Quote:i was lucky enough to only have the one offense and nothing after or before. I was put in a stewart marchmen program and community service I knocked it out.  For about five years after that I got pulled over more often.  I quit making the mistakes to put myself in those positions and my friends that didn't are in jail or on probation or thoroughly tied up in the system now.


I am at an age now where I have friends who are cops.  One works in a sex offender unit and sets up sex offender stings.  The other is a SGT and former detective.  He is of the opinion Alton should have been drawn upon immediately if the call that came in said he had a gun, dumbest thing those officers did was tackle him.  He hates bad cops because in his mind they put him at risk with their bad decisions.


I guess the generational question I have is how many people got arrested for absolutely nothing, exactly how common is that?  I can't imagine all crime is made up by officers.  I can see some being the result of shady cops but I can't imagine a ton of cops are going to want to fabricate things and do more paper work then they have to.


I see the bigger picture, we need to stop the cultural harassing of a community through law enforcement.  At the same time we need to rehabilitate those communities so the mistakes of the past generations can be forgiven.  So we can take people with long rap sheets and find them jobs and a purpose in society so they don't fall into the same traps of poverty and crime.

 

Well, the stop and frisk policy in New York comes to mind as far as certain groups being stopped for no good reason other than the color of thier skin.  There are studies that show that there is racial profiling done by police.  And I'm tellin' ya, if you started pullin' over & searching white kids (18-27) at random, the amount of drup busts in that demographic would also increase.

 

You're right though, it's a very complex issue.  The idea of rehabilitating communities starts with the youth in those communities.  They need better schools, better opportunities, better outcomes.  They need investment in thier communities as well, in terms of economic investment.  This may be something that takes several generations to correct, hell it took several generations to devolve into what we have here.  

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