South Florida cops claimed they were “forced to fire” at a 32-year-old Black man named Donald Taylor in August because he was armed and would not follow commands.
But newly surfaced video contradicts those claims, showing the Black man walking away from cops with his hands raised to his sides showing no gun in his hand when a Hollywood police officer fired a single shot as Taylor had his back turned to the cops, killing him.
We tried that when Biden was in office and all these new body cam laws were passed. So many cops threatened to quit, politicians backed down and let police unions retain control of the cameras and recordings.
Damn, I had no idea that happened. So fucked.
Edit: Also, I kinda feel like the ones who threatened the quit, were the ones we wanted to quit …
Right there with you on that one. If I had it my way, I’d let them all quit, then divert funding from police to social workers and incorporate them into the first-responders network.
Of course, if I had it my way, police would also (at a minimum) have similar training requirements as EMTs, would belong to a union who answered to voters, not other cops, and a whole bunch of other changes to limit their power and militarization.
They wouldn’t have quit. That would have impacted their pensions.
I’ve just been thinking on this more, that really would have been fascinating to see it play out.
I think you’re right for any old timers. New people it’s not a big an issue. I feel like there may have been a big lawsuit though over if that would be reasonable grounds to quit and keep the pension? It could be entirely baseless, I don’t know know anything about that, but that feels like what would happen for those that did quit or wanted to quit?
The ensuing aftermath though would have been a very interesting watch.
Edit: the ensuing aftermath also including all the changes in police misconduct stats.
I say let most of the cops quit and put that funding into training social workers to be first responders to pretty much everything except armed robberies and up.
I think you’d need police for more than just that. Situations can change pretty quickly in a lot of circumstances, but definitely a lot of scenarios where you could send a social worker instead.
There could also be unarmed police like in the UK which would add some level of general deescalation from the start.