171–180 of 262 posts
I'm so past fed up with police in America. The drug war is pathological. The notion that a cop can kill an unarmed suspect with impunity (especially if they're black or homeless or mentally ill) is disgusting. The belief that "law and order" is a value worth allowing one group the exclusive privilege of breaking any law and causing any disorder they like without consequence simply has to end. I'm at the point where I…
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They don't have to. There are plenty of good cops, but your mileage will vary with the integrity of the local PD. There are these hot beds of systemically bad police precincts and the power structure is organized such that those who could fix it are also those initiating it. A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all…
There's 2.5k people in my town and it's news here (literally) when someone is arrested shopping at the local Wal-Mart. The police have two miltary-issue Humvees, for some reason.
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And the problem with police not having guns is amply demonstrated by the recent terror in France. The first police to respond were unarmed.
That doesn't appear to be true. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/08/ahmed-merabet-m... > Merabet, who according to officials was 40, was called to the scene while on patrol with a female colleague in the neighbourhood, just in time to see the black Citroën used by the two killers heading towards the boulevard from Charlie Hebdo. > “He was on foot, and came nose to nose with the terrorists. He pulled out his…
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I find this attitude confusing. You're suggesting that cops are the ones who need to be made to feel safer? That by making them them feel safer they might be less likely to start shooting? Who is protecting who in this brave new world?
You're being irrational now. Of course cops need to be and feel safe. They are just humans, humans equipped with guns. Anything you can do to make sure they don't fire those guns prematurely should be done, after all, they're for protecting us. Calling it an armored tank is exaggerating. It's basically a mobile barrier that can carry a bunch of officers. There's all kinds of nice stuff you can do with them, and frank…
When I went to high school in this general area (15+ years ago) they used run-of-the-mill SUVs just fine.
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Jesus... that's completely indefensible. Now, I don't live in the US, and I only see the bad stuff that happens through the media, but I truly can't see why the police need to do things this way...
They don't have to. There are plenty of good cops, but your mileage will vary with the integrity of the local PD. There are these hot beds of systemically bad police precincts and the power structure is organized such that those who could fix it are also those initiating it. A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all…
Sometimes not even sold, but given. There are government programs where police departments can ask for used military gear and get it at no cost (i.e. no impact to their budget). This makes the departments especially eager to acquire as much "death tech" as they can.
> So you end up with towns of a thousand having swat teams and tanks and you wonder why the culture shifts from protecting and serving to war, death, and extortion.
This makes me very sad. I was born in the 70s so I grew up during the coldest part of the cold war. We were taught in school that (sorry to Godwin) Nazi Germany was pure evil, Stalinist Russia was pure evil, Italy under Mussolini was pure evil, China under Mao was pure evil, and so on. Yet here we are becoming just as militarized on a local level as those regimes, giving our police forces nearly carte blanche to oppress the citizens at will. It's disgusting and disturbing, and I say that as a former law enforcement employee of 14 years.
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And the problem with police not having guns is amply demonstrated by the recent terror in France. The first police to respond were unarmed.
That doesn't appear to be true. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/08/ahmed-merabet-m... > Merabet, who according to officials was 40, was called to the scene while on patrol with a female colleague in the neighbourhood, just in time to see the black Citroën used by the two killers heading towards the boulevard from Charlie Hebdo. > “He was on foot, and came nose to nose with the terrorists. He pulled out his…
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/charlie-hebdo-french-satirical-m...
"the first two officers to arrive, who were apparently unarmed, fled after seeing gunmen armed with automatic weapons and possibly a grenade launcher."
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"Cops" is a broad term. For police officers in general, $120K/year base salary is extremely high, and not representative of the average. To get your conclusion you have to compare the highest paying jobs for police officers with the average paying jobs for software developers. Here are more details from the BLS about 'Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers' for 2013: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm mean an…
Your ignoring the value of an early pension with Heathcoverage that can easily add 30+% to base pay. Also, coders rarely qualify for overtime so that can be a 50% pay cut right there based on 1.5x to 2.0x pay during overtime. Now adjust for cost of living and taxes which hammer the Bay Area coder's the disposable income and things don't look nearly as good as you might think.
Spooky23 specifically excluded the Bay Area ("coders outside of the Bay Area") so your point doesn't apply.
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I've read the same about the Rwandan Genocide.
The Cambodian killing fields as well. However, you have to remember that in none of these cases did the perpetrators act spontaneously on random victims. They were all primed to see the victims as part of a group both inferior (i.e. not deserving of empathy) and threatening (i.e. to be feared, hated and eliminated).
Well, there you have it.
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The officers involved most likely were following both their training and their department's policy here. That something terrible happened as a result doesn't necessarily mean they did something wrong from a legal and professional standpoint. Police work is full of situations that are ugly, even when well-thought out policy is followed to the T. Of course, the wisdom of ever using flash bangs in policing outside of ex…
Which is of course the problem with departmental policy. We routinely see SWAT teams investigating themselves and finding that everything they did was in line with departmental policy.
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They don't have to. There are plenty of good cops, but your mileage will vary with the integrity of the local PD. There are these hot beds of systemically bad police precincts and the power structure is organized such that those who could fix it are also those initiating it. A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all…
> A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction. Sometimes not even sold, but given. There are government programs where police departments can ask for used military gear and get it at no cost (i.e. no impact to their budget). This makes the departments especially eager to acquire…