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I distain fascism. But I don’t go around vandalizing and looting stores, defacing national monuments, setting cars on fire and beating strangers with iron bars.
Therefore, I am not antifa. And you shouldn’t be either if you know what’s good for you.
I agree. And I don't belong to groups with similar rhetoric and tactics on the right.
This has to do with mental issues also, a police officer motivated to react as they did, with whatever was going on in their head, when another officer would not have allowed themselves to have gone to such extremes.
It certainly is a mental issue. We have a hard time imagining kneeling on someones neck as they plead for their life and not letting up until they pass out or are dead. It would take a real monster to do that yet there was that bad cop acting in a terrible sadistic way in the middle of the street.
We will never know what was going through his head but I cannot imagine that he set out that morning to kill someone in front of everyone.
The most disturbing part was the complacency of the 3 other cops that let it happen. What ever happened to the bad cop good cop routine? In this case they were all bad and they let Floyd be murdered. I'm sure that if a bystander tried to intervene and knock the sadistic off Floyd they would have been roughed up and arrested. We do not pay cops to be the judge, jury and executioner but that is what happened.
If only one of those other cops had said "that is enough", showed an ounce of compassion we wouldn't be in this mess today.
The biggest question is, why did this happen and how?
It certainly is a mental issue. We have a hard time imagining kneeling on someones neck as they plead for their life and not letting up until they pass out or are dead. It would take a real monster to do that yet there was that bad cop acting in a terrible sadistic way in the middle of the street.
We will never know what was going through his head but I cannot imagine that he set out that morning to kill someone in front of everyone.
The most disturbing part was the complacency of the 3 other cops that let it happen. What ever happened to the bad cop good cop routine? In this case they were all bad and they let Floyd be murdered. I'm sure that if a bystander tried to intervene and knock the sadistic off Floyd they would have been roughed up and arrested. We do not pay cops to be the judge, jury and executioner but that is what happened.
If only one of those other cops had said "that is enough", showed an ounce of compassion we wouldn't be in this mess today.
The biggest question is, why did this happen and how?
The state of Minnesota has filed a human rights grievance against the Minneapolis PD, to initiate an investigation into a possible history of "systemic discrimination". The investigation will examine the prior 10 years' worth of records. The officer charged with murder had around 17 prior complaints, some of which were for excessive use of force. So, hopefully the answers to some of your questions will be forthcoming, as the investigation develops.
An article in the NY Times last Sunday looked at the issue of police reform, and why it doesn't happen in cases of individuals and entire PD's, that have multiple complaints filed for excessive use of force. One major obstacle they identified, was the power of police unions.
Quote:
In nearly two decades with the Minneapolis Police Department, Derek Chauvin faced at least 17 misconduct complaints, none of which derailed his career. Over the years, civilian review boards came and went, and a federal review recommended that the troubled department improve its system for flagging problematic officers.
If only one of those other cops had said "that is enough", showed an ounce of compassion we wouldn't be in this mess today.
The biggest question is, why did this happen and how?
I'm definitely not a fan of the cops (I learned at an early age that FBI stands for Forever Bothering Italians), BUT-- don't criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes....I've always said that anybody who wants t be a cop probably shouldn't be allowed to be one...What's wrong with him? He's gotta be nuts.
It certainly is a mental issue. We have a hard time imagining kneeling on someones neck as they plead for their life and not letting up until they pass out or are dead. It would take a real monster to do that yet there was that bad cop acting in a terrible sadistic way in the middle of the street.
We will never know what was going through his head but I cannot imagine that he set out that morning to kill someone in front of everyone.
The most disturbing part was the complacency of the 3 other cops that let it happen. What ever happened to the bad cop good cop routine? In this case they were all bad and they let Floyd be murdered. I'm sure that if a bystander tried to intervene and knock the sadistic off Floyd they would have been roughed up and arrested. We do not pay cops to be the judge, jury and executioner but that is what happened.
If only one of those other cops had said "that is enough", showed an ounce of compassion we wouldn't be in this mess today.
The biggest question is, why did this happen and how?
I almost always disagree with you. But that's a good post.
I'm definitely not a fan of the cops (I learned at an early age that FBI stands for Forever Bothering Italians), BUT-- don't criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes....I've always said that anybody who wants t be a cop probably shouldn't be allowed to be one...What's wrong with him? He's gotta be nuts.
When I was a kid, the neighbor boy decided that when he grew up he was gonna be a cop. And I remember all of us (other kids and adults) thinking that of all the kids in the whole town, he was the worst fit for that profession. And, he became a cop. And he was an idiot.
As a teacher and then principal, over 33 years I had few kids express an interest in becoming a policemen. And they always seemed to fit into two categories. One group were people who had a real sense of dedication and doing good things for the community. The other group were people who wanted to be a cop for all the wrong reasons. It never seemed to be people just in the middle. It always seemed to be one extreme (good) or the other (bad).
It certainly is a mental issue. We have a hard time imagining kneeling on someones neck as they plead for their life and not letting up until they pass out or are dead. It would take a real monster to do that yet there was that bad cop acting in a terrible sadistic way in the middle of the street.
We will never know what was going through his head but I cannot imagine that he set out that morning to kill someone in front of everyone.
The most disturbing part was the complacency of the 3 other cops that let it happen. What ever happened to the bad cop good cop routine? In this case they were all bad and they let Floyd be murdered. I'm sure that if a bystander tried to intervene and knock the sadistic off Floyd they would have been roughed up and arrested. We do not pay cops to be the judge, jury and executioner but that is what happened.
If only one of those other cops had said "that is enough", showed an ounce of compassion we wouldn't be in this mess today.
The biggest question is, why did this happen and how?
Without speculating too much - actually who am I kidding, 99.9% of what is said about this situation is speculation anyway - I would say that being a street cop hardens you and imposes certain patterns of thought on you based on your routine experience. In your routine experience, suspects complain all the time about not being treated right, often without any merit, which means you eventually blur it out. Based on your routine experience you likely expect the worst from suspects as well, which means you expect a potential physical attack which means you are more concerned about physically dominating them more than anything else. A degree of callousness is likely to be expected after X years on the force. In this case, there may have been other aggravating factors that led to an extreme outcome, but yeah I don't find it that difficult to understand, I've seen that pattern of behavior before.
Cops are mostly blue collar guys who have plenty of reasons to view much of the public they regularly deal with suspiciously. They're not the most sensitive types on average, and they can't be to do the job, but it also means that this kind of thing will happen once in a while.
When I think about cops, I feel I need to consider that all those situations I encounter in public where I remove myself from an area because let's say there's a crazy guy shouting crazy stuff (if you live in a city this is a semi-regular occurrence) or you see a fight, hear gunshots etc.. Those are situations where the cops need to actively get involved, talk to the involved parties, get in personal close quarters contact with potentially highly dangerous individuals and find a resolution. And all that for an average public sector salary.
It's a tough gig, and in a society with as harsh a social fragmentation as this one with low levels of social trust, it's even tougher. I can only reiterate cops are tasked to do the dirty work of society to deal with the individuals society often has discarded. You may not get the cops you want, but you get the cops you deserve.
Without speculating too much - actually who am I kidding, 99.9% of what is said about this situation is speculation anyway - I would say that being a street cop hardens you and imposes certain patterns of thought on you based on your routine experience. In your routine experience, suspects complain all the time about not being treated right, often without any merit, which means you eventually blur it out. Based on your routine experience you likely expect the worst from suspects as well, which means you expect a potential physical attack which means you are more concerned about physically dominating them more than anything else. A degree of callousness is likely to be expected after X years on the force. In this case, there may have been other aggravating factors that led to an extreme outcome, but yeah I don't find it that difficult to understand, I've seen that pattern of behavior before.
Cops are mostly blue collar guys who have plenty of reasons to view much of the public they regularly deal with suspiciously. They're not the most sensitive types on average, and they can't be to do the job, but it also means that this kind of thing will happen once in a while.
When I think about cops, I feel I need to consider that all those situations I encounter in public where I remove myself from an area because let's say there's a crazy guy shouting crazy stuff (if you live in a city this is a semi-regular occurrence) or you see a fight, hear gunshots etc.. Those are situations where the cops need to actively get involved, talk to the involved parties, get in personal close quarters contact with potentially highly dangerous individuals and find a resolution. And all that for an average public sector salary.
It's a tough gig, and in a society with as harsh a social fragmentation as this one with low levels of social trust, it's even tougher. I can only reiterate cops are tasked to do the dirty work of society to deal with the individuals society often has discarded. You may not get the cops you want, but you get the cops you deserve.
Have you ever seen the 'Stanford Prison experiment'?
Its a real eye opener into what happens when someone holds a position of authority over others.
There are some great cops out there, just like there are some great postal carriers, great doctors, great baristas, etc. Plus a few bad eggs.
The system the police have evolved to deal with the bad eggs? A DIA to handle complaints quietly. If a cop's addicted, or violent, or otherwise in trouble, they pull him aside, scare him sober, put him on furlough or a desk job, and keep it quiet.
The reason why? Because if they air all their dirty laundry, the public would crucify them and the profession would go out the window.
I heard a wife of a Boston beat cop on the radio last night, saying her husband's a good and decent man, religious, a good dad, does an honest job. Out there patrolling on an 18 hour shift, while protesters were screaming at him "White pig!" and other epithets. Literally, his life was being threatened; someone could have pulled out a gun and shot him at any moment; this is the "bad" part of town.
How many years of that are you going to take? I doubt I could take it for more than a few days. You have to grow a thick skin, and after a while you start to view the general public as beneath your contempt, except for a few nice ones.
I'm always very polite to cops on the few occasions I've been stopped for speeding or whatever... but I'm a white male and they do cut me some slack... Nonetheless, I believe if young black men treated cops respectfully (regardless whether they really mean it), they'd have fewer problems with cops. It's simple common sense.
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