What we never hear about policing in America

[Mark Crispin Miller]

On Jan. 18, I sent out "Police in the US Kill Citizens at Over 70

Times the Rate of Other First-World Nations," a Free Thought

Project piece that ran in 2015. (Scroll down for the link.)

Now that the lethality of US cops is in the news again (to say

the least), and since Joe Biden has just shared his thought on 

how policing in America should be reformed (i.e., "Aim low"),

I feel obliged to send, again, my own meditation on the subject

(even though that train has left the station, full of troops).

MCM

If "our free press," and/or our liberal Democrats, cared at all about this 

routine carnage, they would be pushing some reforms that might curtail it, 

if not end it. 

> They would demand a thorough purge of all US police departments, to 

rid them of the white supremacists who have been signing up for years—

as the FBI reported in 2006 (a report that was declassified a few years later, 

at which point "our free press" largely ignored it). 

> They would demand that all US police departments train their officers 

in martial arts, so they need not use guns (and tasers) as their first means 

to defend themselves. 

> They would demand a crackdown on the widespread abuse of anabolic 

steroids, which turn cops (and troops) into rock-hard killing machines. 

(On this lethal epidemic, see John Hoberman's Dopers in Uniform, published 

by the University of Texas Press.) This "war on drugs" would also benefit 

cops' wives and children, since steroid abuse also contributes heavily to 

domestic violence.

> They would demand that the recruitment of police officers take place largely 

in the neighborhoods policed, as opposed to having them commute to work 

in areas whose people they don't know or like. [The Black Panther Party had

the right idea.]

> They would raise the standards for recruitment, instead of lowering them, 

and pay the cops accordingly, treating them as elite public servants, not as 

grunts in place to keep rich people protected and their property intact.

Why is there no discussion of American policing, and how best to improve it

—as opposed to ritually playing up the most egregious killings in our streets, 

and leaving it at that? Why is there so much more press emphasis on gun 

control—control of guns used not by the police, but only those used by the 

citizens—than on the policies that make our cops so dangerous to all America's 

have-nots? Why has no presidential candidate said anything about this grievous 

problem, ever? How many mayoral candidates from coast to coast have ever said 

a word about it? Any?

The subject isn't raised by "our free press" or liberal Democrats because they don't 

care enough about it—that is, about us—even to discuss the issue, much less take 

the necessary steps to make us safer from those officers who ought to be protecting 

us, instead of blowing some of us away, to keep the rest of us in line.

MCM 

Police in the US Kill Citizens at Over 70 Times the Rate of Other First-World Nations

Matt Agorist January 8, 2015 http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-kill-citizens-70-times-rate-first-world-nations