How American Police are Radicalized

America is unlike many other countries in our policing and police training. Each of our police jurisdictions are a little different with different hiring and training programs. Many, like Los Angele County Sheriffs, create an "us vs. them" mentality right from the beginning that makes police brutality seem a responsible response to crime. (For Americans, most other countries the "police" are organized as one unit at the state or federal level.) 

First remember that in America in general, more people have guns than in any other country except Afghanistan and parts of Africa in civil unrest. So the police are rightly worrieda bout their own safety.

Signs that freaked me out in Sarajevo ("Hand guns NOT allowed in this bar." in two different languages) are common throughout America.

But even where guns are less legal and possibly less prevalent (like Los Angeles County), the police training creates hatred and mistrust of the general population. It does it like this:

In Los Angeles County, if you want to be a sheriff (the 3rd largest force in America after the New York Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department) you spend the first tour of duty for 1 or 2 YEARS inside the A County Jail. 

So your first interactions with "the public" as a newly installed Sheriff are with the hardened criminals and small time operators that populate the LA County Jail. For at least a year!

And, in the jails, the prisoners usually self-divide up ethnically into gangs that fight it out for territory. So you come out of your first 1 or 2 years having lots of knowledge about Black, latino and white racists gangs. When they put you in a minority neighborhood, you aren't thinking, "Oh these folks are just like me". You remember they are gang members and violent.

LA County has been trying to change this for decades, but there aren't enough people that want to be jail guards, so the new officers have to do it.

Now imagine this same problem but repeated 17,985 times. Because that is the number of independent police jurisdictions there are.

Americans typically think everyone is like us. But look at the United Kingdom. Knowing they have about 1/6 the population they should have 1/6 the police forces or about 3,000 jurisdictions. They do not. They have 43.

Other countries?

France has 3.

China has 47.

Ed can explain how many of our various police departments were actually started as public and private institutions to hunt down escaped slaves. And this patchwork system developed into the complicated and often inequitable system we have now.

Before you think there is a simple answer, realize that it is not a simple problem. It is all but impossible to implement uniform change across 17,985 police departments.