One of the things I was thinking about in this discussion is that you are focused on the original event and I am focused on the system. Let me give an example; the rape and mutilation of a young girl by, say, a 35 year old man, is a horrid crime; but it is not, necessarily, a reflection of the general society. It is highly desirable for society to have systems that minimize this occurrence; but the only way to prevent it that we know of requires an overwhelming loss of liberty.
The actions of this 35 year old man are definitely evil as well as criminal. Yet, we should not fault the government or society for his actions, unless there were straightforward means of protecting this girl that they ignored. Such straightforward means need not include turning the nation into a police state. Now lets turn to a more problematic case. Say this man is a police officer. If it was something he did privately, without using his police uniform to gain trust, we might wonder if the police screened him properly, but we would not think it the first step of a massive attack on young women by an emerging police state. If he did it in uniform, we'd be more concerned about the supervision he had. We'd look for patterns and context before we made any condemnation of the police as a whole. No matter how horrid this one person's actions were, institutional responsibility is a function of more than just the nature of the act. We would not think it a first step in repression unless it was part of a larger pattern. Even then, we would look at the nature of the pattern before thinking that it was potentially the first step on the road to genocide. Lets look at a couple of those examples. The first is an example I cited: people being pulled over for DWB. On the surface it sounds simple; racist police department harassing blacks. But, its not that simple; nor is the cure. If it happened just in certain lily white suburban communities; then that would be evidence that it is just racism. But, it happens in Houston, too; which is largely black and largely Hispanic. Back in the 60's, the thought was that things like this would end when blacks were empowered. But, over most of the last 20 years, either the police chief has been black or the mayor has been black. There is also a significant fraction of black and Hispanic police officers in the department. Further, their statistics for traffic stops appear to be similar to those of white cops. So, what is going on? Part of the problem is that the rates for black crime is higher than it is for white crime. Police officers do pattern recognition for traffic stops. Its legal to stop a car that is violating even a minor law. But, most of the time, things like a license plate light that is out, doesn't merit their time. But, seeing something out of place does merit suspicion. So, from a law enforcement perspective; DWB has real advantages. But, from the point of view of the majority of law abiding black citizens, it is horrid. In this case, it was three upstanding young people: two college students doing well at school and a newly hired school teacher. While they were not treated especially rudely; they didn't want to be pulled over just because of what they looked like. I supported them in this. Even though it might be a useful police tactic; it is an unacceptable one. Unfortunately; its hard to measure. Houston is trying with logs of the ethnic background and treatment of the people the police pull over, but its a cumbersome system. So, it is clearly not a top down mandated intimidation of blacks by a racist city government and a racist police chief. While I don't doubt that there are racist police officers; the practice doesn't seem to follow the patterns of a fraction of the officers treating blacks and Hispanics far different from the others. Addressing this problem is not a simple task. It involves improved training; giving useful alternate techniques; and a means to measure compliance. Next, let us look at the shooting of a young unarmed Hispanic boy. It is clearly not acceptable. But, from the reports, it was not just a racist police officer gunning for Hispanics. A number of young people are armed in Houston. While gang warfare is down from what it was 10-15 years ago; its still not pretty. A police officer does need to be careful on the streets; a kid just like the one who was killed might pose a risk to him. This doesn't excuse the actions of this officer. His job is to use force responsibly; and he made a fatal error in judgment. The response of the city was to have high ranked officers of the police go to the local neighborhood and meet with citizens who were concerned. They seemed respectful as they listened. Of course additional work is clearly needed. The real solution would be a better partnership between the police and those neighborhoods they are supposed to be protecting. And, these neighborhoods do need protection. A young black or Hispanic man is significantly more likely killed by another person with a gun than a young white man. The wrongful killing by police officers is only a small fraction of this number (a percent or 2). Most of the time it is by another young man of the same ethnic background. This doesn't mean that such a death rate is acceptable and shouldn't be addressed. Rather, it means that it doesn't represent a top down driven systematic attempt by police to intimidate minorities. >If enough hatred exists or is installed > due to whatever intrinsic or external circumstance and enough people > look away when such acts are carried out it just might become that > nightmare you now abhor so much. It might turn into a firmly > established reality. That's a true statement, but it is not one that has to do with the reality in Houston. The overwhelming majority of killings of blacks do not fit the classic hate crime MO. Now, there was an obvious hate crime in East Texas a few years back: in Jared I think...but I could be mistaken. A black man was killed by being dragged behind a pick up truck (I think it was a truck and not a car). The whole town, black and white, was disgusted with the whole affair. There were KKK demonstrating about something or other, but the TV blurbs from the blacks and whites showed a pretty united front. A good outcome of this horrid action was that the town saw how much they really had in common. I'll end this post here to keep the focus on the difference in our perspective. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
