10 ms·

I don’t get it. Are we now advocating that police is overall more of a force of evil than good? Legitimate question.

_bxg1 6y ago
That is what's becoming apparent right now, yes. I was more of an "a few bad apples" person until this week. But they're making it extremely clear that as a faction they have no regard for anything or anyone but their own power and bravado.
- secabeen 6y ago
  Yep. The police seem to be caught in us-vs-them tribalism where police are the us, and them is the citizenry that they are supposed to serve.
  - netsharc 6y ago
    Yeah, and then they also manage to convince themselves (and their supporters) that they're the victims, because they do dangerous work/their colleagues get shot, and the "they" they are facing are all dangerous Jason Bourne-esque assassins...
    - philips 6y ago
      I recently have been learning how deadly Policing is in comparison to other jobs and it came as a surprise to me: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/28/charted-the-20-deadliest-jobs-in-america/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/28/chart...
      - asdff 6y ago
        In reality it's an absolute dogshit job. The hours are long, there's a very real chance of PTSD or bodily harm, and they haze you worse than bootcamp. LAPD has a problem recruiting since everyone who is level headed enough to make a good cop sees it rightly as this horrible job.
        dopamean 6y ago
        They can fix some of that on their own and they choose not to.
        asdff 6y ago
        You can fix a lot of it but at the end of the day, no one likes standing on your feet directing traffic for hours in a black uniform on a hot day, or having to pin down an aggressive drunk at 3am. LAPD functions in a lot of ways as a bouncer would, but with more risk of contracting bloodborne disease. It's just a not a very pleasant line of work no matter what you do or how you reform the system, and that's why they can't recruit.
- DanHulton 6y ago
  I mean "a few bad apples spoil the bunch" is the full phrase, so... I guess that's what we're all seeing.
  - _bxg1 6y ago
    Touche
  - enraged_camel 6y ago
    And even those that aren't "spoiled" (in the sense of committing atrocities themselves) still tolerate and provide cover for those who do. It's an entire culture of suck.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    Incidentally this is literally true. Spoiling apples release ethylene gas, a plant hormone which functions as a ripening agent, accelerating the breakdown of other nearby apples.
- anticonformist 6y ago
  This principle incriminates the protesters just as much. There is widespread rationalization and support for the "few bad apples" perpetrating violence/looting/burning/rioting. There is very little condemnation. Lots of quoting MLK Jr. "rioting is the voice of the unheard" and yet MLK Jr. certainly did not practice or advocate violence. If the protesters can't regulate their own bad apples then how can they judge police for not being able to? Currently, this is two groups of unethical idiots fighting with each other. With each group's extremists serving to justify the other's extremists. The outcome is easily predicted. Either the protesters take the ethical high ground or they lose.
  - bradleybuda 6y ago
    Because one of those groups has a legal monopoly on violence, de facto power, budgets, training, and an incredibly loud political voice.
  - alexilliamson 6y ago
    With great power comes great responsibility. The protesters, even the bad ones, don't have tanks and near-universal legal immunity.
  - bcrosby95 6y ago
    I choose to not care about the looters because I know that if they get caught, we won't be giving them a paid vacation then clear them of all wrongdoing.
  - lm28469 6y ago
    > This principle incriminates the protesters just as much. Yeah but you know, one group _took oath to protect and serve_ and the other didn't. It's like when Trump say some racist shit VS when your drunk uncle says the same thing, you can't put both sides to the same standards. Everybody condemn rioters, but for some reasons a lot of people, including the president and many officials, manage to rationalise police brutality and if you don't see that as the obvious main issue you're most likely in the wrong. > The outcome is easily predicted. Either the protesters take the ethical high ground or they lose. This is the kind of thoughts I had when I was 15, I don't even know what to reply to that anymore. ______ Also, why do people keep creating new accounts to post these very poorly thought comments ? Don't you have the balls to attach your speech to your semi public internet presence or are you just trolling ?
Nasrudith 6y ago
It is a recognition that their reputation is a negative and citing them is /not/ what you want to do when trying to promote your image.
ardy42 6y ago
> I don’t get it. Are we now advocating that police is overall more of a force of evil than good? Legitimate question. Police, in the abstract, are still a force for good. But it's becoming clear to more and more people that the police we actually have commit an intolerable quantity of evil acts.
- jeffdavis 6y ago
  If your city had a ballot initiative to defund and disband the police department, would you vote for it? EDIT: I'm a little confused about the downvotes. If the answer is "no", then what's the problem with police using slack? Isn't it just a basic tool for communication? Is selling them radios also bad? I should also say that my answer in my city would be "no".
  - lreeves 6y ago
    It's pretty disingenuous to suggest that there's only a binary choice about how to deal with this problem. If you look at the policies of a site like Campaign Zero [1] you'll see that there's a lot of options that can help. 1 - https://www.joincampaignzero.org/ https://www.joincampaignzero.org/
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      All of those measures are in place in Oakland. Still corralled protestors into a confined space and tear gassed them for over ten minutes while preventing them from running. I guess that's not on the list though.
    - jeffdavis 6y ago
      I'm just trying to figure out why it's bad that police use slack. If we don't want police to be able to communicate, why not just disband them? Note that I'm not suggesting we disband them. I am just trying to follow the logic.
      - renewiltord 6y ago
nemothekid 6y ago
Dave Chappelle had a bit that went something like this: >Honey, did you see this? - Apparently, the Police have been beating up negroes like hotcakes! The special he mentioned this joke was aired in 2000. I bring this up because it highlights that for some people the police haven't been a force of good for a long time, and smartphones and social media are forcing people to confront that fact. There has been many arguments that people have always been making about how the police in this country been over militarized despite have far fewer training than actual soldiers, and these weapons built for use in the middle east are being used against the poor in the US. IMO, it's not that the police is now more overall a force of "evil", is that there always been systemically corrupt, and you have just been to well off to notice.
- Aqua_Geek 6y ago
  "Racism is not getting worse, it's getting filmed." — Will Smith
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  That joke doesn't support the claim that police aren't a force for good, only that they have been a force for less good for blacks. Of course no one is better off by "abolishing the police" (unless you're a fan of a global dark age).
  - nxc18 6y ago
    this argument always comes up and its complete and utter bullshit. Please think about what you say for more than a half second before you say it. Police are not that effective, society does not completely collapse in their absence, and there needs to be a cost-benefit analysis done for even things that obviously seem good. When police murder and assault people regularly, using military equipment, that's a serious cost to take into consideration. Overpolicing has serious consequences, and the evidence suggests it actually increases crime. When NYC cops stopped proactive policing, _serious crime decreased_. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-stop-yet-crime-dropped/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-...
steffandroid 6y ago
I don't know how you could look at the events of the past week and come to any other conclusion.
- usaar333 6y ago
  Someone can be quite concerned by police violence and brutality, but still view them as essential for a stable society. (The advocates of reforming police organizations go in this bucket)
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    Indeed, but they've had many years in which to deliver and have manifestly failed to do so. Reform should of course be the first recourse when you discover a problem, I don't bulldoze my house if if I discover a leaky pipe or a crack in the wall. If you know there are massive persistent problems and you keep saying 'now's not the time, let's reform this slowly and carefully' then at a certain point you're just procrastinating in hope that the problem goes away.
    - usaar333 6y ago
      > Indeed, but they've had many years in which to deliver and have manifestly failed to do so This is highly dependent on locality. I don't claim to follow broader national trends, but certainly things in the Bay Area have improved significantly in the last 2 decades. e.g. SJPD has seen encouraging reductions in use of force over the last five years (https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/29/as-police-decry-george-floyd-killing-new-force-report-signals-encouraging-direction-in-san-jose/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/29/as-police-decry-georg...)
      - anigbrowl 6y ago
        That's nice, but then why did San Jose police mount such a violent response at the demonstration last week, with one officers running around yelling things like 'let's get this motherfucker' and 'shut up bitch'? When called on to respond as a department they defaulted to gassing protesters and then citing the violent response as a post-facto justification for doing so. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/31/lets-get-this-motherf-ker-san-jose-officers-viral-protest-comments-draw-wide-condemnation/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/31/lets-get-this-motherf...
ncallaway 6y ago
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266751520055459847 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266751520055459847
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> police is overall more of a force of evil than good? I’ve watched journalists arrested and senior citizens bowled over and horrific horrific force used against children on TV and then seen how police chiefs and their lieutenants excuse and deny it in bare defiance of the documented truth and have concluded that, at the very least, evil forces in the police are unconstrained. Until we see evidence of that constraint, it seems irresponsible to add force multipliers to the equation.
Digory 6y ago
A BLM co-founder is on NPR advocating to "defund the police." "It’s not possible for the entity of law enforcement to be a compassionate, caring governmental agency in black communities. That’s not the training, that’s not the institution."[0] There's a continuum of what "defund" means, but the idealists are pushing for actual, no-hyperbole defunding and disbanding. Police cannot be made good. They believe would be easier to reduce crime some other way than authorized state violence, and the funds could be redirected to those ways. [0] https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/06/03/black-lives-matter-co-founder https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/06/03/black-lives-matte...
- jeffdavis 6y ago
  In response to persistent injustice by police, there are really only a few options: (a) Get used to it. (b) Get ready to join up. More officers who care about justice mean that it's easier to get rid of the unjust officers. (c) Get ready to defund/disband, or at least reduce the scope of, the police department. It doesn't shock me that (c) is being mentioned. It's probably a bluff, but might have enough credibility to change the power dynamics.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    B) It is easier to pull someone down than it is to pull someone up
  - rrmm 6y ago
    The current way that police are chosen, trained, and managed seems to have a corrosive effect on members of the police force. Option (b) with a sprinkling of (c) seems best, but it's clear the status quo in depts is not resulting in policing that is positive for the community as a whole. One would expect that if the system were set up right, it should a) find people who would police well b) setup systems to ensure as few abuses as possible happen c) encourage the good cops to push out the bad cops. It's pretty clear that it's more than the people themselves that are broken. The system isn't set up to result in good policing.
- gliese1337 6y ago
pravus 6y ago
I watched a video today of a 75-year old man being shoved by police for something that I can in no way defend. He fell backwards and blood started leaking from his head while he fell unconscious. No officer even attempted to render aid. I have watched a video of a SWAT team breaking into a man's home and murdering him point-blank because he was holding a golf club for the crime of using naturally occurring plants and chemicals. No charges filed against any officer. Even though trained for combat, apparently their life was in mortal danger. I have been personally threatened with arrest by police numerous times for the "criminal" offense of not following their exact instruction or being in an angry disposition for extremely minor offenses. If you want me to be peaceful, why are representatives of The State negotiating with me using violence? Yes. This is evil.
- sol_invictus 6y ago
  I’m sure there’s truth to it, but there are 800k police officers in the US. Are you ready to condemn the entire profession because of a handful of bad experiences?
  - the_pwner224 6y ago
    Imagine a handcuffed, nondangerous, nonviolent person is literally murdered by strangulation by a cop, and three cops stand right there watching and do nothing and don't even appear to be fazed by what's going on. If I was the cop watching, I would kick that asshole in the face and try to stop him. I'm sure if you asked 99% of normal people they would agree. But three cops literally watched and did nothing. Many cops do not partake in evil, but almost every single American cop has no issue with letting the bad cops be evil. And that makes them evil too. And these aren't a few occurrences; they have been happening frequently for decades. We only see them more often because of smartphones and people only got so mad about this occurrence because Coronavirus means everyone has too much spare time.
    - sol_invictus 6y ago
      > every single American cop based on what?
Sevaris 6y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/gwxsl0/an_indianapolis_police_officer_groped_a_woman/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/gwxsl0/an_... https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/gx20pi/lapd_shoots_homeless_man_in_the_face_with/ https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/gx20pi/lapd_shoots_ho... https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/gwzrap/this_happened_in_fairfield_ca_this_is_fing_sick/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/gwzrap/this... https://old.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/gwvk0b/buffalo_pd_attempt_to_murder_an_old_man/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/gwvk... After seeing things like this (hell, these are some of the tamer videos I've seen in the past week), I'm not sure how anybody can seriously still support the police. Police as a concept is absolutely necessary in a civilized society. But the police that the US has? They're nothing but state-sanctioned terrorists.
- Sevaris 6y ago
  I think I'm losing my mind. https://www.investigativepost.org/2020/06/05/police-unit-resigns-in-protest/ https://www.investigativepost.org/2020/06/05/police-unit-res... > “Fifty-seven [officers] resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders,” said John Evans, PBA president. > The announcement comes one day after two members were suspended without pay when a video surfaced, showing the officers pushing over a 75-year-old protestor, causing injury. The BPD Internal Affairs unit has opened an investigation into the incident.
- spoopyskelly 6y ago
  All that imagery only proves that the cops aren't racist and they treat everyone equally.
sg47 6y ago
If you are of a certain color, yes, they are net evil. If you care about equality in society, then it's net evil for everyone. Till systemic racism by police ends, they cannot be seen as net positive. Maybe some police departments are better than others and are a net positive but predominantly they are not.
noelsusman 6y ago
This is not a new attitude. The black community in the US has largely felt this way for decades.
greenshackle2 6y ago
Are you saying police should receive unconditional support and praise up until the moment where their net moral score is exactly zero? Or can we both believe that police is net good but falls far short of how good they should be? And that they deserve to feel the heat for it.
garlicGum 6y ago
The legal system relies on police for testimonies, carrying out warrants for evidence, among other things. Because of this the legal system protects them unless the public is outrage. Right now, police are legally allowed to bully the communities they serve. Not all police do, but the problem is normal citizens have no recourse to hold them accountable when they do. The system in place is evil for allowing such behavior to go unpunished and needs to be changed.

That is what's becoming apparent right now, yes. I was more of an "a few bad apples" person until this week. But they're making it extremely clear that as a faction they have no regard for anything or anyone but their own power and bravado.

secabeen 6y ago
Yep. The police seem to be caught in us-vs-them tribalism where police are the us, and them is the citizenry that they are supposed to serve.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Yeah, and then they also manage to convince themselves (and their supporters) that they're the victims, because they do dangerous work/their colleagues get shot, and the "they" they are facing are all dangerous Jason Bourne-esque assassins...
  - philips 6y ago
    I recently have been learning how deadly Policing is in comparison to other jobs and it came as a surprise to me: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/28/charted-the-20-deadliest-jobs-in-america/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/28/chart...
    - asdff 6y ago
      In reality it's an absolute dogshit job. The hours are long, there's a very real chance of PTSD or bodily harm, and they haze you worse than bootcamp. LAPD has a problem recruiting since everyone who is level headed enough to make a good cop sees it rightly as this horrible job.
      - dopamean 6y ago
        They can fix some of that on their own and they choose not to.
        asdff 6y ago
        You can fix a lot of it but at the end of the day, no one likes standing on your feet directing traffic for hours in a black uniform on a hot day, or having to pin down an aggressive drunk at 3am. LAPD functions in a lot of ways as a bouncer would, but with more risk of contracting bloodborne disease. It's just a not a very pleasant line of work no matter what you do or how you reform the system, and that's why they can't recruit.
DanHulton 6y ago
I mean "a few bad apples spoil the bunch" is the full phrase, so... I guess that's what we're all seeing.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  Touche
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  And even those that aren't "spoiled" (in the sense of committing atrocities themselves) still tolerate and provide cover for those who do. It's an entire culture of suck.
- catalogia 6y ago
  Incidentally this is literally true. Spoiling apples release ethylene gas, a plant hormone which functions as a ripening agent, accelerating the breakdown of other nearby apples.
anticonformist 6y ago
This principle incriminates the protesters just as much. There is widespread rationalization and support for the "few bad apples" perpetrating violence/looting/burning/rioting. There is very little condemnation. Lots of quoting MLK Jr. "rioting is the voice of the unheard" and yet MLK Jr. certainly did not practice or advocate violence. If the protesters can't regulate their own bad apples then how can they judge police for not being able to? Currently, this is two groups of unethical idiots fighting with each other. With each group's extremists serving to justify the other's extremists. The outcome is easily predicted. Either the protesters take the ethical high ground or they lose.
- bradleybuda 6y ago
  Because one of those groups has a legal monopoly on violence, de facto power, budgets, training, and an incredibly loud political voice.
- alexilliamson 6y ago
  With great power comes great responsibility. The protesters, even the bad ones, don't have tanks and near-universal legal immunity.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  I choose to not care about the looters because I know that if they get caught, we won't be giving them a paid vacation then clear them of all wrongdoing.
- lm28469 6y ago
  > This principle incriminates the protesters just as much. Yeah but you know, one group _took oath to protect and serve_ and the other didn't. It's like when Trump say some racist shit VS when your drunk uncle says the same thing, you can't put both sides to the same standards. Everybody condemn rioters, but for some reasons a lot of people, including the president and many officials, manage to rationalise police brutality and if you don't see that as the obvious main issue you're most likely in the wrong. > The outcome is easily predicted. Either the protesters take the ethical high ground or they lose. This is the kind of thoughts I had when I was 15, I don't even know what to reply to that anymore. ______ Also, why do people keep creating new accounts to post these very poorly thought comments ? Don't you have the balls to attach your speech to your semi public internet presence or are you just trolling ?

Nasrudith 6y ago

It is a recognition that their reputation is a negative and citing them is /not/ what you want to do when trying to promote your image.

ardy42 6y ago

> I don’t get it. Are we now advocating that police is overall more of a force of evil than good? Legitimate question. Police, in the abstract, are still a force for good. But it's becoming clear to more and more people that the police we actually have commit an intolerable quantity of evil acts.

jeffdavis 6y ago
If your city had a ballot initiative to defund and disband the police department, would you vote for it? EDIT: I'm a little confused about the downvotes. If the answer is "no", then what's the problem with police using slack? Isn't it just a basic tool for communication? Is selling them radios also bad? I should also say that my answer in my city would be "no".
- lreeves 6y ago
  It's pretty disingenuous to suggest that there's only a binary choice about how to deal with this problem. If you look at the policies of a site like Campaign Zero [1] you'll see that there's a lot of options that can help. 1 - https://www.joincampaignzero.org/ https://www.joincampaignzero.org/
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    All of those measures are in place in Oakland. Still corralled protestors into a confined space and tear gassed them for over ten minutes while preventing them from running. I guess that's not on the list though.
  - jeffdavis 6y ago
    I'm just trying to figure out why it's bad that police use slack. If we don't want police to be able to communicate, why not just disband them? Note that I'm not suggesting we disband them. I am just trying to follow the logic.
    - renewiltord 6y ago

nemothekid 6y ago

Dave Chappelle had a bit that went something like this: >Honey, did you see this? - Apparently, the Police have been beating up negroes like hotcakes! The special he mentioned this joke was aired in 2000. I bring this up because it highlights that for some people the police haven't been a force of good for a long time, and smartphones and social media are forcing people to confront that fact. There has been many arguments that people have always been making about how the police in this country been over militarized despite have far fewer training than actual soldiers, and these weapons built for use in the middle east are being used against the poor in the US. IMO, it's not that the police is now more overall a force of "evil", is that there always been systemically corrupt, and you have just been to well off to notice.

Aqua_Geek 6y ago
"Racism is not getting worse, it's getting filmed." — Will Smith
throwaway894345 6y ago
That joke doesn't support the claim that police aren't a force for good, only that they have been a force for less good for blacks. Of course no one is better off by "abolishing the police" (unless you're a fan of a global dark age).
- nxc18 6y ago
  this argument always comes up and its complete and utter bullshit. Please think about what you say for more than a half second before you say it. Police are not that effective, society does not completely collapse in their absence, and there needs to be a cost-benefit analysis done for even things that obviously seem good. When police murder and assault people regularly, using military equipment, that's a serious cost to take into consideration. Overpolicing has serious consequences, and the evidence suggests it actually increases crime. When NYC cops stopped proactive policing, _serious crime decreased_. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-stop-yet-crime-dropped/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-...

steffandroid 6y ago

I don't know how you could look at the events of the past week and come to any other conclusion.

usaar333 6y ago
Someone can be quite concerned by police violence and brutality, but still view them as essential for a stable society. (The advocates of reforming police organizations go in this bucket)
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Indeed, but they've had many years in which to deliver and have manifestly failed to do so. Reform should of course be the first recourse when you discover a problem, I don't bulldoze my house if if I discover a leaky pipe or a crack in the wall. If you know there are massive persistent problems and you keep saying 'now's not the time, let's reform this slowly and carefully' then at a certain point you're just procrastinating in hope that the problem goes away.
  - usaar333 6y ago
    > Indeed, but they've had many years in which to deliver and have manifestly failed to do so This is highly dependent on locality. I don't claim to follow broader national trends, but certainly things in the Bay Area have improved significantly in the last 2 decades. e.g. SJPD has seen encouraging reductions in use of force over the last five years (https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/29/as-police-decry-george-floyd-killing-new-force-report-signals-encouraging-direction-in-san-jose/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/29/as-police-decry-georg...)
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      That's nice, but then why did San Jose police mount such a violent response at the demonstration last week, with one officers running around yelling things like 'let's get this motherfucker' and 'shut up bitch'? When called on to respond as a department they defaulted to gassing protesters and then citing the violent response as a post-facto justification for doing so. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/31/lets-get-this-motherf-ker-san-jose-officers-viral-protest-comments-draw-wide-condemnation/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/31/lets-get-this-motherf...

ncallaway 6y ago

https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266751520055459847 https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266751520055459847

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> police is overall more of a force of evil than good? I’ve watched journalists arrested and senior citizens bowled over and horrific horrific force used against children on TV and then seen how police chiefs and their lieutenants excuse and deny it in bare defiance of the documented truth and have concluded that, at the very least, evil forces in the police are unconstrained. Until we see evidence of that constraint, it seems irresponsible to add force multipliers to the equation.

Digory 6y ago

A BLM co-founder is on NPR advocating to "defund the police." "It’s not possible for the entity of law enforcement to be a compassionate, caring governmental agency in black communities. That’s not the training, that’s not the institution."[0] There's a continuum of what "defund" means, but the idealists are pushing for actual, no-hyperbole defunding and disbanding. Police cannot be made good. They believe would be easier to reduce crime some other way than authorized state violence, and the funds could be redirected to those ways. [0] https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/06/03/black-lives-matter-co-founder https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/06/03/black-lives-matte...

jeffdavis 6y ago
In response to persistent injustice by police, there are really only a few options: (a) Get used to it. (b) Get ready to join up. More officers who care about justice mean that it's easier to get rid of the unjust officers. (c) Get ready to defund/disband, or at least reduce the scope of, the police department. It doesn't shock me that (c) is being mentioned. It's probably a bluff, but might have enough credibility to change the power dynamics.
- dylan604 6y ago
  B) It is easier to pull someone down than it is to pull someone up
- rrmm 6y ago
  The current way that police are chosen, trained, and managed seems to have a corrosive effect on members of the police force. Option (b) with a sprinkling of (c) seems best, but it's clear the status quo in depts is not resulting in policing that is positive for the community as a whole. One would expect that if the system were set up right, it should a) find people who would police well b) setup systems to ensure as few abuses as possible happen c) encourage the good cops to push out the bad cops. It's pretty clear that it's more than the people themselves that are broken. The system isn't set up to result in good policing.
gliese1337 6y ago

pravus 6y ago

I watched a video today of a 75-year old man being shoved by police for something that I can in no way defend. He fell backwards and blood started leaking from his head while he fell unconscious. No officer even attempted to render aid. I have watched a video of a SWAT team breaking into a man's home and murdering him point-blank because he was holding a golf club for the crime of using naturally occurring plants and chemicals. No charges filed against any officer. Even though trained for combat, apparently their life was in mortal danger. I have been personally threatened with arrest by police numerous times for the "criminal" offense of not following their exact instruction or being in an angry disposition for extremely minor offenses. If you want me to be peaceful, why are representatives of The State negotiating with me using violence? Yes. This is evil.

sol_invictus 6y ago
I’m sure there’s truth to it, but there are 800k police officers in the US. Are you ready to condemn the entire profession because of a handful of bad experiences?
- the_pwner224 6y ago
  Imagine a handcuffed, nondangerous, nonviolent person is literally murdered by strangulation by a cop, and three cops stand right there watching and do nothing and don't even appear to be fazed by what's going on. If I was the cop watching, I would kick that asshole in the face and try to stop him. I'm sure if you asked 99% of normal people they would agree. But three cops literally watched and did nothing. Many cops do not partake in evil, but almost every single American cop has no issue with letting the bad cops be evil. And that makes them evil too. And these aren't a few occurrences; they have been happening frequently for decades. We only see them more often because of smartphones and people only got so mad about this occurrence because Coronavirus means everyone has too much spare time.
  - sol_invictus 6y ago
    > every single American cop based on what?

Sevaris 6y ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/gwxsl0/an_indianapolis_police_officer_groped_a_woman/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/gwxsl0/an_... https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/gx20pi/lapd_shoots_homeless_man_in_the_face_with/ https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/gx20pi/lapd_shoots_ho... https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/gwzrap/this_happened_in_fairfield_ca_this_is_fing_sick/ https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/gwzrap/this... https://old.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/gwvk0b/buffalo_pd_attempt_to_murder_an_old_man/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/gwvk... After seeing things like this (hell, these are some of the tamer videos I've seen in the past week), I'm not sure how anybody can seriously still support the police. Police as a concept is absolutely necessary in a civilized society. But the police that the US has? They're nothing but state-sanctioned terrorists.

Sevaris 6y ago
I think I'm losing my mind. https://www.investigativepost.org/2020/06/05/police-unit-resigns-in-protest/ https://www.investigativepost.org/2020/06/05/police-unit-res... > “Fifty-seven [officers] resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders,” said John Evans, PBA president. > The announcement comes one day after two members were suspended without pay when a video surfaced, showing the officers pushing over a 75-year-old protestor, causing injury. The BPD Internal Affairs unit has opened an investigation into the incident.
spoopyskelly 6y ago
All that imagery only proves that the cops aren't racist and they treat everyone equally.

sg47 6y ago

If you are of a certain color, yes, they are net evil. If you care about equality in society, then it's net evil for everyone. Till systemic racism by police ends, they cannot be seen as net positive. Maybe some police departments are better than others and are a net positive but predominantly they are not.

noelsusman 6y ago

This is not a new attitude. The black community in the US has largely felt this way for decades.

greenshackle2 6y ago

Are you saying police should receive unconditional support and praise up until the moment where their net moral score is exactly zero? Or can we both believe that police is net good but falls far short of how good they should be? And that they deserve to feel the heat for it.

garlicGum 6y ago

The legal system relies on police for testimonies, carrying out warrants for evidence, among other things. Because of this the legal system protects them unless the public is outrage. Right now, police are legally allowed to bully the communities they serve. Not all police do, but the problem is normal citizens have no recourse to hold them accountable when they do. The system in place is evil for allowing such behavior to go unpunished and needs to be changed.