Why people don't trust the police...

[SassyIrishLass]

You break a law you stand the chance of getting arrested, I'm 30 something years old and have never came close to getting arrested. I don't put myself in that situation

Your position in this matter is referred to by the behavioral profession as the authoritarian/submissive personality. If there were more Colonials like you in the mid-1700s there would not have been an American Revolution.

But it takes all kinds to make a world. Doesn't it?

You have no idea what I'm about, dude. Stop pretending you do. The bottom line is if you do something illegal and point a weapon at a police officer you're going to get air holed. Common sense will tell you that

 

[MikeK]

You have no idea what I'm about, dude. Stop pretending you do. The bottom line is if you do something illegal and point a weapon at a police officer you're going to get air holed. Common sense will tell you that

This discussion is not about pointing a gun at a cop. It's about a cop probing a peaceful, apparently law-abiding citizen for cause to initiate violation of his Fourth Amendment protection without benefit of advising him of his Fifth Amendment right to avoid it. It wasn't long ago that what this cop did was a clearly acknowledged violation of Velez's civil rights.

Velez did not point his gun at the cop. His gun was safely locked in the glove compartment of his car. What the cop did was to consciously and deliberately implement the devious process of circumventing the Constitution for the express purpose of imprisoning a decent citizen, an active duty Marine, who had harmed no one.

I want to like cops. I want to respect them and to despise anyone who would harm a cop. But this kind of cop turns my stomach. The actions of this kind of cop reflect badly on all cops. If I know this cop's name and happen to read that someone took him out, how should I feel about that?

This incident is one more contributing factor in the increasing level of public resentment of and dislike of police.

 

[MikeK]

News flash: police officers actually DO NOT have an especially dangerous job. (I am more likely to die on the job than a cop is!) They are basically gangbangers, with the badge standing in for facial tattoos. It's like politicians, lawyers, and used-car salesmen: the 90% that are crooked and/or evil spoil it for the good ones.

Back in 1953, a friend's father, an ironworker named Vinnie Ricci, was crushed to death while working to repair a support column on the Manhattan Bridge.

When we arrived at Greenwood Cemetery for the burial there were about a dozen police cars parked on the street outside. Inside there were about fifty uniformed cops, including a bagpiper, along with dozens of civilians attending the burial of a cop who was killed when his patrol car crashed while chasing a speeder on the FDR Drive.

It was an impressive ceremony, including the first time I'd ever heard Amazing Grace played on pipes as the formation of cops saluted and marched away. While I was less conscious of it at the time that rather elaborate ritual made the quiet, simple and uneventful burial of Vinnie Ricci, the ironworker, seem rather irrelevant.

More recently it has occurred to me that while his uniform was ordinary work clothes and he wore no badge, Vinnie Ricci was killed in the line of duty, which involved serving the interest of the public in a very difficult and extremely dangerous job. Having since given considerable support to the matter it occurs to me that the absence of elaborate, uniformed and piped ceremony on the occasion of an ironworker's death is, more than anything else, a manifestation of the authoritarian, militaristic nature of the American public.

In the bright light of pure objectivity what was observed on that cold morning in a Brooklyn cemetery was the questionable difference between a cop killed in an attempt to issue a speeding ticket and an ironworker killed while attempting to make an important bridge safe for the public to cross.