Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

Again, I don't mean to sound bitter and disrespectful toward police, but I have had police in my family, and part of the attraction of the job are the benefits.

I've been to protests where the socialists get up and say that the police are "working class" but this isn't the 1959's. "working class" can mean working two retail jobs, no vacation, no benefits, certainly NO retirement.

My neighborhood is one, for some reason, that NO police officers live in. Is it beneath their standard of living - because the houses are old? I mean, in many communities there is a huge class difference between police and the community. Sun Belt retirements and vacation homes are NOT the norm where I come from.

around here (rural NH) LEOs actually make pretty good money -- mid-highish five figures and excellent benefits. definitely in better shape than the rural poor they are policing

75% of the sf police force does not live in sf

xp yes, but this isn't because standards of living for cops has improved, it's because the labor conditions in the private sector have been degraded. everyone should have that kind of financial security.

there was a similar discussion with the public bargaining rights fiasco in wisconsin. many workers felt like, hey, they weren't getting these benefits so why should they care if other people are losing them. but the fates of various sectors of the working class are connected. the reason the koch brothers et al see public unions as a threat is because they want to totally degrade the culture of labor rights -- what they call "entitlements" -- to make it easier for them to exploit their own private sector employees. so i still think there is a possibility for solidarity among cops and the truly poor on the basis of class. for instance, the cops who clashed with occupy protesters were acting against their class interests -- if they had a different political consciousness maybe that could have unfolded differently

To me the mission station cops are more like a predatory protection/extortion racket

Xp

working class ppl who become cops have betrayed the working classes tbh

Well, I'm sorry to say the police are just not visible in the labor rights or other economic justice movements. Their union people have every opportunity to make statements when the opportunity arises but I don't see them.

OTOH, you see and hear teachers working for general working people's rights all of the time!

Coming across the bridge to shake down residents, steal drugs, etc

xxp

the reason that #acab is that they all become complicit, they may be ostensible decent individuals who interpersonally could be quite lovely i'm sure, but on duty they at best submit to practices of oppression and at worst gleefully participate in those practices. the cop who isn't a bastard would be the one driving for change from within in a way that would probably get them fired

you could say that cops have "betrayed the working classes" and it's true that most of them seem to be right wingers. however, many cops are not just working class, but are men and women of color. i think it's still worthwhile to point out that the systems they use violence to protect do not start or end with them, and in fact aren't even in their interests. i feel like cops could even come to understand this.

if complicitness is the sin not sure how many of our hands are really clean.

It's interesting that the Koch brothers have been active in funding anti-police groups in the past, including some that have had, on the surface, a content / tone overlap with left-wing groups. The objective isn't social justice, it's private policing. It's being seen as the libertarian right aligning with the liberal left but, in the longer term, the right of the state to maintain law and order is going to be on the agenda and that could potentially unite progressive people behind the police. That seems a long way off, but it's something the police should probably bear in mind. There have already been a couple of flare-ups, including the Bundy ranch thing, where you've had the left broadly supportive of police action and the right broadly opposed to it.

To paraphrase Chesterton, the poor sometimes object to being policed badly, the rich object to being policed at all.

I imagine some people object to seeing police cars in their neighborhood - I have heard people in affluent neighborhoods complain that it makes their neighborhood "look" bad and is probably bad for property values!

I can't imagine what it must be like to live in that sort of community. I'm relieved to see a police car, we never see them and we are near a busy thoroughfare where drug dealers are known to hang out. But the only time I have seen them is to stop ME to ask me why I was in the alley making a cell phone call. Totally pointless and intimidating!

i have mounted cops in my neighborhood sometimes

tmi

rock hard tree trunk

Lol

My uncle was an exceptional cop in many ways: he wasn't racist or sexist, and came down like a ton of bricks on younger family members who repeated anything from the playground along those lines. He spent most of his spare time participating in nature conservation of one type or other. He absolutely drilled it into us that police were expected to behave in exemplary fashion on and off duty, because that was how the police should win the respect and trust of the general public (bottom line being that a co-operative community made his job easier, while a tyrannised community did not). His profile was very high, and he was always in the paper because he'd publicly clash with people just a few rungs up from him over best practice or issues of corruption. As a lieutenant detective, he didn't have to be in uniform or drive a squad car - and from what I can gather, the detective side of things was where the city of Minneapolis liked to place its mavericks.

He died 20 years ago this October, and would be appalled by all the Kevlar zombies in law enforcement today. And that stars-and-bars angel-wing thing? I can just imagine his voice, deriding it as macho bullshit van art.

I think the Kevlar zombies are setting the tone these days.

those wings look more like tarantula legs imo

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/166023_10152838982200567_63766925_n.jpg?oh=e76d99c81ab28f2d7a2209baedf08e1d&oe=5503F103&__gda__=1430744944_edcad2dce0dd9f4763853dc563e0a6c0

Friend just posted in FB:
"So who's in the spotlight to address these issues after co-opting groundswell responses? Al Sharpton and (police union leader) Pat Lynch.
We're fucked."

That image just makes me think of those terrible crying eagle pick-up truck decals from 2002-2003

I know this has been said a thousand times today, but killing police is never, ever okay. The reaction of law enforcement in NY to this helps nothing, though.

jesus, i just read that quote from patrick lynch. i'd like to think that there are some NYC cops who are decent enough to be embarrassed or outraged by this asshole who claims to speak in their name.

Xp and yet you can bet that nobody will commence to digging through these two officers' service records to determine if, hey, maybe they were bad people and deserved it somehow.

I'm sure you'll find a minute somewhere

where's that shit with the statistic about cops dying on the job vs. roofers/foresters/cab-drivers
I just saw it the other day

http://www.premierhandling.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/most-dangerous-jobs.jpg

... much of which can be accounted for by the fact that cops drive a lot

The Officer Down Memorial Page lists the following causes of death for officers in the line of duty this year. Don't know how complete or up to date it is.

Assault: 2
Automobile accident: 25
Drowned: 1
Fire: 1
Gunfire: 46
Gunfire (Accidental): 2
Heart attack: 15
Motorcycle accident: 3
Struck by vehicle: 3
Vehicle pursuit: 5
Vehicular assault: 10

Read more: http://www.odmp.org/search/year/2014#ixzz3Mduh6Nxu

BTW this has made national news now, but I first saw it last week in Cleveland SCENE, the alt-weekly.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/12/volunteer_cop_resigns_after_his_racist_youtube_comments_are_exposed.html

lol @ De Blasio calling for an immediate suspension of protests - everything's even-steven now eh

Patrick Lynch is indistinguishable from every predecessor of his; no cop ever did anything wrong, they bray.

blaming these cop murders on the protests is pretty gross

one convenient insane person

lol @ De Blasio calling for an immediate suspension of protests - everything's even-steven now eh

― Οὖτις, Monday, 22 December 2014 22:06 (23 minutes ago)

this doesnt really have anything to do with what de blasio is saying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxJSBU2KgnI

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday called for protesters to suspend demonstrations in the aftermath of the killing of two New York police officers, who were gunned down in Brooklyn as they sat in their patrol car.

“It’s time for everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests, put aside all of the things that we will talk about in due time,” Mr. de Blasio said in a speech. “That can be for another day.”

I was referring to this lede in the NYT

The obvious purpose of that is to protect protesters from vengeful cops.

“That can be for another day.”

it's always another day somewhere, de blasio

^^^

feel like vengeful cops won't have any problem identifying people to vent their rage on if they're so inclined. hasn't really been a problem, historically speaking.

as some twitterer sez:
Isn't it instructive that there is talk of 'placating' a police force, as if they were less civil servants, and more an angry tribe?

I was referring to this lede in the NYT

― Οὖτις, Monday, 22 December 2014 22:46 (1 minute ago)

and i was referring to your low functioning sarcasm, whatever one thinks of his suggestion of collective pause in order to respect dead public servants, it is not identical to a curtailment of protest as such, nor does it intimate that critics of criminal justice will or should now feel satiated

i imagine de blasio has an interest in maintaining a somewhat working relationship between the police and the communities they work and is probably trying to taper down hostilities before they turn into a broader problem. i think he's less worried about the police picking a rando to vent their anger on in revenge, and more worried about police responding to protests more forcefully/hostilely, protests becoming more aggressive in response, etc. de blasio doesn't want that kind of dynamic obvs.

no i am pretty sure de blasio is worried about police unions shitting on him in general. there is nothing heroic about this move imo

pragmatism is a kind of heroism i guess

uh