There is a big disconnect in your thinking here.

To the extent that cops start getting jailed for unjustified shootings, the mechanism through which that would reduce unjustified shootings is that it would stop cops from over-policing.

I think the disconnect comes from not really understanding violence. Once a cop initiates a hostile encounter, everything changes. There is no more controlling the situation. It has a life of it’s own. The other person could immediately and clearly cooperate, they could immediately and clearly start to fight, or they could be anywhere in a vast dimly-lit sea of grey in between the two.

Once anything other than immediate and clear cooperation occurs, all parties involved are on really thin ice. It’s not a matter of slow, careful, methodical escalations until the situation is resolved. There is no time or space for that in the realm of violence. The cold truth of it is, whoever uses overwhelming debilitating force first is the one that gets to keep breathing. Every second you allow the other guy to stay in the fight brings with it enormous risk to yourself.

This why you will NEVER see me starting a dispute with a stranger over bull****. If I were to do that, I would have zero control over how bad things got.

Under the current model of criminal justice in this country, 90% of a cop’s job is going around starting disputes with strangers over bull****.

I wasn’t mad at George Zimmerman because he shot Trayvon Martin. I was mad at him because he followed Trayvon Martin and started a dispute with him for no good reason. That was the crime. The shooting was just the consequence.

I really hope everyone here keeps this in the mind the next time they have an urge to go yell at some random guy for dropping his cigarette butt on the sidewalk, or decide to confront someone over a ridiculous parking job. You’re starting a game where you don’t really understand the stakes.

I don't think I have a disconnect, since I agree with everything you've said. I just think it's foolish to even talk about punishing cops who overpolice while we live in a society where cops who shoot unarmed people are rarely even charged with a crime.

I think reducing overpolicing has to happen at the administrative level or higher. I would love if we could get communities to reduce overpolicing while also going after the most dangerous cops.

The solution has to address the root of the problem. You can either make cops too scared to interject themselves into unserious situations because every interaction carries a potential prison sentence with it. Or people can actually start looking closely at the real problem of policing turning into a job whose main purpose is to output arrests.

The racism in this situation is a problem, but it’s not nearly the biggest problem. But the racial aspect seems to be all that get’s discussed. It’s bigger than that. Under the current system, if everyone the U.S. were the same race, whoever was near the bottom of the status ladder would be having the same problems with cops that black people have now. The cops are systematically incentivized to lock on to the easiest target group and go nuts.

The last time I got pulled over by a cop was 14 years ago. If my status rank were to start precipitously dropping, I bet I start getting pulled over a lot more often. Even if my driving habits remained exactly the same.

George Carlin had a joke about how rich people needed to keep a certain percentage of people in extreme poverty in order to keep the middle class constantly scared.

This is how our current model for policing operates. Until we fix this, all the problems that flow out of it won’t go away.

Punishing cops for bad shootings isn’t an efficient way to deal with this, and likely would end up with some good cops suffering unjust conquences. A cop can have a bad shooting without being an ******* or a coward or an incompetant. It’s a natural side effect of constantly rolling up on people with an implied threat of violence. It’s not always the cop’s fault. They’re playing the game they were told to play, and this is one of things that comes out it.

Agree completely that the root of the problem is overly aggressive unprofessional policing. What creates that are the wide availability of guns and the overcriminalization of drugs (use in particular) with the violence that entails.

I think the bolded is too facile. I don't know what you mean by "for profit" judicial system. I'm no fan of private prisons, but I'm skeptical about whether they are a huge root cause of poor policing.

Put another way, if we eliminated private prisons (which I be happy to do), I think we would still have a lot of work to do on the policing front.

In contrast, I could change the rules of soccer in a way that would eliminate diving almost overnight.

Less purported criminals, less police, less judges, less prosecutors, less jails...less jobs. Being tough on crime enriches people, and is self-serving. A lot of prosecutors become politicians. The point is, the system is set up in away to incentivize catching criminals, and it has unintended consequences of over policing, however, having less incentive to catch criminals could lead to more unchecked criminality. The difficult part is adjusting the levers to reach a decent balance.

It is not just the explicitly for-profit elements. Government agencies want bigger budgets. It's just natural. Government workers and their unions want jobs. Prisons and court houses are big construction projects and contribute to the economy wherever they are built. Jobs for lawyers.

I think the very best thing you could do to cut back on over-policing is to cut back on the tools available to an over-active "justice" system.

I know I'm incredibly late to the party on this one, but I can't resist some Yaxley-Lennon bashing.

The trial wasn't a secret. We all knew that some child grooming gang was being tried. What the media couldn't report were specific details of the trial because:
It could prejudice the jury
It could harm the defendants who were still "innocent till proven guilty"
It could harm victims and witnesses who don't want to be in the press
It could do all of the above to a series of related ongoing investigations and prosecutions

What DIDN'T happen was that Tommy Robinson turned up a secret mystery court and uncovered cases that nobody knew about. What DIDN'T happen was that the press were to be forever silenced on the matter. It's just that the court's priority is the trial at hand and ongoing investigations.

I suppose we can squabble about whether the freedom of press is more important than the fairness of trials, but that's not the case Tommy Robinson was making. Tommy Robinson was in his typical full blown "What about them Muslims" rage.

The funny thing being about his "journalism" is that you can literally ring any court in the country and ask about a case they're dealing with and they will gladly tell you if any restrictions are in place. If you don't have their number, you can walk in and ask. But Tommy didn't think to walk in and ask, because he's not a journalist and he wasn't interested in anything other than causing a ruck.

Everybody in the country knows who he is, what he'd done, and he's been the centre of headlines while his case leading to his eventual imprisonment has been ongoing. And during all that time, the media has been free to say exactly what he did - which would be weird if they couldn't mention the thing he was doing.

Independent of what is going on with Robinson, you dont think there is/was any type of cover-up going on? I mean, they had an investigation that wasn't covered, some trials that weren't covered, and then in the end all we have is some names of men, crimes they committed, and sentences given.

You are satisfied how this all went down that justice was served? I mean given the way the US justice system works, with the Epstein fiasco just being the latest public case of misjustice, I think most people would agree this kind of faith in the justice system would be severely misplaced here.

Look, Tommy Robinson has been jailed for committing contempt of court again. This isn't his first conviction. The guy has also been convicted of assault and fraud. More than once.

When you try to pass him off as a "journalist" who Big Brother have attempted to silence it just shows you haven't got a clue who he is. You've just seen a headline or a picture of him in his "jailed for journalism" t-shirt and figured you were on to a winner.

But be specific for me. What about this case do you think has been "covered up"?

edit:

Here's a list of the convicted men, with pictures of them, where they lived, and what their convictions are for. On the BBC website. There's quotes from some of the victims too.

What is it you want to be reported that you think hasn't been?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-45918845