Which of the NAACP's demands do you support?

[MarkD]

I would agree to #4, but I wonder if the NAACP has ever demanded that police academies start training future officers about the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause and how it pertains to police officer work. Cadets are already trained in certain other aspects of constitutional law, such as how to interrogate suspects and how to conduct lawful searches, so they ought to add training in the Supreme Court's case law about racial equality. They should be trained that it is unconstitutional to treat a suspect worse because of race or national origin. If the NAACP hasn't demanded that yet, then why don't they start doing so now?

[MarkD]

I would agree to #4, but I wonder if the NAACP has ever demanded that police academies start training future officers about the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause and how it pertains to police officer work. Cadets are already trained in certain other aspects of constitutional law, such as how to interrogate suspects and how to conduct lawful searches, so they ought to add training in the Supreme Court's case law about racial equality. They should be trained that it is unconstitutional to treat a suspect worse because of race or national origin. If the NAACP hasn't demanded that yet, then why don't they start doing so now?

Telling fully grown adults that racism is bad isn't gonna make them stop being racist

Not just "bad," but unconstitutional.

Are you contending that police officers who have killed people have done so because no one told them that killing people was against the law?

No, I am not contending that.
If you have made this kind of straw man accusation a habit of yours, I ought to buy you a big bale of hay and lots of little doll's clothes so you can make lots more.
I am contending that lots of police officers probably make use of racial profiling quite frequently, because they think that racial profiling is just as acceptable as any other kind of profiling, and if so, then maybe lessons about how racial discrimination is more legally unacceptable than any other kind of discrimination would curtail the use of racial profiling. I am contending that police officers ought to be taught about the difference between rational basis reasoning than strict scrutiny reasoning, so that they can see why it would be that racial profiling is constitutionally unacceptable. Things like THAT are what I am contending.
Geez, maybe the next time I see one of your posts, I'll throw a straw man your way, and see how you like it.

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Donerail: Yes, establishing a prima facie case against the police is going to be difficult. But I am not talking here about how to litigate against the police, am I? I am only talking here about what to teach prospective police officers as they are trained. Teaching prospective police officers about the difficulty of establishing a prima facie case will probably give them an "easy out" if they are indeed racists, as they can predict what might happen to them if they do end up practicing racial profiling, but on the other hand, learning about the unconstitutionality of racial profiling might at least give many future officers a conscience.