i'd say the scale would tip towards the criminals being criminals first. my friend doesn't get called out to domestic abuse cases to have tea or get to rescue cats from trees very often. when he gets a call it's because a supposed crime has gone down not when a rainbow breaks through the clouds. i know he tries to enter every situation where everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but how do you achieve that in the course of an investigation? you try to find out if one or both of the parties is fucking lying to you. it's note even a high crime vs low crime thing. he got a call to a high income neighborhood,think ive told this one before, where him and another cop had to wrestle and tase a 6'+ 300 lbs black guy who was trying to kill himself by stabbing a 9 inch hunting knife in his neck (dude got air cared and lived).
there are two kinds of cops: most of them are the "true believers", ones who really want to help and protect their community. on the other hand you have those cunts: wounded ex-dorks/fat kids who were pushed around and have decided to turn them self into what they hated most as revenge: the "school yard bully": vindictive, violent pricks who relish in pushing people around then testi-lying at every accusation against them that they are "officers of the law who swore an oath to uphold it". they are no better than the criminals they hypocritically arrest. these few and proud sub-human cretins are what create the fear and simmering anger america now has towards their police.
most cops, i'd even say almost all of them, went into the force with the best intentions. but it's a difficult job with a lot of bullshit mixed into it. if you're in a rough city, or a rough role, it's fucking dangerous - and the perception of your job both in terms of safety information and mass media is that it's a fucking dangerous job. time goes by, and the best intentions get mixed up with fear, paranoia, genuine heart felt concern for your safety and your families safety if you are hurt or killed, or if god forbid you have to arrest the wrong asshole and his crew goes after your family. then all the daily grind of working for what is effectively a government department grinds you down. you watch all the times when justice doesn't prevail. you see good cops, friends, get fucked over by some piece of human trash who manages to swing a bullshit charge. you see a buddy lose his career over some shithead hipster posting edited footage without context on youtube. you see and hear all the horror stories. and the shitty attitude from every government job and the resentment at the toxic shit that you've seen creep in. you look at the cars of the people you protect, the people who won't even send flowers to your funeral if you get shot saving their ass. who won't give a fuck about your wife or your kids. the people who want every lawsuit by every asshole who's trying to weasel out of being caught by making a bullshit brutality claim to come out of your pension fund. all the parts of yourself that wanted to help people and be a good person are at odds with the parts of you that are bitter and pissed off and feel betrayed and fucked over by the system. you struggle to pay your bills on the shitty salary that most cops get paid and watch budget cuts eat into your life in little ways every time money is tight. you see crooks and assholes driving cars that cost more than your kids college educations and treat it like nothing. your world view gets tainted a little bit more by every entitled, selfish little cunt you meet in your job. and now not even the movies treat you like a hero. now in every show and every movie and every bit of pop culture, cops are crooked and dirty. you can't even play a video game to see what you do in an idealized light any more - at best you're irrelevant / a street sweeper with a gun who cleans up the mess, or just as likely, if not more, the cops are baddies and are out to screw everyone over. like every government job, you know that you're a disposable cog and your boss might hesitate to throw you under the bus, but his boss, the big bosses, and the lawyers? they'll drop you into the shit to keep the city/department/station out of shit faster than a taxi cab blow job. honestly, i think the miracle at this point is that there are any cops left out there who aren't cunts. it's fucked, but like so many things, fucks me how we fix it.
unless you are a chicago cop where, with overtime, plenty of cops with experience make close to or safely above 6 figures. but with smaller town cops, i agree. i saw it with the cops in the affluent suburb i grew up in. they would come into our classes in hs for crime class or the like and always make some offhand comment about how they couldn't afford to live in the community. it was definitely reflected, not necessarily in police brutality, but a disdain for alot of the citizens. i don't recall anyone i knew getting traffic warnings, only citations, and it was sport for the police to break up drinking parties. a bunch of hs kids drinking in a neighborhood house definitely necessitates 3 squad cars, and sometimes an suv for good measure, to come in sirens blaring to lay down the law.
where i went to school it was a sport to taze defiant college kids. granted they were being assholes, but really, i don't think you can taze someone just for being a dick.
maybe you can expand on this a little bit. what was the air boat captain officially charged with? running an illegal tourism operation into the everglades? or was he running drugs, guns, human trafficking, some other nefarious shit? because, while there was not an extreme amount of violence in this interaction, this again, indirectly, shows a disproportionate use of force if this was nothing more than an illegal tourism company.
oden, i respect you and what you post, but your bias is showing pretty clearly here. actual feds couldn't give a fuck about an illegal tourism operation, unless of course that operation picked up illegals along the way. when the feds get involved, its something pretty genuine. they really don't care about petty crime and assaults. i know this because one of my friends is a fed. federal agents are no joke, they face a pretty tough process to get into the system, they aren't farva, they aren't the guy that got picked on so he's out to show everyone whats up. considering our friend knew nothing of what he stepped into, and considering what the feds knew things we don't and won't, it seems they did pretty well. they made innocent bystanders feel non-threatened, which is a pretty remarkable accomplishment considering they came with weapons loaded and ready to go.
listen, the respect is mutual and i understand what you are saying and i respect that you have friends that have worked hard and do the right things, but this doesn't change the reality of the situation we are in as citizenry of the united states and how government entities are coming to view us. i will leave this here for you: i don't want to say this delicately, because to put it delicately would allow people to misinterpret the point. you are wrong. this is just an example but it is topical to what is becoming startlingly far too prevalent. the epa performed a raid the other week on some uppity white dude who imported a land rover defender from the wrong year, the vehicle didn't meet emissions standards, so they sent in the swat team? look, i'm not trying to say that there aren't situations that require a swat team because there are. i'm saying that we have witnessed decades of mission creep. every federal agency and every podunk town in america does not need a swat team. a swat team does not belong on raids like the two the i have highlighted above.
also, not all federal officers are created equal. i started a job dealing with immigrant laborers in the northeast. there is a significant amount of border patrol allocated to the canadian border and how do you think they spend their time, hmm? do they gear up to bust a 19-year old named christie with a civic trunk loaded with labatt blue crossing the border or felipe who picks veggies and milks cows? the threats they deal with are not comparable to the other border (if such threats exist) and yet they are equipped to deal with the fucking apocalypse all the same. i think a lot of this involves dealing with populations that don't understand how to defend their rights well or don't have the resources to do so. this shit doesn't go down in the country club, because every lawyer in the county would drop off a business card and offer an aggressive defense. lots of police will look for "easy targets"-someone who can be busted, but doesn't present them with a physical or legal challenge.
the 410 number is the fbi's 2012 count of justifiable homicide, "the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty."* don't look for too much recognition of unjustifiable homicide, though: http://data.newsday.com/crime/nassau-police/ summary: 46 shootings in seven years. 20 of them have no paper trail at all. the other 26 were deemed justified by the department, an impressive 100% accuracy rate for a government agency. thank you for correcting me. 24 million is oz, not canada. against stereotype, it looks as though humans are the only species less deadly in australia. Spoiler *that definition seems weasely to me, and i expect lawyers had a hand in it. but i can't find any clarification on the precise definition. more corrections welcome.
according to cnn (http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/15/us/missou ... ?hpt=hp_t1), and god help me i always trust cnn, (fuck no), micheal brown was suspected in stealing swishers from a store and that kicked off the whole series of events.
no wonder they executed him in the street. and the cop is "being treated for injuries" from being "attacked" during the incident. a full week gives you plenty of time to run a cover-up. i hope the guy anonymous falsely identified as the killer didn't get his house burned down.
the first name that anonymous released was of a person who is not a police officer for ferguson or anywhere near that area. after this came to light, anonymous claims that the ferguson pd intentionally falsely posted information and addresses about that guy to lead them astray. then, anonymous released another name of the officer, and apparently, that is also the wrong name.
i'm not in law enforcement or a lawyer, based on the report issued, the suspect is accused of robbery. how is theft of a $50 box of cigars robbery? isn't that shoplifting/petty theft?
i think if you just walk out with something, it's shoplifting. if you use force or violence to get away with it, it's robbery. using a weapon would be armed robbery, etc. i don't know what happened in this case.
that's exactly what it is. it reeks to high hell. they say he is a "suspect in a strong-arm robbery." bull. shit.
just curious, why are you saying it's bullshit? that brown wasn't a suspect or that it wasn't a strong arm robbery?
the footage at the gas station shows him standing in front of the counter. no weapon, but grabbing the clerk. here's the thing: the robber clearly has on flip-flops and brown appears to be wearing running shoes while lying in the street. of course, it may be him because the pictures are grainy but why is everyone finding this out just now? whether he did it or not the county police are hiding a lot of info and have been from the start.