I will say that a state police officer did me a solid a few years ago when I needed a jump at 3am on the shoulder of the freeway. On the other hand, I was subjected to mild unwarranted harassment on another occasion (the classic “you know why we are questioning you” when there was no valid reason).
But the assumption that the police do good things every day is some weak-ass tea. People do good things every day. Officers do good things because they are forced to set their pathology aside once in a while. Not because of it being their job.
Their job is to catch bad guys. Helping people is a yeah, sometimes, because it is the right fucking thing to do just then.
But it is not enough. We grant them a lot of latitude to do the catching bad guys thing. Sometimes they err. Sometimes they go overboard. And in Baltimore, some of them are the vilest of thugs, barely distinguishable from the very bad guys we expect them to be bringing down for us.
The biggest problem that shows up over and over and over and over in this thread is the silence. When there is egregious behavior, where are the decent officers standing up to repudiate the thugs? They can be as good and proper and decent and friendly as how do you do, but when they look the other way from the misbehavior, their ivory snow goodness is soiled, tarnished, blackened, corrupted.
That is why your awesome police news of the day thread is worth a potato sack of rat turds on a sunny summer day in a parked car with the windows rolled up. Look a ways upthread at the oath of service, the line where they swear that “I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions” and tell us how well, based on this thread, they are holding up that part.
So do many folks I know(myself included to the best of my ability), so should be able to trade in those good deeds for a free pass to harass and/or beat up and/or kill someone? Even if I myself are a little lax in the good deeds department, should I be able to use the good deeds of my fellow citizens to get that same free pass?
How many little old ladies do I have to help cross the street before I get to rob a bank?
This thread is not about people as a general class, right? It’s specifically about cops. If sending an autistic kid helicopters, a K-9 unit, and who knows what else not only on his birthday, but for an entire week is an example of “setting aside their pathology because they are forced to”, well, that seems like weak tea to me. There are many examples, just a quick search away, of cops doing incredible, WAY beyond the call-of-duty stuff.
As far as the silence from other cops is concerned, I’m with you there. I know we have some LEO’s as members of this board. Have they spoken up about the issue? I’d be interested to hear if they ever encountered bad behavior from their co-workers and called them out on it.
My thread is worth a bunch of runny rat turds? Why? Can’t the concern of the police abuses shown here be mutually exclusive from highlighting the good things they have done? If not, why?
On this point: police, for the most part (with some exceptions) are not doing nasty things off-duty. They (some of them) are doing nasty things on duty, under color of law. Some, or much, of their paid nastiness is, as you say, way beyond the call of duty.
Giving helicopters to autistic children is not done under color of law. It is some person in a uniform doing a human thing. I do not pretend to suggest that police are consistently bad or violent across the board, but when it comes to crunch time, trusting them to do the right thing looks harder and harder to support.
Then there is the escalation factor. In many of these situations, they seem to have so much hostility toward the persons they are encountering that the situation get driven toward the worst possible outcome. Some departments are working on this problem, but the push toward de-escalating tactics does not appear nearly strong or widespread enough.
Texas Deputy Sheriff Jose Nunez sexually abused a 4-year old girl for months or years. The girl’s mother was an undocumented immigrant so he threatened her with deportation to keep her from reporting the crime. Nunez has been placed on administrative leave.
Since conviction will require witness testimony, there is an effort underway to delay deportation of the witness/illegals.
In fact this thread is giving us all hope. Because we are doomed when the headlines start to scream: "EXTRA !! A cop did NOT kill a black person ! EXTRA !! "
Yes, it is not quite as bad as it sounds, according to the story Broken Rickard linked, … Nunez has “familial ties” to the woman and her daughter, although their exact relationship is unclear. …
I pretty much guarantee you that when all this children being seperated at the border stuff starts falling out, we are going to be hearing of some cases of atrocious sexual abuse of children.
And I also know that we will not be hearing about all of them.