I have been lurking for awhile but rarely posting. I have been following both of these threads and find it deeply disturbing. I don’t think there are a few bad apples. If bad apples remain with the good ones, guess what happens. It is the bad cops that give the good 2% a bad name.
My problem is with the whole LEO culture…period. Whether we look at the local travesty in Tucson where Jose Guerena was gunned down ( I went to the house and got to see the 50+ rounds of the 71 that did not impact the body of Guerena and buried themselves throughout the house and two neighbor’s homes and did, thankfully, not ventilate Mrs. G or her toddler). This from their elite SWAT unit. All dismissed after an internal investigation, of course.
Or the young homeless man beaten to death in CA.
Go here for a whole cavalcade of stories about cops gone bad:
http://www.copblock.org/
http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/
We need to address the core issue which is why do all these laws exist in the first place? For power and control. Nothing else. Less than eight percent of all Federal inmates are caged for crimes of violence. There are now seven million Americans in cages, on probation or on parole.
With so many folks caged or chained for non-violent offenses, why are cops so violent with everyone they arrest?
I hear plenty of bellyaching on this forum about how the political process puts their freedoms and liberties at risk or eliminate them entirely, yet if the cops did not exist, the politicians would be helpless to enslave a population or yoke them to their anti-freedom agendas.
Until we wake up out of our collective fever dream and cashier every cop in existence and ask them to find some productive work, there are some measures we can take:
1. Make every cop personally responsible for his bonding and insuring for his conduct on duty. Put his entire financial future at stake every time he abuses his authority or maims or kills someone. There is a reason the much maligned mall cops don’t make the news for maiming and killing both innocents and suspects. They do not have a perverse incentive structure that punishes taxpayers for police misconduct.
2. Stop the perverse “officer safety” BS that puts their lives dearer than the cattle they are allegedly “serving and protecting”. If you are that concerned for your safety, get another job.
3. Disarm them, all of them and if they need to go after someone dangerous, request assistance from armed citizens then the incentives aren’t as perverse as they are now. Cops literally get away with murder…everyday.
And, Ryan, please don’t sing the soliloquy about cop-hater or some other such nonsense. This is not about hate but sheer self-defense for the way the country is now, everyone is minutes away from a violent arrest and a ruinous span of their life caged for offenses against the state. Everyone.
I am a former Sheriff’s Deputy with six years experience. The system is rotten to the core and no band-aids will cure its ills. A top to bottom fumigation is required.
BTW, no to formal training requirements