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The behaviour of US police officers

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Yeah but the Democrats have spent the last... forever rounded off humping the leg of the very concept of "Union" without ever making the distinction, or even acknowledging the possibility, that a "bad" Union was a thing that could exist. They can't just go "Oh well there's good and bad unions we're just now acknowledging that for the first time" without it falling somewhere on the scale of overly convenient to outright self-serving."

I refuse to believe they are going to pull the gloves all the way off to fight police unions.
It's one of those things where Democrats trying to support worker ability to bargain for wages and working conditions ran straight into police unions taking advantage of that fact to protect members from any kind of discipline or prosecutions.

Politic last Oct: Democrats’ Coming Civil War Over Police Unions - How far is the party of labor willing to go to confront them in the name of racial justice?
All Democrats POLITICO spoke to said they support police’s right to unionize and bargain over wages and working conditions; it’s police’s ability to negotiate misconduct standards through union contracts that some are now questioning or flat out opposing.

“As Democrats, we’re very supportive of expanding rights and protections for workers,” said Castro. “[But] police unions have taken advantage of collective bargaining agreements to create less accountability and transparency around police work.”

And back in Feb 2019 [CA] Orange County Register: The long alliance of Democrats and police unions erodes
The mutual backscratching was embedded in the state’s political culture for decades.

No more.

Crime rates have declined sharply from their very high levels of the 1970s and 1980s and no longer occupy high places in polling of Californians’ fears. Democrats have become utterly dominant at all levels of government and no longer must worry about challenges from a feeble Republican Party. And Democrats are much more likely to embrace criminal justice reforms than lock-‘em-up laws.

Two legislative conflicts underscore how the alliance between cops and Democrats has eroded.

Last year, over the strident objections of law enforcement officials and unions, the Legislature passed and Gov. Brown signed legislation that repeals one of the special protections that cops had enjoyed – sealed records on misconduct cases.

Senate Bill 1421, carried by Sen. Nancy Skinner, an Oakland Democrat, requires law enforcement agencies to release disciplinary records of officers involved in unjustified shootings, crimes and other forms of misconduct.

So it's not accurate to broad-brush this issue.
 
I don't know of anyone that's opposed to police reform today other than the Democrats that control the big city police unions and governments, who often work hand in hand to muffle and dilute any reforms that are called for.

There's certainly disagreements, on the left and right, about what kind of reforms are needed and what kind of reforms would be effective, but I don't know of anyone other than the unions that say everything's fine and nothing needs to be done.

So you think the Police Union, it's supporters in government and media, and all of the thin blue line average joe supporters are a bunch of Democrats and leftists? I don't know man.
 
Don't forget that the violent mobs just need be given "space to destroy". Don't worry, the government will rebuild it so it can be burned down again.

See the point made right before that post. Quite literally, police have quite a long track record of doing exactly what you're trying to caricature (not always, of course, but far more often than you would likely like to believe) - so long as the riots aren't, for example, pro-justice, pro-civil rights, etc. To make it worse, right wing propagandists on Fox have really blatantly worked to excuse it when it's young white people rioting after, for example, sporting events or doing so in favor of right-wing causes. On the flip side, obviously peaceful BLM protests are far more likely to get large numbers of police in full riot gear.

Well, yes, conservatives or libertarians don't control the media, government, universities, or Hollywood. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the problem gets solved, progressives can take all the credit that they want.

Just to be clear, progressives don't even remotely control the media. The actual relationship is more along the lines of -

1) The corporate media wants to make money and supporting popular causes is one of the totally normal ways to get and keep people engaging with their content.
2) Progressives support a lot of things that consistently poll as very to extremely popular.

Thus, there's notable overlap. When it comes to the more direct relationship between progressives and the corporate media, though, there's significantly more tension. The actual left in the US is the ONLY notable political force in the US that threatens corporate profiteering and is actually pushing for corporate accountability, with progressives as the major focal point of that, so the corporate media has a habit of working to sabotage the left where and as they can.


I can't explain why police abuses aren't considered a problem until progressives can blame it on racism in order to increase their power and advance their agenda.

That's a fair concern. The really simple answer to that, though, is that you're working from false premises. IIRC, addressing police abuses has actually been a progressive cause since at least the late 1800's when the Progressive movement actually really started taking shape. To be clear, significant strides have been made since those days, but things have never actually been "good", which pretty well leaves us with the choices of just letting it stay bad, trying to improve it more, or getting rid of it.

Let's face it, most of these abuses are taking place in areas where progressive Democrats have controlled the government for decades, so maybe that explains why the problem couldn't be solved earlier.

Again, false premises. Either way, most of the biggest problems aren't something that said Democrat led local governments can meaningfully deal with in the first place, especially individually. Qualified immunity, for example, that the police force inherently tends to attract authoritarians, and police unions with rather absurd amounts of power are three notable issues that local governments have little say over, among far too many others.

Who cares as long as we can solve the problem?

That, at least, I'll agree with. The results matter far more to me than who's doing it.
 
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So you think the Police Union, it's supporters in government and media, and all of the thin blue line average joe supporters are a bunch of Democrats and leftists? I don't know man.

Matter of fact, I bet there’s quite a few bike clubs, neo nazis, secessionists, militias, sovereign citizens, doomsday preppers, and plain old small government gun nuts that ten years ago wouldn’t have been caught dead saying anything good about the cops that bought a few blue American flag patches and thin blue line t shirts once they spent a summer tear gassing blacks and liberals.

But that’s just me.
 
I don't know of anyone that's opposed to police reform today other than the Democrats that control the big city police unions and governments, who often work hand in hand to muffle and dilute any reforms that are called for.
There's certainly disagreements, on the left and right, about what kind of reforms are needed and what kind of reforms would be effective, but I don't know of anyone other than the unions that say everything's fine and nothing needs to be done.

The police unions are run by the Democratic party? :confused:
 
I know I am probably going to get **** kicked for this as I am not American, as "what would I know?", but to be fair to the cops from a purely independent eye view, what I see is this. Re cops being evil.

From what a quick look shows is there was 700,000 full time cops in the US. (2019 stat)
Even from all the threads on here highlighting dodgy **** from some of them, it is IMO pushing it to say the majority are actually that bad.

Even the stats showing mild stops that could be shown as a kind of racism via profiling, which are small in the grand scheme of things, don't show how many cop offenders are repeat offenders, which would whittle the number down , while also showing it is the bosses hiding it.

That's missing the point. It's the utter lack of oversight and accountability, and that many of the bad apples are in influential positions, for example, heads of police unions, where presumably a plurality of local cops think they're exemplars of appropriate behaviour.


We know that Ferguson PD was racist throughout, and had policies that regarded its (black) population as cash cows. What we don't know is how many of the 18000 organisations with police powers also had systematic (not just systemic) racist implementation of policies.
 
The police unions are run by the Democratic party? :confused:

They have certainly worked together and supported each other in the past, until recently when the Dem's are frantically trying to distance themselves from them, because suddenly it has gone from all Unions great, to all Unions great apart from these ones which are embarrassing us, but remember we love unions and if they get less dodgy we will probably love them again.
 
Wonder what the US coverage of a scene like this would be if it were occurring overseas, especially if it were in a country that we see as adversarial.

Cops and soldiers fire on protest crowds from inside armored vehicles and behind barricades. Cop/soldier (hard to tell the difference at this point) is seen pointing a M4 carbine into the crowd while his partner fires a beanbag shotgun through the fence.

https://twitter.com/daviss/status/1382162743235579904

You mean like this?

https://twitter.com/gathara/status/1326988782600663047?s=20

long thread
 
Well, yes, conservatives or libertarians don't control the media, government, universities, or Hollywood. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the problem gets solved, progressives can take all the credit that they want. I can't explain why police abuses aren't considered a problem until progressives can blame it on racism in order to increase their power and advance their agenda.

Let's face it, most of these abuses are taking place in areas where progressive Democrats have controlled the government for decades, so maybe that explains why the problem couldn't be solved earlier. Who cares as long as we can solve the problem?

What in the blazes are you on about?
 
Ok now how about when taken in context?
Taken in context it is a validation of violence against bad actors until the bad actors stop behaving badly.

It further validates violence against those not acting badly when sufficiently frustrated by the actions of those who are. That it where I'd diverges from the opinions of those who support police violence- they tend to limit the purview of use of force to the people who are actually acting out.
 
Hey we found a good cop, of course she got fired for being a good cop.

"For more than 14 years, fired Buffalo Police Officer Cariol Horne fought to have her dismissal overturned so she could get her full police pension.

Horne was terminated by the city after she said she tried to stop a fellow officer who put a man in a chokehold during a 2006 arrest."

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/fired-buffalo-police-officer-wins-lawsuit-will-get-her-pension/article_0c481c2c-9c7f-11eb-95ce-db6e32a6c26b.html
 
Taken in context it is a validation of violence against bad actors until the bad actors stop behaving badly.

It further validates violence against those not acting badly when sufficiently frustrated by the actions of those who are. That it where I'd diverges from the opinions of those who support police violence- they tend to limit the purview of use of force to the people who are actually acting out.

Yeah that's why the biggest issue is the lack of de-escalation in these events. The LEOs are not acting like they want the situations to deescalate. They act like they want the first excuse they can latch on to to make the situation worse.
 
Please keep to the topic of the thread, rather than bickering. Thank you!
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin
 
Man I have no idea. I've been trying to find even a hypothetical way out of the post-fact world for a long time now. If you see a potential path let me know.

Niether do I.
But I do know the idea of shutting down police departments completly until they can be reformed (and I think many departments badly need reform) is just plain stupid.
 
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