re: #94 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

“Nothing is going to change until we institute new procedures for dealing with criminality on the part of LEOs.”

I agree. There are more and more instances occurring in which cops are failing to serve and protect and have become criminals themselves. I’m thinking of the so-called elite gun task force group members on trial who were heavily involved in robbery, changing time cards to reflect they’d worked more hours than they actually worked, and stole and sold drugs. I guess they got the idea that they could do these things because they were “elite,” and wouldn’t be questioned about the crimes they committed. A young officer here in GA resigned on Thursday. He was selling drugs and guns out of the back of his police vehicle. Another off duty officer here got caught on video shouting racist and homophobic slurs at a group of persons he didn’t even know. The problem with trying to rein these officers in is multifaceted because of the following: Sometimes the corruption is so deep that it touches everyone in the department. Then, there’s the brotherhood of the uniform that make officers feel they must back each other up even if they know an officer has done something wrong. I’ve also noticed that we have many citizens who think police officers should never be held responsible for anything they do, even if it involves shooting down an unarmed citizen in our streets. Juries are loath to find a police officer guilty even if it’s 100% clear that s/he is guilty as hell. Some prosecutors work hard to exonerate police officers and will quickly declare that a shooting is/was justified, and union leaders make sure they’re involved as soon as possible so they can begin the propaganda campaign to save the police officer’s job. Then, we have the media that tends to always try to give law enforcement a pass. We have members of law enforcement who are racist, homophobes, Islamophobes, rapists, anti-Semites, and misogynists. These individuals don’t leave these attitudes at home when they put on their uniforms and begin their shifts. To improve officers’ performance and transform them into the public servants they are supposed to be will require no tolerance policies for certain behaviors and attitudes, additional training, especially in teaching them to use the tools they have before they reach for their guns. I would also suggest giving them a battery of psychological tests, and checking their social media backgrounds/history, just to name a few. When I was growing up in the 1960s, we rarely had an incident in our city in which a police officer would shoot a citizen down in the middle of the streets of my city. That has changed, and it’s sad. Something will have to be done. Something must be done. It’s going to take ongoing civic activism, studying candidates records and never missing a vote when top law enforcement officers are elected.