How often have you witnessed police brutality that was not warranted? How many times have you heard an officer use the N word or other slurs?
You’ve asked a lot of good questions, Archie. I think the best way to answer these are just list some observations I made over the course of 15+ years on the job:
-there are cops that express their distrust/dislike of African-Americans openly. It’s quite awkward and I’ve told guys to take their shit somewhere else, I don’t want to hear it. Our job was/is to be color blind and to apprehend people breaking into residences and vehicles (which IS an epidemic never talked about by the media), arrest domestic violence offenders, sexual battery offenses etc.
-WHERE I WORKED, 9 out of 10 times we arrested someone for a residential/commercial burglary, they were African-American males.
-9 out of 10 times we arrested someone for a vehicle burglary at a gym, day care center or park, they were an African-American male. That doesn’t mean we were catching white people commit those felonies and letting them go. If you got apprehended doing those things it didn’t/doesn’t matter what color you were.
-blowing in a fellow cop for doing shady/dirty shit is easy if they are WAY out of line. I’ve done it. I would have had no problem at all telling that dumb motherfucker to get off that guys neck before he died/we all lose our jobs. And if he didn’t listen to me I would have called a supervisor on my cell phone.
But as plommer mentioned a day or two ago, if you go to the command staff about you hearing another cop calling some guy a “nig”,half the department will know about it in an hour and the 1-2% of the cops who are racists will treat you differently for the rest of your career and possibly not have your back in a fight. Personally, I didn’t give a fuck. But these are just observations.