Police

[MollyMac]

it's sad that we need them to begin with, but such is life.

There are always there when you don't want them (usually beacuse, whethe ryou admit it or not, you ARE fucking up), never there when you do need them (because they are NOT psychic) and never hear the end of either.

[Bella Sophia]

Humans are greedy, selfish, and illogical. Of course we need police officers... who are just as greedy, selfish, and illogical....

God, the world is a depressing place.

[MollyMac]

I'd never argue otherwise. I jus tthink that the backlash is shite as it punishes the whole for the bullshit of a few... kind of like every time there is a school shooting, the goths are profiled in schools for suspicious behaviour... irony, that

[Godslayer Jillian]

I think you're just seeing one aspect of the police. I don't hate the people that are cops; I hate the cops. You understand?
In the times of the proverbial forefathers, a slave owner could be very generous with their slaves; give them adequate food, comfortable shelter, hell maybe even he ate with all of them on the same table. Does this make the abstract of slavery any less monstrous?
It's impossible to separate "Police" from "Police state." I'm not saying we live under complete totalitarianism, but the amount of police we have is directly proportional to the degree of totalitarianism in a nation.
Forget about individual bad cops; they are indeed just bad as individuals. But what about when they go against mobs? They take on the mob mentality they're trying to subdue. Only the most pacifist ones would not use aggression against a riot, it doesn't matter whether the riot is violent or disobediently civil.

[MollyMac]

I see the aspect of the police that comes home to me almost every night, Jillian.

And you are speaking only on what you see and not what actually happens- what happens between academy and the beat, between all the training in the world and a mob and everything you can do to stop escalation.

A mob IS violence. Gathering or peaceful assembly is not a mob. When it becomes a mob, when others' civil liberties are violalated, even in assembly, it comes doen to maintaining the peace. Ever notice how you don't see what happens before the camera phone start taping?

I am not saying all cops or all policing is good, but you need to know what and how they learn is directly related to exactly what happens on the beat- easiest arrest to worst case scenario. YOu need to know why they are trained they way they are by looking at why they have to be trained.

Then let's eliminate the police and forms of policing. We apparently cannot trust ourselves to ourselves, as we are who and what we are. but have at it.

[Rotting Corpse]

Not all cops are bad,just like all humans are all good.It's just that the cases we hear the most are the bad ones.A relative bof mine is a cop actually lol.....

[Rotting Corpse]

And Jilian, from that point of view,the mod is also the slve owners.Only,if you don't obey THEIR rules you end up dead. I'm not into the whole "police" shit,but you can't deny that, if we need their help, we will call them n matter what our opinion is.Man can be a beast.We need limits.I belive that,without the threat of the police,we would hear every day about rapes,murders,theft.I'm saying "sit back and enjoy" by all means.I'd kick the ass of a cop if he was a bad one anyday.But we do owe respect to the few good ones(look who's talking,I look the other way every time I see a cop!!!!)

[Darklight689]

Well as much as they can really suck sometimes they are a necessity. Without them we would be so screwed if you think about it. Well anyways, dont like cops? Next time you're in trouble, try calling a crackhead. ;D i love that one but either way there are good cops and bad cops out there so best not to be an ass to all of them. My teacher is a cop, was secret service and aside from being the biggest damn pervert in the world and loving to watch people fight/fighting himself he is a really good guy. And some detective who is a nice guy but sometimes he just runs his mouth too much.

[Crying_Crimson_Tears]

We need cops in the world. They can protect us. Yeah there are some things just wrong with the police, but without them who would uphold every law that our forefathers (at least in this country) took time to make.

And Signe, you're just pissed off because no one here likes you. So you can just leave.

[HumanePain]

Police, just like doctors, politicians, teachers and priests have the same distribution of altruists, criminals and sheep. The bell curve is everywhere.

Teachers are supposed to be good, but a few have seduced students. Are they to be lumped together and all labeled as bad? Of course not. The same goes for the police and clergy.

Now, having established that the police are subject to the same distribution of personalities as any other population, the issue becomes the concept of police.

In this regard, yes, we need to police our own species, because of the same reason: there are sociopaths in society that have predatory natures. The police protect the rest of us from these sociopaths. Otherwise, we would end up like Tijuana or Rosarito Mexico, with shootouts, robberies and rapes running amok.

How long would society be kept from chaos and violence without order? Life would become short and brutish, as the stronger take from their weaker neighbors.

So, having established that the police are needed, the next issue becomes how much order is needed? What is the threshold of criminal vs. accepted behavior? This is where we as humans run into problems. One day marijuana possession is worthy of being sent to prison, and then it is legislated into a 100 dollar misdemeanor with a ticket and no jail time. The driver of a truck leading the police on a reckless chase through a city is justifiably thrown to the ground and handcuffed, but the passengers sitting in the back of the truck are thrown to the ground and beaten with clubs. Where is the threshold of sufficient cause vs. excessive power?

[MollyMac]

The sad thing is that it comes down to economics as to determination of what is and is not a crime, these days.

For instance, in Kansas, it is more difficult to get a drug conviction for intenet to sell than it is to get a conviction for tax evasion. Where is the money? Tax evasion. But, to get around this, and to appease the general populus that would rather have a drug peddler than tax xheat in prison, Kansas has mandated that any funds generated from the sale of illegal substances are subject to income tax. And so, if you want to sell your crack, you have to pre-pay your estimated tax based on market rate and vice millage. It is not illegal to pre-pay your taxes, in factm if you want to sell drugs you cna only sell if you pre-tax the tax.

Paying the tax and saying you are selling is not illegal.. but it is "just cause", and so no one does it.

When you get busted for selling (and not just intent to sell as that is a little ex post facto and pre-emptive conclusion); you are sentenced based on the sell and also on teh taxes you did not pay- SO, Joe average gets teh deal off the street for a longer time and the state gets a tax lien against the dealer and teh dealers property. Win-win... ish.

[Lapin]

I like cops. I like cops because I've got these dumbasses breaking curfew in my court. This group of fourteen to seventeen year old boys don't know what "shut up" means. They think it's perfectly acceptable to shout and ride their skateboards on the sidewalks at two am. All have had prior convictions, and their ring leader has done two rounds of juvie.

So I call the MPs, they put their little asses in the cars and take them home. I go to sleep. Yay for the police!

MPs patrol the base constantly; cars for the roads, and ATVs/snowmobiles for the trails. Guess what? We have almost zero crime on base. It's safe to take my sisters to the park. It's safe for me, a woman, to walk home alone at night.

I know that during events, MPs monitor the soldiers drinking in case they need to go back to their barracks. I know they think they're cute and like to flirt.

But I don't know anything about civilian police. I've never had an incident with them. I've never lived off a base long enough to have any experience. So maybe things are done differently.

[MollyMac]

Exact;y the same and totally different at the same time. It;s just a context issue. And life on base is different than civillian, different standards, different culture. I've lived both and prefer civillian, but base is actually more liberating because I could walk around at night without issue, where in the "free world", I have mace and a knife and a cell phone and... ironic, no?

[Lapin]

Definitely ironic. I live near Baltimore and DC, and let me say, I'll take my "restrictive" base over The Murder Capital of the World and the runner-up any day.

[badteccy]

Originally Posted by Signe

I have contacted the police about you guys.

HAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAA!

[Godslayer Jillian]

All this talk in favor of authority v. self-governance reminds me of what was said about Woodstock in '69 (not in a personal memory, of course, but I've read the article databases)
In the Woodstock festival there was a death and two rapes, and everyone was scandalized by this, but they forget that while the festival lasted, Woodstock became the second most populous area of the State after New York City, and these three crimes are minimal compared to the number of crimes in New York city in a day.

[MollyMac]

But Woodstock was a united intent, not a general populace like NYC. If everyone was on the same logical page, police would STILL be necessary because humans are not naturally creatures of logic.

[Godslayer Jillian]

I see just an issue I can't get past that makes me refuse to see any authority as necessary and good.
How is the logic of "We need the cops or otherwise we couldn't live peacefully and there'd be crimes 24/7" and the like
any different than Christians saying "Atheists are immoral and their lives are always sad because they don't have God in it" ?

[MollyMac]

I see what you are getting at, and i think you and i ultimately agree on the overall authority thing... we are just coming at it from opposite ends. It's as if you see it that authority should not be necessary as we should govern ourselves and i see it as we need authority because we obvious do not govern ourselves.

...not to mention, people do not tend to to tend to their own and so some authority is necessary for mental and physical welfare, not to mention that non-due-process systems have a higher faulty rate than due process systems. If you rely on civilians to deal with teh issues that cops do, it would be lynch mob all over again because good citizens are the ones that become mobs

[Lapin]

At my old high school, the year I graduated, there was a riot at the end of the year. Now, since seniors let out earlier in the year, I was, thankfully not there. Violence makes me antsy. Anyway, it was getting bad, so our cops, since the school actually sits on the base/civilian line, nearly divided down the exact middle, called in the MPs, since they figured they were better for the job.

Which they were. Fifty MPs subdued the riot of two hundred students in twenty minutes. But parents got angry because videotaped footage posted on YouTube (Got to love high schoolers) seemed to show particular violence towards their "precious sons". (It was all boys)

When said video footage was examined though, it was shown that all the boys had punched and kicked the officers trying to hold them back from each other and were justifiably subdued, handcuffed, and put in the patrol car. The officers it turned out, were trying to give them leeway and not press "Attacking a police officer" charges.

The parents were still angry, saying that the officers had no right to touch their children.

From the footage shown, three of the boys got subdued and put in cuffs because they were beating the living hell out of some boy and pounding his head into the hardwood floor.

....Yeah. "My son didn't deserve to be pepper-sprayed" my ass.

[Kanedawg]

Originally Posted by Signe

I have contacted the police about you guys.

Did they get back together after all these years?!

[Dark Clarissa]

Maybe she sent them a message in a bottle (I know! I know! I'm sorry!)

[Kanedawg]

Dude! I was thinking the exact same thing. Synchronicity!

[KontanKarite]

When vanity and greed seem to drive human culture, humans will set standards on what is good and valuable and what is not. When these are set and are so ingrained in society, what would one do to obtain those good standards?

We are only as good as the Nikes on our feet. We're only worth what we drive. We're only beautiful when we're thin.

We will kill the man wearing the Nikes because we can't seem to get any other way to obtain them. We will steal or destroy a Porsche because we can't be there in any traditional way.

I would imagine that the less material you obtain to own and define you, the less you would be inclined to commit a crime.

I'm not entirely convinced that crime is committed more by hate than it being that we establish standards as a society that some can not reconcile with or do not wish to be that.

Most of us, like it or not, are born into a world of games based on obtaining material and security. Apparently, the more we have of both, the better person we are. A collective of social rules that we had no say in. Until now. Sadly, when you think differently or when you tend to not play by the established rules, it ends up being you against everything else.

[MollyMac]

And yet, even on this forum, the fashion threads ournumber the lit, the pecking order is established and so the goals are pre-set. This is nto a criticism or admonishment, but kind of an indicator that no matter how basic the intent, it becomes what we run away from, not because we desire it, but becasue it is what we know.