I don't think that people complaining about excessive use of force hurt the point of view that the US is a police state. If anything, these people support the idea that the police are out of control. People are looking for any sort of easing up from the cops, even if it's for violent offenders.
You get a constant drum beat of news articles showing the cops killing people who were unarmed, and public resistance grows, which for most people means nothing, as they aren't about to become criminals. Years of police abuses leads to a lot of people not caring if officers live or die, though-- where we are right now. This is a good thing, because everyone is on the same page: violent police are unliked.
The colder the community gets to police, the faster they will change their tune. Ferguson was a turning point, with many police departments realizing that violence begets violence, and military occupation of neighborhoods as a policy begets violent opposition. Since Ferguson we've seen a lot of police departments start to walk back violence as a policy, and maybe in 10 years we'll be back to community policing.
People see the European policing model (police not murdering tons of people or constantly beating/tasing them, having polite and helpful cops who are members of the community) and are getting jealous and angry. This too is a good thing.
>You get a constant drum beat of news articles showing the cops killing people who were unarmed
Anything that gets views will be a constant drum beat in the media. Media coverage is a bad indicator of reality. I would prefer these numbers stay lower [0]. But these numbers never get brought up by the media. They happen frequently enough that articles could be drummed out once a week, I wonder why they aren't?
>I don't think that people complaining about excessive use of force hurt the point of view that the US is a police state.
I'm arguing that the people who bring up foolish points as solutions are more harmful than helpful. I for one don't like reading articles like this one [1]. This isn't about being a police state - this is about people not knowing how to deescalate things. "Taking arm/leg shots" is not deescalation. Not shooting a violent and armed suspect is not deescalation. More or less asking officers to risk death is not deescalation. Yes - the US is increasingly becoming a police state. No, asking officers to risk death instead of shooting is not going to solve it.
I agree about being members of the community. Public outreach and police interacting with the community in friendly ways goes a long way. We need more of this [2] [3] [4] [5]. It builds trust, it builds a sense of community, and that's something sorely lacking in many places of the US.
You get a constant drum beat of news articles showing the cops killing people who were unarmed, and public resistance grows, which for most people means nothing, as they aren't about to become criminals. Years of police abuses leads to a lot of people not caring if officers live or die, though-- where we are right now. This is a good thing, because everyone is on the same page: violent police are unliked.
The colder the community gets to police, the faster they will change their tune. Ferguson was a turning point, with many police departments realizing that violence begets violence, and military occupation of neighborhoods as a policy begets violent opposition. Since Ferguson we've seen a lot of police departments start to walk back violence as a policy, and maybe in 10 years we'll be back to community policing.
People see the European policing model (police not murdering tons of people or constantly beating/tasing them, having polite and helpful cops who are members of the community) and are getting jealous and angry. This too is a good thing.