Two in my neighborhood.
In these moments I am glad to be Irish, not for the skin tone, but for the blessings:
May those who love us love us.
And those that don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we’ll know them by their limping.
I don’t know about ‘offensive’; but it certainly strikes me as being yet another part of the self-serving and blatantly dishonest exaggeration of the risks involved in policing.
It isn’t the safest of jobs; but it doesn’t even break the top ten(plus, a substantial percentage of the deaths that do occur are related to the fact that it’s a job that involves a fair amount of driving; not to homicidal criminal scum that Our Troops are protecting us against or whatnot).
As with most good misdirection, it isn’t false; but that mostly just makes it harder to bat away before it becomes misleading. Periodically, cops do get shot by criminals under circumstances so lopsided you’d assume that they were cribbed from a morality play. Just not very often. This is…not exactly…what you would be led to believe by the pomp and pageantry surrounding the issue.
The claim is true in the sense that (hopefully) the person wearing the wristband doesn’t deserve to have his next traffic stop end with a bullet to the face; but it’s painfully dishonest by implication; both in terms of exaggerating the tepid lethality of the occupation; and in deliberately appropriating someone else’s rather better justified concerns to do so.
The huge difference is those people aren’t employed by elected officials susceptible to campaigns against them by “cops who risk their lives for the public” if they don’t play ball and give the cops whatever they want in contract negotiations. It’s all about optics and economic leverage. My city requires absurdly expensive off duty cops to be at any construction site impinging the roadway, basically doing what a flagger does for a fraction the price. There are 2 full time cops who do nothing but coordinate this moonlighting. Why? Because.
So no, you shouldn’t be offended by a self righteous cop any more than at a dog licking it’s balls. It’s what they do.
Um, what?
I don’t see how your argument follows. Could you help me understand your thinking?
I’m pretty sure, “don’t be offended because cops are offensive dickweeds” isn’t what you meant, but I can’t seem to find other interpretations.
As far as I can tell, you’re saying that cops always work with unethical conflicts of interest that would fire or imprison anyone who wasn’t in a uniform with a badge. And it seems you’re saying that it’s fine.
you mean, if the politicians ‘take a knee’ the police will rely on their popularity with the people to dislodge those politicians?
That’s a great description of the 1960s-2000s, and that’s not what’s happening anymore.
About half of the US is totally fine with the knee, and more become okay with it everytime lord cheeto opens his tweethole about it.
Sorry, I guess I should have have used an ironic emoji for those with impaired irony detectors.
Maybe some places, but in the NYC area cops are extremely well paid and bennied, and there’s no sign of change. They are very public in their hatred of any mayor that takes them on. A NYPD cop makes more than a teacher with a PhD. After five and a half years, they are compensated with $90,829 before OT.
Found this:
Newly hired NYPD officers can expect to receive nearly $2.2 million in pension payments and City paid health benefits over 32 years of retirement, based on the current average salary including overtime pay and other compensation; the average age of 26 for newly hired Police Officers; retirement at age 48 after 22 years of service, and assuming the average life expectancy of 80 years. Persons retiring above the rank of Police Officer will earn higher retirement payments based on their respective ranks.
Sure, but the % of voters flocking to support that with jingoistic glee is rapidly falling, which is new.
The politicians who counted on that high %… they don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
What you describe as the state of affairs is as it is, it isn’t SOLVED, but the automatic reflexive mass support for it that you describe has in fact changed in the last 3 years. Just watch an NFL game.
Nothing “official” about it. The opening summary has NPOV problems compared to the rest of the article as well.
Thats an assumption not really based on anything factual since you did not talk to this particular officer.
Having a conversation does not have to be antagonizing. Personally I’d have asked. Just simply asked without being a jerk or being confrontational about it.
Personally I try not to seek out being offended and save that for when its genuinely required.
When is that?
Asking the cop at all is going to be seen as being confrontational. Seeing as the whole cops vs people of color war is highly politically charged in the first place.
When was the last time you spoke with a US cop vs a Japanese one? Cops in Japan seem to be actually worth while, and seem to be respectful and sometimes even helpful. Not really so in the US.
I hope you are right, but I don’t see it yet in local politics where it counts. Very often it’s the old guard working class voters who turn out for local elections, which were often not set in November deliberately to reduce turnout and empower local machines. And it will not change the decades of public worker contracts that have set up coming bankruptcies in numerous states and cities that cannot pay for the promises made years ago to get elected. Il, NJ and CT are in deep shit.
One word, homogeneity, both racial and cultural. They don’t see “us and them”. Our cops are often even geographically apart, big city cops rarely live where they work, the residents aren’t “their people” even if the are the same race. I’ve heard numerous city employees mock the notion of living here.
Is that one of those LiveStrong bracelets, Officer Friendly?
I don’t personally have a formula. Do you?
Agreed, even more so if it’s a person of color who does the asking; just sayin’.
This is one of those times I’m not willing to let someone on the fringe dominate the conversation as if they are a certified expert (as with pretty much every freakin’ topic.)
This is my reality, everyday, 24/7; it’s not an esoteric exploration of philosophical thought.
I was 17 years old when I started to pay close attention to police brutality in the Black community because that was the first time someone I knew personally got killed by the police under sketchy-ass circumstances. It wasn’t the last…
Look around.
you can definitely question this source, but it does say something:
Millenials are killing media illiteracy.
I was asking about the standard you referred to for yourself as “when its genuinely required”. Call it formula or a standard or a metric, if you like.
Follow up: why change the subject away from that standard for yourself that you seemed so willing to introduce to conversation? I asked because I assumed it was all but on the tip of your tongue, and that you would know what you were referring to more deeply. Perhaps I was mistaken and you don’t know what you meant?
Obviously I see things differently. Its not some magical talent on my part but I can talk to people without being confrontational. Interestingly enough I sometimes learn things from talking to people which break pre-existing stereotypes about them.
Just a bit over a year ago was the last time I spoke to police officers in the US, last time I was on US soil.
As for Japanese police, honestly besides the job title they don’t really generally do “police work” as understood in the US. They are good for asking directions and not much else. Trying to report a crime in progress here is futile in my experience. They don’t really do much to actively solve reported crimes except wait for someone to come in and confess or try to force suspects to confess. That is if you can get them to accept a report of a crime at all.
OTOH like many people in completely different walks of life from my own, I do enjoy talking to them to hear their perspectives on things.
In fact from speaking to current and former police officers here, there is very much an “us and them” factor involved in their mindset. OTOH, this is very much a defining factor of how all Japanese society works at every level. See here for the root of that
That’s a “bad” thing?
My take on it is something like, yeah, no fucking shit blue lives matter. Someone kills a cop and it’s a statewide manhunt followed by the death penalty.
I’m not saying police lives shouldn’t matter, but it’s like, you guys already won this one.
