This and That
Captain Kremmen said:
And he talks about Police abusing their authority.
Oh, don't get your heart all a-twitter. Consider that despite the member attempting to bait a moderator into banning him, the moderator, aware of the severity of his post to which so many object, has not taken any action against him.
And in truth, I go easier on the cops when we're not expected grovel for the sake of their egos. Your remark, be it flippant or vicious or whatever, was not something you needed to apologize for, and if the people who join police departments are supposed to receive some extraordinary protection of respect that we should not extend to other groups of people, such as politicians, lawyers, and religious people, they're going to hear just how pathetic and greedy that is.
But yeah, the idea of a LEO not under any official sanction or punishment
complaining of abuse of authority?
Quite frankly, the longer he goes on, the more he proves my point.
I mean, come on, if he doesn't like the opinion that cops are dishonest, maybe he should try something a little more honest.
Seriously, we all go through this in some way at some point in our lives. How many millions of people would consider me evil simply for being an American? Frankly, it doesn't bother me because I know why so many people complain about our society.
And as I noted a couple days ago, in a discussion of
religion and politics:
In the end, it is unfortunate; many good, decent people of faith get stained by these outstanding hatemongers. And that is, to a certain degree, understandable; the constant stimuli coming from the evangelical sector is hateful. To the other, though, I am also aware of a faction among Christians who seem to get it. They don't bother trying to say, "That's not fair to Christians!" because they recognize that the hatred visited upon society has taken that name for itself. They get it, and know the difference between the "Christians" we talk about in large political issues and themselves. Trust is an astoundingly effective communicative aid.
You know how discussions can get to that point? When the people who might disagree take reasonable positions. I can tell you exactly why I have such a low view of cops; all we know about our neighbor's argument is that his feelings are hurt.
When it comes to the hurt feelings of LEOs, I'll worry about that when trusting cops is no longer dangerous.
They don't like to talk about how it comes about.
They don't like to talk about how it transmits through the ranks.
They don't like to talk about how it persists.
Instead, they just complain when people criticize the police at all.
And as we have seen, yet again, what the LEO sensitivities aren't able to do is actually be useful on such occasions.
Although, I did want to thank you, personally: I haven't had to ask someone how to apply to be a black man for several years.
Of course, in that stretch I've never gotten an answer, either.
• • •
Fraggle Rocker said:
I'm an unrepentant pig-hating hippie.
In the end, the police are human beings. That is all the respect they get from me. It's a baseline. You get it if you're Officer Hero, Osama bin Laden, or even a capitalist. Its components include the Dostoyevsky measurement.
The only real, practical solution is to set aside our myths and start purging the corruption and hatred, start holding society's powerful to account for their power.
Once upon a time I might have said that I cannot afford to have cops as friends, as I have a long history as a stoner. But even before we cleared that one up in the Evergreen State, that myth went bust.
My friend's stepfather was, on balance, a reasonably good person. Indeed, where we separate, and where he became dangerous to me was not simply in the fact that he would admit that (nearly accurate paraphrase) "There's not a cop who hasn't or wouldn't perjure himself to keep a definitely guilty suspect from getting off on a technicality". Where he became
dangerous to me is in a simple difference of perspective: I do not find this acceptable. He not only found it acceptable, but considered it appropriate.
And it used to be a lot easier to convince oneself that rampant corruption was something that existed somewhere else. Los Angeles. New York. Chicago. New Orleans. Small towns in the middle of racist nowhere.
I live just north of Seattle. I presently have no specific beef with the Snohomish County Sheriff's office, but the rest of our law and justice system seated in Everett is rotten to the core. The Seattle Police Department is out of its mind, and even tried to take down the new mayor in a disciplinary scandal among police leadership. Cops only get fired when, like Birk, the department is against the wall and facing open revolt from the citizens. But no, that guy was
still beyond prosecution.
And I don't loathe Reichert as a sheriff. Whatever pebbles or stones he might have added to the wall over time, he tried to do some important, good things before he left. Indeed, it seemed like after he lost the disciplinary action against his deputies, "Dancin' Dave"—a personal friend to the guy whose stepfather I've mentioned—a guy who helped bring in the Green River Killer, was running out of ways to leave the KCSO in better shape than he found it. So he did the obvious and overdue thing; the new policy on marijuana was, "Don't give us a reason ... please?" Sure, it was a tacit please, but his argument was that his deputies had better things to be doing, so, you know, just ... just don't
force them to get involved. Don't deal on the streetcorner. Don't get kids high. Don't toke in public. That sort of thing. No more wasting the aircraft on flyovers looking for radiation from the grow lights. No more poring through utility records looking for extraordinary electric consumption. No more stings. Better things to do.
But he would, as long as he wore that badge,
always present a danger to me. It is inherent in how the laws are structured and the law enforcement agencies operate.
It's also true, though, that I hold a scorched-earth outlook on the hurt feelings of LEOs. If it's just a few bad seeds, then get rid of them.
One might, then, wonder if there is a reason they have not.