St. Paul Mayor: It Starts With Who We Hire As Officers | Morning Joe | MSNBC

St. Paul, Minn. Mayor Melvin Carter discusses his city's demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, attending Floyd's memorial service in Minneapolis, the importance of who is hired to be a police officer and being the son of a police officer. Aired on 06/05/2020.
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St. Paul Mayor: It Starts With Who We Hire As Officers | Morning Joe | MSNBC

63 comments

  1. Cops who get fired by one department for brutality or other crimes should be barred for LIFE from any form of law enforcement. I wouldn’t even let them be a mall cop. Instead, a cop who gets fired for killing a kid in one town just moves one zip code over and gets rehired. Screw that.

    1. @Emily Moss Is that your analytical diagnosis doctor? How much do I owe you? Oh, wait, GoFundMe like all of your handout hero friends. lol🤣

    2. ​@Jaguar Godhmm… Are your lame attempts at insults your way of coping with being so sick in the head? Or is it just another consequence of your extreme stupidity?

    3. @Emily Moss If my words are registering as insults then they’d be anything but lame. Mission accomplished. Recede into your safe-space until it’s time to loot cheesecake and Louis Vuitton in the name of a violent felon/drug addict. Enjoy.

    4. @Jaguar God Hahahaha, No, your words are not registering as insults. Just _lame attempts_ at insults. Your kind have no sense of humor, so your best attempts will always fall flat. It’s like Trump’s unimaginative and astonishingly unfunny nicknames. “Or as I call her, ‘Nancy…'” lol
      Funny and clever are simply not in the right’s wheelhouse. Hate and racism are.

  2. Officers are taught to be cautious to the point of paranoia when interacting with the public. In doing so, they push their authority past acceptable thresholds for the average citizen.

    1. @Jan Tillmn and therein lies YOUR ignorance. There will be times where force is necessary but you want to equate every stop to a 6’7″ football player?? Besides, my point was concerning encounters with the “average” citizen. Are you really that desperate to justify excessive force? Maybe you’d change your tune if there was a knee on *your* neck because of a potential misdemeanor.

    2. Become a cop and see if you start to be a little paranoid. They see some messed up stuff and deal with a lot of dumb people and always must run towards the danger while you run away. Yes some police officers dont deserve a badge but you can’t judge them all because of others actions.

    3. @James McClain I know its a tough job and anyone can have a bad day but those bad cops are ruining peoples lives and even killing people. Some of them should have never been given a badge but others get desensitized over time. Police officers have to get better at policing themselves, they know who the bad apples are.

    1. @Nunya Bidnis Funny most citizens appreciate their police and respect them. Of course, if you’re out causing trouble, you probably have a different opinion.

    2. Jan Tillmn nah man that’s not possible they all have different ideological beliefs sing that antifa and Libertarians an anarchist are in League with each other is like saying Christians Muslims and Jews are in love in League with each other

    3. @lee Roberts I didn’t say Antifa. I said anarchist Libertarian boogaloo. Same ideology on a spectrum .Boogaloos want outright civil war and work with BLM to accomplish it.

    4. Christian V
      Just because he has 18 files doesn’t mean he was guilty of any of them. Investigations stay in your personnel jacket regardless of the outcome or reason for complaint. You would have to inspect each to find if there is a problem trend. Evidently there was not.

    1. I would’nt hold your breath waiting for Democrats to advocate disbanding a huge union, Funny how these incidents always seem to happen in Democrat citys….

    2. @Dark Stormy Ian Smith, john D and Dark Stormy: Quit blaming the Unions for any and every problem that comes up. The Unions don’t make policies. They don’t control the hiring of cops. It’s pure republican Union bashing to cover up any issue caused by someone else. You guys are spouting Republican propaganda.

    1. @D B But it is also the INTEGRITY of the Individual.
      You have to have the moral fortitude to “Do the Right thing” IN EVERYTHING YOU DO.

      If I am a Janitor, you had better believe; I am going to clean with the utmost pride and integrity in that job because that is the person who I was raised and to the HIGHEST standards possible.

      People lack that basic human value. The force needs to do a better job recruiting the right kinds of officers.
      But then, corruption sets in within the culture and the power demons set in and all the good has now become fueled by privilege and corruption.

      We already have enough of that Sheeit in our White House. It has to go💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩😠😠😠😠

    2. Truth. 13-19 weeks is not enough. That’s a crazy low amount of training involved with a position that yields a huge amount of power over citizens. Couple that with a few states not requiring them to even be of drinking age.

    3. @Sine Quanon Officers don’t have the power to rid departments of bad officers. That is a head supervisor/HR role.

    4. @AD1VET If they don’t have the power then GIVE them the power…this isn’t brain surgery. WHATEVER is preventing good cops from removing bad cops needs to be fixed…an anonymous call-in line, a peer review board…anything that works. Bad cops cannot be permitted to exist. In addition to making the job more dangerous and the community less trusting and cooperative, bad cops COST cities millions of dollars. If they won’t do it for moral and ethical reasons, maybe their wallets are enough motivation….take lawsuit settlements out of their pension fund. Make cops pay for their own liability insurance out of pocket and if their premiums get too high, they gotta go. Mandate psychological exams every six months.
      If the unions get in the way, eliminate them. The problems CAN be solved – it just takes the proper political motivation.

  3. “How do you change their attitudes?” You don’t. You weed out people with those attitudes.

    1. The job itself creates those attitudes. Cops only deal with the worst people and people at their worst. I can only imagine what that does to a human psychologically.

    2. @boredom2go I agree certain things about the hiring process and the actual way the job operates need to be changed like more community out reach, mandatory counseling with a contracted firm, and making cops and sheriffs more aware of their impact on communities and people as law enforcers.

  4. No, it starts with holding officers accountable for their actions. Regardless of who you hire.

  5. So why didn’t AG Ellison do anything for almost 3 years since he was elected MN AG, if it has been so bad for so long?

    1. It’s not about the pay. You don’t want people becoming police officers for the money. That won’t end well. It’s about managing the mental health of the officers. These are just people. They aren’t robots. If you keep throwing them into dangerous situations and into contact with the worst human beings all the time, they’ll be consumed by it.

      They need to handle these incidents in phased teams. If there’s an aggressive resistance to arrest, the officers on the scene will only be tasked with getting the suspect neutralized. A second team would be brought on site to transition to suspect welfare. These officers would not be amped up on adrenaline from the arrest and will completely relieve the first team.

    2. @T Boman on the fence because I’ve often seen offices deal with naked drugged people and thought “they aren’t being paid enough” but when they get more money, they get militarized. Even with allocations considered more money for individual police won’t stop racist cops

    3. @T Boman facts he have house here in Florida. And Windermere isnt a cheap place to live at.

    4. T Boman…….And that’s not enough for someone that puts their life on the line every time they report for their shift

  6. If you decide there is a mythical group conspiracy, then it makes sense that the only remedy is some mythical solution.

  7. It is the Mayors orders that the police have to take. PERIOD! The Mayor is #1 responsible. Sick of the criminals passing the buck.

    1. Why does the party matter? It’s a man not a Democrat, this is a human rights issue not a political issue.

    2. Nathan Napier it matters because in general, the Democratic Party asks more from government. Giving police more control and asking them to do much more than they should be.

  8. “The police departments announces they’re going to take sensitivity training, and add two more new requirements, Intelligence and Decency.”
    ¬George Carlin.

  9. I think we need to stand up for the VAST MAJORITY of fundamentally decent law enforcement officers. Thank you for your service.

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