i'll post a comment i wrote on a friends fb: there is going to be a tipping point and when it happens it is going to get ugly. when using the appropriate course of action to bring someone to justice is failing on multiple accounts people will take matters into their own hands. i'm not going to argue about the merits/demerits of gun control because that will get us no where, but i will say shit like this is exactly why i roll with an ak47 and body armor.
what i have a problem with is the police in full riot gear with machine guns and military style assault vehicles facing down a group of people who have their hands in the air and are peaceful. the cherry on top is johnny fucking law on top of the truck with a locked and loaded 308 sniper rifle just waiting for his chance to smoke someone. really law enforcement you want a peaceful demonstration and you have a guy pointing a gun at the demonstrators, that is an act of aggression and is not acceptable.
yes. that sort of "look" is becoming more and more commonplace with american police. whenever i see them in those stormtrooper outfits i think one of two things 1) they're about to invade poland or 2) they are giant fucking pussies too scared to do the job they signed up for in the first place. it is indefensible that cops need to carry hardware like that. it's fearmongering, not tact.
have you not seen the videos of the two women being subjected to anal/vaginal cavity searches in the middle of a public highway in texas?
i have some bad news for you. read paragraph 4. specifically subparagraph i. it can get worse, we haven't seen how bad it can get yet.
i think it was a different case, but a man was forced into a anal cavity search at a hospital after rolling through a stop sign in a parking lot. the police forced the docs to perform searches multiple times because the first search found nothing. none of the searches found anything. then he was made to pay the hospital bill. even once is too much....but this happens way, way more often than just once. there is a lot of bad shit going down these days.
yea, you may want to rethink that part. i'd like to see you patrol some of the most violent neighborhoods in the us and not have your ass pucker like you're spending your first night in prison. speaking on this topic though, the denver jail system is under federal review after multiple acts of gross violence.
or the video of the new mexico police mowing down an "illegal camper" with his arms up and back turned because he "had a knife".
no, i honestly haven't. i'm pretty creative but i can't justify that. i also said i know there have been cases where the police have clearly overstepped, and i would choose more adjectives after hearing that. i was talking more about the shootings/violent arrests and why they might have happened more than anything. edit: now i have.
tell that to the people who live there. and these are protesters with their hands up in the air, and they are unloading rubber bullets on them. there is a time and place for dressing like that and this isn't it.
i'm referring to you call them pussies for being nervous in a hostile environment, not their equipment or demeanor or group movements. i'm specifically referring to the individual officer who you called a "giant fucking pussy"...
look into knockless warrants. the number of them issued has skyrocketed. they cause a crazy amount of deaths by bystanders, police, and more importantly, the people whose homes are being broken into by police. we have guns. if for some weird reason the police thought we were up to something and got permission for a knockless warrant, everyone in my home would be dead. when a bunch of masked men with guns come into your home, what is the right way to react to that? we would try to defend ourselves and everyone would die. this is not an unheard of scenario.
no-knock warrants are just horrible. some of the most unpleasant stuff i have ever read centres around them.
according to wikipedia, "the number of no-knock raids has increased from 3,000 in 1981 to more than 50,000 in 2005, according to peter kraska, a criminologist at eastern kentucky university in richmond.[1] raids that lead to deaths of innocent people are increasingly common; since the early 1980s, 40 bystanders have been killed, according to the cato institute in washington, d.c.[1]" yea, thats a tiny bit worrying.
i don't have a problem with swat or police actually doing their job. if some gangbanger is clearly a threat and points a gun at you, fine. take him down. but to not due your due diligence when a civilians life is on the line is a betrayal to the constitution they swore to uphold and protect. a marine was murdered for protecting his own home http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jose_guerena_shooting
i think that this is pretty important. the attitude of a lot of cops is "go home every night." their tactics reflect that; it's why doing anything suspicious at a traffic stop is likely to get a gun drawn on you. the cop doesn't know who you are; you could be a perfectly reasonable guy, or you could be some tweaker who's decided that his life mission is to kill a cop. as a result, there's a very, very big attitude of "fuck you; i have a wife and kids, and i'm going to be going home to them tonight. i don't care about you." in a county where the people are mostly law-abiding, protect and serve is perfectly possible because the community is usually on the same side as the cops. meanwhile, in a high-crime community where the police have an adversarial relationship with the people, the cops are focused on survival. and to do this, they've basically said, "instead of building better community relationships, we're going to militarize as much as possible to minimize risk of harm. make them fear us, and we'll be safe." if they want to reverse this trend, they have to completely change the mindset that they use while policing the community. and, well, it's hard. it takes compassion. it takes the willingness to assume the risk that someone is going to mistake compassion for weakness and hurt them. it takes intelligent, motivated, decent people to manage the force. and right now, the cops don't have any of those. like schools, we've fucked police forces by vastly decreasing money for personnel. we've increased the budget dramatically for equipment; kids in inner-city schools get ipads and brand-new microscopes while being taught by apathetic morons. then they go home, get into trouble, and get arrested by understaffed thugs who are paid peanuts but have an armored personnel carrier, an m4, and body armor.
very complicated issue. im not down with the militarization at all. having two good friends as cops the horror stories they tell me of the people they come in contact with on a daily basis makes me wonder how all police don't eventually become jaded. it'd be hard to not let the 95% criminal activity interactions you would normally interact with in your job not let you influence your actions on the 5% normal law abiding when you do come in contact with them, even for minor stuff. you wonder what type of training or psychological treatment they are provided with to keep going. im just throwing out that percentage but i mean the nature of the job puts you in direct contact with the worst of the worst on a regular basis. in my little suburban town there is one huge dick hole officer who should have been screened out before academy, the rest, like the officer that was stationed at my high school, were basically fun loving types.
not that i am doubting that they come into contact with weirdos (shit, i'm not even a cop and i can say that i meet some weirdos on a weekly basis), or that they serve in a high crime area, but what happened first? did people get used to being harassed by police officers so they act negatively towards them? or are they in a high crime area and are simply reacting to people who are criminally motivated to start with? it's very chicken-or-egg'y. even me, white bread, middle class, reasonably educated person in a reasonably safe part of town experiences a speed up of my heart rate and a racing mind when i see a cop. whether i'm walking or in my car, my mind races with all the shit i might be doing wrong and if they will be pulling me over. that's kinda fucked up. el husband's standard list of actions for when he gets pulled over (he's gotten 2 speeding tickets in the past 7 years) is very southern californian of him. car pulled over, car stopped, all windows rolled down, keys go on the roof of the car, hands go open on the top of the steering wheel. yes, we've come to that.