Tyrants in Uniform

In recent years, NYC has set the standard for extremely-unconstitutional policing.

It was Republican administrations in NYC that set the standard for this with atrocities like Stop-and-Frisk being openly promoted and bragged about. We should only assume that Democratic administrations will gladly use the same force and expand upon it.

If we care nothing for the constitution and the rights of the individual, why would the left - who gladly uses repressive and confiscatory tactics every chance they get - care?

Both Trump and Cruz are bad on this issue, though Trump is noticeably worse. Cruz should adopt Rand Paul's talking points on police as they are correct.

"Standing with police" has become the establishment badge to wear. It's an extension of the "law and order" talk that people like Trump thunder on and on about.

The police don't need to be "stood with". They're paid (well) to do their job and they're given weapons, armor and hardware that shift power greatly in their direction. Crime will not dramatically increase if police aren't there to harass everyone into subservience.

Of course, it takes an intelligent engaged electorate to understand this and stand by it.

"Young grasshopper, you must achieve balance." This applies to the relationship between police and citizens. If there is no trust, then there will be fear and violence. Our current Attorney General has made the police afraid to get involved. The Black lives matter more than police lives movement has also made Police afraid and so the Ghetto can burn before police and fire will come.

Sigh...I like you Petrarch.

I really do.

But it's hard not to react to much of what I read here with a heavy sigh and eye-roll.

"...at the way Barack Obama has pilloried the police who protect us from thugs in the night, and instead sided with those thugs."

I mean really? Hyperbole much?

But I digress.

The fact of the matter is that reflexively backing the police in almost every incidence of misconduct (except of course in cases of only the most obviously wanton acts of depravity and/or those caught on "film" in which the officer's actions fail every attempt by those such as yourselves, to be willfully mischaracterized as justifiable), leads us to this logical extreme.

In other words you can't have it both ways.

You can't argue on one hand, that when it comes to blacks, that even the most benign level of noncompliance in response to unjustified police harassment, justifies any level of response by an officer, up to and including murder, and then complain when they attempt to codify these powers in such a way that now, not just poor blacks can be arrested and tagged as felons (or killed), but also college coeds like little Justin and Amber can now get a taste of "the good life", and have their lives ruined too, for having COP (contempt of police). Can you imagine the number of white college students who potentially would now and forever more, be thrown on America's trash heap, based on the mere word of an arresting cop?

So what's the problem?

Blacks have been getting beaten and killed for years based on completely bogus charges of "resisting arrest" ("Stop resisting! Stop resisting!"), and now that they want to make felons out of EVERYONE who "resists", now you have a problem with it?

For years I have been pointing out the hypocrisy of pretending to be against so-called "government intrusion", "taking away our freedoms", "infringing on our rights", "unconstitutionality", blah, blah, blah, while at the same time mindlessly supporting the power of its agents (cops) to harass, arrest, and deny its citizens' basic right to life, liberty, and freedom of speech, through the use of completely subjective, and low-threshold-of-proof charges such as "disorderly conduct" and "disturbing the peace".

So now, they want the power to completely ruin a person's life for merely verbally protesting, or offering token physical resistance - resulting in no injury -to an unfair or unlawful order or arrest. And?

Again I say, what's the problem (as if it wasn't obvious)?

You wanted it...You got it!

Tony, could it be - alas, oh my! - that you and I have finally found the one issue we agree on?

:-D

lfon,

You have no idea how pleased I am by your response. :D

Actually, while I rarely comment, I have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of agreement I have had with a number of your comments as of late. On occasion, I have actually been tempted to comment to that effect, but didn't want to "jinx" it. ;)

I don't know if I've changed, or you, but I've definitely found more to agree with in more of your comments than I ever would have thought possible.

Is...is...is...this what's referred to as finding "common ground"? ;)

Thanks for your response.

Tony

If you think that we blindly support the police, Tony and lfon, you are gravely mistaken.

We are vehemently opposed to civil forfeiture:

http://www.scragged.com/articles/sheriff-macdonalds-tax-farm

We don't like the FBI forcing Apple to crack their devices:

http://www.scragged.com/articles/no-apple-for-the-fbi

And we are strongly in favor of quickly getting rid of bad cops, and harshly punishing those who commit crimes - as even this very article makes clear, as well as this one.

http://www.scragged.com/articles/jfk-the-real-killer-of-laquan-mcdonald

We need a police force. We need to support the police - but we also need police who are worthy of support. That means aggressively getting rid of the bad apples, but being willing to stand by those who are doing their job of "serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the law."

And obviously we need to do a better job of writing laws that are worthy of being upheld - which, generally speaking, we don't believe the drug laws are.

http://www.scragged.com/articles/cutting-off-the-head-of-our-drug-problem

So there's more common ground that you might suppose.

@Tony - There's another point too, Tony. Consider Ferguson.

1) The media jumped aboard the lie "hands up, don't shoot" which was so egregious that the Washington Post had to publish an apologetic retraction.

2) Eric Holder and all of his merry men tried hard, but they could find no evidence whatsoever that this was anything other than a justified shooting - what to you want? Mr. Brown's finger prints on the officer's gun, for crying out loud!

3) Nevertheless, a pretty good cop's career was ruined.

4) Mr. Holder lied to touch off a race war between blacks and police.
http://www.scragged.com/articles/what-do-holder-and-obama-expect

5) BLM types later murdered a number of police officers in various cities across the nation.

6) Bill Clinton finally told the truth about black on black crime, but BLM yelled so loud about it that he had to sorta apologize.

7) Black lives which are ended by other blacks don't matter at all. Democrat activists are even trying to erase the term, "Black on black crime."

Petrarch, did I not explicitly state that Scragged's support of police wasn't without exception?

"...except of course in cases of only the most obviously wanton acts of depravity and/or those caught on "film" in which the officer's actions fail every attempt by those such as yourselves, to be willfully mischaracterized as justifiable..."

So sure, when there's irrefutable evidence (i.e. video) of wrong doing, you guys will offer a tepid one or two-sentence acknowledgement that the individual did not deserve to be shot down like an animal.

For example, I'm sure Tamir Rice's mother would be particularly heartened by your strong condemnation of her child's murderers, who were cops:

["We can all agree that twelve year old boys should not be shot even when playing with toy guns, particularly not without much of a warning."]
(http://http://www.scragged.com/articles/do-black-lives-matter)

But then of course, you go on to spend the remaining 99% of the article "pillorying" BLM.

["We need a police force. We need to support the police - but we also need police who are worthy of support. That means aggressively getting rid of the bad apples..."]

So why do you so vehemently attack movements like BLM, which raise the issue of cops brutalizing and murdering unarmed civilians? Or for that matter, ANY entity who's aim is to decrease police misconduct.

I mean who's against preventing cops from murdering unarmed civilians?

What's Scragged's position on lifting the veil of secrecy on Grand Jury proceedings?

What's Scragged's position on using an independent prosecutor to handle allegations of police brutality and murder?

Why in Scragged's articles on the unrest in Baltimore were there no condemnation of the police torture and murder of Freddie Gray, that precipitated it?

So I submit that while Scragged occasionally offers lip service on the most obscene, obvious and incontrovertibly documented cases of police depravity, it's usually half-hearted, and generally serves as a backdrop in service to a pejorative attack on black communities, or one of Scragged's other favorite "liberal" targets.

It is my experience when reading Scragged's commentary on incidences of police misconduct, that absent video, and not just ANY video, but incontrovertible video, showing police criminality, Scragged's default position is that the police are justified in their actions...Except of course when it's a white rancher offering armed resistance to a lawfully executed police order, but that's another topic.

Remember the articles on the Louis Gates Jr. incident?
http://www.scragged.com/articles/the-president-and-the-policeman
http://www.scragged.com/articles/teaching-moments-with-the-president-the-policeman-and-the-prof

It was obvious that Scragged's position, aside from accusing the President of being a racist (requisite eye roll), was that Sgt. Crowley was completely justified in accosting and arresting a Harvard Professor literally on his own doorstep.

So I'm sorry, but I stand by my accusation of hypocrisy, and defy you to link to an instance where lacking video, Scragged writers sided with an alleged victim of police misconduct.

Go ahead...I'll wait.

@Nate - Ok sure, I'll bite.

1) The media jumped aboard the lie "hands up, don't shoot" which was so egregious that the Washington Post had to publish an apologetic retraction.

Well to that I'll say at least WaPo had the integrity to admit they were wrong. When are we going to receive one, just ONE apology from a police union, or it's enabling media (e.g. fox news) for advancing the blatant lies cops tell, which are later shown to completely false by video evidence?

Hell, even in the face of video evidence, killer kops and their enablers will double down, and try to assert that the video shows what it clearly does not. It was ridiculous how many idiots were insisting that the video of Tamir Rice's murder, "clearly" showed the child "drawing his 'gun', and advancing on the officers". It was preposterous.

So I'll grant you that. But, an odd lie told by a populace sick of being subjected to common occurrences of police harassment and brutality, pales in comparison to the number of lies police routinely tell in covering up their own, and each other's crimes.

2) Eric Holder and all of his merry men tried hard, but they could find no evidence whatsoever that this was anything other than a justified shooting - what to you want? Mr. Brown's finger prints on the officer's gun, for crying out loud!

Sorry but in my opinion, all the Ferguson report did was show that there was a lack of evidence that rebuts beyond a reasonable doubt, Darren Wilson's self-serving testimony and account of events, not that he was innocent. I read the report, and found some of the language and conclusions legally, and intellectually lazy.

Here's an example:

1."the evidence does not establish that it was unreasonable for Wilson to perceive Brown as a threat while Brown was punching and grabbing him in the SUV and attempting to take his gun."

My objection to that statement is that there is nothing beyond Darren Wilson's own uncorroborated testimony, that would lead to the conclusion that Brown was "attempting to take his gun". Since Brown is not here to challenge that account, in my mind there's no justification for such an opinion to be stated as fact.

An alternate explanation for the physical evidence might be that Wilson, enraged by Brown's acts of disrespect, illegally pulled his gun, with the intent of -let's say it together -murdering yet another unarmed black citizen, and Brown responded by attacking Wilson in self-defense, and attempting to direct the muzzle of the gun away from his upper body.

Wilson claimed that in response to him pulling his weapon, Brown said "You're too much of a pussy to shoot".

Really? C'mon.

3) Nevertheless, a pretty good cop's career was ruined.

Purely subjective opinion

4) Mr. Holder lied to touch off a race war between blacks and police.
http://www.scragged.com/articles/what-do-holder-and-obama-expect

Say what???
C'mon man! "Touch off a race war"? How can I take your remarks seriously?

For that matter, what lie are you referring to? All I saw was a completely slanderous statement, and absolutely no attempt to substantiate it.

5) BLM types later murdered a number of police officers in various cities across the nation.

Sigh..."BLM types"? So anybody that kills a cop is a "BLM type", are they?
What about all the "Mudering cop type" policeman who murder unarmed citizens DAILY aCross the nation?

6) Bill Clinton finally told the truth about black on black crime, but BLM yelled so loud about it that he had to sorta apologize.

Really? That's not mine, and many other's take.

7) Black lives which are ended by other blacks don't matter at all. Democrat activists are even trying to erase the term, "Black on black crime."

Um ok, you're right. Blacks don't care about crime committed by other blacks. I mean gosh, they're being soooooooo totally unreasonable in expecting supposedly professional LEOs who are sworn to protect and serve, to conduct themselves better than criminals.

Yeah, you got me there.