Finding Out Why We Need Police

AFRICAN-AMERICANS have traditionally lived in a police state, police capturing and returning escaped slaves, KKK cops wielding their selective application of power well beyond the south. Gangs of roving, out of uniform cops in Boston, looking for blacks to "talk to", in the twentieth century. In the 1800s, Irish and eastern European immigrants got cop jobs in Boston, Philly, and New York in return for promises to turn out their ethnic communities to vote the right way, for the right political strong man, using whatever tactics it took to get the job done. In Ferguson, Missouri, two thirds black, four out of fifty three police officers were black two years ago, when Michael Brown got killed. Civil and police corruption runs deep in American history, deep, and complicated. Police departments were founded in America as the lesser of two evils in the 1840s, for reasons unrelated to law enforcement or crime prevention. When there were no police in American cities, order was maintained by a hodge podge of sheriffs, constables, your occasional military intervention, and the widespread but sadly mistaken belief that in a free market society, the public ought to be able to and can police itself. Wrong! A capitalistic economy is a free wheeling roller coaster of alternating boom and bust. When it busts, people become angry and desperate, and mobs of protesting poor people need policing for the protection of the comfortable wealthy. Street wars between gangs of Catholics versus Protestants, natives versus immigrants, blacks versus whites inspired the formation of organized police departments to combat civil unrest, first in old England, then in Philadelphia. Today, in an America that has resegregated and once again turned stressful and nasty, the major issues are militarization of police forces and the application of technology. Technology came to policing early, when guns, handcuffs, and cameras were introduced in the eighteen forties. Now, its all about tasers, armored cars, and body cameras. Urban police departments inherent all kinds of neat stuff from the U.S. military, often exacerbating existing fears and mistrust in the hood. Cameras can help hold cops accountable, vindicate, or indict them. From the beginning black cops were not trusted to work in white upscale neighborhoods, and black ghettos have traditionally been policed by white, sometimes surly, sometimes empathy free, usually fearful cops, with cops, with consequences. The sociological factors are ever present, and must always be taken into consideration. We are now finally fully realizing the urgent necessity of connecting police to their communities in a bond of cooperation and friendship. We can do this, and we can clean up the corruption in America's police departments and in our streets, just like Chief J..f Parker did in Los Angeles in the turbulent post World War Two Hispanic versus gringo street wars. But first, we will have to admit the need to do so......................WE PROMOTE THIS WEBSITE IN ORDER TO PROMOTE ORIGINAL THINKING....PLEASE SHARE!