Police Reform Might be a Race Issue

 Police reform in the U.S.A. is a hot topic for Democrats and particularly blacks. Federal reforms tend to be universal fixes that break a lot of eggs to make minority omelets. My ideas on the topic are general and inexpert. Yet I will write them, or summarize them anyway.

White people are fairly satisfied with the state of police departments. Before racial integration mostly white communities worked very hard to eliminate police corruption. Internal affairs and F.B.I. investigations tended to square things away, and like military units with old lineages they tended toward stability. Integration changed that. J. Edgar Hoover being a homo may have been hot on undermining white police corruption and the strait world order in order to make a kinder, gentler society where one day he and his kids might be openly queer. History sometimes make silk purses out of sow's ears...it's all in the timing.

f course police departments in the old south served to arrest an enable convict labor of blacks. In the modern era racial integration made more white police interaction more like that of political peers with blacks yet the policing was arm's length and cautious because of the recent history of radical black activism, rioting and criminal behavior of undereducated people in slums. Blacks today are still the driving force in modern police reform primarily to benefit themselves understandably. For white people police are satisfactory, even so they would generally prefer quality poling of blacks in a way that black Americans are satisfied too. 

Hispanic Americans don't complain about policing too much. In Mexico and other Latin countries police departments are sometimes expected to have a high percentage of corruption and good cops are sometimes killed by drug cartels. The Mexican Marines and years ago the Federal police are regarded as honest and the remainder dubious. Maybe Hispanics don't expect American police to be more honest and are satisfied if they are not persecuted tor harassed. Maybe Hispanics have lower expectations of police based on cultural experience to the south- I just don't know. 

So how to reform police for black Americans and Hispanics too even if they don't expect much of the Federal government except to let more Hispanics enter the U.S.A. That is the federal question. Without a good answer it would be dangerous to willy nilly throw some experimental fixes on the nation and see if they work. If too many crimes occur after the new era of policing it is likely a harsh counter-reaction would follow if history is much of a guide.