Infographic: A Neutral Look at Police Brutality

A Neutral Look at Police Brutality, shared with CopBlock.org by Matthew Pelletier of http://Accelerated-degree.com cites outlets such as DOJ’s National Criminal Justice Reference Service for a somewhat inside look behind the thin blue line.

I love these infographics – they take seemingly-dry statistics and make them visually appealing, which helps in their overall objective of communicating information.

Let’s unpack this graphic:

• Many of the stats speak directly to the culture that exists today in policing, a system that suffers from server perverse incentives since it is an artificial monopoly. In plain English that just means that while cops claim to serve and protect you the “customer,” they put themselves and their colleagues first. Turning a blind-eye to an overly-aggressive and heavy-handed colleague is the norm. As is ostracizing the rare (but increasing!) colleague who speaks-out against such actions. And that’s not surprising – police employees are sheltered from competition and any real mechanism of accountability (just check out the last data-point to see how responsive Chicago PD has been), save for withdrawing your consent. Fortunately, that’s the angle many are now advocating.
  
• One caption near the bottom says: “79% of police feel that reports in the news media have caused the public to distrust law enforcement” – that level of distrust is earned. If the lamestream media didn’t default to giving a free pass to aggressors who wear a badge that number would likely be closer to 100% Just think of how most news outlets back off from asking tough questions or posting personal information when the accused aggressor wears a badge.
  
• re: the “A few bad apples” portion – might these rates be higher if filing a complaint actually made any difference? Hell yes they would. Instead, most people wronged by someone wearing a badge realize that it’d be a waste of their time to file a complaint. Just how much justice can be had when the investigators and aggressor work for the same outfit? When the “rules” are created out of thin air and interpreted by their friends? When omitting or distorting the truth is so rampant that the word testlying is common vernacular. This is why Cop-Reports.com was created.