A Floridasheriff on Friday fired a deputy who fatally shot a Black airman at his home while holding a handgun pointed to the ground.
Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden fired Deputy Eddie Duran, who fatally shot Senior Airman Roger Fortson on May 3 after responding to a domestic violence call and being directed to Fortson’s apartment.
Body camera video shows that when the deputy arrived outside Fortson’s door, he stood silently for 20 seconds outside and listened, but no voices inside were heard on his body camera.
That is a Fund the Police position. More training doesn’t fix a lack of consequences. You have to take money and/or freedom away from them for doing bad things, or you’ll never see positive change.
I never said anything about giving more money to police departments.
Exactly. You were talking about the creation of large bureaucratic entities that would work hand in hand with police departments. What happens when police departments want to recruit. Maybe they can offer cheap loans to people who go to those universities. Maybe when officers retire, they can go work for those independent organizations that you’re talking about.
All of the above is expensive, all of it makes large law enforcement even more entrenched in society despite value or lack thereof, and none of it has anything to do with accountability or oversight. You’re proposing a solution that doesn’t even address the real problem.
I wasn’t expecting you to revive this discussion, but I’ll still talk about it. I was suggesting that the independent oversight board is funded by diverting police funds. For it to be independent, we’d have to prevent former cops and their families from being on the board. Since the independent board is responsible for issuing the police licenses, that would be pretty easy to track.
For the record, I’m not saying that this is the only solution either. To me, this is a large part of the overall solution for ending police violence. There are a lot of police reforms I want to see, but we have to start somewhere.