Don't tangle with a cop in America

The cost and possible cause of confrontations between police officers and civilians, whom they have sworn to protect.

We have all read or watched the news stories of the beatings and deaths of our fellow citizens at the hands of police. I for one believe there is nothing new about this behavior by police. What is new is the explosion of phones, with cameras, on the streets and access to social media where videos can go viral.

Town, cities, municipalities have been paying off the relatives of the dead for years.

For years police officers having been killing us.  But unless we lived in the area where the crime was committed we knew nothing.

But again that has changed and so today we find out that Baltimore has settled with Freddie Gray’s family and will pay them $6.4 million to settle the claims made in his arrest and death at the hands of 6 police officers (They are all facing trials with charges from assault to murder)

The Baltimore Sun in this article states “The payment is larger than the total of more than 120 other lawsuits brought against the police department for alleged brutality and misconduct since 2011.

The City of Baltimore is accepting full civil liability, but not saying that the officers did anything wrong.  So, Mayor Rawlings-Blake, is spending almost $7M of the city’s money, but that does not mean that she and the City Council think that he was murdered.

How many officers and how much training could have been bought for that money? Why are local governments willing to pay outrageous amounts of money to victims and or their families, but do not see fit to spend time and money training their officers to serve and protect, rather than letting them roam the streets acting like cowboys in a bad B film?

What is it about America that has resulted in the shoot first; ask questions later mentality, which is practiced by law enforcement and civilians? 

(2013 Renisha McBride. Detroit, MI).

Civilians have been watching too many bad movies, listening to nuts on the radio and TV and since we are a country of “Laws” except when the 2^nd Amendment enters into the dialogue, we are a country where almost any Tom, Dick and Harry can purchase a gun, either legally or illegally.

And then we come to what I am beginning to think maybe the reason that police officers are trigger-happy.

Is the problem anabolic steroids?

In 2004 the DEA warned of the use of problems caused by the growing use of steroid abuse by American police and listed the symptoms of such use.

In 2008, the International Association of Chiefs of Police with over 16,000 members approved a resolution calling “upon state and local law enforcement entities to establish a model policy prohibiting the use of illegally obtained steroids and warn of the dangers of steroidal supplements and to development of instructional materials to aid in these efforts.”
Nothing has happened to make that resolution a reality. Would Freddie Gray and others who have died in the past year be alive today if that resolution had become more than words on a piece of paper?
The Phoenix Police Department, which was at the forefront of testing stopped in 2007. 
In 2008 Kim Humphrey wrote a piece about the need for a strategy to combat the use of steroids.  A few years later he told a reporter “"You don't want anyone carrying a gun — having a rage or a mood problem or a depression problem — [while] taking a drug they shouldn't be taking."

So rather than local governments using some of the millions that are paid out in claims to test the police for steroid use, they do nothing and the reputations of their cities and police departments are trashed. They have not followed MLB's lead and have done nothing to stem usage and so we have:
Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, teenagers at a pool, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBoise and Christian Taylor.  Those are the names we know, how many don’t we know?

Did those men and women come in contact with a steroid using, gun carrying “law enforcement officer? We don’t know, they were tested, but of course the results were not released.
If steroids are the problem, how long will it be before that 2008 resolution becomes more that a piece of paper?