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from the Who-LiveStream's-the-Watchmen? dept.
The Root reports that “Almost half of Americans hate their police department:”
[DrugAbuse.com] examined over 766,000 tweets about sentiment toward law enforcement in each state. The state with the most positive perception of police was New Hampshire. The most negative: Arkansas. The city with the most positive perception of police was Columbus, Ohio, while the one with the most negative was, not surprisingly, Ferguson, Mo. Other “failing” city police departments included Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, New York and Denver. Baltimore, a city still reeling from recent unrest, received a D grade….
“If you talk to young people in Baltimore, I don’t think their feelings about police have changed at all in the last five to seven years,” says [Philip Leaf, a Johns Hopkins University professor]. “There has been a negative perception of police in many communities for a long time. There just haven’t been conversations with these young people or in the media about it until recently. There hasn’t been an upsurge of disconnect with the police. With cellphones, there has been documentation of things that people have been talking about for a long time. People haven’t been believed, and now it’s hard not to believe it, if you see it on TV.…”
“It’s not as if this stuff hasn’t been going on all along for decades, but now it’s being captured for the world to see, and the few bad apples being captured on camera are ruining the entire tree of law enforcement,” says Hassan Giordano, 39, and a candidate for Baltimore City Council. “However, those very same people who have a negative opinion of police will also be the same ones calling 911 when they find themselves in an unsafe situation. It’s a catch-22.”
It's important to note that on the graphs shown in the article, even an A grade represents negative sentiment.
More data and a description of the methodology are available at DrugAbuse.com, including graphs of tweet sentiment involving alcohol, drugs, and marijuana. DrugAbuse.com used the commercial IBM service AlchemyAPI to analyze the tweets.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday August 26 2015, @10:57PM
So long as the "thin blue line" holds fast, the "good" cops are knowing accomplices in the crimes of their "bad" brothers.
Came here to say the same thing!!
Just about every other profession steps up and gets rid of the delinquent Nurse, the craptastic coder, the dangerous electrician, and the such.
It might take another 50 years, but with a video camera in every pocket pointing out the corruption and abuse, cops are either going to suffer collective punishment or they are going to clean up their act.
Part of this is a significant number of people entering police work are control freaks, with significant personality disorders, and would probably be gang members if they had taken a slightly different path in life. They were probably bullies in junior high school, and still are. We've got to find a way to weed these guys out.
Maybe we should experiment with un-armed (or tazer only) cops like These Countries [washingtonpost.com].
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday August 27 2015, @12:59AM
I'm not sure that the tazer is ANY improvement over the gun. The warning that "Since it's non-lethal, it will be used when it shouldn't be used" has proven true so very often that I generally think they should be restricted to animal control officers or some such. Or maybe just totally banned. (It's not that non-lethal if you misuse it, as has frequently been shown to happen.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday August 27 2015, @01:14AM
Its pretty non-lethal, as long as there is only one available. When 4 or 6 cops all deploy them at once, you can kill people.
The battery should be limited, and logic built into it to prevent the abusive use you hear about.
With out tasers you have only truncheons and batons, which can be just as lethal.
Saw this big kid on PCP once, (football line backer) and it took 5 fat cops to hold him down.
He was tearing up the building, and throwing freshmen like footballs.
Campus police at that school weren't allow to carry guns. The Taser had zero affect oh him.
Cops now days would have just shot him.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @10:18AM
Its pretty non-lethal, as long as there is only one available.
Or if you have a bad heart, a pacemaker, etc. etc.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:18AM
what are you talking about? they are gang members.