Way too many cowards in American policing — compare firemen and unprotected COVID medical personnel

© 2020 Peter Free

 

17 June 2020

 

 

Video of the cop-initiated murder of Rayshard Brooks visually makes my title's point

 

See the security camera video clip of Mr. Brooks' execution, here:

 

 

Tom Porter, Police have released bodycam footage showing the struggle before the fatal shooting of Black man Rayshard Brooks by Atlanta police, Insider (14 June 2020) (with embedded videos)

 

 

Let's skip a blow by blow legal analysis

 

It's clear from the above video that Mr. Brooks never posed a deadly threat to anyone in the above encounter.

 

Tasers (stolen or not) are not statistically deadly weapons.

 

Consequently, the shooter cop executed Brooks for no good reason.

 

 

Was this representative police gutlessness?

 

Cowardice is (arguably) the core issue that explains American law enforcement's comparatively high volume of unjustified death-dealing.

 

This trait shows up in the System's usual cop defense, "I was afraid for my life."

 

As if being afraid is not just as much an indicator of being a chickenshit — as it is a reasonable summation of a potentially life-threatening situation.

 

 

Cowards should not be in policing

 

Why?

 

In humane societies, policing should be about protecting lives, even miscreants' lives, rather than casually taking them.

 

 

Minimal professional standards

 

Cops should be noticeably braver and notably calmer than the allegedly reasonable people on the street, who make up jury pools.

 

That's the point to recruiting psychologically selected people into what is supposed to be a defending, rather than attacking, police occupation.

 

Cops should be willing to take a few lumps to do their order-maintenance jobs in a professionally valid and life-defending manner.

 

This is exactly equivalent to the standards that we expect firemen to uphold, as they rush into obviously deadly places. You don't hear them whining that, "I was afraid for my life."

 

Equally revealing, has been the fact that American medical personnel have been doing their potentially deadly COVID-19 jobs for months — even in the absence of adequate personal protective gear.

 

 

Societal expectations

 

Police should be more tolerantly accepting of (and skilled at controlling) people's unruly behavior, than troops in war zones are.

 

After all, it is not all that dangerous in the American Homeland.

 

See comparative occupational death statistics, including for law enforcement, here.

 

As a result, police bias should always be firmly set against killing or maiming anyone.

 

Police should be minimally expected to deal with physical resistance and psychologically bizarre behavior in non-deadly ways. Unless, of course, they are faced with an actual — not made-up or obviously misinterpreted — right-now threat to someone's life.

 

 

"The cell phone looked like a gun" (for instance) doesn't cut it.

 

Supposedly, we are hiring officers who can both see and not succumb to overwhelming fear's fog.

 

Not acceptable either, is the "furtive reach" excuse for blasting away.

 

Or all the other bullshit that cops regularly invent to excuse their life-ending overreactions.

 

 

In short, at minimum

 

Police departments should be employing officers and deputies who are psychologically able, suitably trained, and physically capable of dealing with instantly developing happenings in non-deadly ways.

 

 

Instead of meeting this minimum standard

 

The American legal system incentivizes cowardly police behavior.

 

It routinely excuses lamely fearful cops for:

 

 

acting like ordinary frightened people

 

and

 

having been too easily overwhelmed by quickly developing situations.

 

 

As a result, there exist way too many incentives for police wimps and sadists to survive and continue their murdering ways.

 

 

The moral? — Cowardice is (arguably) the basic cause of the majority of unwarranted American police killings

 

Racism arguably enters as an associated afterthought. Skin color just aggravates already noodly cops' fright streaks.

 

It is the chickenshit trait that usually comes first.

 

Get rid of cowards (and cowardice-encouraging militaristic leadership) and American law enforcement would stop killing and maiming so many people.

 

Think of firemen and poorly protected COVID medical workers as setting the guts standard.