American policing lies largely outside of any meaningful democratic control.
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Memphis police once stopped me for being a white woman in a Black neighborhood. “The only reason people like you come here is to buy drugs,” I was told. (I was a newspaper reporter reporting a story.)
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yup. it's called "out-of-place policing" and it most often happens the other way around — Black folks stopped by the cops for being in white neighborhoods.
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Nobody lurker here: is the "magic bullet" solution to get rid of qualified immunity, and make individual police officers have liability insurance, mandated at the federal level for all departments?
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A related point you allude to: there is no civilian control of police. They choose what policies to follow or obstruct with slowdowns/defiance. Yet confronting police with any real repercussions would just confirm the impotence of civilian authorities so everyone just ignores it.
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yup. was unnerving, for instance, to watch flail. one of his officers literally pepper sprayed a columnist for the Minneapolis paper and they (the cop) got a payout
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I feel like a comparative lens is needed here. UK police are racist (ask the family of Stephen Lawrence among others), one was just outed ss s serial rapist, but only after another one kidnapped and murdered a woman while on the job. That said, they seem to manage take direction.
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You didn't mention funding power, which is still theoretically held by the people even if policy is not. This reminds me a lot of the last couple of decades of presidential power creep while Congress has abdicated its oversight role.
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Excellent article... Please, of you can, do a deep dive into the use of steroids and testosterone, in order to bulk up, by LEO. In addition to racism, etc.. the rapid escalation of extreme violence brings to mind 'roid rage. And nobody is talking about this.
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