The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri is one in a seemingly endless string of white police officers using excessive force on African-Americans. Maybe it will be the one to wake us up, and help us put an end to this practice, but more than likely that’s just wishful thinking. Right now there is just too much, dare I say hatred, for people of color in America, brown and black, that has been fueled by the political right! That political right has waged a successful war not only against poor people of color, making them out to be the “takers” in our society, but also in making the left, those who fight for equal rights for all regardless of skin color, sex, or sexual orientation, the cause of their problems. That the programs that were created by Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” are the ones that have trapped people in poverty and taken away their will to work and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Well, I would say that it’s the captains of industries fault. They are the ones that shut down the manufacturing plants and outsourced good paying jobs, they are the ones that destroyed the unions and took away people’s hopes and dreams of a good paying job and left gaping economic black holes in our inner cities! Hell, they’ve even rigged the election system and drawn election district lines such that areas that would elect a Democrat in fact elect Republicans and now are attempting to take away the right to vote through voter id laws!!
But let’s get back to the issue of excessive force by the police, I for one am sick and tired of reading day after day about the police shooting someone for sneezing, or looking at someone the wrong way – it’s about that bad. Let’s turn the tables, switch roles we all know that unfortunately the situation would be a lot different if black police officers were shooting white people!! The basic point is that NO police officer should be using deadly force except as a last resort!!
I said to my wife the other day… if it were a lion on the loose on the streets of Ferguson wouldn’t they first shoot the lion with a tranquilizer gun? Ok so what happened to tasers, I know that when miss used they can be problem-some but isn’t a better alternative and more likely to save a life? Then I read these two articles today……
First from Think Progress:If Ferguson Were In The UK, Michael Brown Would Almost Certainly Be Alive
In that article the author points out….
….By the most conservative estimates, there were more than 400 shooting deaths at U.S. law enforcement hands in 2012. In the UK, that number was zero. Between 1995 and 2010, the number of UK victims of police shootings was 33. And British citizens are about 100 times less likely to be shot by police, according to the Economist.
That’s because the United Kingdom takes a dramatically different approach to guns. Most police in the United Kingdom don’t carry guns most of the time. This difference in policy is in part justified by the fact that most United Kingdom citizens don’t carry guns, either. And that means cops are less likely to be killed than they are in the United States…..
and in Japan
Japan provides a different sort of contrast, because officers do carry guns. But almost no one else does. Police are also given more training than in the United States, and place a heavy focus on martial arts training because police “are expected to use [firearms] in only the rarest of circumstances,” according to David Kopel, who studied Japanese gun control. The message seems to be working, because Japanese cops have killed just one person in the past six years, according to the Economist.
So it can be done, there are ways to limit the number of tragic shootings by police officers and they should all be studied and used!! The United Kingdon is not totally free of police shooting controversies
….. In 2011, the country erupted in protests that spread throughout all of England over the fatal shooting by special armed police of Mark Duggan, a young black man. But even a comparison of those 2011 riots and those in Ferguson this week told Newburn something remarkable about the differences between American and British policing. For one thing, the Duggan shooting was one of just a few nationwide over the course of many years, while Brown’s is representative of an epidemic.
How true that last statement is,,, yes it is an epidemic, maybe even worse than the threat the Ebola virus poses to the US, and it’s one that has to be fought just as strongly!!
And from Addicting Info Here’s How UK Police Apprehend Someone With A Knife Without Shooting To Kill (VIDEO)
A taser! What a novel idea… and one that should have been used in the case of Kajieme Powell…..don’t you think!