Well, hell. I’m sorry for poking at you about the grammar. Normally I would refrain from being a dick about it, but it just seemed to me that you might have been unnecessarily stiff toward Scooter about his quote, so I felt moved to stick my tongue out. Not very mature of me.
And I think it really needed to be said, that point of yours that protesters really can’t afford to assume that all cops are dopes and nothing more than hired goons who like to pepperspray the defenseless and murder those who attempt to fight back. It’s true that the job might not offer the kinds of challenges and rewards that would normally attract the sorts of people who end up working as rocket scientists, hedge-fund managers, philanthropists, preschool teachers, journalists, or community organizers, but that doesn’t mean that there are absolutely no smart and sensitive humanitarians wearing blue these days, nor does it imply that all (or even most) cops are complete nincompoops. Trouble is, along with the institutional expertise and training we all too often hear about institutional racism and brutality, and many of us have enough firsthand exposure to these kinds of incidents to keep us from dismissing them out of hand as small, isolated problems.
Still, your overall point cannot be overstated: none of us can afford to blithely turn our backs on the cops.
