My kid acts (what’s considered) strange every day of her life. Pointing a gun at people doesn’t make them less strange.
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Actually they were not just cleared of wrongdoing, at least one was given an award for his actions:
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While true - they do not see it that way here in the states… They very much model their worldview on a militaristic one, and call those of us who are not police civilians. This goes along with the general militarization of the police that has happened these past few decades, as older military gear is sold (or sometimes given) to law enforcement.
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My kid (now a college-graduated adult) also was strange (like his dad at that age). He got yanked from the school bus by the cops after some other students thought it would be fucking hilarious if they anonymously identified him as planning to shoot up the school. Lucky it all ended safely for him, and the dipshits got suspended, but I was livid about it for a while.
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Suspending them is a light punishment, they could have gotten him murdered. Jeezus.
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This is absolutely technically correct, but in informal use, at least in the States, it is often used to indicate “those outside the profession.” We often refer to non-medical personnel as “civilians” to differentiate from medical professionals. I have frequently used this in phrases like “If this is how we treat our own, what hope can civilians have?” It’s understood, even though incorrect.
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In case anyone was wondering how the rest of the police department reacted to this daylight murder, the killer cop was just awarded a purple heart for the scrapes and strains he received during his gangland execution of an innocent citizen. Damn, that’s a lot of rotten apples!
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The cops are the ones who see themselves as an occupying force, here to subjugate the population. Ask any of them, and you’ll hear them call non-cops civilians as if they are a lower life form. It might be technically incorrect, but in practice, it’s entirely accurate.
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I watched the video. I don’t see how they didn’t charge that officer, that was outta control in every way.
Those criteria need to include escalation/de-escalation. If the cop escalates the situation like in this example, then they didn’t just murder someone, they planned it.
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To be fair, there are those people who (incredibly naively) know what the police are and want to “reform” them from within. They simply don’t last because the act of informing on the wrongdoing of their fellow officers gets them kicked out faster than any actual wrongdoing would. So there are, very briefly, some actual “good apples” on police forces, but the whole system exists to only retain the bad ones.
And just when you think they possibly couldn’t sink any lower… And this isn’t even the first time I’ve read about cops straight-up murdering someone and not just not getting in trouble for it, but actually getting some award as a result. The cops are constantly telling on themselves…
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Or beaten/hazed/murdered. Whistleblowers within police departments have their families threatened. Reporting abuse is the surest way to get fired; murdering people gets rewarded.
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I know that this is the case, but I contend that the casual use of this military metaphor connotes a worrying militarisation of society, whether it is used by the police or by doctors. I think this is unique to the US. I’d be interested to know whether people in other English speaking countries use it, and if so, whether it was imported from the US.
I can say with confidence that I would never use the word to speak about people outside my field. We tend to speak of laypeople instead, both in German and in English (I’m not sure about Norwegian, it hasn’t come up yet in my conversations here).
Of course that metaphor has its own problems, being derived from religion as it is. It casts the speaker as part of a priestly class above the mere layperson, but at least it doesn’t cast them as a soldier. It doesn’t imply the antagonism that “civilian” does.
I don’t know, it just gives me the creeps imagining myself using that term.
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that’s insane. also, not captured in the one box, he’s done this before and was rewarded for it before. no wonder he chose to do it again
Whorter also received the Medal of Valor award in 2018 because of his response during a 2017 officer-involved shooting in Colorado City. McWhorter and Deputy Charles Roldan were responding to a search for Dennis Flowers, who had an arrest warrant out for a robbery.
Flowers allegedly pointed a gun at McWhorter, according to the CIT report for the incident. Roldan first shot Flowers twice, and then McWhorter shot the man 10 times “until Flowers fell to the ground.”
Roldan and McWhorter’s use of force during the 2017 incident were also found “justified” by Chostner in the CIT report
this is the meaning behind the rotten barrel. his superiors like that he’s killing people
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That too, but often it’s the system itself that punishes cops who push back against wrongdoing, on a completely official level.
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With all of the cameras we have today is there really a need for police officers to have guns? Do police having guns really prevent any crimes? Unless someone is actively assaulting/murdering someone else why does a police officer need a gun? How often are they actually in situations where they need to shoot someone? If someone is doing a drug or stealing a snickers bar you don’t need to kill them.
Ask the person to cuff themselves and come peacefully. If they don’t, you ID them and then send your para-military types to apprehend them. Send the person the bill for the cost of the extra force.
That police officer was being a dick and escalated the situation. Now he is a murderer.
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Less than 1% of police calls result in police stopping a crime in progress in the US. They are really terrible at it.
Less than 1 in 20 of their calls involve even the potential for a violent response to a violent emergency.
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Too true. This post on that subject is one that I share a lot with folks who’ve been watching too many copaganda shows featuring daring do-gooders and diligent detectives:
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I sure hope so. I shared this story in a previous post (which is all too frequent, unfortunately) but I’ll share a link to it here as well.
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