On 9/12/02 4:41 PM, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip> > Don Greeley gave us the report for an incident that many have quoted for the > macing of a child. Can we see that we jump to conclusions at times? Do we > perhaps pass judgment too soon? Is this not a form of prejudice against > anyone in uniform? What do we think when we pass by a house/car/park or > whatever, when a police officer is engaged in talking to someone or checking > their credentials? Do you think, "Well I hope they don't beat the snot out > of that civilian!". Actually, the folks who were jumping to conclusions were those accusing Jason Goray of claiming a child was maced. He merely asked questions and others put words in his mouth. > I too hold my public servants to a higher standard. However I do know that so > do they. The police have said time and time again that they would sooner > have a bad cop off the force then deal with him/her. That person makes the > rest have a tougher time doing their jobs. Really? Then why exactly is Richard Sauro still a Minneapolis police officer? If this were true, I would think pressure from his peers who no longer want to deal with him would have been enough to send him on his way. > I am not asking the list to roll over and accept any one blowing off their > civil liberties. I am only asking that we look at it from a perspective that > takes into consideration all the numbers. I dare someone to look at one days > arrests, calls and services throughout the whole city. Then take all of that > and multiply it by 365 and then extract the number of cases of violent > confrontation. What is the exact outcome? A large number, to be sure. However, there are those of us who feel any amount of abuse from police officers is too much, no matter how small the number of officers involved or what percentage of overall cases it represents. But for the sake of Valdis' argument, let's take a conservative guess and say there are 100 arrests, calls and services throughout Minneapolis in a day, which would mean 36,500 in a year. Two percent of 36,500 is over 700 cases of abuse by officers per year. Even if we raised our standard to say only two-tenths of a percent were acceptable, that's still over 70 cases of abuse. That's far too many for me to stomach. > An officer sworn to protect the President by the name of Bradey was hit by a > felons bullet. He regained 60% of his bodily functions. He was quoted as > saying, "sometimes you have to be happy with what you got". And the point of this is? I suppose that if I get stopped and become a statistic of the MPD, I should be happy if I only just get knocked around a little bit instead of shot? Come on! > If I have to live in a world where 98% of the time the police do their job > with little or no mistakes - I can live with that. So now can we cure the > rest of societies ills? Maybe Valdis can live with it, but those who are suffering that abuse should not have to and that's the point that our elected officials, our chief and those who contend the police can do no wrong need to get. And that's why I hope Minneapolis City Council will vote Friday to accept the offer of federal mediation. As has been noted, it's free of charge to the city and Chief Robert Olson reportedly supports the idea so what do we have to lose? Mark Snyder Windom Park (59A) [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
