Improving Our Police Forces

A reader sent me this piece, a statement by a police chief:

It’s not the police who need to be retrained, it’s the public. We have grown into a mouthy, mobile phone wielding, vulgar, uncivil society with no personal responsibility and the attitude of ‘it’s the other person’s fault, you owe me’. A society where children grow up with no boundaries or knowledge or concern for civil society and personal responsibility.

He clearly has a point about our disrespectful and non-compliant citizenry. People, and especially our young, don’t have the manners that we oldsters had when we were growing up.  But to blame citizens’ behavior and to take no responsibility for things like the spate of deaths of unarmed black people is just atrocious. It’s completely obvious that the police need to be trained in de-escalating situations, using no more force than required, and not treating black people more harshly than whites.

If you wear a badge and reject that, you really need to find another line of work.