And I don't care for cold, heartless people.
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Posted on 01/09/2003 7:29:12 AM PST by FlyingA
If you think you can determine what that dog is thinking in three seconds worth of video, you are wrong. My point is not to defend anyone because I was not there. The video points out a few things, but it doesn't tell me just what kind of dog this really was and what the dog was thinking when it bounded from the car. And to say that you, or any one else observing the video, does know what the dog was thinking is simply disengenuous.
There is such a developing bad image abroad of Americans being trigger happy toothless violent goobers which is not true, that would be devoured by papers in Malaysia, Korea, Germany, Pakistan and further fan the flames. You name it. For example in Japan, they would reply "This would NEVER happen in Japan" Of course, the reason is that with such a low level of violent crime in Japan, police generally don't have to walk around or drive around on pins/needles wondering if this is their last day on earth because of some freak out there with a weapon on crack.
We have a lot of things to work on at home, too. Glad we can look in the mirror once in awhile even though it makes you sad/angry.
And I don't care for cold, heartless people.
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Give the man a year in jail and lose his job. Maybe others like the FBI, ATF etc will get the message.
Pardon me while I get a little frustrated but my brother is a police officer. A few years back he was chasing a bank robber around Indianapolis's 465 loop. The bank robber crashed striking a stranded mini van killing a mother and her new-born baby and seriously injuring the father. I saw the impact this had on my brother - he grieved for that family as much as if it had been his own. His marriage soon fell apart after that and later was removed from duty.
When my brother first started as a police office his very first day on duty he was riding with his 'trainer' and they got a call about possible suicide. They arrived on the scene and there was a car running inside a garage. A man was standing outside the house saying his father was in there somewhere. The entire house was filled with exhaust fumes but my brother ran from the front door through the house and opened the garage door. He fell vomiting on the driveway. His motive - he was hoping to save the man inside.
Another time my brother got a call regarding a domestic dispute with a report that guns were involved. My brother made a silent approach to the home and started working his way to the front door - gun holstered. He was edging his way along the garage (connected to the house) when he came around a corner next to a screened porch. Crouched down in a corner of the porch was a woman holding two pistols. Inside the house he could hear crashes, screams and yells. He could not go into that house with the woman sitting there holding two guns so he instructed her to put the guns down and step away. She refused to acknowledge him. He repeated his instructions and after the third time she said she couldn't and started to get angry. My brother then told her if she didn't drop the guns and calm down he was going to have to shoot her in order to get inside and help her husband and daughter. She refused so he aimed his gun at her and she dropped the weapons as he asked. He secured the guns and her and then went inside with backup and was subsequently attacked by both the father and the daughter. The 4 officers with him had to physically wrestle both people to the ground.
In another instance I got to ride with my brother on patrol one night. After several hours of patrol we started running a speed trap on a highway that ran through town. He would run the radar and when we caught a speeder he'd ask me if we should 'nail em' and i'd say 'go for it'. I felt so powerful... mahaha... well. Invariably we'd get up there and I'd listen to teh conversation through his microphone and watch it on video and start to feeling terribly guilty. My brother didn't write one ticket that whole night - he too didn't like to give tickets unless absolutely necessary. I was really surprised at his consideration for people. It was my expectation that he'd just simply do his job - but invariably he'd talk to people, was extremely polite and he would usually come back and say something to the effect of 'most people don't need tickets, they just need reminders'.
My brother is one of thousands of police officers. Through him I've gotten to know many police officers in many different cities. I've heard stories from them that would scare the crap out of most of us if faced with the same situation. They make decisions that effet peoples lives and bear the consequences for it. My brother is getting his life back together and is about to rejoin the police force. He'll never outlive what happened that one night when that mother and baby were killed but I know this - policemen are not terrorists or fascits or whatever. they do a hard and thankless job.
I for one saw the video and recognize that there were some horrible mistakes - but it really chaps my ass to see some of the things you all are saying in this and other threads.
That's my $2 worth.
The last years of his career were spent as the Chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he’d touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens, would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
My sister is married to a good guy – who was also a good cop.
And I STILL vividly recall a business trip and having a flat tire. I pulled onto the narrow shoulder and was opening the trunk when I spied a Georgia State Trooper’s car cross the median, hit the flashers and pull in some distance behind me and a bit closer to the road, shielding me and my car from the 70 MPH traffic. SHE got out and asked if I needed any help. I told her I could probably handle it. She said she’d keep her unit there until I got done.
THEN she spotted my cane and saw that I was partially disabled. Before I could object, she was in the trunk, had wrestled the spare to the ground and was jacking up the car, all the while asking me to remain safely near the guardrail. About that time, two county deputies stopped and pitched in. The lady trooper cut her hand fooling with the jack and soiled her freshly pressed uniform wrestling the dirty flat back into the trunk. They couldn’t have been nicer! I took their names and wrote highly complimentary letters to their superiors – all of whom promptly acknowledged them and thanked me for the kind words.
These officers – like my uncle – grasped the significance of “To Protect and Serve.”
I also recognize that the cops – like Gort in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” -- are simply the muscle (the “enforcement”) behind the legislative and statutory “law” enacted by society as a whole. That is, after all, why it’s called “LAW ENFORCEMENT.” And although it could be argued that this society may be morphing into the homonym for “whole” as you read this, these laws are enacted by our alleged “representatives” meeting in generally safe, quiet and opulent chambers far from the increasingly mean streets where the cops ply their trade. If the cops have too many intrusive and abusive laws to enforce, check the nearest mirror for a likeness of the responsible party.
And if the cops ARE abusive to the general citizenry, why aren’t HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of us RAISING UNHOLY HELL at each and every meeting of the responsible governing body? French political philosopher Joseph D'Maistre declared that "Every people gets the government they deserve."
Have we really become the “nation of sheep” an author foresaw many years ago? If so, we have little right to object to the shearing. Or the coming slaughter and culling of the flock. And my guess is that the culling will begin with the most troublesome and noisiest sheep. And guess who THAT is?
An old friend is a ranking officer with a large police department. I would rate his love of our freedoms and the Constitution against anyone here at FR. A few years ago, he told me that IF the order to begin some sort of weapons round-up among the general citizenry ever came down from “on high,” we would quickly know about it from the reports of disturbances and gunfire from the neighborhood cop shop: Fully HALF the officers in his department are Second Amendment guys. He and they would be the first to resist such an order – physically if necessary. What should scare us all is the shift in our demographics and the continuing leftist indoctrination by the government schools, making it impossible to know how much longer that ratio – and sentiment – will hold.
A civilized society must also recognize the need to assure that EVERY officer we put out there be as well paid, trained and supervised as possible. The people doing this work ought to have the best training and equipment we can provide them if only to convey to them our belief that their work – and their lives – are as worthy as our own – if only to keep their morale at the highest possible level. Disgruntled malcontents almost always make lousy cops.
Having said that, we must also recognize that EVERY large barrel contains some bad apples -- and SOME cops are “cowboys.” Some are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! -- spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear criminality of the Clintons – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem. There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my Uncle Bob would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” -- referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Mine too. (could you guess?)
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