Rosalind Nelson said: > The godawful frustration of trying to address police police brutality is > dealing with people who refuse under any circumstances to believe that > brutality is a problem. > > I generally agree in waiting for the results of a well-conducted > investigation before coming to a final conclusion about events described > in the newspaper. > > That means there has to be an investigation. > > That means the investigation has to be competent and impartial. > > It looks like we'll have an investigation in this case, but I question > how competent and impartial it will be, when the agency conducting the > investigation is the some one being examined. >
My response: I also feel a great frustration in police brutality investigations, but mostly from people on the other side. There seem to be many people on this List and elsewhere that seem to believe that any accusation of police brutality must be true. Even though there are lots of people in this city who would gladly lie through their teeth to get a cop into trouble. On the other hand, I've never heard anyone on this List say that there's no police brutality in Minneapolis. I agree that it is a problem when the police investigate themselves. Cops do have a sense of loyalty to each other -- and so it has to be a very blatant misdeed for the Department to blame one of their own. But the excessive rhetoric of the cop busters actually impedes solving the brutality that's out there. There is no possible solution that would acceptable to the cop haters, because as soon as another accusation surfaced, the braying about an "occupying force" would rise again. This is both because there are people out there that will cry "brutality" about the most angelic police force, and because it is impossible to root out every bruiser in a force of several hundred. So those people inside the police force that could make a difference figure "what's the point?" -- they'll get skewered no matter what they do. My impression of the Minneapolis cops is that for the most part they don't have great people skills, and there are more thumpers than we should expect to find. The police "code" is partly to blame for this, but the antagonistic attitude of much of the populace is also a major cause. We've got to figure out a way to investigate brutality investigations without depending on the cops to check out their own. What we've done in the past hasn't worked. But a blanket condemnation of police when someone complains takes us in the wrong direction. Mark Anderson Bancroft TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
