You can ignore the racial angle and still come away with the criticism that the culture among most police departments in American is VERY antagonistic towards the populations they serve. I could bang on about my personal experience but it's not super relevant here.

Just look at any major police scandal in the past decade. There's almost always an attempt at a cover up, and always a ton of officers that knew about it and did nothing. No matter what the crime or infraction is, police protect their own and circle up in the face of even the most benign criticism. There's a great book called I Got a Monster [1] that details Baltimore's infamous gun task force, and it's shocking how many people knew what they were up to for years. People who look the other way aren't good apples. For a bit of history, Radley Balko's Rise of the Warrior Cop [2] does a great job detailing the growth of us vs. them thinking among police nationally.

> It can be VERY hard to do the right thing, especially when it means it's the last thing you get to do (before you lose your job).

Police are almost NEVER fired. The number one goal of police unions is to prevent any firing for any reason ever, and they are very successful at that.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Got-Monster-Americas-Corrupt-Police/d...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...

Community based policing, cops on neighborhood patrols, has been on the decline for years.

Police funding is now more often used to to acquire military weapons/hardware.

"Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" is a highly recommended study of this problem.

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...

So the agency stockpiled arms neither for the purposes of fighting crime nor for any drug-dealing or nefarious state-overthrow activity but effectively as a kind of entertainment or a sort of fantasy that they'd be acting like the cops they saw on TV.

And here, it may seem strange but is actually logical that the thinking of real cops who don't shoot it out everyday seems to be driven by the images of TV cops who do.

This book is relevant here.

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...

It's true that local police have become much more militarized over the past decade or two. Trickle-down military-industrial complex, so to speak.

Radley Balko is a writer who's covered the issue thoroughly: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...

I just think it's pretty clear by now that the primary driving factor for police criminality becoming a political issue is that very many members of the socio-economic underclass now have internet-connected video cameras on them at all times.

I think the book "the rise of the warrior cop" explains that how the police does their job in the US has changed and why. It gave pretty satisfying answers as to why it's become what it is now.

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...

er, they're getting skewered in the media. United is paying the price for their mistake.

If they're regulated, next time they drag someone off a plane, they'll say "We were just following the handbook and were in accordance with federal regulations. Take it up with the FAA"

So no, no need to regulate the industry.

Also, the body you want to regulate them (the government) routinely does much, much worse to people.[0]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...

If you're interested in how this kind of thing happens (and alarmingly how often it happens), this book is an excellent read:

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...

In my opinion you're viewing this from the opposite angle (bottom-up versus top-down).

To me, much of the root cause (it's not just black males per se; think of all the dogs shot mostly unnecessarily by police for instance -- https://puppycidedb.com/) is the over-aggressive militarization of the American police force. Which occurred for many reasons, but primarily was due to various moral panics such as the "war on drugs", and the need of our oversized military industry to dispose of excess military equipment. (See Balko's book on this: https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...)

Ultimately, the problem I can see with such policies is that the "war" paradigms too many police departments are obsessed with divide people between The Good Guys and The Enemy. The police force should be about community first (protect and serve etc.). But when the motif is more Good Guys vs. The Enemy, this probably does allow things like racial bias to play an oversized role. And when the motif is more War War War, it probably encourages hair-trigger responses.

In my opinion, American police violence (and we do IMHO have the most over-aggressive culture of any rich world nation I've seen) won't be fixed until this attitude changes. This is less a police officer issue (officers can be trained to any culture) and more of the type of culture encouraged at a legislative level.

Their number one job is not to kill anybody innocent, and they are terrible at it.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...