Second Amendment.
Police here need those tools because there are cartels like MS-13 and other dangerous criminals they have to face on a daily basis.
Bad cops with lots of complaints are protected by police unions, that's the main problem. Get rid of those and you'll be able to fire the bad apples.
Protesters may get hurt, many of them bring it on themselves by not dispersing after a few bad apples stir things up by throwing rocks/bottles of cement/etc.
We need to call out the people disrupting the protests, not the cops trying to protect the protesters from the rioters.
> Protesters may get hurt, many of them bring it on themselves by not dispersing after a few bad apples stir things up by throwing rocks/bottles of cement/etc.
I recommend you avoid this type of reasoning. After all, I’m explicitly not saying “Police may get hurt, many of them bring it on themselves by not disciplining a few bad apples who stir things up by sitting on someone’s neck until they die“, which would be an equivalent statement.
I think you and I would agree about the current police unions, although I do think there are at least two other possible solutions than getting rid of police unions entirely.
I definitely don’t agree that police need to be armed, because although I’m no longer living in the UK, I grew up there — UK cops are not only not routinely armed, their unions are mostly opposed to becoming armed.
Yes, thank you for clarifying your sweeping statements so we could have a conversation :)
> I do think there are at least two other possible solutions than getting rid of police unions entirely
There is no other solution, it's the corrupt union leaders protecting these cops.
The cop that killed Floyd had 17 complaints, his union protected him from being fired.
The unions essentially killed Floyd.
There aren't cartel wars going on in the UK, but there is terrorism so I'm not sure whether or not UK should or does have swat/armed police.
It's not feasible to take guns away from cops here, there are too many criminals with guns, all major cartels are in Houston for example. MS-13 operates in at least 30 states.
I understand everyone wants to feel like they need to argue about this, but no one is saying these specific cops that do harm shouldn't be punished.
No group, including the police, are the problem, individual humans (including union leaders and specific politicians) are the problem.
tldr: get rid of the police unions and replace the local Democratic leadership in the cities that these events happen in to solve the issue.
Either way, talking about a group should not get you fired, period.