JohnRawls wrote:I am actually not sure why the US policing system doesn't punish this and why cops defend the actions of other cops in this regard. This phenomenon seems to be especially prevalent in US while in Europe it is a lot less. Even if we exclude the culprits race/skin colour. Still, the killer needs to have a fair trial and they do take some time, it would never be instant even if the US system was good in this regard. The riots are definitely sending a message and you are right that going somewhere where the rich and powerful reside will have a huge effect.
I am kidna split on this. Riots are illegal and should be put down by the police or the national guard. On the other hand they do serve a purpose. Also sending the national guard to confront the rioters will be very unpopular and Trump is already down an almost no-return hole. So he won't do it, he will wait until the governers do it so to blame them.
The real question thought is how to fix the US policing system in this regard? What exactly is malfunctioning? How do you fix it? Simply saying that cops are racists or pigs is not going to get us anywhere. To be fair to police, they are doing their job so they get labelled pigs and racists. There should be stricter punishments for police who use execcive violence up to jail time. But then again, this will weaken the police apparatus and is against the idea of police.
The police are part of the criminal justice system of the USA. Many studies have found innate bias in sentencing, and privatizing prisons is making it an incentive to throw people in jail John Rawls. Even for petty crimes that used to be never eligible for imprisonment. It effects poorer people since they rarely have the bail funds or the lawyer funds to pay for fighting charges. They plea and accept sentences even when they are innocent since paying the many thousands of dollars to bail out of the prison system is too much for them to come up with.
Most judges and jury sometimes tend to be chosen kind of without much consideration for proper socioeconomic backgrounds. What do I mean by that? That you have juries who never lived or worked or even visited the defendant's neighborhood or county or area of the city. They don't share a lot of characteristics. Another thing is that juries are filled with people who speak English natively. My husband got off of jury duty because his English was not native. Which meant that Latinos who were accused of crimes and tried for those crimes never had the same linguistic or cultural group judging them for the crime or charges. Translators have to be certified and many jurors don't get most of what is said. They have to be fast and it is not something that they process well. if you study the whole system? It doesn't serve justice. Only the very very wealthy and the ones who could afford lawyers that challenge the jury selection people well because they have supplementary legal support crews to help the main defense lawyer.
The entire system is very inefficient as well. People can get off of jury duty due to having dependent adults and or for being immigrants, for many reasons. But many people come up with excuses because they don't pay you at all for jury service in many districts. Each day you are there deliberating or listening to testimony? You are not making your regular salary. You are losing money. Students are not excused and can easily be absent during finals and are distracted waiting for the damn trial to be over to take their final exams that were postponed or delayed due to jury duty.
Parking in an urban busy area that is astronomically expensive is a problem. Bus routes being congested and having to wake up hours before the start of a trial during peak traffic hours is another. Following the instructions of the judges that can be tedious and long winded. You got the security guards patting everyone down and etc. I used to be a court interpreter in federal and local courts. I also was a juror is three different trials. You vote? You are stuck with the jury summons. You don't show they put out a warrant for your arrest.
You must go. The entire system sucks in many ways. It is about MONEY. How much you can pay. To whom. For legal defense in criminal or civil trials.
If you can't afford it? Expect a plea deal, a guilty verdict and time in the slammer run by a for profit prison system that is making money for a longer sentence than what is necessary or customary. A permanent criminal record reduces your ability to get hired by a significant amount of employers and bars you for life from collecting welfare, or qualifying for affordable housing programs. It will bar you from a large group of professions for life such as social work, teaching, nursing, police or law enforcement, firefighting, managing any money at a bank, financial advising, engineering, retail, and many others.
I hope that answered you thoroughly.