Why aren’t these attitudes, beliefs and behaviors caught long before these men are given guns and badges? We keep asking what’s wrong with our law enforcement and questioning whether we need reforms. How can any of these law enforcement officers be trusted to engage women and people of color in the course of their duties if their basic belief systems are racist and misogynistic? Protect and serve?
And don’t forget, these guys are protected by qualified immunity, which is almost impossible to contravene in practice.
This is just a sliver of what’s wrong all over the country. Let’s start by instituting much more stringent filtering systems for entrance into the police academies and then lengthen training by six months and expand and add many areas of training required. Let’s stop fretting, wringing our hands, pleading not enough resources or funding, and just do the job right, a job we know has to be done.
Are there good cops? Yes, of course, and I have known a bunch of them.
But we should all be really concerned by how often unhealthy attitudes, beliefs and behaviors are never discovered or, in some cases, ignored.
Stephen McArthur
Montpelier
