Why Should We Trust Cops?
The latest incident with the SF police videos is infuriating. But given what we (should) know about police culture, police brutality, driving while black, code of silence, and so on and so forth, this isn't that surprising. I hate the fools who make excuses for them though.
Why do we as a society place so much trust in the police? Obviously people of different class, gender, and racial backgrounds have different views toward cops, with the extremes being poor people of color who distrust them and rich white people who look to them as saviors. I don't have data to back this up now, but I know there are studies out there dealing with this.
The question I have is, should we, as individuals, trust cops? To answer this question I started looking at the requirements to become a cop in San Francisco, where entry-level "peace officers" make $64,347 to $89,601. The basic requirements are a GED and passing an simplistic exam. Assuming you have not committed any felonies and you can demonstrate your physical prowess and hide your mental defects, you're on your way to ruling the streets, and get paid mad money for it.
Why do we have such a low threshold for people who can carry guns around and kill people whenever they feel threatened? Do cops have the critical skills to deduce when to kill? Or are they relying on their biases to judge situations? Are they self-reflexive enough to see their own biases?
Now, I don't know what kind of training they go through, but when your pool of potential trainees are of such "low" quality, it is unlikely that all of them will come out as qualified as they should be. Just as there are bad doctors and bad professors, there will be bad cops no matter how stringent the training is.
Are there good people who become cops because they think they can help people? Of course. But once they place themselves in that position, individual intent matters not and the power and authority rules them. See the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Is my viewpoint classist? Probably. Maybe someone couldn't afford to go to college and wanted a stable job to feed their families. Fine. Though not malicious, the result and consequences are the same. See above paragraph.
Obviously I'm coming from an anti-police perspective, but I find it hard that anyone can disagree with the fact that we should raise the requirements for becoming a cop. If we can't get rid of them, we at least deserve cops who are intelligent enough to understand that using morale boosting as a defense for making videos that denigrate people based on their class, race, sexuality, and gender is just really really really dumb.
I'm spending way too much time on this. Back to studying.
Why do we as a society place so much trust in the police? Obviously people of different class, gender, and racial backgrounds have different views toward cops, with the extremes being poor people of color who distrust them and rich white people who look to them as saviors. I don't have data to back this up now, but I know there are studies out there dealing with this.
The question I have is, should we, as individuals, trust cops? To answer this question I started looking at the requirements to become a cop in San Francisco, where entry-level "peace officers" make $64,347 to $89,601. The basic requirements are a GED and passing an simplistic exam. Assuming you have not committed any felonies and you can demonstrate your physical prowess and hide your mental defects, you're on your way to ruling the streets, and get paid mad money for it.
Why do we have such a low threshold for people who can carry guns around and kill people whenever they feel threatened? Do cops have the critical skills to deduce when to kill? Or are they relying on their biases to judge situations? Are they self-reflexive enough to see their own biases?
Now, I don't know what kind of training they go through, but when your pool of potential trainees are of such "low" quality, it is unlikely that all of them will come out as qualified as they should be. Just as there are bad doctors and bad professors, there will be bad cops no matter how stringent the training is.
Are there good people who become cops because they think they can help people? Of course. But once they place themselves in that position, individual intent matters not and the power and authority rules them. See the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Is my viewpoint classist? Probably. Maybe someone couldn't afford to go to college and wanted a stable job to feed their families. Fine. Though not malicious, the result and consequences are the same. See above paragraph.
Obviously I'm coming from an anti-police perspective, but I find it hard that anyone can disagree with the fact that we should raise the requirements for becoming a cop. If we can't get rid of them, we at least deserve cops who are intelligent enough to understand that using morale boosting as a defense for making videos that denigrate people based on their class, race, sexuality, and gender is just really really really dumb.
I'm spending way too much time on this. Back to studying.
posted by Tran at 11:29 AM
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