Should being a racist/bigot/anarchist disqualify you from Police/Military/Office service?

By and large I have a strong distaste for employers using anyone's personal political or social views as a basis to discriminate. If its off the clock, off premise, and out of uniform, it should stay none of an employers' business, but law enforcement is one of my few exceptions. A city or county has a HUGE interest in their citizens confidence that race, religion and sexual orientation will play zero role in who get stopped, who gets believed, who gets prosecuted and who gets convicted that supersedes an individual right to engage in politically or socially offensive speech free of sanction or discipline.

Its also a stupid and incompetent defense attorney who does not reach for social media postings on the cops who arrested, or testifies at his client's trial. Its a great tactic on the way to file a nifty civil suit as well.

No way around this one. These views being expressed are toxic to any policing or prosecuting agency. Imagine the fun a lawyer will have in any case involving a use of force, when the officer is posting his views on blacks, Hispanics etc with a few more colorful references I cannot post on this forum.

 

Your workplace is where you are paid to work, and your private views have no place there.

 

I only wanted to help you, suggesting that a political views of a law obeying citizen should not prevent him from getting any job, as a soldier, policeman, teacher or other profession.

 

Obviously yes. But we need far less positions of power and that power to be far less than it is. Across the board.

 

She is married to a white guy and has white children.

 

Nah, white people hating white people is the way of white people. surely you noticed?

 

Her self hate must be all consuming...

 

Of course we don't, ever, expect consistency from the hypocrite crowd...

 

I commend you on your self awareness.

 

And that reason is COMMERCE. The market keeps people in line, not legislation.

 

Spoken like a 17 year old middle class white kid who's just discovered wokeism. Good and Evil .. totally binary! They don't coexist in all of us. Wokes are Good, and non-Wokes are Evil.

Back in my day, low self-esteem misfit teenagers went to Christian fellowship for this kind of validation crap.

 

How about "white people suck and I wish they'd all die"?

 

What if black people use golf to mock white people? What if Chinese people use monkeys to mock brown people? What if brown people use cruel caricatures to mock Chinese people?

 

Perfectly put. Thank you!

 

PTSD has VERY specific diagnostic criteria .. and let me say clearly and in the strongest terms - being insulted doesn't even begin to begin to get anywhere near even the lightest of those criteria.

 

EXACTLY. They have no place in the mind or concern of your employer, for the same reason.

 

Class action says whhhhhaaaaattttt? In an unregulated legislated market you get stuff like melamine in toothpaste, or toxic sludge left in rusting out barrels buried under subdivisions in an attempt to stop the damage before the people regulate the market. The job, whatever the market, keeps people in line so they can earn their daily.

 

Oh so you are not aware that PTSD episodes often have triggers? you'll have to forgive me if I dismiss your opinion as ill informed.

 

As an employer who would do a better job protecting and serving your customers? Someone without bigotry and prejudices or someone who hates a significant portion of your customer base? Why would you hire someone who does NOT treat all of your customers equally?

 

I am sooo on your side on the broad issue here, but you have no idea how much a few juicy racist or homophobic quotes will compromise a cop's usefulness in any precinct where blacks, Hispanics or LBGTQ members are a significant demographic. He cannot be anywhere near a case involving minorities, not investigating the crime scene, not interviewing witnesses or suspects, not near the custodial trail of evidence because he will be impeached based on his statements and his credibility will be stomped. He's literally not worth the money the city puts into him every year. Its probably better to be understaffed. As DA, you have a standard of beyond a reasonable doubt to meet with a black suspect, and Facebook posts attacking blacks, BLM, Maxine Waters, and Barack Obama as our first Kenyan president. Don't even bother to file it.

Defense attorneys ejaculate in their pants for the moments like that.

 

Why would you expect that someone can’t do his job properly because of his private views?
If an employee is a racist, he has no business badmouthing his employers clients/customers.
I know many nurses who don’t like particular patients but treat them all the same. You can’t refuse to care for someone because of their race or disease. It should be the same requirement for every worker.
If they can’t perform their job without discrimination, they need to find a job where it won’t matter.

 

The answer to your question above can be found in the systemic racism practiced by law enforcement throughout our nation.

Obviously they allow their racism to influence their job performance and we have way too many deaths already to establish the dire consequences of their FAILURE to do their jobs properly.

That is the REALITY that we are dealing with right now.

We MUST find a better alternative and there are proposals to make that happen.

Taking funding that is being wasted on militarizing the police and instead using it for COMMUNITY OUTREACH programs just make sense. Sending a police officer to deal with someone with mental issues becomes a death sentence when their racial bias kicks in. A community health worker in the same situation WITHOUT a GUN but WITH the proper TRAINING can defuse the situation without any loss of life regardless of their personal bias.

So your point about the NURSES treating everyone the same is valid in their work environment. However we do NOT provide police officers with the same training that would enable them to differentiate between someone who is mentally deranged and someone "resisting arrest".

 

We have a similar problem here with cops and the mentally ill. Not so obviously racist though.
It was exacerbated when cops were given guns.

I agree that often police are often seen as the only resource for dealing with the mentally ill. Same here.

Mental health is poorly resourced and the police don’t get as much education as would enable them to deal with these difficult situations.

a few more police need to go to jail for murder and then I believe the lesson will sink in.

 

There is also an undeniable impact on the minority communities which loses that sense of trust, and respect in law enforcement because of that corrosive acid which racism or homophobia or ethnocentrism represents. If you tolerate overt expressions of racism in your police force, the perception of bias, or animus poisons any well of mutual trust and cooperation between it and the minority community regardless of whether the cop used the slur in the office or on their personal twitter account. It tells the minority community something about the mindset of the person talking to their 16 year old boy. They will be less likely to talk to cops, less likely to open their doors, or give the benefit of the doubt when controversies show up if they perceive the cops as an adversary that profiles their children more, harasses them more, and works harder to see longer sentences . And that circulates back into a refusal to report crime, and rising crime rates and lower apprehension and conviction rates. It takes so little to inflame reactions and so much to rebuild that trust and respect once that reputation infiltrates.

 

Do you think that there is trust in law enforcement and respect for law enforcement?
You wouldn’t have to be a black person to have totally lost respect for law enforcement after witnessing George Floyd’s death or Breonna Taylor’s death.
Take their guns from the police and I think the whole scene would change.