It's hard to keep at these killings by police straight. Which was the one where the black guy had a book but the cops say he had a gun? What was the one where the helicopter cops- who sounded like a morning-zoo radio team- could tell from way up in the air that the black guy was "a bad dude"? Was that Tulsa? Or Charlotte? The cops found a gun somewhere! And, what about the one from 2011 where now they have video of the cop planting a weapon on the black guy he killed? Sunday- somewhere- the cops pepper-sprayed a 15 year old black girl who had been hit by a car on her bicycle because she refused to wait for paramedics. They did that for her own good, I guess? The ungrateful little justice obstructor...
It's hard to keep them straight but there is one common denominator. Black victims.
It is also hard not to think it's a racial denominator, even when black cops are the perpetrators. Does seem to be a pattern, especially when there are dozens of these cases every year.
There undoubtedly are racist cops in America but, I contend again that what we have first and foremost is a bad cop problem. It's easier to become a cop than to become a cosmetologist. Easier by several hundred hours of training. I'm not sure why so much training is involved in cosmetology. They have no powers of arrest and they rarely (if ever) kill anyone. Why though, does a cop (on average) receive only 622 hours of training with no required apprenticeship, while a hairdresser trains for 1570 hours and then (on average) performs 1080 more hours of mandated apprenticeship? Hair is important but, not 4 times more important that serving and protecting. This varies from state to state and that means it's easier for cops in some states than described above.
Since I last worked with guys who were set on becoming cops, they've upped the ante for the job quite a bit. I had a coworker that I tended bar with, kinda proudly admit that he failed the psych exam to become a cop. I could have told him he'd fail long before he took it. The kid was the son of a suburban cop and a bit judgmental as a result. He'd often figure stuff out about people "...because my dad's a cop..." There you go. It's genetic! Another fella lamented that he was always competing with guys who had military time (not just Military Police service) that he didn't have. It used to work that way- and I think it still helps- but, I've heard there is less emphasis on that these days. Maybe. There might be more given the militarization of many Police Departments these days? Anyway, in the 90's many PD's started looking favorably at college being a prerequisite, preferably a bachelors in Criminal Justice. But, those are preferences. They vary by departments and by state.
Anybody who knows a family member of a cop on Facebook knows that those family members all want their loved one to come home each night. True that but, cops don't even make the Top 10 of dangerous occupations. Time magazine has them at #15 in 2014. Loggers are #1 and cops come in right after "general maintenance and repair workers". They all want to come home at night too.
Cop killings are actually down of late, during the Obama regime. It's rhetoric about a "WAR ON COPS!" that has risen during this time. Several hundred Americans are killed by cops each year. It's very popular for white people to note that cops kill more whites and Hispanics than African-Americans but that's usually to highlight that "white people don't riot when one of us is killed..." We tend to save our rioting for more productive reasons such as winning or losing a championship in one's city. Ain't that 'murica? Whites are a far larger percentage of the population than blacks, by the way. We've got the numbers! For now...
Simply, we need better training for all cops. A better screening process too, to weed out potential trouble makers. The people getting killed aren't always the desperadoes in our society and I doubt the cops doing the killing are our best and brightest. The woman officer in Tulsa "feared for (her) life" despite being with three other cops immediately by her side, two in the air and more nearby. She panicked and a man died. That is preventable with training. It's avoidable. Life will never be fool-proof. Neither will death. We can try to do better though. All we have to do is try, and to try to give it the attention that we think our hair deserves.
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