Racists Really Get Me Down

[Sybaris]

 

I worked with an out and out racist, hideous man, who claimed that blacks were lazy.......while he himself was bone idle and fouled mouthed. Horrible, horrible man. That such monsters exist is all rather depressing. He had a shaved head, covered in tattoos, drank , smoked and used very unpleasant racist language.

 

And  such cave men are allowed to vote!   

 

I think I know that guy. Is his name Steve?

 

When I was in Thailand, I knew a British guy named Steve. He bragged about shooting niggers in SA and how he would take care of barking neighbor dogs by feeding them sponges, which would expand inside their stomachs and slowly starve them to death. Haven't run across many more repugnant than this guy.

 

 

That reminds me......... around 1990 a ship I was on pulled into Hobart Tasmania. I was sitting in a bar and a local guy says:

 

"You got a lot of black fella's on your ship ................ we took care of that around here a long time ago"

 

I did some research and yes, in the early 1800's the colonists declared open season on Tasmanian Aborigines and killed them off.

[Geezer]

 

Until you are the lone officer making a traffic stop at 3 AM, or responding to an active shooter call don't assume you know how dangerous a police officers job is.

 

 

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-top-10-dangerous-jobs-country-tanks/

 

 

Here are occupations more dangerous than being a police officer. Number of deaths per 100,000 employed:

image: http://tftppull.freethoughtllc.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/chart-3.jpg

 

• Logging workers: 127.8
• Fishermen: 117.0
• Aircraft pilots: 53.4
• Roofers: 40.5
• Garbage collectors: 36.8
• Electrical power line installation/repair: 29.8
• Truck drivers: 22.8
• Oil and gas extraction: 21.9
• Farmers and ranchers: 21.3
• Construction workers: 17.4

Cops don't even make the top 10.

 

In other words, a single officer responding to a shooting in progress can be thankful they don't have a really dangerous job like being a lumberjack, cowboy, or a commercial fisherman. Yeah, that is a great point. Thanks for educating me.

[SilentLoner]

Scores of cops? How about a tiny minority of them!

That may be true, but the issue is scores of cops band together to protect the minority that give them a bad name. Cops that try to be whistleblowers often get targeted by fellow officers.

[Vigile]

 

 

Until you are the lone officer making a traffic stop at 3 AM, or responding to an active shooter call don't assume you know how dangerous a police officers job is.

 

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-top-10-dangerous-jobs-country-tanks/

 

 

Here are occupations more dangerous than being a police officer. Number of deaths per 100,000 employed:

image: http://tftppull.freethoughtllc.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/chart-3.jpg

 

• Logging workers: 127.8
• Fishermen: 117.0
• Aircraft pilots: 53.4
• Roofers: 40.5
• Garbage collectors: 36.8
• Electrical power line installation/repair: 29.8
• Truck drivers: 22.8
• Oil and gas extraction: 21.9
• Farmers and ranchers: 21.3
• Construction workers: 17.4

Cops don't even make the top 10.

 

In other words, a single officer responding to a shooting in progress can be thankful they don't have a really dangerous job like being a lumberjack, cowboy, or a commercial fisherman. Yeah, that is a great point. Thanks for educating me.

 

 

No, IOW, officers who shoot first and think later because their jobs are just so damned dangerous are just being pussies as their jobs are not statistically nearly as dangerous as you or they imagine. They are, however, quite dangerous to we, society in which they shoot first and ask questions later. More dangerous than terrorism as they kill a hell of a lot more of us than the terrorists do.

 

See that little bolded phrase of yours in your quote above? The post was to show you that there is no need to make any assumptions, we know exactly how dangerous, or not as the case seems to be, a cop's job is.

[Geezer]

Vigile, it is you who is making assumptions & painting all police officers with an broad brush. Police officers are routinely the target of citizens making videos of them while working a call. They are subject to arrest & prosecution if they exceed their authority & now many of them are required to wear cameras while they are doing their job. Who else gets that kind of scrutiny while they are in the process of doing their job?

 

And yes there's is a police officer in my immediate family, so I do have a dog in this fight & that does give me a different perspective because I am in a position to get the Officers POV on these issues too.

[Vigile]

I've supported all my arguments. If you feel I'm broad brushing, you'll have to show me why I'm wrong, not just claim that I'm wrong. 

 

As to your estimation that they are held accountable, reality asserts itself quite differently from your claim, as I've shown in part here; evidence to the contrary of your claim is far too detailed to itemize here; IOW, there's so much it's quite cumbersome and depressing.

 

And, we all have dogs in this fight. The US has turned into a virtual police state.

 

BTW, I used to work in the DOJ. I know the police perspective personally as well.

[Thurisaz]

Folks, how about you meet in the middle?

 

Yes, not all cops are bastards. However, all cops aren't angels either. Condemning them all just because of their jobs is wrong. However, acting like no cop can ever do anything wrong... is wrong too. Checks and balances, metaphorically, must be in place.

 

So yeah, if a cop is in obvious danger (or if it plausibly seems to him like he is), then by all means he needs to have the right to defend him/herself. However, if there's reason to assume a cop may have stepped out of bounds, like with those cases we've all heard far too much about lately... the case must be investigated no different than if the suspect wasn't a cop.

 

Just my 2 cents worth.

[Vigile]

My issue Thur, is there can be no good cops if they support a system that systematically removes people's rights. The fact that they are the force behind that corrupt system necessarily makes them bad, no different from SS agents or NKVD officers.

 

This is a somewhat separate issue from the idea of a rogue cop.

 

However, given police, as a group, join together to defend and cover up the actions of rogue cops, it becomes doubtful that they are much different from the rogues too. As I pointed out with the Chicago murder. The police department spent a year covering up the crime -- erasing video, etc... And now, the Union stands by their man. And, if you notice, not a single charge was leveled against those who conspired to hide the crime.  Where are the good cops in that department?
 

 

So yeah, if a cop is in obvious danger (or if it plausibly seems to him like he is), then by all means he needs to have the right to defend him/herself.

 

 

Looks like your cops killed a whopping total of one person this year.  Ours have killed 1000 so far.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_Germany

 

You guys have a population of 80M IIRC. We have a population of 320M or so, so if we use your police force as a model of how to handle situations that require force, we should have killed no more than 4 people.

 

And here's a fun article I came across:

 

 

85 shots: US cops use more ammo per man than Germans per year

https://www.rt.com/usa/us-germany-85-shots-022/

[Thurisaz]

Well even the "bad cops" inasmuch as they support and protect a bad system may act in good faith that they are doing a good thing; there's the curse of our modern age again, all too often victims of one kind face victims of another kind, while the criminals behind the scenes sit in their luxury villas doing coke and hookers. Of course even if they think they're the good ones that doesn't mean that we must therefore not try to stop them.

 

That said, yeah, US cops are quite undeniably much more trigger-happy than ours. Why that is the case is an interesting and complex question (personally, I think major factors there are that pretty much every suspect they meet may be heavily armed and thus may blow their brains out unless they shoot first, combined with that idiotic idea that a man needs to prove continuously that he's a Real Man™, meaning to never ever accept any defeat and use whatever means needed to win, and if this includes violence then violence it will be).

 

My comments in the previous posting were meant as a theoretical basis; I certainly didn't want to imply that there's no issue with US cops at all.

 

And sadly, that misguided esprit de corps is quite common over here too, for what I can tell. Our cops may shoot to kill much less commonly but if they do and circumstances make the event a suspicious one, they'll protect each other just as much - whether justified or not.

[Vigile]

Well even the "bad cops" inasmuch as they support and protect a bad system may act in good faith that they are doing a good thing;

 

 

No doubt. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. According to Solzhenitsyn, the worst crimes against humanity that took place during the Stalinist purges were not the result of animosity, but people just following orders and bureaucracy. 

 

It's for these reasons I don't believe we should give our cops a free pass. Citizens and cops alike need to think about the consequences of this system.

 

That said, yeah, US cops are quite undeniably much more trigger-happy than ours. Why that is the case is an interesting and complex question (personally, I think major factors there are that pretty much every suspect they meet may be heavily armed and thus may blow their brains out unless they shoot first, combined with that idiotic idea that a man needs to prove continuously that he's a Real Man™, meaning to never ever accept any defeat and use whatever means needed to win, and if this includes violence then violence it will be).

 

 

That's one theory. Mine is that they have an us v. them mentality and they engage in lazy, wild-west type thinking as they know there will be few, if no personal consequences to their sloppy behavior.

[mymistake]

Folks, how about you meet in the middle?

 

Yes, not all cops are bastards. However, all cops aren't angels either. Condemning them all just because of their jobs is wrong. However, acting like no cop can ever do anything wrong... is wrong too. Checks and balances, metaphorically, must be in place.

 

So yeah, if a cop is in obvious danger (or if it plausibly seems to him like he is), then by all means he needs to have the right to defend him/herself. However, if there's reason to assume a cop may have stepped out of bounds, like with those cases we've all heard far too much about lately... the case must be investigated no different than if the suspect wasn't a cop.

 

Just my 2 cents worth.

 

 

What does good and bad mean?

 

Here is the problem as I see it.  Now that we live in a world with cameras everywhere the police officers who commit murder are getting filmed.  These murders are very rare when you consider how many police exist.  The alarming part is that whenever one of these police officers commit murder there is always a cover up.  Every single time.  Other officers spontaneously cover up what happened.  These other police officers didn't commit the murder.   Covering up your fellow officer's crime is normal.  Where are the police officers who arrest other police officers when murder that were not caught of film?  Without cameras all these murders would be swept under the rug.  And that is something that is wrong with the entire system.  To me a good police officer is one who will report the crime of and even arrest his own partner.  Show me an officer who will do that when it wasn't caught on film.  Being willing to commit felony obstruction of justice at any moment is the very definition of a bad police officer.

[Thurisaz]

Ayup that's a major part of it too.

[Vigile]

What does good and bad mean?

 

 

Moral and immoral. Dangerous and not dangerous.

 

You don't need to be religious to find the terms useful.

 

 

These murders are very rare when you consider how many police exist

 

 

You're using the wrong measurement. You have to compare our force to the rest of the world. We are a mind-bogglingly extreme outliers where it comes to police shootings; 100-1 compared to the rest of the industrialized world.

 

The alarming part is that whenever one of these police officers commit murder there is always a cover up.  Every single time.  Other officers spontaneously cover up what happened

 

 

Yup. So just imagine how much worse things are than what we actually have evidence for. The odds of us catching the cover ups are infinitesimally small as we aren't learning via whistleblowers or internal investigations, but only after 1 out of 100 that is caught on film is brazen enough that even the prosecutors have to give up something to the protesters.

 

Where are the police officers who arrest other police officers

 

 

And where are the charges and convictions for felony conspiracy and aiding and abetting? I watch this stuff fairly closely and I can't recall this ever happening.

[Vigile]

Here's 10 good cops executing an unarmed, non-threatening man on the streets yesterday. Notice the MSM ignored it, as will the prosecutors (unless the protests get too loud. Then they'll just charge with 1st degree, a built in acquittal, 'cause they protect their own Yo).

 

http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/12/public-firing-squad-video/

 

If you dig, you can find it and the press is more than happy to blame and demonize the victim: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Man-killed-by-S-F-police-had-long-criminal-6674052.php

[mymistake]

That story is picking up.

 

http://abc7news.com/news/exclusive-mother-says-san-francisco-police-executed-her-son/1108980/

 

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/12/02/san-francisco-police-shoot-suspect-in-citys-bayview-neighborhood/

 

 

Cameras are the real equalizer here.  Now everyone in the public can look at the footage and decide if that matches the official police story.

[dichotomy]

 

 

I worked with an out and out racist, hideous man, who claimed that blacks were lazy.......while he himself was bone idle and fouled mouthed. Horrible, horrible man. That such monsters exist is all rather depressing. He had a shaved head, covered in tattoos, drank , smoked and used very unpleasant racist language.

 

And  such cave men are allowed to vote!   

 

I think I know that guy. Is his name Steve?

 

When I was in Thailand, I knew a British guy named Steve. He bragged about shooting niggers in SA and how he would take care of barking neighbor dogs by feeding them sponges, which would expand inside their stomachs and slowly starve them to death. Haven't run across many more repugnant than this guy.

 

 

That reminds me......... around 1990 a ship I was on pulled into Hobart Tasmania. I was sitting in a bar and a local guy says:

 

"You got a lot of black fella's on your ship ................ we took care of that around here a long time ago"

 

I did some research and yes, in the early 1800's the colonists declared open season on Tasmanian Aborigines and killed them off.

 

 

What happened to aboriginal people was horrific, it always upsets me.

 

I'm surprised to see a discussion about racism turn a tangent onto if cops are bad or not.

 

Racism, like many unpleasant opinions and actions is hard to stomach. For me, the overt racism is easier to deal with though, it's the subtle, ignorant racism that is hard to handle.

[Vigile]

What happened to aboriginal people was horrific, it always upsets me.

 

Yeah, his post put a lump in my throat.

 

I'm surprised to see a discussion about racism turn a tangent onto if cops are bad or not.

 

Why? Seems aptly related to me. It's where racism meets the road.

[dichotomy]

 

 

I'm surprised to see a discussion about racism turn a tangent onto if cops are bad or not.

 

Why? Seems aptly related to me. It's where racism meets the road.

 

 

Because, whilst the cop discussion is interesting (ish) it's not the real issue.

 

Racism and people being shit towards other people is the issue. People thinking that *they* are better than another, is the issue. You could replace cop with any number of profession, it's not all that relevant to me. (but then I'm from the UK so maybe it's different.)

 

But racism or rather tribalism, that deep routed belief in an us and them, a false notion that one "kind" of human is superior to another, not because of what they do, but purely as a result of who they are, is a serious issue for humanity as a whole.

 

The cop discussion is about actions and behaviours and decisions, a system, racism is based on something that cannot be altered or changed by the person who is in receipt of that racism, it just *is* they just *are*.

[Vigile]

Dunno. I think people thinking they are better than someone else doesn't really cause harm; it just makes the racist look uneducated and dumb. Real harm is where the rubber meets the road with public policy, policing tactics, etc... Being sent to prison at greater rates and for longer times than someone with different skin color is real, measurable harm. As is being policed more aggressively, etc...

 

It's here that racism moves beyond being just stupid and becomes something evil.

[dichotomy]

Dunno. I think people thinking they are better than someone else doesn't really cause harm; it just makes the racist look uneducated and dumb. Real harm is where the rubber meets the road with public policy, policing tactics, etc... Being sent to prison at greater rates and for longer times than someone with different skin color is real, measurable harm. As is being policed more aggressively, etc...

 

It's here that racism moves beyond being just stupid and becomes something evil.

 

Yes, that's significantly harmful racism, but it's still racism, it might be being perpetrated by some police officers, and the system may be corrupt and institutionally racist, but the discussion is (or perhaps I'm saying *should be*) about racism, not whether or not it's okay to speak in sweeping generalisations about cops. It was that, the defence and attack of the police that seemed an unnecessary tangent, because it's not about *them* it's about racism, it's about those who suffer at the hands of racists, be they average Joes, cops, or institutions.

[Vigile]

Is your issue thread derailment? You've been around here long enough to know that's kind of our thing.

[dichotomy]

Is your issue thread derailment? You've been around here long enough to know that's kind of our thing.

 

No, not at all. 

 

More that it distracts from the fundamental issues. Focusing on the "cops" takes away from the ongoing racist issues. The cops are just a small part of a bigger issue. It was more that I didn't like making it about them, as if they're somehow more significant than normal people, because imo they're not. It's giving them a false status.

 

Having said that, I do appreciate that with power and force comes greater influence and responsibility, to use a cliched term.

[Vigile]

Well, we'll have to disagree here. In my mind, cops are at the forefront of the racial issue facing the country. They are key and always have been.

 

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=14707

 

Don't believe me, research yourself. It is clearly a systemic issue. It comes down to the very fabric of everything that we do in law enforcement. So if you think it's not wrong, just think about your metric, that your metric is arrests. That your goal is to go out there and arrest somebody. Not help them. Not solve a crime, not deescalate a situation. It's arrest them. So where do you go from there to say it's not a systemic thing?When we go back through time and you see that we have ideas like criminal profiling, where at one point in time we allowed the worst of our society to pick the weakest and take those people and start putting them into a system. And once they're in that system we use the data of that system to justify putting them back into that system. So we essentially end up taking these 16-24-year-old black males, and we arrest them based upon the idea that we arrested them before. So somehow that makes them more likely to be a criminal, because you arrested them. That doesn't make any sense.