ukcatfannfl
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Member # 1425
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posted 06-17-2020 10:40 AM
This is a letter to me from the son of the former police chief of Miami who is a friend of mine so I can attest this is a true version..
puts police shootings in a better context!
Commissioners,
Police do not fear accountability or scrutiny. Police do not fear body camera or cellphone surveillance. Police fear being judged by people who are not educated about the laws that grant them their authority and the authority to use force. They fear being judged by people who are not trained on when and how to use force. They fear having videos and partial videos aired publicly to masses who don’t understand its just a part of an incident and not representative of the entire incident...videos aired without the context provided by a thorough investigation by experienced police professionals. They despise being linked as a whole to officers and incidents on the other side of the country that have no bearing on the work they do in their city. The video of Minneapolis Officer Chauvin and George Floyd is damning and inflammatory, and even the worst police officer will say there is no justification for a knee on the neck of a person in handcuffs but the hysteria that has followed that video and others since has validated all those fears. Officers have always known that a video could be weaponized to inflame the public just as easily as it could exonerate.
For several years now officers around the country have been sacrificed, fired and criminally charged by people who do not understand policing to the whims of people who do not understand the law. It is no surprise to see these officers acquitted in courts. Officers involved in the deaths of Freddie Gray were acquitted because they acted within the laws and training on use of force. A grand jury declined to charge the Officer involved in the death of Eric Garner because he acted within the law. A grand Jury declined to file charges against the officer involved in the death of Michael Brown. After a trial a jury found the officer involved in the death of Philando Castile not guilty. These officers are not acquitted because the juries condone racism or brutality; they are acquitted because when the laws and evidence are explained to reasonable people in a setting free of pressure from outside interests reason has a better chance to prevail.
The irony is that when politicians support mass hysteria in this manner they only aggravate the final outcome, further inflame the uninformed public and in the end weaken law enforcement’s first, best weapon against escalation and the need to use force in the first place...their presence and the authority that it bears. I know you are in a difficult position but I propose you would serve the public and the law better if you did not take a side and instead supported thorough investigations and their results.
The new pressure to ‘defund police’ means a lot of different things to different groups. For some it is a way to punish police for perceived brutality for others it is a noble effort to achieve the rule of law with less interaction with law enforcement (who wouldn’t want that). I’m sure that as fellow public servants you know as well as I do that no problem was ever solved by ‘defunding’ it.
Thank you,
Christopher Cuccaro,
Miami-Dade Police Officer
25 years
[ 06-17-2020, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: ukcatfannfl ]
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ukcatfannfl
Posts: 8771 | From: Inverness, FL | Registered: Jun 2001
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