You cannot argue like that with me. An officer is not someone who guns down peaceful citizens by default.
What do they do then?
I like posts by both you guys, you are both free thinkers. Knee jerk defense of the police is not going to get citizens anywhere. But then again, making sweeping generalization about ALL cops doesn't do us any good either.
One the whole, as a system, the THIN BLUE LINE sucks. On that position, I have to stand with Sonny. That is part of why that Cop that shot that 19 year girl got away with what he did, and why the cop in the video I posted will get away with what he did. It is also why they don't have to think first and act afterwards. The system is corrupt. If you have seen the movie Serpico, see it. If you have, review it and see it again. That is how life works, and it has only gotten worse. This isn't news, this is an essay from a man who's been there and studied the problem of corruption.
The Police Are Still Out of Control
I should know.
By
Frank Serpico
10/23/14, 09:34 PM EDT
The Police Are Still Out of Control
Over the years, politicians who wanted to make a difference didn’t. They were too beholden to the police unions and the police vote. I wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton in 1994 addressing this very issue, saying that honest cops have never been rewarded, and maybe there ought to be a medal for them. He wrote back, but nothing changed. In New York City, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg professed that things were going to change, but in the end he went right along with his commissioner, Ray Kelly, who was allowed to do whatever he wanted. Kelly had been a sergeant when I was on the force, and he’d known about the corruption, as did Murphy.
As for Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, they’re giving speeches now, after Ferguson. But it’s 20 years too late. It’s the same old problem of political power talking, and it doesn’t matter that both the president and his attorney general are African-American. Corruption is color blind. Money and power corrupt, and they are color blind too.
Only a few years ago, a cop who was in the same 81st Precinct I started in, Adrian Schoolcraft, was actually taken to a psych ward and handcuffed to a gurney for six days after he tried to complain about corruption – they wanted him to keep to a quota of summonses, and he wasn’t complying. No one would have believed him except he hid a tape recorder in his room, and recorded them making their demands. Now he’s like me, an outcast.