President Obama's comments on Ferguson today and his plans for helping to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Courtesy of the USA Today:  

The government will try to reduce the "simmering distrust" between police and minority communities, President Obama said Monday, in part by issuing new rules for military-style equipment and seeking more cameras to be worn by law enforcement officers. 

"This is not a problem simply of Ferguson, Missouri," Obama said after a day of meetings with local government and law enforcement officials from across the country. "This is a problem that is national." 

The president announced a new task force to study best police practices, as well as tighter controls on federal money that local law enforcement agencies use to buy military-style equipment. 

The goal, Obama said, is "to make sure that we're not building a militarized culture inside our local law enforcement." The Obama administration also unveiled a three-year, $263 million plan to assist community policing, including a $75 million plan for 50,000 new body cameras to be worn by officers. 

The president said that community policing can help make officers and their communities "partners" in battling crime and promoting safety. "We can build confidence and we can build trust, but it's not going to happen overnight," Obama said.

Dealing with the militarization of the police and putting more body cameras on more police officers will surely have a dramatic effect. But of course there are still the systemic problems of underlying racism, a lack of respect for the communities that they serve, and a John Wayne mentality that needs to be addressed as well among many police officers in this country.

For most communities in this country there is simply no need to provide armored vehicles and military style body armor and weapons to our police. And once they have them, it will obviously make them feel like soldiers at war instead of peace keepers at home.

I think even with the President taking these steps and expressing his frustration at the events that took place in Ferguson, that too many people still see the color of his skin and simply categorize this as a "black" problem that the majority of Americans simply do not need to worry about, or take steps to deal with.

Ultimately this needs to stop being seen as a "black" problem, and needs to be seen as an "American" problem.

Only then will there be serious, and long term attempt to protect ALL Americans from brutality at the hands of the people we hire to keep us safe.

Milwaukee police chief responds to questions from press with epic response.

Courtesy of Inquisitr:  

Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn made a national name for himself on Wednesday after an impassioned video went viral on YouTube. 

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel posted a three-minute clip of Flynn responding to police protesters, who turned out to a Fire and Police Commission meeting to slam the department over the shooting of a mentally ill man. 

Dontre Hamilton suffered from schizophrenia but was non-violent, according to family members. When Officer Christopher Manney approached Hamilton, he reportedly violated protocols that escalated the confrontation, and he ended up shooting Hamilton 14 times, killing him. 

Flynn responded by firing Manney, taking flak from the police union in the process. When police protesters showed up to verbally attack him and other members of the police at the meeting, Flynn was having none of it. He shouted back at many of them and took a phone call, much to the chagrin of the protesters. 

This led the press to ask Edward Flynn about his actions following the meeting. His response is not only angry, thought-provoking, and impassioned, but it also symbolizes what many law enforcement personnel feel about doing their jobs in the 21st Century. 

I think that sometimes people forget just how stressful of a job police officers have.

They deal with people at their very worst, and often they are confronted with numbing amounts of domestic abuse, death, and human despair.

This of course is no excuse for the cop who guns down an unarmed person, or uses excess force to make an arrest. But it does help us to understand just how frustrated police officers must get with constant attacks on their profession, and disrespect from their communities.

I thought Police Chief Edward Flynn's remarks were quite appropriate, and I think they help to remind us that these are just human beings trying to hang onto their humanity, in the face of incredibly heartrending experiences.