Should we make our police departments look like the communities they serve? (1 Viewer)

[jamesrage]

Should we make our police departments look like the communities they serve?

Yes,Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities.
Nope,Race of the communities should be irrelevant when hiring police officers.


Bernie Sanders: We Have To Demilitarize Our Police So They Don't Look Authoritarian | Video | RealClearPolitics
we have got to make our police departments look like the communities they serve in their diversity.



Before anyone thinks of voting yes.Do your impression of a stereotypical racist with a hick accent(yes I know that not everyone with a hick accent is a racist and that even people without hick accents can be racists) and say"Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities". After saying that ask yourself does that sound racist to suggest that only blacks should police black communities and only whites should police white communities IE making police departments look like the communities they serve.

 

[Paleocon]

Should we make our police departments look like the communities they serve?

Yes,Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities.
Nope,Race of the communities should be irrelevant when hiring police officers.


Bernie Sanders: We Have To Demilitarize Our Police So They Don't Look Authoritarian | Video | RealClearPolitics
we have got to make our police departments look like the communities they serve in their diversity.



Before anyone thinks of voting yes.Do your impression of a stereotypical racist with a hick accent(yes I know that not everyone with a hick accent is a racist and that even people without hick accents can be racists) and say"Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities". After saying that ask yourself does that sound racist to suggest that only blacks should police black communities and only whites should police white communities IE making police departments look like the communities they serve.

Having a healthy segregation would do wonders for reducing racial tension. Though I doubt that that's what Sanders meant. He almost certainly just meant that we need more black cops via affirmative action.

 

[Orly?]

Liberal are racist... Just another example..

 

[What if...?]

Should we make our police departments look like the communities they serve?

Yes,Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities.
Nope,Race of the communities should be irrelevant when hiring police officers.


Bernie Sanders: We Have To Demilitarize Our Police So They Don't Look Authoritarian | Video | RealClearPolitics
we have got to make our police departments look like the communities they serve in their diversity.



Before anyone thinks of voting yes.Do your impression of a stereotypical racist with a hick accent(yes I know that not everyone with a hick accent is a racist and that even people without hick accents can be racists) and say"Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities". After saying that ask yourself does that sound racist to suggest that only blacks should police black communities and only whites should police white communities IE making police departments look like the communities they serve.

I think they should be policed by people that live there. Community policing works better than the "us vs them" model we see now.

Cops that know the local mentally challenged guy are much less likely to kill him for brandishing a cake knife, for instance.

 

[Paleocon]

Liberal are racist... Just another example..

What exactly is wrong with what is proposed in the poll?

 

[Orly?]

What exactly is wrong with what is proposed in the poll?

Picking people because of their race rather than their qualification is always wrong in all situations.

 

[Paleocon]

Picking people because of their race rather than their qualification is always wrong in all situations.

You're begging the question. If we acknowledged that certain neighborhoods are white or black, race could definitely be a valid qualification for policing there.

And note, we're not even talking about hiring discrimination, just assignment discrimination.

 

[Infinite Chaos]

~ we have to demilitarize our police ~

I may be British but the language is reasonably similar so I don't understand how the link talks of demilitarising the police and you jump to black policemen for black communities and white policemen for white communities?

Does demilitarising now mean black policemen and white policemen?

 

[Chomsky]

I say 'No'.

At least not necessarily in the neighborhoods.

But I think in city-wide terms, the department should reflect the cultural diversity of the city at large.

 

[Paleocon]

This thread demonstrates everything that's wrong with right-liberalism.

If you try to use the language of the left against it (i.e. calling Dems racist) you've already lost.

 

[SocialD]

Should we make our police departments look like the communities they serve?

Yes,Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities.
Nope,Race of the communities should be irrelevant when hiring police officers.


Bernie Sanders: We Have To Demilitarize Our Police So They Don't Look Authoritarian | Video | RealClearPolitics
we have got to make our police departments look like the communities they serve in their diversity.



Before anyone thinks of voting yes.Do your impression of a stereotypical racist with a hick accent(yes I know that not everyone with a hick accent is a racist and that even people without hick accents can be racists) and say"Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities". After saying that ask yourself does that sound racist to suggest that only blacks should police black communities and only whites should police white communities IE making police departments look like the communities they serve.

I think that there is a legitimate value in having people 'from' a community be police officers in that community because they are familiar with some of the people and so forth. I don't think that we have to affirmative action a department though.
As far as the militarization I do think police departments are over militarized in many areas.

 

[jamesrage]

I think they should be policed by people that live there. Community policing works better than the "us vs them" model we see now.

Cops that know the local mentally challenged guy are much less likely to kill him for brandishing a cake knife, for instance.

I could be wrong but I am pretty sure they don't regularly rotate cops from one neighborhood to another, and even if they do they don't rotate them all at ounce. So I am sure they know about a local mentally challenged guy.

 

[jamesrage]

I may be British but the language is reasonably similar so I don't understand how the link talks of demilitarising the police and you jump to black policemen for black communities and white policemen for white communities?

Does demilitarising now mean black policemen and white policemen?

That is part of the title of the article and is not relevant to the poll.
I quoted the part that I felt relevant to the thread title. Which is Sanders saying police should look like the communities they serve. If I wanted a poll on the militarization of the police then that would be a separate thread.

 

[Nilly]

Should we make our police departments look like the communities they serve?

Yes,Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities.
Nope,Race of the communities should be irrelevant when hiring police officers.


Bernie Sanders: We Have To Demilitarize Our Police So They Don't Look Authoritarian | Video | RealClearPolitics
we have got to make our police departments look like the communities they serve in their diversity.



Before anyone thinks of voting yes.Do your impression of a stereotypical racist with a hick accent(yes I know that not everyone with a hick accent is a racist and that even people without hick accents can be racists) and say"Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities". After saying that ask yourself does that sound racist to suggest that only blacks should police black communities and only whites should police white communities IE making police departments look like the communities they serve.

Picking people because of their race rather than their qualification is always wrong in all situations.

There is a whole load of nuance to this question that I think is being missed.

For example, race aside, should police for a certain community be picked only from a certain community? Should police in a rich area be people chosen solely from people applying from given rich area? Likewise with a poor area? I don't think that's an easy question to answer, and that's an even more general form of the question than the poll in OP.

Consider this: If police should be picked from the community, and we assume there are no differences in policing ability between races, then it would make sense that given a non-racist society, the demographics of the police force would match the demographic of the area (within 2 sigma or so). It the above assumptions are correct, then if it were the case that a majority black area were being policed by a majority white police force, then it could be inferred that the police application process in that area is biased towards white people.

Now, this is a simplification of the issue. What if black people only apply for law enforcement positions at 10% the rate that white people do (something that wouldn't surprise me)? If that's the case, then the question shifts to 'why do black people only apply to the police at a 10% rate of white people' and what are the underlying reasons for that. Talking about this as a qualifications vs race issue is massively oversimplifying it.

For the record, I agree with Bernie that we should be trying to move towards (back to?) a 'community policing' kind of model.

 

[What if...?]

I could be wrong but I am pretty sure they don't regularly rotate cops from one neighborhood to another, and even if they do they don't rotate them all at ounce. So I am sure they know about a local mentally challenged guy.

Its different than the old "beat" cop.

Much was in response to the drug war and community cops not being willing to destroy lives in its name. Cutting more slack than ambitious prosecutors and politicians liked.

So they started putting cops in neighborhoods they WEREN'T familiar with, didn't personally know people in, to keep them from exercising the in-the-moment judgement that the job traditionally allowed.

The whole zero tolerance, mandatory sentence mindset.

 

[jamesrage]

There is a whole load of nuance to this question that I think is being missed.

For example, race aside, should police for a certain community be picked only from a certain community? Should police in a rich area be people chosen solely from people applying from given rich area? Likewise with a poor area? I don't think that's an easy question to answer, and that's an even more general form of the question than the poll in OP.

Consider this: If police should be picked from the community, and we assume there are no differences in policing ability between races, then it would make sense that given a non-racist society, the demographics of the police force would match the demographic of the area (within 2 sigma or so). It the above assumptions are correct, then if it were the case that a majority black area were being policed by a majority white police force, then it could be inferred that the police application process in that area is biased towards white people.

Now, this is a simplification of the issue. What if black people only apply for law enforcement positions at 10% the rate that white people do (something that wouldn't surprise me)? If that's the case, then the question shifts to 'why do black people only apply to the police at a 10% rate of white people' and what are the underlying reasons for that. Talking about this as a qualifications vs race issue is massively oversimplifying it.

For the record, I agree with Bernie that we should be trying to move towards (back to?) a 'community policing' kind of model.

In a non-racist society the issue of race is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the police officers policing the community only represent 1,2,3 or 10 percent of the community.

 

[Infinite Chaos]

~ I quoted the part that I felt relevant to the thread title. Which is Sanders saying police should look like the communities they serve ~

OK, I won't nit-pick the construction of your premise, I see what you're trying to discuss.

We have possibly a very different police force here - not just because our police aren't armed and we have very low shooting figures of policemen or the public but I'll stress certain points

1) A policeman cannot choose which community they are posted to here, most if not all are deliberately posted away from their home county.
2) When there is a shooting by an armed policeman, there is an automatic triggering of an investigation into why. We don't have the horrible scenarios I've seen from US police video.
3) We used to have great community policing (if at times a bit rough) - there are no (despite what Mr Donald Trump's advisors tell him) no-go zones here.

I think it's more important that your police earn the trust of your population and in my eyes, that means fewer armed police but with much higher standard of training and more accountability.

 

[coyotedelmar]

What happens if a neighborhood demographic changes? Do you move police around to try to make it match again? Or do you fire the ones who were there before the change?

 

[Orly?]

You're begging the question. If we acknowledged that certain neighborhoods are white or black, race could definitely be a valid qualification for policing there.

And note, we're not even talking about hiring discrimination, just assignment discrimination.

If an area is predominately black it will be more likely that a black is hired because there are more of them, statistics...

But that does not mean that a white should not be hired because he is white.. Let the statistics and free competition sort it out rather than tr to regulate it to make it the way you think it should be.

 

[Nilly]

In a non-racist society the issue of race is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if the police officers policing the community only represent 1,2,3 or 10 percent of the community.

If white and black people are, in general, equally good at policing, and are picked from the community, then if the community is 1% white, but the police force is 99% white, then it absolutely is relevant. It means that even though black people are just as good cops as white people, they're not being picked for the police.

Now, the cause for that could be black people don't apply to be police, or it could be that as soon as the police force see a black name on an application they reject it (i.e. racism). We don't know what the underlying cause would be, but there would certainly be a problem.

 

[Helix]

Should we make our police departments look like the communities they serve?

i'm not advocating legislation that forces them to do that, but it's kind of common sense, so i'd support departments enacting policies like that voluntarily.

 

[jamesrage]

If white and black people are, in general, equally good at policing, and are picked from the community, then if the community is 1% white, but the police force is 99% white, then it absolutely is relevant. It means that even though black people are just as good cops as white people, they're not being picked for the police.

Now, the cause for that could be black people don't apply to be police, or it could be that as soon as the police force see a black name on an application they reject it (i.e. racism). We don't know what the underlying cause would be, but there would certainly be a problem.

I am sure to racist the issue of race does matter when it comes to hiring.But race is irrelevant when it comes to hiring.

 

[Lutherf]

Should we make our police departments look like the communities they serve?

Yes,Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities.
Nope,Race of the communities should be irrelevant when hiring police officers.


Bernie Sanders: We Have To Demilitarize Our Police So They Don't Look Authoritarian | Video | RealClearPolitics
we have got to make our police departments look like the communities they serve in their diversity.



Before anyone thinks of voting yes.Do your impression of a stereotypical racist with a hick accent(yes I know that not everyone with a hick accent is a racist and that even people without hick accents can be racists) and say"Only blacks should police black communities,only whites police white communities". After saying that ask yourself does that sound racist to suggest that only blacks should police black communities and only whites should police white communities IE making police departments look like the communities they serve.

These freaking morons...:doh

We spend all this time and energy trying to integrate communities and now Bernie and his crew want to segregate them again except now they're calling it "safe spaces" and other such trash.

 

[Mach]

They just need to make one of the qualifications:
"Knows the primary culture of the people being policed".

How do you test that? Easy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZoRb9C_ndI

No need to use RACE as a qualifier. Just use that, and 9/10 times unless they are a DJ, professor of AA studies, or vanilla ice, they will be black.

My favorite is the end 3:10
Triva question: is "pimping" easy?"

white: it ain't easy
dave:correct!

white: no
dave:correct!

black: hells yeah it easy
dave: Strangely enough, that too is correct!

 

[Orly?]

I say 'No'.

At least not necessarily in the neighborhoods.

But I think in city-wide terms, the department should reflect the cultural diversity of the city at large.

It naturally will based on the statistics of how any of each race there is mixed with the average qualification of people in all races, throw the results in a hat and that is who gets hired..