Note that this is much more prevalent in the US than anywhere else.
Part of it might be gun prevalence, but the problem seems to be largely cultural to me. Police Unions abhorrent behavior entrench it, too.
Part of it might be gun prevalence, but the problem seems to be largely cultural to me. Police Unions abhorrent behavior entrench it, too.
The Cartels import weapons by the container load, and not from the US. And that's not including the ones they steal or just appropriate from their own government.
And please read wikipedia on the subject
I don’t care what Wikipedia has to say about anything - especially where guns are concerned.
You don't need to win in a gunfight in order to win.
I don't think there is a European perspective. We haven't had anything close to the gang crime problem in the US in a long time, and when we did have it, guns weren't a thing.
It's obvious that there are lots of issues, but "look, we don't have them because we do X" doesn't work when we didn't have anything comparable in the first place. I'm certain that we would see very different policies if London, Paris or Berlin had the murder rate of Chicago, and it wouldn't be "let's spend more money on mental health".
No, it's really not, and "you're American, you just don't want to see it" is not an argument. And if it was, it wouldn't work, because I'm not American and am not living in the US. Born, raised and still living in Europe.
That's how I know that we never had anything like the US situation in recent history. Hell, even during the world wars when criminals would've had a field day, it wasn't anywhere close.
It's not hard to find stories about police brutality and police corruption in areas far from any gang activity (small towns in the midwest, for instance). You can also find stories about police departments in similarly small towns that have been able to obtain serious military-grade equipment that they definitely don't need.
And even separate from all that, you have things like civil asset forfeiture, where the police think it's totally reasonable and OK to just steal people's stuff, without the people being even suspected of any crime, and the law (in many places) allows it.
This is all part of a culture that tells cops they are above the law, they have the power, and everyone else just needs to bow down and accept that.
Then you combine that with the serious, organized efforts white supremacist groups have gone to over the years to essentially take control of the police force...
Yeah, the biggest "gang crime problem" here is the gang in blue.
Certainly, I agree with that. And the US culture is very different from European cultures (which is not a surprise, given how quickly the country changes and how young it is). Comparing it to Europe where we're sitting on a very different (and much more stable still) culture with very different traditions, a completely different approach to individualism vs collectivism etc, isn't helpful, and you won't get anywhere if you dismiss 99% of the difference and then say (yes, I'm exaggerating, and no, I don't mean you specifically but people who like to point to Europe in comparison) "well, clearly, it's because the citizens don't have guns and the police wear friendlier uniforms".
American isn't changing faster or slower than any other place either, it just is favoring certain ethics that are counterproductive to a peaceful society. Reminds me of certain other fundamentalist places in the world. It of course makes sense it would turn out this way, many early settlers went across the Atlantic precisely to be able to practice their fundamentalist versions of protestantism. Some of that carries of into this I am sure.
Seriously, take up some literature on deescalation tactics for police, and in particular evidence based effectiveness of such methods in comparisionto other tactics.
That's a small part of it, yes. But mostly, it's very individualistic, and it's very different from European cultures in that regard which will obviously result in very large differences in results.
> American isn't changing faster or slower than any other place either
Errr, yes it is. The demographic make-up of America has been determined by waves of immigration, that changes culture. And it has been happening much faster than in other places. You're rewriting history and I don't understand your motives.
Migration is similarly not exclusive to America. Tons happens in Europe too, we're humans after all! Moreover, country and language borders tend to create different spaces for local differentiation, which is something that is much rarer in the US due to the fact that Americans (almost) all speak English. It's no accident you will find most variance in places people do not speak English (Cajun culture, Spanish-American culture) or a very different English (South<>North, poor neighborhoods/cities vs affluent areas).
Step outside of the Anglosphere!
The fact is that police decided to escalate their response to gun crime is entirely on them. The desire to turn things into a "war" between police and non-police validates the decision to use guns against police. After all they're soldiers.
Further more the consistently abusive behavior of police and complete lack of consequences reinforces to abused communities that police are no different from any other gang, with the exception that they will never be arrested. That again justifies treating them as just another violent gang, and so use of equivalent force against them is reasonable.
Police also are more violent, and push harsher charges, against specific communities. By doing that they've established that they are not operating fairly, and that lack of fairness further establishes police as an enemy.