*DISCLAIMER* This is a highly political thread. Contained in this thread are mine (and hopefully others') OPINIONS. This is not an attack on anyone's views. This thread is not meant to offend others, but it is a discussion about views surrounding the recent events in Ferguson, Mo. If I have any information wrong, I will correct it. Just post a comment below about it and I will be sure to edit it. I will attempt to remain as politically correct as possible, but again, please feel free to correct me about this. Background Information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown Darren Wilson was not charged. With the anniversary of Michael Brown's death past, you may have heard of Ferguson starting to pop back up in the news. The night of the anniversary, the protests grew violent once again. There have been many arrests, and the county of St. Louis has declared a state of emergency, like last year. Now is the part about my opinions and views on the matter, refer to the disclaimer at top. I can see what the protesters are protesting about, there is still racism in this world, but we must face it: No matter how much people change, I believe that there will still be some people who will remain the same and not get along with other people of different heritage then themselves. Since it is America, they have their freedom to speech. The people who do not get along with others are acting within their constitutional rights, and there will always be people in life that will not be easy to get along with. As long as those people still exist, there will still be racism in the world. Around the same time as Michael Brown was killed, there was a white woman who was killed by a white police officer, but that case did not raise as much attention as Ferguson. These events are terrible for the families of the victims. Not all police officers are racist. There are many police officers, and they risk their LIVES everyday when they go to work. They are brave, and I respect them for being courageous enough to do that job. In my opinion, they are some of the bravest men and women out there, along with all Emergency service members, and Soldiers. They put their lives on the line, putting themselves in front of a bullet to protect their nation, and the communities of the U.S. So now about the protests. It may be a little shaky from here down, depending on your views of the situation. I do not see the reasoning behind turning the protests violent. There is no point to attacking the police, and the men and women keeping watch. If they see you doing something stupid in times like these, you will be arrested. Hands down. No questions asked. They are protecting the community from these people who are wrecking havoc on the streets for media attention. The protests have a point, but the second someone attacks a cop, or anyone else, the protests turn pointless. They lose their purpose, because you must be peaceful for change to come. They become violent, and that makes the protesters no better than the cops that they believe are terrible people for killing and injuring others. THAT PLACES THE VIOLENT PROTESTERS ON THE SAME LEVEL AS THE COPS THEY ARE PROTESTING AGAINST. (I will reserve a post underneath this one for updates on the situation) There are many people who get along fine with people of other ethnicities then themselves. Not everyone is out to get a certain race. There are a select few who ruin things for the rest of the population. I know that there will be people who disagree with my opinions, and I hope that you will not see me differently for having placed them out there. Thank you for reading my views on this topic which is very important for shaping America at this time in history. My intention is for this to start a discussion in the community, but due to views, some may reserve the choice to discuss this topic.
List of sources http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mi...ile-marking-year-michael-browns-death-n407236 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown
Even though most cops are okay, the rest of them need to know that police need to be above racism and other crap like that. Have you ever seen videos of those men being assaulted by police while they're in a fetal position? Terrible stuff going on down south.
Where I live, the Police were racist, untrustworthy, and corrupt until the late 1990s. Riots erupted throughout the 70s in the North against Margaret Thatcher, the last Tory Prime Minister until David Cameron in 2010 due to her policies that crippled Northern England, Scotland, and Wales for the benefit of London, and the Police's unprofessionalism was highlighted greatly. Eventually, the riots became aimed at the police. There was a riot in Liverpool in the 80s where officers not even trained to be in the midst of a riot were thrown in there anyway, and eventually people got killed. The police force was eventually reformed massively and became much more professional, and now people feel safe when they see the Police here. The last big police corruption event was the Hillsborough Disaster, in which 96 people died because the Police were idiots. They paid off The Sun to say it was the public's fault. Now you'll get stabbed if you buy the newspaper in Liverpool On a smaller scale, some police officer killed an unarmed 'teenager' in London and the Police tried to cover it up - sparking the 2011 England riots. I say on a smaller scale because most people were rioting to loot shops and for a bit of fun, not for the cause they were claimed to be started for. My point being that the Police and the government sometimes need to suffer some violence against them from the public to get their arses into gear. That's what the US needs. From an outsider's perspective: your police force is in shambles. I'm not saying all of your officers are bad, I'm just saying a lot of them are. On your point on the racism not going away: sure, it might not. But the Police need to know they have to be above racism, to judge everyone equally (not in a, 'oh, everyone could be a murderer, I'd better watch them... and arrest them' way), otherwise you end up with an unfair justice system and people end up getting killed for no reason. I also believe that we can get rid of racism: we stop talking about it and stop giving racist bigots attention. That way, kids stop listening to and believing discriminative comments from their parents, and racism will die off in time. I'm going to stop writing now. Here's a funny video I like to watch where the cop is a nice guy. (Clarification: He's from Liverpool, not Ireland )
Whether he attacked them or not, police shouldn't be shooting to kill. Police shouldn't even have guns at all. Allow me to elaborate... In the UK, our Police are assigned to different areas. The normal officers are unarmed, and make use of pepper spray, handcuffs, and their own hands (they aren't allowed to hit people, only grapple them to the floor). Then we have crowd control officers who go to football stadiums and areas where a large amount of people will be gathering that day (think around train stations), who are armed with batons (they also ride horses ), which aren't really allowed to be used unless someone is putting other people's lives in danger (crushings, etc.) and they haven't listened to warnings, so it's there as a threat, essentially. Then we have riot police, who are specially trained to use riot shields, hoses, and tear gas (which isn't used unless the situation is out of control), who are obviously only called in when there's a riot (the last riots in the UK were in London and Cardiff in May after the 2015 General Election, but to my knowledge only regulars where called in, and the riot police weren't used). Then we have armed police, who are armed with shotguns etc. and are only used in drug busts, hostage situations, and if there was ever a terrorist attack in this country (which there hasn't been since 7/7 in 2007 because MI5 are gr8, unless you consider ISIS gunning down British tourists on a beach a terrorist attack), they would probably be called in. I like that structure better than 'every officer is armed and they can hit people whenever they want as long as they have an OK reason'.
Soul, one thing you need to realize is that what applies to one part of the world is not necessarily true for all of it. What works in the UK does not mean it'll work in the US. What works in the US does not work in South Africa. What works in Australia would not work in India, and so forth. There are hundreds of different cultures around the globe, and trying to say "Well this works here so that's what you should do" is fundamentally flawed. As for the Ferguson thing? I'm staying out of this. I just hate seeing these silly cookie-cutter "one size fits all" arguments come up in political debates.
I was just trying to say that the US's police force is lacking some sort of... 'proper' structure. Yes, I understand that everyone and their mother can walk around with a gun in the US, so it'd be stupid not to let the people stopping them from abusing that right to not be able to walk around with a gun. They shouldn't be shooting to kill, though - that's when you end up with kids with toy guns (a thing I've heard happened in America) waving them around and getting shot in the head by police officers happening. I've noticed a lot of American police officers seem to lack control over what they do, if that makes any sense - they seem to shoot first, ask questions later.
In an ideal world, no one would be killed at all. Obviously, that is far from what we can even hope of anytime soon, so the best course of action is to see how close we can get to that situation. If we completely remove law enforcement weapons, many innocent citizens would be dead. If we over arm law enforcement, then they will use lethal force on too many that could have been arrested less violently. The trick is to find a middle ground. In America, pretty much anyone can get a gun. This means that it can be assumed that any criminal could have a gun. For this reason, removing the guns from all police officers would underpower them compared to possible criminals. Unless we limit what possible criminals have, we can't limit what police have. Imagine if we forced our police to use pepper spray and batons while a criminal could have a gun. That would obviously end very badly. If Americans want to remove some of the lethality from police weapons, then they would need to be willing to put limitations on how lethal of a weapon they can get. Since the problem of limiting the weapons available to the general public is a highly debated topic and one that would lead to even more debates, it is safe to assume that nothing big will happen there for a long time. With that option out the way, we can look at other ways to remove police brutality. One option that seems really helpful is the use of body cams. A court and the public can now see exactly what the officer sees and will give exact answers to whether the use of force was warranted. This keeps officers accountable and would help prevent the riots caused when there isn't enough evidence. Overall, it seems like a win-win situation and at least gives people the justice and certainty they need to feel safe and know that the outcome is one based on facts. The next step would be to work on the trust with officers and remove some of the fear in America today. The problem with saying whether this event warranted death is that we can't say for sure exactly what happened. We have to rely on "The officer said this is what happened" while others say that the officer is lying. There is no way definitive justice can come from that.
Hands up means don't shoot. Simple as that. I believe racism is still a major issue but violence is NOT the way to combat it.
The police work in pairs, and backup is always close if they need it. There have been plenty of muscular guys attempting to take on Police officers here, often with knives and dogs - the Police usually do just fine. Our police are also hardly pacifists. They see plenty of messed up stuff and if you anger them too much (injure their partner for example), a lot of them most likely will beat the living crap out of you. T Would just like to point out the UK is also more than just England - it's made up of four different countries, each with multiple different cultural groups, languages and different laws to eachother. Our 'pacifist' 'cops' are English, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish, and Gaelic and live in all of these countries. Anyway... We don't have shootings here, and when we do, they are stopped quickly. You should have better gun control. I'm not saying you should have gun shops needing a billion licenses to set up and civilians needing multiple licenses and not being allowed to use them in non-designated areas like we do over here - no, you people seem to like your second amendment rights too much to let that happen. I'd propose something like a Switzerland model, which could work quite well in the US. Yes, actually. It would. Organised crime still exists in the UK, sure, but organised criminals are extremely quiet. Crimes committed in the US with guns are also carried out with knives here - there's not much we can do to stop that. Like, what are we going to do? Ban kitchen knives? No. The Thirteen Colonies fought the British because they wanted to vote in our Parliament (which they had the right to do). Our King considered it, the Colonies responded with violence, our King said no, you got your war on. There was pretty much nothing to do with guns involved.
As someone who lives in a town where a guy shot his girlfriend and ran around with a gun near my house, here's what they do: they get the helicopter out. They track the guy down, and get multiple cars out to surround him. This way he has nowhere to run. I don't know what they do past this point, but I'd imagine the armed police get called in if he doesn't surrender - or get guys to distract him, and then tackle him to the ground, get his gun off him, and handcuff his arms and legs, and then load him into a van. No, we have no mall (which are called shopping centres over here, but wateva) shootings because of our gun control and how good the guys working at MI5 are at policing the black market. Yes, we have a population of 64 million and the US has one of 318 million, but that isn't the reason. The reason is that America has a gun problem. Even your own President admitted it. That isn't peace. That's fear. I'd talk and act carefully if I was getting grilled by an officer with a gun. I'd be scared of them. I don't want to be afraid of the people who are supposed to be protecting me. I haven't looked into this whole Michael Brown thing very much, and the last I heard about it was a year ago. From what I can gather, the evidence seems to be stacked up against the policeman who shot the lad.
