smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Oh, my bad. I thought this was the classroom door we were talking about.
Cont: Today's Mass Shooting (2)
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Oh, my bad. I thought this was the classroom door we were talking about.
They can’t. One bad apple spoils the barrel.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
That is an often misapplied axiom.
Yep - I’ve posted about how its usage by the likes of the police is in fact opposite of what it used to mean. “It's strange how that phrase has subtly changed its usage, it is now used to say, "this is a lone individual everyone else is OK", whereas it used to be used to recognise that the one bad apple means everyone is also spoiled.”
ETA:I apologise for the over usage of used that I used in the above.
ponderingturtle
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I have a question, is a cop who lies and covers up another cops brutality a good cop or not? The cop isn't brutalizing anyone but is enabling others to do so. Which is exactly why people blame the majority of cops for this problem, because they enable it.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Personal responsibility. The cop that guns down an unarmed person is responsibe for what HE does. The cop who sees that and does nothing is responsible for seeing it and doing nothing, but he is not responsible for the cop that gunned down the unarmed man.
Cops have seen what happens to other cops that speak out... they get punished for blowing the whistle.
I also completly disagree with the The Great Zaganza's view that if good cops resigned things will change - that is just fantasy idealism. The reality is they will just be replaced with more cops, and some of them might be bad, then you will have more bad cops and less good cops. Rinse and repeat enough times, and you won't have any good cops left.
No. What needs to change are attitudes and systems, and that won't happen if all the cops capable of making those changes are gone. If America can't change its attitude to get its act together on guns when its classrooms are full of murdered children and its shopping malls are littered with the bodies of dead shoppers, then there is no hope of changing the the situation as regards to rogue cops.
W.D.Clinger
Philosopher
With my highlighting:
When people pat themselves on the back because they are willing to consider more shades of gray than just black and white, they vastly underestimate the multi-dimensional character of problems they're trying to confront.
Actually, most of the real world has shades of multiple colors.
When people pat themselves on the back because they are willing to consider more shades of gray than just black and white, they vastly underestimate the multi-dimensional character of problems they're trying to confront.
The Great Zaganza
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he is 100% complicit in the killing if he doesn't report it for what it was.
This is the case for every civilian, and, reality check, here, cops are
civilians, not soldiers in enemy territory.
change from within has failed over and over, and yet PDs are getting more and more money, and do less and less for the community with it, spending it instead on military gear, racists training seminars and PR departments.
No "good" person should cover for this by "doing their best" within a horrible, incorrigible system.
Of course, the Media is at fault, too, for doing Copaganda 24/7.
ponderingturtle
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But is he a good cop or not? By the definitions of many here you can't count him as bad just because he perjured himself to try to keep another cop out of prison for murder.
Exactly why they are so vanishingly rare.
This is what gets lost in the discourse, systematic problem that make it impossible to be a good person in the system.
There are ~800,000 law enforcement officers in the US. Most of them do no wake up everyday and decide to be a mustache twirling supervillain.
BUT the system of law enforcement in the United States as degraded to the point that it's near impossible for potential good cops to be good cops. If you try to be a good cop now you will be punished, marginalized, and ostracized at best.
A good person can still be a cop. But a good person can't be a good cop because they are part of a system that simply doesn't reward good cop behavior.
There are ~800,000 law enforcement officers in the US. Most of them do no wake up everyday and decide to be a mustache twirling supervillain.
BUT the system of law enforcement in the United States as degraded to the point that it's near impossible for potential good cops to be good cops. If you try to be a good cop now you will be punished, marginalized, and ostracized at best.
A good person can still be a cop. But a good person can't be a good cop because they are part of a system that simply doesn't reward good cop behavior.
plague311
Great minds think...
If the "good cops" aren't currently saying anything because they're afraid of being punished, what good are they actually doing? Sure, they aren't terrorizing citizens, technically, but they're allowing it to happen without any form of consequence.
Imagine the response on all fronts if these shooters were members of ISIS cells infiltrated into the country. It'd be like 9/11, and some country might end up being blasted.
The US in its ire can rapidly work up action on a grand and terrible scale over a few foreign terrorists. Why the shrugging of shoulders over its own hone-grown terrorists?
The US in its ire can rapidly work up action on a grand and terrible scale over a few foreign terrorists. Why the shrugging of shoulders over its own hone-grown terrorists?
Because brown people fly airplanes into buildings and white boys shoot up schools.
The Great Zaganza
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I fully understand not wanting to rock the boat, both because everyone needs a job and speaking out might not only get you fired, but might pose an actual risk of life and limb.
But you aren't a Good if you don't.
But you aren't a Good if you don't.
Thermal
August Member
I dunno. Can a good person be a good lawyer, even though our legal system is a train wreck? Camden County NJ's police department, and in particular its Chief, have bucked the trends and been stand-up LEOs lately. The Chief walked unarmed in Camden's George Floyd protest marches. I think you can work for good within a corrupted system. Sysiphean, perhaps, but I gotta respect them.
Is it better to abandon law enforcement to the purely bad guys?
My point is the "good" cops are going to get jack and **** and jack just left town actually done on any real world effective level unless change starts coming down from above.
When need both. Good people in the cop community and a change in the cop community. Neither/or is going work on its own.
When need both. Good people in the cop community and a change in the cop community. Neither/or is going work on its own.
TurkeysGhost
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One could imagine a public agency tasked with keeping the public peace, solving crimes, and responding to emergencies, but it would look entirely different than the cops as they exist in America.
By any metric the cops are terrible at their supposed jobs. Clearance rates for serious crimes are low, they obviously don't prevent crime using their current tactics, and it's a coin-flip whether or not they'll actually intervene in an emergency.
They are very good at being a jobs program with nearly unlimited budget for the most unhinged, volatile men in society and scaring the bejesus out of anyone, public official or private citizen, who suggests that the status quo be challenged.
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And that's why whole "Lookit me not caring about dead kids oh I'm so edgy" routine we're getting from the usual suspects is such a goddamn farce.
Take all emotions off the table and put the big "Lookit me I'm a faux-autistic emotionless Vulcan Robot hardy har" persona on and pretend to look it as purely utilitarian cost-benefit spreadsheet and we're still dumping massive amounts of time, money, personnel, resources, and political capital into something that isn't doing what it's supposed to do.
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azazal
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The cynic in me is convinced that if ISIS or Al-Qaeda launched a dozen coordinated attacks across the country with sleeper agents using legally purchased firearms, nothing would change from a legislative point of view.
Delphic Oracle
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I do not support the notion of blaming the door or the teacher for this tragedy.
However, a door with a closer at the top being propped open by placing an object at the bottom will eventually not consistently and reliably close and latch correctly.
This concludes my investigation of the evil door and its complicity in this matter.
However, a door with a closer at the top being propped open by placing an object at the bottom will eventually not consistently and reliably close and latch correctly.
This concludes my investigation of the evil door and its complicity in this matter.
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