Try the French ‘Les ripoux’ or “My new partner”, where the old, extremely corrupt cop get to teach his new, honest partner how profitable policing is done.
This is one of the first things you learn when you have kids. “You become who you hang around” is deeply, deeply true. Have a bunch of crappy friends and you, too, start to become crappy. It just seeps in.
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Indeed. Ideas are contagious.
The human condition.
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Sounds like police forces need a bit of “broken window theory” applied to themselves, eh?
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Re your unionization comment. As a Norwegian I would say the problem isn’t the existence of police unions. Police have the same right as everyone else to collective bargaining for pay and labour rights. The problem from where I’m standing is that American labour unions don’t look like unions to me at all. To me they look like guilds, designed to keep the labour market restricted to members rather than to fight for everyone working in a sector.
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They have to. Right to work state laws basically forbid unions from representing everyone. The only way for unions in the US to have proper leverage is for them to force out scabbing. So yeah they essentially are guilds because republican lawmakers have made it illegal for unions to work like unions.
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Historically they are the means by which capital suppresses labor. I would recommend some of the old Wobbly texts for a deeper dive. The specifics for not including them among labor or the working class vary somewhat in formulation, but the idea is pretty widespread.
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That’s interesting, thanks. I find the argument that “they don’t produce value” dubious, since many unarguable workers may not either. It very much depends on how management deploys them. But still, interesting.
I find the status and culture of police unions troubling, as well as sheriff culture. Many consider themselves to be somehow extra-constitutional and outside/beyond the purview of state and federal oversight. It’s cousin to the “sovereign individual” trope.
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