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Even Darren Wilson Says the Ferguson Police Department is Screwed Up

 
 
 
ksen said:
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/3/9090047/darren-wilson-new-yorker

The Ferguson Police Department had a surprising critic in a new piece from the New Yorker: Darren Wilson, - the former Ferguson cop who shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9 - nearly a year ago.
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Sounds like Wilson basically agrees with the DOJ report on the Ferguson PD.
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I'm not sure to what extent this is Wilson engaging in some karmic ass-covering a year or so later, although I do concede he would be in a position to know whether or not their training was adequate.

But what actually got my attention was this:

As the New Yorker pointed out, a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum found cadets usually get 58 hours of firearms training, 49 hours in defensive tactics, 10 hours in communication skills, and eight hours in de-escalation tactics.
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Which is completely ass-backwards to how police officers are supposed to handle their interactions with the public. A procedure that should begin with communication and conflict resolution and progress only EVENTUALLY to the use of deadly force should emphasize the BEGINNING of that process, not the end of it.

If you're getting 58 hours of firearms training you should have at least 100 hours of communications and deescalation each. It isn't the job of police officers to be effective killers, it is the job of police officers to keep the peace and that is more effectively done with words than bullets.
 
I actually thought there might be something redeeming about Wilson in here but after reading the New Yorker story he still comes off as part of the problem.
 
Crazy Eddie said:
But what actually got my attention was this:

As the New Yorker pointed out, a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum found cadets usually get 58 hours of firearms training, 49 hours in defensive tactics, 10 hours in communication skills, and eight hours in de-escalation tactics.
Click to expand...

Which is completely ass-backwards to how police officers are supposed to handle their interactions with the public. A procedure that should begin with communication and conflict resolution and progress only EVENTUALLY to the use of deadly force should emphasize the BEGINNING of that process, not the end of it.

If you're getting 58 hours of firearms training you should have at least 100 hours of communications and deescalation each.
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Yeah, if the major part of your training is firearms training then guess what's likely to be your default method of dealing with something.

It isn't the job of police officers to be effective killers, it is the job of police officers to keep the peace and that is more effectively done with words than bullets.
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Actually, dead people are quite peaceful.
 
Some excerpts from the New Yorker profile:

[Wilson] granted that, in North County, the overt racism of past decades affected “elders” who lived through that time. “People who experienced that, and were mistreated, have a legitimate claim,” he told me. “Other people don’t.” I asked him if he thought that young people in North County and elsewhere used this legacy as an excuse. “I think so,” he replied.

“I am really simple in the way that I look at life,” Wilson said. “What happened to my great-grandfather is not happening to me. I can’t base my actions off what happened to him.” Wilson said that police officers didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on the past. “We can’t fix in thirty minutes what happened thirty years ago,” he said. “We have to fix what’s happening now. That’s my job as a police officer. I’m not going to delve into people’s life-long history and figure out why they’re feeling a certain way, in a certain moment.” He added, “I’m not a psychologist.”
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Wilson said that he often handled calls like Randolph’s, and that such work was tough, because he could do little to help. I asked him if he agreed with Randolph that the neighborhood’s main problem was the absence of jobs. “There’s a lack of jobs everywhere,” he replied, brusquely. “But there’s also lack of initiative to get a job. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” He acknowledged that the jobs available in Ferguson often paid poorly, but added, “That’s how I started. You’ve got to start somewhere.”
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Once, he arrested some of the woman’s kids, for damaging property, but usually he let them go. In his telling, there was no reaching the blind woman’s kids: “They ran all over the mom. They didn’t respect her, so why would they respect me?” He added, “They’re so wrapped up in a different culture than—what I’m trying to say is, the right culture, the better one to pick from.”

This sounded like racial code language. I pressed him: what did he mean by “a different culture”? Wilson struggled to respond. He said that he meant “pre-gang culture, where you are just running in the streets—not worried about working in the morning, just worried about your immediate gratification.” He added, “It is the same younger culture that is everywhere in the inner cities.”
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Earlier on the author spoke at length with an Officer McCarthy who seems like one of the good cops. He has lots of praise for Wilson. But you read the rest of the article and see that Wilson is neck deep in whatever is going on with today's police forces and wonder how can a good cop like McCarthy not see? And that's probably even more discouraging than reading that Wilson is being Wilson.
 
And all the way at the bottom:

At one point, I asked Wilson if he missed walking outside and going to restaurants. He told me that he still ate out, but only at certain places. “We try to go somewhere—how do I say this correctly?—with like-minded individuals,” he said. “You know. Where it’s not a mixing pot.”
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jesus christ
 
For anyone wondering what the term "dog whistle" refers to, here is a really good example:


They didn’t respect her, so why would they respect me?” He added, “They’re so wrapped up in a different culture than—what I’m trying to say is, the right culture, the better one to pick from.”
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Black person: (rubbing ears) "Did you hear that? That sounded like racism to me."
White person: (listening) "I don't hear any racism. You must be imagining things."
 
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