"Surprising Speech by F.B.I. Chief Focuses on Police and Race"

[applegrove]

Surprising Speech by F.B.I. Chief Focuses on Police and Race

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/us/politics/fbi-director-comey-speaks-frankly-about-police-view-of-blacks.html?ref=politics&_r=0

"SNIP.................


WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, on Thursday delivered an unusually frank speech about the relationship between the police and black people, saying that officers who work in neighborhoods where blacks commit crimes at higher rates develop a cynicism that shades their attitudes about race.

He said that officers — whether they are white or any other race — who are confronted with white men on one side of the street and black men on the other do not view them the same way. The officers develop a mental shortcut that “becomes almost irresistible and maybe even rational by some lights” because of the number of black suspects they have arrested.

“We need to come to grips with the fact that this behavior complicates the relationship between police and the communities they serve,” Mr. Comey said in the speech, at Georgetown University.

While officers should be closely scrutinized, he said, they are “not the root cause of problems in our hardest-hit neighborhoods,” where blacks grow up “in environments lacking role models, adequate education and decent employment.”



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[markpkessinger]

1. A comment I just posted to the Times article . . .

Mark Kessinger

It is worth noting that Mr. Comey heads an agency that found its agents 100% faultless and totally justified in 150 out of 150 shootings of suspects -- 70 of them fatally -- from 1993 to 2011. Likewise, under Mr. Comey, the FBI exonerated itself for the highly questionable killing of Ibragim Todashev --a friend and associate of the Tsarnaev brothers -- during questioning by FBI agents after the Boston Marathon bombings. Simply based on the law of averages, a finding that shootings were justified 100% of the time is highly suspect. Thus, while I respect the eloquence and erudition of Mr. Comey's speaking and writing, I remain very skeptical that he is in any position to present the "hard truths" he purports to present in an objective way.

Nowhere in Mr. Comey's speech -- and yes, I read the full text -- did he address himself to the problems in American police culture. The old "blue wall of silence" seems to have changed little since the days Frank Serpico walked a beat. Sure, there are many cops who do not themselves engage in wrongful conduct. But officers good and bad are nearly universal in honoring that code of silence with respect to the wrongdoing of their colleagues (the occasional Frank Serpico or Adrian Schoolcraft notwithstanding). This turning of a blind eye towards wrongdoing within their ranks stands in direct conflict with Comey's assertion that police officers are "overwhelmingly doing the right thing for the right reasons."

[applegrove]

2. I just hope that there will be a better system in place to ensure more trust in the end,

on all sides.