The same reader posted an addition to his first reply that I didn’t notice until posting my initial reply:
Case in point : newly released body cam footage of the Police killing in Atlanta makes clear that Rayshard Brooks did not have a weapon — he said he did not have a weapon and the officers confirmed this by patting him down. Hence, had the response team been British bobbies without guns, there would not have been a killing last night.
My impression from the tape is that the violence didn’t start until the officers attempted to cuff him for, presumably, public intoxication. It’s not hard to see how an intoxicated black man, faced with handcuffs and menacing cops, would decide to make a break for it. It’s a bad decision caused by another bad decision, but given the societal context he’s in, it’s not surprising. The real solution is fixing society.
ALSO, I have heard (but not found the actual reference) that body cam footage has NOT led to more accountability by the police, or a reduction in police killings.
I’d very much like to see that pointer.
And while I’m on a hobby horse, the Right-Wing Extremist 2nd Amendment Gun Nuts & Weapon Manufacturers profiting therein — all are part of weapon proliferations such that police training in the US *has to* account for the possibility of a weapon at every turn — which is why officers wear the body armor, and are trained to react forcefully with their weapon if they are threatened. Whereas in the UK & New Zealand the Bobbies mostly don’t have to worry about that. Not saying that banning weapons stops its proliferation in the hands of wrong-headed people, but cutting off the oxygen to the 2nd Amendment Gun Nuts would go far to stop domestic killings, suicides, mass killings, and eventually (perhaps) a de-escelation of police having to train for urban warfare.
2nd Amendment absolutism, as well as misreading of the 2nd Amendment, accounts for far too many deaths in this nation. Having once been on the other side of the debate, although never an actual gun owner[1], it’s not hard to fathom the misreadings, as well as the paranoia and forgetfulness in that it’s not The Government, but Our Government, the bad math involved, etc, all motivated by confirmation bias, which is to say critical thinking is not applied because the arguments back up the preferred conclusion.
