No.
> To recognize when to listen to a police officer, how to identify if the officer steps out of line, what rights are afforded, etc.
Sure, but no. The police have all the responsibility to de-escalate situations. If they're not doing that then they're the ones in the wrong.
Do you actually consider it prudent to ignore situations of danger and not respond to them with the proper context?
For each case you can find (if you can find any at all), there are millions - yes, literally millions - of police interactions that don't end that way.
If you interact with the police peacefully, the odds of you experiencing any violence are virtually zero.
Ryan Whitaker (who was white, incidentally), who opened his front door armed with a gun he was legally and constitutionally permitted to have and to use to protect his home and was kneeling to put his gun down when he was killed?
(And, uh, Jacob Blake?)
I mean, yes, I have been pulled over by the police on 101 and not killed, and I once ran a stop sign in Palo Alto and I wasn't killed either, and I went to pay my ticket at the police station and I still wasn't killed then. But that's true in the other direction - I'm sure I have interacted with millions of people throughout my life, and yet if I killed a single one of them without cause, I would rightly be called a murderer. No one would be saying that the risk of encountering me is virtually zero.
(FWIW Breonna Taylor wasn't asleep, not that it justifies her death and Jacob Blake was most definitely resisting - even the super shaky cell phone coverage from a bystander makes that obvious)
More people get struck by lightning every year.
Cops are people, not some idealized identity of justice. Perhaps it would be prudent to consider the idea that the people with guns who can legally shoot you should be treated with a little more consideration. I can't imagine turning my back on cops and reaching into my vehicle, but maybe that's white privilege.
The government is legally able to take violent action. You don't want it another way. So then really, what's your point besides all cops are bad?
I carry a gun every day too, and there is precisely zero mortal danger to anyone who peacefully interacts with me. It is an entirely reasonable expectation to demand that from government staff.
The police do not have any special legal privileges when it comes to shooting people over any private citizen. To grant them such, de facto, as we have done, is to abandon the rule of law (or the equal application thereof) in society.
I think a higher standard is reasonable and possible. Indeed, almost everyone in society is subject to it. Police, if they are to exist, should be as well.
Well. Yeah. That's the critical part isn't it...
So can cops shoot people only when you think it's ok?
The police do not legally have that right; but in practice they get to murder anyone they want and get away with it.
The rules for the police are very different than the rules for everyone else. That's due to inequality in the application of the law: the rules that apply to you and I do not apply to them.
Perhaps you, as many do, think the police should be in a special class of their own, above the law.
I think the laws should apply equally to all people.
SO CAN COPS ONLY SHOOT PEOPLE WHEN YOU THINK ITS OK?
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Everybody always remembers that last part, but take a look at the very beginning. Three branches—Executive, Legislative, and Judicial—deal in the world of law and are supposed to keep each other in check and balance. Three branches—Militia, Police, and Military—deal in the world of force and are supposed to keep each other in check and balance. Except now in 2020 we're being told nobody in the first group should ever need a tool to defend themselves, and the other two groups resemble each other more and more every day.
That's not actually the underlying model of the 2nd Amendment.
The underlying model of the second amendment is that professional standing armed forces are a threat to liberty (even when nominally dedicated to external security, because they are inevitably applied internally; permanent paramilitart police were not a thing at the time of the 2nd.) Because of this, it is essentially to have effective citizen militia that can be called up for internal and external security needs, so that governments aren't tempted to create permanent forces for this purposes beyond cadres to support the mobilization of the militia. The 2A isn't about having a balanced triangle (“police” didn't really exist for several decades after the 2A), it's about having one of those three obviate the need for the others.
There is probably a good debate to be had about whether that model was durably workable at the time, whether it is workable in the modern world, and whether it would in particular be reachable from where the US is now. But we've lost that in our 2A debates.
I strongly disagree, and submit that a big part of the problem is this exact mentality.
Police should get gobs of training, they have to take the high road, they have to learn to not let their buttons get pushed, etc., etc. - all of those things are true. But the primary responsibility has always rested and should always rest on the shoulders of individual citizens that the police are interacting with. People need to be accountable for their actions.
I'm very sorry when anyone loses their life due to an altercation with the police, but the elephant in the room is that pretty much all of these are completely and easily preventable if people show even a smidgen of accountability for their actions. The common factors across victims of police shooting is not race, but (a) commission of a crime and (b) resisting arrest. Remove either from the equation and the death rate drops dramatically; remove both and it's virtually zero.
Yes, let's continue to figure out how to improve law enforcement. If we find actual instances of racism, let's work to eradicate them. Whatever problems exist in policing, let's study them and fix them. But let's not pretend for a moment that any real progress will be made while there is a pervasive attitude that crime and/or belligerence towards cops isn't a massive part of the problem.
Why does this study show that so many black people want the same or more police presence? Because the overwhelming majority of them (and everyone else) obey the law and, in the event they do interact with the police, refrain from punching them, fleeing the scene, etc.
Maybe if cops can't control their emotions they shouldn't be given a gun and then immune to essentially any misuse of the gun?
> (a) commission of a crime and (b) resisting arrest.
We have a judicial system for a reason. The police isn't the arbiter of justice. Especially when the historical reasons for the formation of police in many countries and the US was to control slaves, former slaves, and economic activists.
> Whatever problems exist in policing, let's study them and fix them.
The studies are all out there. Are you refusing to take a look?
> while there is a pervasive attitude that crime and/or belligerence towards cops isn't a massive part of the problem.
You're trying to shine a piece of turd and say it'll get better. A piece of turd, no matter how shiny, is going to be a piece of turd. Police, the way & the numbers they have today, are not necessary for a functioning society.
meanwhile study:
Results are based on a Gallup Panel web study completed by 36,463 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older, fielded June 23-July 6, 2020. The survey was conducted in English. Individuals without internet access were not covered by this study. The Gallup Panel is a probability-based panel of U.S. adults whom Gallup selects using address-based sampling methods and random-digit-dial phone interviews that cover landlines and cellphones. The sample for this study was weighted to be demographically representative of the U.S. adult population, using the most recent Current Population Survey figures.
So they excluded the lowest income Black Americans.
And the issue here is that the question just asked "should there be less police" - that's not what the police abolition movement is arguing for.
How would've the results been if the question asked:
"Should we reduce police force presence in your neighbourhood by 90% while also ensuring that you will get more grants for education, healthcare, and housing"
Or even:
"Should we abolish policing (while still maintaining a skeleton force to respond to aggressive incidents) in exchange for providing housing for everyone making below a certain amount of money?"
I don't disagree; I'm actually making a different point, a pragmatic one, that it is really easy to almost entirely eliminate the risk of dying at the hands of the police, and that it is completely within one's own power.
I'm all for doing what we can to do to improve the police to make an already rare problem (relatively speaking) even more rare, but if the objective is to reduce deaths at the hands of the police, that's not where the low hanging fruit is.
it is of course the officer's job to deal with the situation. --
here is an analogy of a pedestrian crossing. It is the job of the motorist to pay attention, but it helps to train the pedestrian as well. While the responsibility for the accident is put on the motorist, wont the pedestrian be better off with the training?
This is an absolutely naive position to take. Police have no such obligation, and citizens should absolutely be educated and informed on their rights.
Maybe the _sophisticated_ approach here is to say they should have that obligation?
Does that apply if a suspect pulls a gun or a knife on them? De-escalation clearly failed, must be their fault.
It's not the job of any individual citizen to fix the police, but it sure is the job of the democratic society as a whole to fix it (because if you make it the police's job, they're certainly not going to actually do it).