Apparently, the fact that authorities sometimes unfortunately need to make snap judgments to preserve the lives of themselves or others means, in MarkG’s mind, that all judgments made by cops should be granted this same life-or-death importance.
This is a poor justification but a good line of explanation. Throughout cop training in the United States, there are several central and constant themes: expect the worst, and do the things that will keep you alive. These are used to justify everything, to a ridiculous degree - keep your shoes polished because scruffy-looking cops are more likely to be attacked. Similarly: be assertive, take control of the situation immediately, because if you let the other guy get the upper hand in a contact, he'll be more inclined to attack you. 'How to deal with someone who, as it turns out, is doing nothing wrong' is, unfortunately, not a high priority.
In a deeply demoralised, understaffed agency with no money for non-essential training, lacking the luxury of choosing only the best employees, in a scary high-crime city, things will tend to get pared back to the dumb basics. Obviously the individual cops here screwed up badly, and I'm not trying to exonerate them; but if all you give someone is a can-opener, then drum into them the idea that the can-opener is the most important thing in the world, you should not be surprised if they treat every problem as a can of beans. Pttng t dwn t jckbtd thggry prly fr th sk f g-grtfctn s knjrk crctr.
Not that willful neglect isn't an effective method of control in its own right.
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| 2009 | 1 |
| 2008 | 1 |
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