…has certainly turned into a fine mess.
I’ve started to write about it any number of times but always gave up. There are so many things to say I can’t ever quite get a handle on it.
But that big funeral for the two dead ones brought to mind a pervasive meme from some years ago: Remember when we were told – over and over and over – that cops needed and deserved all sorts of respect for their authoritah because their jobs were just so damned dangerous? SWAT cops have to wear masks because they’ll make enemies on duty who will hunt down them and their families. It virtually never happens outside crime novels, and the notion was shot down (no pun there) by article after article listing the most dangerous professions – lists on which being a police officer never appears. And now we have these two cops who actually were targeted by a whacko just for being cops, something we were once told is routine – and tens of thousands of cops fly in for the funeral, almost as if it’s an unusual occurrence.
It’s all so convoluted. It started with the Michael Brown shooting which may have actually been justified, not that we’ll ever know. The Ferguson PD went into reflexive cover-up mode, so that the evidence of a righteous shoot they eventually trotted out was understandably suspect. Their wild overreaction to the protests didn’t exactly build a bridge over troubled water. Then there was the Eric Garner killing – or, sorry, his completely coincidental and unrelated death subsequent to an encounter with officers of the NYPD – and their “don’t resist if you don’t want to be killed” reaction to the controversy, which really helped a lot. Look! Al Sharpton! Don’t blame us, the guy was overweight.
It’s very unfortunate that this managed to be about race. A ‘national discussion’ about police abuse is long, long overdue, but it needs to cover topics far wider than ‘things that make Al Sharpton rich and famous.’ And now I notice that all the conservative writers seem to be loudly and unanimously denouncing the very notion that police are ever anything but gallant, self-sacrificing Heroes in Blue. Police corruption? A contradiction in terms! And if someone points out that criticism of police misconduct in general and NYPD misconduct in particular didn’t start this month or this year and is certainly not unfounded, they just view Al Sharpton with alarm as if that were an answer. I love to hate him too, but come on.
And so, unfortunately, here we are. All the problems of overbearing cops: Militarization, brutality, asset forfeiture, unjust shootings, union corruption, the whole fetid swamp of Us v. Them double standards, you bloody name it – will be neatly swept under the rug by what may have been the only people who could possibly have made a difference if they’d only chosen to join the ‘discussion’ instead of taking the wrong side.
I don’t think we can expect the problem to ease any time very soon.
I seriously doubt the “cops” are going to stop murdering people, and getting away with it, any time soon so I see little chance this can all be swept under the rug, regardless of the media, the race baiters or any of the rest of it. This all went far beyond “discussion” a long time ago – except for the one where we grovel and kiss their ass… they’ll have that “discussion” any old time.
More and more people are facing the fact that if they want to be protected from ordinary criminals, they have to do it themselves. The problem remains, of course, of finding a way to protect ourselves from our “protectors” in blue/black/armor… with getoutofjailfree cards attached to their paychecks. And, as much as the media, etc. wants to tie that into the outright stalking and murder of police, they are truly not related.
Hopefully, at least some of the cops may recognize that acting like real human beings just might get them some help from US when and if they need it. Most of us just want to be left alone, but that’s obvioulsy not part of their gameplan.
Good observation – that this “phenomenon” of criminals targeting cops that has been blasted on the airwaves by so many as an excuse for increased militarization is nothing of the sort.
When two cops get targeted and killed just for being cops, and the entire nation falls to its knees in response, it becomes obvious that this is, indeed, a startlingly rare thing to happen. So rare, in fact, that I cannot recall another instance of it happening in my lifetime.
Sure, I’ve heard of cops getting shot, but it’s always in “the heat of.” This is literally the first time that I’ve ever heard of the oft-touted meme of cops being targeted by criminals actually coming true.
That being said, I love how so many people can look at this situation, and somehow divine the logic from it that they seem to be divining:
that this cop over here killed an innocent gentle giant in cold blood*, so now I am justified in killing some other, completely unrelated cop in cold blood to get even.
What kind of stupid logic is that?
Not that i’d agree with it if it happened, but at least it would make more sense if they went ofter officer Wilson, the perpetrator of the “murder”. But to just kill two random dudes? Fathers, husbands, brothers? WTF kind of thinking is that?
*Yeah, it looks like the innocent gentle giant meme has fallen apart, but some people still buy it, like, for instance, the killer…
Cops love a good funeral, seemingly more so than anything else. They will drive a patrol car for hundreds or even thousands of miles just to swell the funeral procession of a “fallen comrade” that they didn’t even know. Naturally, most of this activity is somehow done at the public’s expense and amounts to an expense-paid vacation for the mourners.
Firemen do the same thing, but with usually less of the long-distance joyriding since spare fire trucks are somewhat less available than patrol cars in your average agency.
I found the image of the NY police turning their back on their Mayor at that funeral to be particularly disturbing. First of all, a funeral is for the family of the deceased, and I doubt if that family wished the funeral of their loved-one to be reduced to some sort of political theater. More importantly, who can look at that picture and not wonder if all of those armed men are truly under proper control?
I think you are mistaken on the Ferguson incident. The evidence is overwhelming that the thug was the instigator and intended to kill the cop. The Garner incident was not a chokehold but merely a neck takedown. Mr Garner died from his Asthama which acted up with the physical activity and excitement he experienced when he choose to be taken down instead of submitting to arrest.
I Think it is a mistake to conflate any legitimate police activity with any specific or general example of police being stupid or abusing their authority. There isn’t a one to one equality because they are different people. It would be like me deciding to disparage or harm some man who was missing a leg simply because I once saw a legless man abuse someone.
I am in favor of allowing the community to oversee their police department. Police should treat citizens fairly and honorably. Anytime a policeman uses excessive force or inappropriate actions on some innocent person I think that policeman should be let go regardless of the result of a grand jury or investigation. A policeman that would assault or otherwise harm an innocent civilian shouldn’t be a cop.
I think the police turning their backs on the mayor was spot on. The mayor, the race baiters and the president have blood on their hands and they must go. New York City before Mayor Giuliani was a hell hole with a high murder and crime rate. It was the strong mayor supporting good police that made NYC safe and saved literally thousands of lives. We are soon going to see how easily that can all be destroyed and return to a dangerous city thanks to De Blasio.
I agree with pretty much everybody posting above. If that sounds contradictory, sue me, I’m human.
Much is being made of violence perpetrated by police, & violence against police. I grew up seeing them as the Enemy; I come from a family of (largely) felons. I’m the son of one who managed to never go to prison, but I grew up expecting to.
I see LEOs as employees I’ve had to call on, for instance when my home was burglarized in 2006, & some (I don’t judge all by the few) as power-trippers who abuse their position, like the KY trooper who stopped me on the way to my Granny’s for Thanksgiving dinner (no shit) in ’05 ’cause he thought he had some big-time drug smuggler. Maybe mules really are tattooed longhairs in ’81 Caprices: the few I’ve known who transported illicit products were clean-cut folks in nondescript, couple-year-old sedans who obeyed traffic laws.
At some point, we have to discuss things like the legal ability to confiscate cash &/or other property on suspicion, with it not being returned even after a hearing. If you carry too much money, you MIGHT be doing something wrong. By that logic, Stringbean Akeman could have lost most of his earnings at any time. It’s been a problem here in TN for some time, & I hear elsewhere, too.
I mostly trust LEOs to do their jobs honestly, but when the system for which they work is inherently corrupt, how long until all trust breaks down? What do we do about the other side, which says no matter what the law does, they’re in the right?
Michael Brown was an animal who got what he purchased with his actions, or at least it appears so to me. Eric Garner’s takedown looks mishandled to me, but there’s no way you can choke someone to death that way & in that short a time; I think he was, at least secondarily, a victim of his choice to be in horrible physical condition.
A young man was shot in Berkely, MO, after pulling a weapon on an officer, & the usual crowd still called it a murder, or at least a wrongful death. How do you deal with those who have no grasp on reality?
Sorry for the long comment, but I didn’t see how to do it shorter.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/the-benefits-of-fewer-nypd-arrests/384126/
…But the police union’s phrasing—officers shouldn’t make arrests “unless absolutely necessary”—begs the question: How many unnecessary arrests was the NYPD making before now?
http://filmingcops.com/policing-comes-to-a-stop-in-new-york-people-get-along-peacefully-and-society-continues/
and
https://news.vice.com/article/utah-police-fatally-shoot-decorated-army-veteran-after-responding-to-medical-call
“the deputy who fired the fatal shots was wearing a body camera, but it was turned off.”
I observe that there are some cops who are decent, honorable men, trying to make the best of a bad job.
I also observe that cops do a somewhat dangerous job, and basically have to look up society’s anus for a living and deal, day in and day out, with the absolute worst of human behavior; it should therefore not come as a tremendous surprise that a lot of them have very bad attitudes.
Lastly, and I’m just going to throw this out here, police work is very far from the most dangerous profession out there. Working in a coal mine, working in a sawmill, working 120-hour weeks on those big oceangoing fishing vessels, now that is some dangerous work–and for pretty crappy pay, too, as a general rule, these days.
For that matter, driving a cab, delivering pizza, or working the graveyard shift behind the counter of a gas station/convenience store near any big freeway offramp is statistically a hell of a lot more likely to get you murdered on the job by some twitchy junkie than being a cop–and when Abdul the Cab Driver or the high-school kid who delivers pizza gets mobbed and shanked by half a dozen “diverse urban yoots” for coming downtown after dark with insufficient melanin–I mean, for the $7 in his wallet and half a pack of smokes–it is quite carefully kept out of national news, and the victim sure as hell doesn’t get a sendoff with bagpipes and a marching band and half a dozen politicians giving the eulogy and wagging fingers under our noses about how terrible, terrible a tragedy this was.
To simply say that police work isn’t the most dangerous statistically is missing the point. When a policeman in the inner city is in uniform and has to interact with a lawbreaker he is at far more risk of injury or death at that moment then the statistics can possibly show. It is his training, his weapon, the operating procedures and his feloow cops that allow him to live and not be a statistic. The coal miner doesn’t have to worry that the guy behind him is gonna shoot him but the policeman does. THAT is the difference. the risk the policeman faces is intentional and evil unlike a coal miner. In NYCity for the past 15 plus year the pizza delivery man could in fact go to bad nieghborhoods and deliver pizza with very little risk to his life thanks to the cops. THAT is the difference. If you don’t get it then you will never get it. If Ferguson, Chicago, East St Louis, Baltimore and New Orleans adopted the policies that NYCity police adopted under Rudy then they too would be safe to deliver pizza or to simly walk in. If you don’t understand that then you are going to get the chance to live it in yur own town. We either have law and order thanks to the police or we do not. Abandon the police at your own peril.
Well no… If the police were actually PEACE officers, and treated every person as human beings first and were prepared to answer for their own choices and actions always… maybe, but probably not even then.
The police do not “protect” any individual. They have zero obligation to do so, and can’t be sued or prosecuted for failure to do so, even if they are standing next to you. This is a well developed legal fact and can’t be disputed. The possible motivation or intention of the individual “cop” is not relevant to that fact either. It’s his choice to act or not act.
Most of the efforts of police around the country, and the greatest contribution to their risk, involves their efforts and dedication to “enforcing” all of the prohibitions and petty “rules” that have nothing to do with protecting anyone. Add to that the almost mindless drive to generate “revenue” and you have something far, far beyond your rosy picture of the police. You have, in great part instead, the current wave of jack booted thugs who will kill you in 2 seconds for the ‘crime” of not being fast enough to bow down and grovel. Even if there is no way for you to have heard and understood their imperial command.
GoneWithTheWind, you make my point for me. Or were you trying to say that cab drivers, pizza delivery guys, the kid working the counter at the Stop-n-Rob by the downtown off ramp on the graveyard shift, don’t know perfectly well the peril in which their jobs place them, and aren’t acutely aware from second to second that their next customer may kill them–for the cash in the till, for the money they carry to make change, or just out of spite when they see a white face?
Again: cab drivers, convenience store clerks, pizza delivery guys get ambushed, robbed, beaten, stabbed, and shot ALL THE TIME. Do they get a sendoff on live TV with the Governor describing them as “fallen heroes” and consoling the grieving family, or an honor guard from the local Army base? No. No, they don’t.