It's not the neighborhood dysfunction it's the police dysfunction
by digby
Juan Williams says we're asking police to do thing they're not trained to do:
WILLIAMS: What you have here is a situation where, I think, you have poor people, who feel that they have a grievance -- a difficult situation across our country in terms of how police deal with the dysfunction that is in this neighborhood, but deal with it in every community in America. We are asking our police to go in and to deal with people who are extremely violent, disorganized, families in chaos, and say to the police, you're our front lines. And when the police fail in handling the situation, then we say, it's a matter of police brutality. I think it's a matter of society, often times, asking police to do things they're not trained to do.
They're not trained to take prisoners to jail? Because that's what the Freddie Gray case is about.
Freddie Gray was taken into custody after a chase but without a fight. And while in custody his spine was evidently somehow severed in the back of a police van. What in the world does any of that have to do with violence and chaos in the neighborhood? Were the police traumatized by their daily grind and couldn't handle the stress so they took him on a wild ride to blow off steam and severed his spine? If so, is that supposed to be ok? Because violence and chaos?
Police are professionals who are given tremendous power over individuals. I know they have a hard job. That's why they get very generous pensions, benefits and medical care. (And also why they are so often given the benefit of the doubt before a jury.) But police brutality cannot be a "perk" or a compensation for the stress of their tough job, it just can't. Neither can it be a reasonable explanation for beating, tasering and killing unarmed suspects. That's turning the law and the constitution on its head.
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