06-09-2020, 08:10 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-09-2020, 08:19 AM by Anthony '58.)
Ever since Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem, I have had a four-point "Crittenden Compromise" to deal with the problem of excessive force by police in communities of color.
Here it is - and my apologies if I had already posted it here before:
1. Eliminate the shoot-to-kill policy that prevails in most police departments across the country, even when there is no evidence that the suspect is armed, and regardless of how minor the crime. Fear of lawsuits if an officer "kneecaps" such a suspect is what drives this policy. A shattered knee can generally be repaired, while a dead man can never be brought back to life.
2. Legalize marijuana, as polls show more than 60% of Americans now favor doing, for all purposes in every state. This will reduce contacts between police and people of color by at least half.
3. Also legalize concealed carry, which will do three things: First, it will abolish stop-and-frisk en passant because what the police would be looking for in essentially all stop-and-frisk situations would no longer be illegal to possess; second, it will give people of color an equal right to bear arms under the Second Amendment (95% of those serving time under the restrictive, confiscatory gun laws on the books in the various states are African-American or Latino); and third, this proposal is guaranteed to be very popular among gun-rights advocates, which is sure to give it broad bipartisan support.
4. Implement same-race policing; that is, only black officers patrol black neighborhoods, and only Hispanic officers patrol Hispanic neighborhoods (the latter also eliminating potential language barriers). And to anyone who thinks this is "radical," Boston did it in 1850, after Irish residents of such neighborhoods as Charlestown and South Boston complained of the brutal treatment they were receiving from WASP cops. Thus began the tradition of the Irish civil servant, which quickly spread both to other cities and to other uniformed services, most notably fire departments. This will also, by necessity, lead to the hiring of many more black and Hispanic officers - so, like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, it's a win-win.
Here it is - and my apologies if I had already posted it here before:
1. Eliminate the shoot-to-kill policy that prevails in most police departments across the country, even when there is no evidence that the suspect is armed, and regardless of how minor the crime. Fear of lawsuits if an officer "kneecaps" such a suspect is what drives this policy. A shattered knee can generally be repaired, while a dead man can never be brought back to life.
2. Legalize marijuana, as polls show more than 60% of Americans now favor doing, for all purposes in every state. This will reduce contacts between police and people of color by at least half.
3. Also legalize concealed carry, which will do three things: First, it will abolish stop-and-frisk en passant because what the police would be looking for in essentially all stop-and-frisk situations would no longer be illegal to possess; second, it will give people of color an equal right to bear arms under the Second Amendment (95% of those serving time under the restrictive, confiscatory gun laws on the books in the various states are African-American or Latino); and third, this proposal is guaranteed to be very popular among gun-rights advocates, which is sure to give it broad bipartisan support.
4. Implement same-race policing; that is, only black officers patrol black neighborhoods, and only Hispanic officers patrol Hispanic neighborhoods (the latter also eliminating potential language barriers). And to anyone who thinks this is "radical," Boston did it in 1850, after Irish residents of such neighborhoods as Charlestown and South Boston complained of the brutal treatment they were receiving from WASP cops. Thus began the tradition of the Irish civil servant, which quickly spread both to other cities and to other uniformed services, most notably fire departments. This will also, by necessity, lead to the hiring of many more black and Hispanic officers - so, like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, it's a win-win.
"These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation" - Justice David Brewer, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892