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Yet another example of how our policing in this country is beyond broken. These cards are disgusting and what they represent is the exact opposite of what polic

Yet another example of how our policing in this country is beyond broken. These cards are disgusting and what they represent is the exact opposite of what police should stand for. I hate our current state of law enforcement (local and federal) that essentially lets "enforcers" pick which laws they enforce and who they enforce them against. The ability for police to utilize "discretion" might sound like a good thing but I think it's not. If they enforced the laws equally and universally we would see that some (perhaps many) laws need to be stricken from the books because of how many people are regularly breaking them. Instead the police get to pick so if you piss them off they might write you up for a minor infraction that they ignore 99% of the time. The police should not have this power. Another example of police getting to decide if they want to do their jobs are not is what happened to the CA DA Chesa Boudin. He came in and tried to implement various criminal justice reform policies and the police didn't like that so what did they do? They stopped doing their jobs. They let crime rise to the point that civilians, incorrectly, assumed the DA wasn't doing his job and they recalled him. Let that sink in, a DA tried to make changes and the police decided to just not do their job in order to make him look bad so they could get him effectively "fired" and they didn't have to make any reforms/changes. That's absolutely disgusting. Just imagine trying to pull a stunt like that were you work and think about how well it would go over. Police are not a protected class, they should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us but instead they are held to almost no standard at all. We need massive police reform in the US and it's becoming even more clear that there is little worth "saving" from our current system.

secabeen 4y ago
This is essentially the argument that "All Cops are Bad"; some few cops are bad, but all cops willingly participate in a system that protects and enables those bad actors. The US military is a good comparison, they routinely dishonorably discharge soldiers who misbehave or fail to behave in honorable ways; police seem much less able to manage themselves in the same way. (Not that the US military doesn't have its own share of problems, nor do they always kick out the people they should, but they seem to have a better culture of doing so than most US police forces. Both could certainly be improved further.)
- LocalH 4y ago
  That's certainly funny, given the gusto with which many PDs emulate military structure and behavior. The one thing they could really stand to learn from the military? Nah, we're good, they say.
  - greedo 4y ago
    Same with the employment of firearms. Most serviceman would be brought before a courts martial if they used the same tactics and justification common in US police departments.
carapace 4y ago
> Let that sink in Or go do some research. I'm a left-leaning grow-in-SF person who voted to recall Boudin. I've had Progressive friends tell me to my face that I was fooled by the police. Okay, for the sake of discussion, let's say that your presentation of the story is roughly accurate. (Let's ignore what the Asian political bloc was saying, they were fooled by the police too, in this scenario; and let's ignore all the folks who worked for Boudin in the DA office and then came out against him. Ignoring all that...) So the police don't want to work with this DA. They say the rise in crime is due to him being soft on crime. We vote him out. Next, one of two things will happen: crime will go down, or it stays the same or goes up. If crime goes down, great! That's what we want, yeah? But if crime goes UP then-- Aha! --we then know that Chesa Boudin wasn't really the factor after all and the police were playing games with the data and enforcement, eh? And that plays (back) into the hands of the Progressive bloc, no?
- setr 4y ago
  If the concern is police was artificially increasing crime through intentional lack of enforcement, your outcomes aren’t right If DA exits, and crime increases, then it probably wasn’t the police artificially fiddling with things (because they would revert to norm after exit). But then whatever the DA was doing was apparently working, so his exiting isn’t so great. If DA exits, and crime decreases, then: 1. If police were artificially meddling, and stopped meddling after exit, then this is what we’d expect 2. If police were not artificially meddling, and DA was the cause due to soft-on-crime, then this is what we’d expect If DA exits, and crime stays the same, then artificial meddling and DA policy either didn’t occur, or had no impact. Item 1 of crime decrease is not what “we” wanted. Item 2 is a good outcome. But I don’t see how you’d differentiate in this simplification.
  - carapace 4y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. The police said that they couldn't do their jobs because the DA wasn't prosecuting. The Progressive bloc said that the police were fudging the reported numbers and shirking their duty just to make the DA look bad. (Pretty strong accusations IMO.) But we don't really have the data. The Progressives claim is that the official figures are cooked. But anyone who has spent time here has seen the crime for themselves. So which is it? Are the cops doing their job but the DA lets the criminals walk? Or are the cops lying and shirking their duty to get rid of a DA who is willing to prosecute their misconduct? In the event, we voted the DA out. The Asian-American political bloc and many Democrats went with the police version of the story, and the Progressives said that they (we) were all just bamboozled by the Republicans and the Police. So now if crime does not go down after removing Boudin then the Progressive bloc will be handed a PR victory (not a real victory, because more crime is bad even if it helps your side politically, eh?)

secabeen 4y ago

This is essentially the argument that "All Cops are Bad"; some few cops are bad, but all cops willingly participate in a system that protects and enables those bad actors. The US military is a good comparison, they routinely dishonorably discharge soldiers who misbehave or fail to behave in honorable ways; police seem much less able to manage themselves in the same way. (Not that the US military doesn't have its own share of problems, nor do they always kick out the people they should, but they seem to have a better culture of doing so than most US police forces. Both could certainly be improved further.)

LocalH 4y ago
That's certainly funny, given the gusto with which many PDs emulate military structure and behavior. The one thing they could really stand to learn from the military? Nah, we're good, they say.
- greedo 4y ago
  Same with the employment of firearms. Most serviceman would be brought before a courts martial if they used the same tactics and justification common in US police departments.

carapace 4y ago

> Let that sink in Or go do some research. I'm a left-leaning grow-in-SF person who voted to recall Boudin. I've had Progressive friends tell me to my face that I was fooled by the police. Okay, for the sake of discussion, let's say that your presentation of the story is roughly accurate. (Let's ignore what the Asian political bloc was saying, they were fooled by the police too, in this scenario; and let's ignore all the folks who worked for Boudin in the DA office and then came out against him. Ignoring all that...) So the police don't want to work with this DA. They say the rise in crime is due to him being soft on crime. We vote him out. Next, one of two things will happen: crime will go down, or it stays the same or goes up. If crime goes down, great! That's what we want, yeah? But if crime goes UP then-- Aha! --we then know that Chesa Boudin wasn't really the factor after all and the police were playing games with the data and enforcement, eh? And that plays (back) into the hands of the Progressive bloc, no?

setr 4y ago
If the concern is police was artificially increasing crime through intentional lack of enforcement, your outcomes aren’t right If DA exits, and crime increases, then it probably wasn’t the police artificially fiddling with things (because they would revert to norm after exit). But then whatever the DA was doing was apparently working, so his exiting isn’t so great. If DA exits, and crime decreases, then: 1. If police were artificially meddling, and stopped meddling after exit, then this is what we’d expect 2. If police were not artificially meddling, and DA was the cause due to soft-on-crime, then this is what we’d expect If DA exits, and crime stays the same, then artificial meddling and DA policy either didn’t occur, or had no impact. Item 1 of crime decrease is not what “we” wanted. Item 2 is a good outcome. But I don’t see how you’d differentiate in this simplification.
- carapace 4y ago
  I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. The police said that they couldn't do their jobs because the DA wasn't prosecuting. The Progressive bloc said that the police were fudging the reported numbers and shirking their duty just to make the DA look bad. (Pretty strong accusations IMO.) But we don't really have the data. The Progressives claim is that the official figures are cooked. But anyone who has spent time here has seen the crime for themselves. So which is it? Are the cops doing their job but the DA lets the criminals walk? Or are the cops lying and shirking their duty to get rid of a DA who is willing to prosecute their misconduct? In the event, we voted the DA out. The Asian-American political bloc and many Democrats went with the police version of the story, and the Progressives said that they (we) were all just bamboozled by the Republicans and the Police. So now if crime does not go down after removing Boudin then the Progressive bloc will be handed a PR victory (not a real victory, because more crime is bad even if it helps your side politically, eh?)