That’s awesome that you knew a personally benevolent cop.
I still don’t find that a good reason to trust cops, cut them slack, or give them any respect beyond human civility.
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I consider that proposition open to debate, rather than as a foregone conclusion.
I didn’t say that. I’ve said I struggle to be able to tell the difference based solely on the visible signs of their membership in the group.
Vegans don’t get to shoot you because they say they’re afraid of you. PeTA is widely scorned as being hypocritical attention hounds. Golfers at least yell “Fore!” before they launch a potentially lethal missile in your direction.
I’m glad to hear of your association with that person. He sounds to have been a genuinely decent person who took the motto “To Protect And Serve” very much to heart. I’m sorry to learn of his untimely end.
Do you know if he ever overlooked a colleague’s unethical behavior? Do you know if he ever failed to report when another cop overstepped the boundaries of their authority? Abused the power they enjoyed because of their membership in the self-selected group called “cops?”
I’m not saying he ever did any of these things. What I am saying is that LEO culture pretty much demands that he did.
It’s not enough for a good cop to just be a good cop in their own personal conduct. They have to also demand that all of their colleagues uphold the same standard, and have the moral courage, backed up by institutional norms, to hold bad cops to account for their misdeeds.
“Dog bites man” is not news, cops breaking the law absolutely should be.
If the nature of their job requires exposure to conflict, then maybe we need to look at how to mitigate that, and re-integrating them into their communities, them regaining the trust of the citizens they serve would be a great place to start.
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You literally just compared it to he US, and found that in comparison it has a well regulated militia.
Instead, police who don’t shoot minorities get fired.
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Too bad they seem to be so utterly and desperately out-numbered by all the “bad apples.”
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If we want to wade into semantics, I contrasted two things that are drastically different, rather than compare two things that are mostly the same.
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There’s bad barristas in every apple barrel. Starbucks is putting the employees on paid leave while they conduct an internal investigation. Our thoughts and prayers are with the unserved cops at this time, however no wrongdoing will be admitted. The cops were Ordering While Uniformed, (like Driving While Black) so Starbucks employees presumed drug trafficking, as many cops do many illegal things, and after the last incident why would these uniformed officers want to go into a hostile environment? They were provoking hostility. Also, did they show their green cards and papers to prove they were REALLY cops and ACTUAL citizens? They brought weapons into a civilian situation. They were unable to intimidate the people they normally harass. We cannot comment on personnel problems. (Oh, wait that’s not how starbucks handle these things; that’s how the Police Department handles these things) Also: a police officer can completely ignore a call for help if they choose too. There have been many deaths of people who called the cops and never got a response. 5 minutes for coffee? What about the 100,000 rape kits that haven’t been tested?
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As with most stereotypes, that’s a function of observation bias, in this case, news reporting. “Cop doesn’t shoot unarmed kid” doesn’t make the news, hence pretty much the only time you hear about a cop on the news is when they do something bad. While news/blog reports about bad cops desperately outnumber those of good ones, I highly doubt that the actual number of bad cops outnumbers the decent ones.
There are the cops who blatantly do wrong. And the cops who turn a blind eye to it.
Both groups are bad cops, and (when you factor in the cops turning blind eyes) I highly doubt that the actual number of decent cops outnumber the bad ones.
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A good cop who doesn’t tattle on his brother behind the thin blue line is just a bad cop.
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Silence is complicity.
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US police departments and police unions routinely block predatory and corrupt cops from being held accountable, ensuring they’re effectively above the law as long as they don’t do anything to alienate their brethren. That’s why they’re losing the public trust even within demographics which historically have far less personal experience with police abuse, not because of a “few bad apples” on some of whom the media shines a light because the rise of citizen journalism has diminished their ability to ignore it. When you suggest it’s greedy media that’s the real problem, you’re playing right into the cop-washing narrative. I realize that’s not your intent, but that’s the consequence.
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Actually I don’t think that is the case. There’s just a lot of lazy ones in the middle.
Yeah, you really need to read that ProPublica article. A medium-sized city worth of cops lined up on the side of firing the guy who refused to shoot a black man.
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Anyway, it’s not the well regulated militia that is the main difference. Swiss people have an entirely different culture. There is less racism, less exceptionalism (or at least a different kind), people are less ignorant, less racist, there’s less poverty and less inequality. So it’s no problem they have a few guns lying around.
Just FYI; starting out your comments with that word is not likely to yield a desirable response…
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That’s…just a whole lot on nonsense. The Swiss don’t have guns lying around. They have some of the strictest gun laws on the planet. It’s just that those laws are not about ownership of guns, they are about use and storage of guns and distribution (and storage) of ammo.
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What are your own experiences of being black in Sweden?
Living in a black body means seeing things that those who live in a white body don’t see. One example is being always aware of how one’s skin colour is denigrated and seen as deviant. Always being aware that someone can at any moment threaten me, insult me, physically attack me. Never being able to relax when outside. But the question of race has been made invisible in Sweden.
Off-topic, but the door was opened…
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Switzerland != Sweden.
One is a landlocked nation in the middle of the Alps, where people speak German, French, Italian and Schwyzerdütch. The other is a mostly coastal nation extending above the Arctic Circle, where people mainly speak Swedish. One is in the EU, the other stubbornly neutral.
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Aw, geez. It’s late, and I really did know that, but disbelieve me if you choose to.
So…prolly need a VPN for this.
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