The U.K. will have a new Prime Minister tomorrow, Theresa May. This center-right “one nation” Conservative Party MP gave a brilliant speech on police reform a few years ago that, in my opinion, goes further than the remarks from either Sanders or Clinton during the campaign to demand accountability and transparency. It is doubtful you would see an American politician address a police union, quite like this.
A choice excerpt:
When you remember the list of recent revelations about police misconduct, it is not enough to mouth platitudes about “a few bad apples”. The problem might lie with a minority of officers, but it is still a significant problem, and a problem that needs to be addressed…according to one survey carried out recently, only 42% of black people from a Caribbean background trust the police. That is simply not sustainable…I will soon publish proposals to strengthen the protections available to whistleblowers in the police. I am creating a new criminal offence of police corruption. And I am determined that the use of stop and search must come down, become more targeted and lead to more arrests.
SomervilleTom says
I suggest that this is an issue that exemplifies the challenge facing America and Americans. The electorate of the UK is DIFFERENT from Americans in this regard.
The ugly fact is that too many — perhaps even a majority of — Americans shrug their shoulders and ignore the continuing slaughter of black Americans by our police, while rising up in indignant rage when police in Dallas are killed.
I note that the first response of our Massachusetts government is to join Louisiana in making an attack on police a “hate” crime. Yes indeed, we must protect the fine officers of Baton Rouge who murdered Alton Sterling.
I am, of course, not defending attacks on police. I am instead reminding us that until we take effective action against police abuses, such attacks will become more frequent and more extreme. Too many police, and too many Americans, in fact welcome this development — the inevitable result will be massive responses by heavily-armed police that will kill even more blacks.
This is how race wars begin, my friends.
Theresa May was able to give this speech because she, and the UK government, had ALREADY TAKEN steps to curb police abuse in the UK.
We have done NOTHING comparable. In reality, we have gone in the other direction.
centralmassdad says
There are quite a few police officers in my neighborhood, parents of my children’s friends, etc. and I have chatted at length with them over the problem, of which they are painfully aware. It is a viscous circle. Everyone acknowledges that there is a two-way trust/fear/anger problem, which would be helped if the police were more culturally similar to the policed. But that isn’t easy, because you can’t do hiring quotas, and because it is hard to recruit in a community that views police as an actively hostile enemy. Problem two is that no one makes a distinction among the many various police departments nationwide, which means that incidents elsewhere inflame tensions here. Also, even if a department does everything they can possibly do to address the problem, years of investment, effort, and goodwill can disappear in the blink of an eye if there is an incident.
I don’t disagree with any of the 15 points someone posted the other day, except to wonder whether having the police make the decision of whether to enforce this or that law/rule/ordinance is a good idea, unless you are a cowardly legislator that hides from this issue.
Because there are so many various local police departments, and because the actions and behavior of one affects the whole nation, it is my opinion that the road to a solution will be, in addition to long and hard, federal.