1844

Ah, so it’s not “by their nature”, it’s just literally every single one of them.

Sorry, but if you think that literally every cop is evil, then you should want to live without cops.

Unless, of course, cops aren’t in fact all evil, and it was just a ridiculously hyperbolic statement with no tether to reality.
(that’s what it was)

1845

Well he did say that the conscious enablers were less evil. I’m guessing you’re subscribing to a more black and white view logic where if someone is any degree of evil, you should want to live without cops?

1846

Yeah dude, if you think that the guys are freaking EVIL, then you really shouldn’t want the government to be arming them and having them patrol the streets. Because that would, obviously, be entirely terrible. It would be worse than having no cops, since at least without cops, you wouldn’t have a government mandated force of evil walking around and, presumably, doing evil things all the time.

But of course we all know that literally every cop isn’t in fact evil.

1847

Why do the good cops not clean house? Why doesn’t every police chief across the country clamp down and say “Enough is enough”, flushing out all the shit and keeping only the good cops? Why won’t this happen?

Why not have functional body cams on every single cop every single shift, with the footage controlled by an independent agency to avoid tampering? If the cops are doing nothing wrong then why is this a problem? Wouldn’t the good cops welcome video/audio footage of every incident so they could easily clear themselves of any wrongdoing in transparent and honest manner?

By not saying or doing anything, the good cops are allowing the horrible rot to continue to eat away at the institution as a whole. You’d think they’d do something about that if they really cared. I can’t think of any reasons to NOT do that except there’s probably an immense amount of peer pressure from other cops to stick with the status quo or a particular cop is benefiting from the current system and doesn’t want it to stop.

1848

Interesting, so your assumption is that you’re either evil or you’re not, nothing in between. So when he said the ones that were enablers were less evil, he was clearly talking under a different set of assumptions than your binary scale of Evil/Not-evil. You guys need to agree on your assumptions and underlying terms first.

1849

Why don’t good muslims stop all the bad ones? Clearly, every muslim is evil! Oh, but some of them are “marginally less evil”, I guess.

Maybe good cops just don’t have the power to fix all of the institutional racism in our society?

So then “less evil” is simply an entirely meaningless statement.
It becomes simply “Cops are human beings”. Okey doke.

1850

Oddly enough, I do believe cops should be less armed (and so should the general populace) for a whole host of reasons. So there’s that.

But what I really want is for them to be less abusive with their power, not resist accountability measures being implemented, admit when they fuck up, not just circle the wagons and cover for each other, and have to follow better guidelines for use of force- they see themselves as a military organization (which they aren’t, and shouldn’t be), so starting with a military-style ROE shouldn’t be a problem for them. Yet all of this is apparently too much to ask for, so we should just let them do whatever they want and not question anything they do.

1851

I thought we were talking about police. What do Muslims have to do with it? Do they have a nation-wide union that I’m not aware of? I’m pretty sure the police do - a union that’s pretty damn powerful, that protects dirty cops all the time. What if the good cops, which in your mind is 99+% of the cop population, band together and vote good people into union positions, then those leaders can fix all this? Why doesn’t that happen? If 99% of cops are good, why the hell don’t they have the power to fix it?

EDIT - those last questions are legitimate “Why aren’t they fixing it?” questions. I’d really like to know why the general cop population isn’t sick to death of the shitheads ruining their reputation overall. They have a union that could band together and fix this if they wanted to.

1852

Your criticism of cops is the same kind of nonsense argument that people leverage against Muslims. That they are all culpable for the actions of any portion of their group.

You think that the national police union is the cause of all this? NAPO? Cause I can’t see that being remotely true. Issues with cops go way deeper in society than simply their union, much less the national organization made up of different unions.

I know at least some of them are. But then again, you’ve got folks on your side saying that they are literally evil, while they are literally risking their lives to protect you, which kind of sucks balls for them.

Most of these guys are just freaking guys working a fairly stressful, and sometimes dangerous, blue collar job. Asking “why aren’t these guys all fixing this major problem with our society” is silly. The answer is “because they got other shit to do.”

1853

I don’t recall it being touched on much in this thread—juries are, with some consistency, acquiting these cops.

It seems unreasonable to expect the silent majority of cops to fix this thing when society, as a whole, doesn’t.

Back to the line cop issue, how many of you had to try and tackle even a small thing in a big organization? It’s not easy, even if you have some modicum of power. At a minimum, it takes a huge amount of time and persistence. It’s almost impossible if you don’t. I think it’s unreasonable to expect the fix to come mostly from within the police force when the message from our society on the issue is so muddled, from our juries to our politicians.

1854

There is no such thing as a silent majority in this day and age. I doubt there ever was such as thing.

1855

Are you saying that society has issues with cops or agreeing with some of us that cops have deep issues that really need to be corrected?

Well it’s their job. They’re welcome to quit if they don’t want to protect those of us that don’t deserve their esteemed service. Sounds like what happens when cops start thinking of the local population as them instead of us.

The problem is not with our society; the problem is with the police. Stop killing minorities and covering it up. Stop planting evidence. Stop lying under oath or on police reports. Maybe fixing this should be a priority isn’t this other shit they have to do. It’s not like all police work needs to stop immediately while their leaders work on correcting this.

Don’t you think that some of this might be related to the false testimony, malfunctioning body and car cams, and other general fuckery that seems to pop up when cops are on trial? Police take advantage of the fact that society as a whole tends to trust their testimony, though sometimes it’s obviously misplaced trust.

1856

I presume they’re being instructed to find according to the “reasonable fear” test (or whatever it’s called, IANAL) that we’ve definitely talked about upthread. I.e. if a “reasonable person” could “reasonably” come to the cop’s stated conclusion in the moment, and that stated conclusion is one for which the use of force is authorized, then it’s totally okay to shoot a social worker who is pleading with you not to shoot a nonthreatening autistic person.

1857

Ah, so you think any good cops should quit, leaving ONLY the bad cops.
That sounds like a totally awesome plan, that will totally result in exactly what you want.

No, that’s bullshit.
The problem IS absolutely with society.

It’s absurd to suggest otherwise. The problems with police are a reflection of those larger, institutional problems with society as a whole. They do not exist on their own.

1858

I’m not sure where I said that. I wouldn’t want any good cops to quit. I think a good cop that joined the force for the right reasons would do their job and protect ALL people, not turn into a snowflake when criticized.

So it’s society forcing these cops to shoot minorities, tamper with evidence, lie under oath - NOT the bad cops. They’ve led otherwise blameless lives? Why are the cops not responsible for their own actions? No one’s forcing them to be corrupt, or racist, etc.

I get that we’re never going to agree on this but I think we both DO agree that the bad cops should be weeded out, prosecuted, and face the consequences of their actions, no matter what the cause is.

1859

That’s exactly what they do, but you’re saying that they’re evil because they haven’t somehow solved everything.

They’re just guys working. They don’t control everything. They could just quit in disgust I guess, but then you’re gonna have only bad cops left.

What do you think makes those bad cops? Like… why are they bad?
A big part of them being bad cops is simply a reflection of dramatically larger problems of institutional racism in society. There’s a reason why black folks have such different interactions with cops than white folks, and that reason absolutely does not start with the cops.

The racist policies of cops is a reflection of racism in society as a whole.

I absolutely agree. Bad cops need to be held accountable, not only for the obvious reason that they harm society (while occupying a uniquely empowered position that’s hinged upon helping society), but because bad cops make it that much harder for GOOD cops to do their jobs.

But the reality is, there ARE a ton of good cops out there. They aren’t all evil. They didn’t become cops because they wanted to kill civilians. I know some of these guys, and they are good men who literally became state troopers because they wanted to be the good guys. And I know some who are just assholes on a power trip.

I just reject the idea that they are all evil, because even if they aren’t doing all the bad stuff themselves, that they are responsible for all the other guys. No man, that is not fair, and that unfairness is obvious when you try to apply the same thinking to any other group of people where some people do bad stuff.

1860

I never said all cops are evil. I think every cop that continues to say nothing while their fellow police continue to give the rest of them a bad name are part of the problem though.

1861


Cops in schools, what could go wrong?

1862

The teachers can always shoot them. #Winning.

1863

Charges against the kid have been dropped…

What about charges against the officer?