"We must always remember that the police are recruited from the criminal classes."
~ Gore Vidal
------------------- Idea: Anyone anywhere in this country applying for a job as a policeman or policewoman shall be required to have a four-year college degree.
-- not from online school,
-- and not a major or minor in "Criminal Justice" -- Major and minor must be in a real subject:
English
History
Science
Math.
If we put this policy in place, we will get better candidates for police work. I believe this requirement would weed out a lot of psychos.
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Last week SLATE had an opinion piece titled, The Satisfying Irony of a Police Union Furious That Cops Are Being Treated Like "Thugs" and "Animals"
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Reader Comments:
Bonespurs McCombover
Maybe their image would improve if they stopped murdering people?
~~ Oh, gosh, maybe... I dunno... STOP ACTING LIKE THUGS AND ANIMALS, THEN?
Bob H
Act like a thug, get labelled one.
Interesting that he has the same grievance as Trump -- we get no respect -- and the same misunderstanding. Respect is not based on Dominating people.
Mike4
Here's the thing -- people won't treat you like a bunch of thugs if you start policing your own. Next time a 'bad apple' cop starts beating the crap out of someone for nothing, or plants evidence like the cop who planted a gun by someone he just shot in the back, call him out, even *if* someone wasn't videoing you.
~~ Let us not forget that the fight for benefits for 9/11 first responders was led by John Stewart and strenuously opposed by Mitch McConnell.
Charles Newlin
The obvious reply: in that case, they should stop ACTING like "Thugs and Animals" -- or covering up for those that do. The Blue Wall of Silence, aka "Omerta," means that there are very few "good cops"; it makes police depts. into well-armed street gangs.
And electing somebody like Kroll, in Minneapolis, to head their "union," merely underlines how fascist they really are. He represents them.
That's why cops have been so out of control in their reaction to the George Floyd demonstrations ...those demonstrations are a personal threat to many cops, and to the culture they all belong to.
Thanks to the reactionary Federal gov't, in a program that continued under Obama, police are now so well-armed that they are a threat to democracy.
Minneapolis may well have to call in the National Guard in order to disarm the police, if they really do try to "disband" them. Which is obviously what they need to do.
GW
The Southern Poverty Law Center has warned for years that police departments and National Guard units have been infiltrated by right wing and neo-Nazi sympathizers from the Promise Keepers, 3 percents, and other hate groups.
In addition, police union contracts intentionally make it hard to fire police for inappropriate actions and behaviors....
~~ My low crime, white suburb hated the cops. All they did was pull you over for some obscure driving rule violation or come hassle you because you were shooting off bottle rockets in your back yard.
~~ In the last several years I have discovered that there is a rather large group of white suburbanites who absolutely despise the police. All of them recount their personal experience or witnessing something that fundamentally changed their view on law enforcement.
~~ As a white suburbanite, I support this theory.
~~ I grew up in a mixed suburb and the police would always accuse us of destroying property when we were just running around the neighborhood like kids do.
~~ I'm a white suburbanite. I haven't had ANY interaction with a cop in forever. Even the last time I got pulled over for speeding was years ago.
But I'm neither blind nor comatose.
Anyone who can watch the things we've seen over the last several years as police departments became ever more militarized and not become...disenchanted...with law enforcement isn't paying
attention.
~~ I live in a suburban town where the median income is over 100k. I never got pulled over until I moved here. ...I was completely puzzled about it, because I was getting pulled over all the time but they never wrote me a ticket.
Then someone pointed out, 'You drive a 15 year old Toyota Yaris, with the paint peeling off and tape on the bumper'... apparently the cops were pulling me over all the time because I looked poor. It was pretty illuminating for me.
~~ Weeding out authoritarian personalities needs to greatly improve. These are generally not your collaborative problem solvers.
~~ they use personality tests to detect the psychopaths. then they hire the psychopaths.
Very Polite Vampire
I love it when people say, "If we defund the police, you won't be able to call police in an emergency!" That's already the status quo for people in many communities where calling the police just increases the risk involved in an already bad situation. That's kind of the point.
Silence
It hurts his feelings when you point out that members of his union are sadistic bullies.
Los Angeles, 1992; Rodney King protests
Bill Cat for president 2020
Why don't we have any toleration for sadistic bullies? They are people too. Crappy people that should never be given any authority over others, but....
punkTaoist
Most police leaders will moan about how they are being victimized without an ounce of self-awareness.
~~ "Hey! If we don't get to be victims too, then WE'RE the ones suffering here!"
-30-
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