JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Avoid social unrest

by

1860 days ago
20200606

The un­rest (sparked by Po­lice bru­tal­i­ty) go­ing on in many oth­er coun­tries is some­thing that we can avoid by mak­ing changes to the way Po­lice op­er­ate.

Body cam­eras should be manda­to­ry for all po­lice, es­pe­cial­ly for re­spons­es in­volv­ing use of force. What is the dis­ci­pli­nary process for of­fi­cers who con­ve­nient­ly “for­get” to turn on the cam­era? Are dis­ci­pline, sus­pen­sion and ter­mi­na­tion records pub­lic? If not, why?

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er has pub­licly spo­ken about “non lethal” weapons such as tasers, pep­per spray, rub­ber bul­lets. “Rub­ber” bul­lets have a met­al core cov­ered by a thin rub­ber lay­er and are ca­pa­ble of death or se­ri­ous in­jury.

A study on rub­ber/plas­tic ki­net­ic pro­jec­tiles found that 71 per cent suf­fered in­jury cat­e­gorised as se­vere and 15 per cent of peo­ple were per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled, es­pe­cial­ly when fir­ing dis­tances were less than rec­om­mend­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er or tar­get­ed the head or neck. Sim­i­lar­ly tasers have been im­pli­cat­ed in the deaths of thou­sands of peo­ple, same with pep­per spray or CS gas. We should not con­fuse “less lethal” with “non lethal”!

Some of these prob­lems are a re­sult of the whole train­ing process and mind­set im­part­ed to re­cruits dur­ing train­ing, ei­ther of­fi­cial­ly or “off the record.” In Ger­many it takes 3 years to be­come a cop. How long does it take lo­cal­ly? What are the min­i­mum en­try re­quire­ments —do we train in­tel­li­gent men­tal­ly healthy peo­ple or what­ev­er we can get? What is the per­cent­age of time spent on de-es­ca­la­tion and com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing strate­gies com­pared to firearms and self-de­fence? Does train­ing cov­er po­si­tion­al as­phyx­ia that was like­ly a con­trib­u­tor in George Floyd’s death?

The mil­i­tari­sa­tion of po­lice (ar­moured ve­hi­cles, SWAT teams) ul­ti­mate­ly does noth­ing but wors­en ex­ist­ing prob­lems.

It’s un­re­al­is­tic to ex­pect that with shiny new toys the po­lice are go­ing to choose de-es­ca­lat­ing a sit­u­a­tion rather than have any rea­son to “test out” their toys. In fact, it would ap­pear that po­lice are taught to keep es­ca­lat­ing un­til com­pli­ance is achieved! But there should be “use min­i­mum force nec­es­sary” rule for con­flicts and de-es­ca­la­tion should be the first re­sponse. The May­or of Chica­go has an­nounced many di­rec­tives for im­proved po­lice train­ing in light of George Floyd’s death—will we do the same?

Po­lice need to be held to ac­count to a high­er stan­dard than civil­ians, be­cause they are en­trust­ed with au­thor­i­ty and weapons that the rest of us don’t have. This means that they should self po­lice and not be com­pla­cent when oth­ers cross the line, oth­er­wise they are just as guilty. Bad ap­ples must be pros­e­cut­ed and face jus­tice just as a nor­mal per­son would.

The whole idea of “paid leave,” “trans­fer” and “sus­pen­sion” must not be op­tions for of­fi­cers who have a his­to­ry of com­plaints or break laws. The of­fi­cer who killed George Floyd had 18 com­plaints against him, yet these were ig­nored by the po­lice de­part­ment he worked in!

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty should be giv­en ad­di­tion­al pow­ers to fa­cil­i­tate in­ves­ti­ga­tion as they are best po­si­tioned to serve as an in­de­pen­dent check and bal­ance on the ser­vice. Un­for­tu­nate­ly I don’t think the Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion cares about pub­lic in­ter­est as much as the rights of its mem­bers (like many oth­er Pub­lic Sec­tor Unions). They should be not al­lowed to dic­tate fu­ture di­rec­tion.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored