Yes, but the fact of the matter is that cops, somewhat
like soldiers, are employed, trained and paid to subordinate those urges. When they don't do so, quite simply, they aren't adequately enough doing a part of the job they signed-up to do and that they are paid to perform.
Fear of perishing is a healthy emotion when its possessed and heeded in a perspicacious manner. When fear is given too great a role in governing one's thoughts and deeds, it catalyzes unsuitable, irrational and/or inapt outcomes. Such outcomes, among cops and soldiers, include not doing the very thing they are employed to do.
Does that mean that cops and actively serving soldiers are held to higher and/or more rigid behavioral standards than are the rest of us? Yes, it does. Considering them as mere men and women, I fully understand and adjudge as "normal" the FL cops choice(s) not to enter the Parkland school. Considering them as cops, I see men and women who agreed to take a job whereof they, in fact, were unwilling to fulfill all the obligations that job carries.
Dude, its just a job, its just a uniform.....all this attached banter about their tax payer obligations don't mean crap. In the real world, fear takes priority. Everybody wants to jump down these men throats for wanting to stay alive and yet you give a pass to another tax paid servant that acts like a fuckin moron 24/7, ie Trump. 2 examples of people showing thier true character in light of what is expected.
Dude, its just a job, its just a uniform.....
Well, if that's how you feel about it, and I'm not suggesting you aren't entitled to feel that way with regard to your own evaluation of a career you might pursue as a cop or soldier, I'm glad you aren't one of the cops patrolling my streets.
No disrespect, but I served 10 years in Navy and I have been privy many many times locally to see our cops in action....and I'm never impressed. They're never around when the real danger is posed. They come after the fact. I've never seen in my neck of the woods a hero story about cops, never. Now I've seen them bravely give tickets out for seat belts not being warn, I've seen many times them shoot unarmed blacks, but hero's.....I'm still waiting.
My reality and I'm sticking to it!!
What is one to say to that? Your experiences and personal observations are what they are. I think it unfortunate that your experience consists only of cops being disappointments. The verity of your interactions and observations of police behavior doesn't, however, define the normative standards to which each of us, including you, has a reasonable basis to hold cops accountable.
They're never around when the real danger is posed. They come after the fact....but hero's.....I'm still waiting.
I think too part of what's at issue in your mind is the inadequacy with which law enforcement officers and institutions interdict rather than react to criminal behavior among the citizenry. In fairness, cops aren't psychic and they don't have crystal balls. Accordingly, the scope of crime prevention they can perform is largely limited to apprehending extant offenders and commencing the process by which they are denied subsequent opportunities to commit similar and/or worse offenses.
The circumstance in Parkland, FL is an uncommon one in that it was an instance in which some law enforcement officers were on-site in the midst of a crime and, seemingly, before all 17 kids had been shot dead, yet they demurred from entering the building and confronting him. Clearly, those cops didn't behave heroically, but that doesn't mean they should not have and it doesn't mean they hadn't any onus to have done so.
The normative standards some cops at Parkland and others disregarded, unless I misread your OP, is the basis for this thread's title and OP remarks. As goes whether the cops who responded to the MSD school's request for help, it's clear they didn't exert the full bore of their resources to serve their community. Had they performed the mental calculus I described in post 27, it's possible that instead of talking about 12 dead kids and two dead teachers, we'd instead be talking about some fewer quantity of such and some quantity of dead or injured cops and perhaps a dead shooter. That too would have been a sorrowful outcome and subsequent conversation, but given the expectation that cops, when called to do so, duty to enter harm's way, it'd have been an outcome and conversation concomitant with part of why communities cops.
Dude, you have got to tone down your apparent intellect and be a bit more short winded....reading your post is like reading a fuckin novel....in one ear out the other.....now with that being said, finger pointing, second guessing, playing couch hero, in my opinion does a disservice to the dead and to the law of that county. Moving forward, the nation must find solutions.
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finger pointing, second guessing, playing couch hero, in my opinion does a disservice to the dead and to the law of that county.
Dude, you opened this thread with the normative exhortation that we (society) cease and desist with censuring cops (presumably some of the ones who responded to the MSD shooting in Parkland, FL) for not entering the MSD school building(s) in pursuit of the shooter. Your basis for that exhortation is innate sense of self-preservation's immutability, even among cops.
Stop hating on these cops for being HUMAN BEINGS!!...In the real world, cops are just human beings like the rest of us and their first instincts is to survive....You got a deranged kid, shooting up everybody and you want cops, who haven't shot a gun [in a long time] and you want him to go into a building and save lives?
Faced with this rebuttal...
cops, somewhat
like soldiers, are employed, trained and paid to subordinate those urges. When they don't do so, quite simply, they aren't adequately enough doing a part of the job they signed-up to do and that they are paid to perform.
...your response was to equate the duty attendant to the privilege and honor of being a sworn public servant profesional with that of "just a job," similar, perhaps to hotel housekeeping staff who, like cops, wear a uniform. But you didn't stop there; you essentially, tacitly declared that things like oaths of office, duty to uphold the public trust, have no import, being instead just words, presumably just words cops utters so they can commence to collect a paycheck, for "it's just a job," one that comes with a wardrobe.
Dude, its just a job, its just a uniform.....all this attached banter about their tax payer obligations don't mean crap.
I responded to that by showing that putting themselves in harm's way, their public duty, and burden to render aid is very much part of cops "employment contract," if you will.
Then, rather than acknowledge those duties are in fact extant, you commence to lay a rhetorical foundation for deflecting away from your original thread thesis -- that society should not decry cops who fail express, in direct contravention of their training, the self-preservation instinct -- by noting your tenure in the Navy and specific police behaviors you've seen. Of course, none of your anecdotal observations/experiences have damn thing to do with whether there exists a cogent positive or normative basis for society to accord to cops -- namely the Parkland, FL ones who didn't enter the building and my thereby have allowed the shooter to kill even more kids than he might other have -- a "pass" for shirking their "harm's way" obligation.
I served 10 years in Navy and I have been privy many many times locally to see our cops in action....and I'm never impressed. They're never around when the real danger is posed. They come after the fact. I've never seen in my neck of the woods a hero story about cops, never.
Furthermore, you punctuated that drivel with this...
My reality and I'm sticking to it!!
...as though your reality and inferences you draw from it, are somehow
the reality, rather than what it is -- the set of observations that life, serendipity, happens to have sent your way. Your anecdotally determined "truth" and
the truth need not at all be the same things, yet in creating this thread you embarked on a discursive journey about something bigger than yourself and that yet presupposes your truth is congruent with the truth, even though your truth is but your piece of the truth. Well, no disrespect, but nobody who's own truth doesn't mirror yours is going to accept a premise or conclusion that is biased completely with nothing other than your personal observations and experiences.
From there you advanced your rhetorical progression to a new theme with an oblique reference to your original thesis by stating:
now with that being said, finger pointing, second guessing, playing couch hero, in my opinion does a disservice to the dead and to the law
What?
- Would you rather the country refrain from holding cops accountable for their failure to do their jobs, the whole job, part of which includes entering harm's way to help citizens in dire, life-or-death, need?
- Would you rather the country not evaluate the Parkland, FL cop's behavior/protocols so as to identify ways -- process, training, recruitment, etc. -- to not repeat the same mistakes when comes again an opportunity to interdict the shooter while s/he's shooting rather than after s/he's done shooting people?
Holding the cops culpable for not pursuing and engaging the MSD shooter while he was inside the building is blameworthy because the cops duty was to do just that. Reviewing the situation and circumstances of the situation and the cops' behavior is useful for furthering criminologists' -- theoretical and practical -- understanding of how to structure and manage police forces so as not to repeat whatever be the same mistakes that lead to the Parkland area police forces having at the scene of an "active shooter" event cops who were unwilling to attempt to save people's lives by confronting the shooter. No jurisdiction/community needs cops like that; thus all jurisdictions have something to learn from the sequence of mistakes that happened in Parkland. It may be also that other jurisdictions, by dint of having demonstratively courageous police officers, have insights to share in how to achieve that end; however, they wouldn't even know to volunteer their idea absent the publicity about what happened in Parkland. Quite simply, the
Then you complete your flight from your original thesis by introducing, as vaguely and ambiguously as you did your original thesis, the idea of "we need solutions."
Moving forward, the nation must find solutions.
So, fine; you no longer want to defend your original thesis. The tacit implication of that decision, though you may construe it as something akin to avoiding this,...
...folks who followed the discourse, read the above summation, and know rhetoric know it is tantamount to this:
Moving forward, the nation must find solutions.
Okay, I'll bite. Solutions to what? What exactly are the matters for which you here care to discuss solutions and solution approaches?
