Yes, Black Lives DO Matter.
by Doug
This article in today’s WaPo both broke my heart and infuriated me.
I, like all of the BLM marchers and supporters I know, would NEVER paint all police with the same brush. It’s the police who insist on doing that, behind their “Thin blue line”. And IF you’re going to make that stand, then it is you who have INSISTED that you all be treated the same. And I’m not sure that’s really what you want. As one of the late night comedians pointed out, some professions just can’t tolerate bad apples: “We’re American Airlines, and 98% of our pilots try to land safely every time!!” The best solution I’ve seen to the problem of there being no incentive for police to police themselves is to rewrite codes so that jury awards to compensate victims for criminal police behavior come out of police retirement funds instead of general municipal budgets. I’m open to other suggestions, but as a (former) economist, I know that financial incentives to behave CAN have an effect; one just has to be VERY careful how those incentives are designed.
Training programs and rewarding proper policing generating a different attitude in departments, promoting based on officers displaying an attitude of racial justice, community involvement and factors other than simply a policeman/policewoman’s arrest record also would help. That and prosecution and fair punishment for those who are racist and immediate termination for those “bad apple” officers that poison an entire department. Cleaning up reputations by community actions helping the communities that they are protecting, rather than harassing those communities. These are all programs that are currently originating from outside of the departments.