Another thing I want to add. Due to either this type of police training or the people they recruit, it makes me wonder what side they will be on when our society starts to collapse. Any thoughts on that?
Just like in every walk of life, some good, some bad. The bad ones get all the attention. I read the description of what happened by the guy that was with the one that was killed. I tend to believe him.
I think people should ask themselves why this sort of thing tends to happen in certain neighborhoods and what kind of society creates those police.
My little township doesn’t even have police. We have to contract with the county by law but they don’t come out here unless they’re called. I think the last time I saw one here was last fall.
We live in a police state. Every federal agency has some sort of law enforcement wing. Every state and county has swat teams. I live in a small city of 40,000 and we have a full time swat team. Many towns have some sort of military vehicles/equipment. With all of that, don’t you think that most of these agencies are over trained and chomping at the bit to take any and all of us down?
I say the police have evolved into controlling monsters. Why order a kid to walk on the sidewalk except as a ridiculous show of authority?
They prey on the communities they are supposed to serve, they enjoy putting choke holds on harmless people, harassing kids, shooting dogs.
They take steroids which make them nasty and short tempered. They like being dominant, in other words they abuse their power.
Instead of letting the situation in Fergusson calm down, they showed up in all their scary ugliness with their sticks and riot uniforms and tear gas. Idiots. I am livid about the police conduct in this thing.
I have deep respect for LE officers. They always have an element of danger in their lives and most of them deal with the dark side characters of life - the basement people. It is a tribute they are not all in a mental hospital because of years of such experiences. God bless them all!!
The thug was a walking in the street instead of the sidewalk. The cop pulled up and said “Get on the sidewalk”. The thug didn’t acknowledge him and kept walking. The cop pulled up and tried to get out of the car. The thug pushed the cop back against the car and went for his gun (cop’s account.) the cop pulled and shot said thug.
If the account by the cop is true, then; suicide by cop.
Is the cop telling the truth? I do not know.
“When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail”, my cousin is a retired NJ State Trooper, second generation and on the job for the right reasons.
I asked him one night over dinner, what is the hardest part of your job? His answer surprised me, he said “when you deal with the dregs of society on a daily basis, it wears on you and you begin to see everyone in the same light, you must constantly remind yourself that they are not.
:: we should start to seriously question eitehr the training of police ::
Currently, JohnnyLaw is trained to view anyone who is not a LEO is a “hostile” (enemy).
That is the “point of change” needed.
I say two people know what really happened and one of them is dead. So the complete story will never be known.
Current LE attitude is ‘you will do exactly what I say because I get to tell exactly what to do’. Then they zealously exercise that prerogative.
To me it’s an example of control issues. I think people with these types of issues are drawn to LE. That’s not to say all LE has this problem but enough do to draw attention to LE.
I said last night: Beware of conformational bias. Nobody posts stories about the cops who didn’t shoot the dog or the black teen. Not on FR, HP or Fox news. So what you read or see as news is but a microcosm of the worst of LE.
You are right.
Law enforcement today is not the organization of peace officers of your daddy’so day.
There are still many fine officers out there and this is not directed at them.
But too many cops today have an attitude problem and I believe it comes from above - from the academies and from Washington.
Too maNY cops act like an occupying paramilitary forcer of
union thugs. An army which abuses citizens, ignores constitutional rights, employs excessive force, and collides in covering up the most egregious crimes against the public.
Solution?
1. Civilian review boards.
2. Civilian monitors in each and every police academy drawn from voluteers.
3. Replacement of police chiefs with civilian directors of public safety.
4.Residency requirements.
5. Cops who reflect the ethnic background of the communities they serve.
6.A MASSIVE reduction in SWAT teams - if we NEED a National Guard, we HAVE one - made of citizen soldiers.
7. END the OBSCENITY of police unions (and ALL civil service unions for that matter.)
Consider NYC. It’s police force, if it were a country, would make it the 20th largest army in the world. Other cities in the US have a very large police presence as well. To not expect several bad eggs in each of these departments is unrealistic. True, seeing any innocent person killed because of terrible judgement is wrong. Still, for the blacks in MO to use that as an excuse to do what they did is also wrong. If you ask them why they are doing this, their response is always the “I’m-a-victim” excuse. And why didn’t the police force in MO act to stop it? Because of bad judgement of one officer. From Rodney King to Katrina to the most recent incident, blacks use the situation to destroy, loot, and steal. By contrast, compare Katrina to the tsunami in Japan where there was not even one incident of looting in the entire country.
To be sure, Jesse and Al will be in MO to stir the “victim” pot, but they need to be asking themselves: “What can the black leadership do to prevent the post-incident destruction that seems to be a black trademark?” So far, crickets...because they refuse to admit they have a problem.
Just as the society at large has gone morally downhill, so too the Police forces as well.
At one time, the most paramilitary police units were the SWAT teams. Now, it seems, that SWAT of the 1970’s is mere child's play compared to the teams today. Then again, the criminal forces they face are potentially armed to the teeth as well so there's been an escalation of violence of sorts, on both sides.
The Police, scared to death of a routine traffic violations have to prepare themselves for an attack at any moment. Their badge is a target. Society seems more demented, unstable, unpredictable and, again, violent.
The Police are now in an overkill mode and they abuse their power many times in order to protect themselves from harm.
September 11th added an extra layer of fear within the system, witness the security overkill, padding down grannies about to board a domestic flight. The US has lost all proportion in it's search for security and relies too much on High-tech INTEL and not enough on Profiling, like the Israelis. They rely more on HUMINT than anything else.
I am not saying that the Police policies do not need reforming, they do but those that sign up for the Police Academy may be the same adults who grew up on massive destruction, Hollywood films where whole areas of America's cities are obliterated while sexy guys and gals hold a massive handgun in the air, ready to pounce, kicking in the door and killing tens of bad guys. It's cool man! This is what we've all been exposed to at a more gory and bloody rate than at any other time in history.
The question here is can we step back
A loss a leadership. No one in our Government is accountable for their action from the President on down to people running the IRS or the Justice Department or the VA and on and on.
Shit rolls down hill. No leadership above leads to no leadership below. The Police no longer enforce the laws— see illegal aliens, allowing occupied cities, etc. They enforce political agendas. Then you have to look at hiring in the past several decades. There used to be physical requirements, intelligence requirements, medical requirements etc. Then we went PC. A certain amount had to be women, a certain amount had to be black or Hispanic or this or that. Now surely women, blacks,, Hispanics etc. can be Police Officers. But that should NEVER be the qualifying factor and in many case it was and is. Many things have conspired and occurred to get us to this point.
As far as when society breaks down, I believe generally cops will realize they probably won’t get paid anymore and will just go home to protect their families.
The problem is bigger than the “police”.
Several posters make statements that must be prefaced with “If true” - isn’t that the problem? How often does a police officer suffer repercussions for falsifying a report? That’s how you would start cleaning this up - they should be fired for that.
Any government employee should be fired for misdeeds for which a private sector employee would be fired.
Lying on a time card. Non-accountability. Surfing porn all day at work. incompetence.
It’s a government employee thing - where they are accorded “due process”. They tend to believe they are their own elite.
I see this in nearly every government organization - from police departments, fire departments, the military, bureaucracies, federal agencies (note the IRS and many many more).
That is the problem. It shows more with the police because they have more direct opportunity to display their contempt for those who are not members of their self-proclaimed elite. It’s not all, but even the “good” ones do not rat out the abuses.
It is a cultural thing for those in government, and it needs to end.
Seems like police departments are realizing that they are going too far and some have started addressing the problem.
A local news channel in Cleveland ran a piece regarding the 2012 shooting of two unarmed suspects (13 cops fired 137 rounds, killing two people) and how the RNC convention in 2016 will help improve the Cleveland police department. The Feds will be retraining the force and providing new equipment.
The most interesting part was an interview with Cincinnati’s police chief and how changes were made to deal with a growing hostility between the police force and citizenry there.