Funny you should mention football, cuz you’ve moved the goalposts. The point was whether this slogan was evidence of a systemic problem.

As my comments allowed for, cases where someone is physically injured are different and worse, but attitudes can be just as indicative of systemic problems (remember, that’s the thing we’re actually talking about here) as actions.

I find your football comparison strange since the beer-drinkers, like our nascent police cadets, also had yet to actually injure someone, but you were willing to put 2 and 2 together and figure out that beer might lead someone to cause some actual trouble. Deplorable attitudes sadly don’t enjoy a similar causal connection in your mind.

Beatings, taserings, and other abuses of power - even in isolated incidents - are needles in the haystack. If you find one, its worth investigating to see if you can find others.

A single cop who thinks it is ok to beat his girlfriend, because she is too afraid to call 911 for fear of getting one of his buddies, shows a breakdown in the system. A pair of cops who aren’t afraid to taser someone because they know they won’t get caught and/or punished suggests that not only the cops but their superiors are derelect in duty.

A group of not-yet-commissioned college-aged cadets exhibiting bravado haven’t actually caused any physical harm. While I’d take a second look at the crew - who knows, maybe there really are issues beneath the surface - no one has actually caused another person PTSD yet.

When I was in college going to football games, it wasn’t uncommon for perfectly well-adjusted fans to yell “Get’m! Sack’m! Make’m eat dirt!” There were other fans who’d down five or six beers. I kept my eye on the beer drinkers. The cheering guys generally didn’t bother me.

You are hilarious. I remember when I was a really confident, but obviously and profoundly ignorant undergrad, too. Great times.

No, they do their fair share here in the US as well.

The DOJ recently found several instances of deadly constitutional rights violations at the King County Jail where I was held, some of those violations included letting people die slow and agonizing deaths from infection, sexual abuse of prisoners by guards, and physical abuse that resulted in eye lacerations and other grievous injuries… In a jail where pre-trial detainees are held.

In my case, I was intentionally denied medical treatment as a form of punishment, of torture. The pain from my injuries was so intense that I suffered from convulsions nightly, lost 30 pounds and couldn’t sleep for two weeks. Other people in the holding cell with me were so afraid I was going to die they started to threaten a riot if I weren’t looked at. But the torture continued no matter what, even after they realized I was innocent.

The army medic who visited me told army doctors, including a colonel, how I was treated and they tried to get in to see me but the jail wouldn’t permit them access to me or my records, even with my permission.

I was lucky, to some degree, I was innocent and there was video tape to prove it, or else I would have died in there.

So, keep on fighting for the detainees in Gitmo while the rest of us suffer and die in jails right down the street.

As in my story, which you mentioned a few months ago, when a US Army Medic freshly back from Iraq came to see me when I was held in jail, he was angered by how poorly they had treated me and how they had forced me to languish there without even bothering to dress my wounds, which were still open at that time, 3 full days after my arrest.

He told me, “I am ashamed that I’m over their fighting for a country that treats you like this when we treat known insurgents, people who just shot at my friends and fellow soldiers, better than they are treating you here in this jail.

At least in Iraq we give them something for pain and treat their injuries. I can’t believe this is happening here.”

runcible,

You’re kidding right? Don’t you mean you first have to be *able to* read. The slogan says to cause PTSD in plain langauge. How is that not an endorsement of polcie brutality? (unless you posit that encouragement and endorsement are two different things which have somehow not converged in this example, which I would love to hear explained.) I think we all understand this was somewhat tongue in cheek, but it still reeks of “let’s get out there and kick some ass!”

Even if the recruits were to explain it really just means “let’s get out there and kick some ass, where such ass kicking is appropriate and necessary to further safety of our communities.” It’s the emphasis on that part of the job that is concerning.

why are the things you mentioned signs of a “deeply flawed policing system” but this slogan is not? Now, I’m obviously not saying it is the same thing, but it seems like a pretty decent “sign” to me of a problem. In fact i think this is a better sing than the harrassing ex-girlfriend example you provided, because it shows the attitutde of a *group* of police who had just undergone training and should still be in their most idealistic mindframe. (A single rogue cop with control issues could stalk an ex-girlfriend without it being a systemic problem.)

I think it is fair to point to this and question either or both of a) what is occurring (or not occurring) during their training and b) what type of person is being recruited to become a cop in Idaho. Which, not coincidentally, are th every points raised in the post.

Your statement, “you guys are taking a single case of juvenile humor and trying to use it to damn an entire graduating class,” is pretty confusing. i know police apologists often want to say that one incident of police abuse does not make all cops bad or reveal a systemic problem. But here you’ve used the same canard without realizing that we are using “X” to damn… wait for it… *the very people responsible for “X”* yet somehow we’re painting with too broad a brush!?

The thing is, single incident of police abuse by a veteran cop, and you’d say it’s isolated, or it’s too far removed from training and recruitment to reflect on those systems. This is obviously not those things. And, just because someone is tasered or beaten doesn’t mean it’s not still a “sign” of a serious problem.

On a side-note, you free-market folk are awfully kind to say bad things about the police, after all, their only purpose is to protect YOU from US.

YOU’re able to use all of your superior intellectual skills, educational backgrounds and financial bases to continue to get richer and richer off of our backs, but somehow POOF! freedom ends where my clenched fist begins. You can use all of YOUr tools to outcompete me and to take advantage of the entire legal system and power structure that supports you but when I move in to wrestle you for some property that somehow, magically, you “own”, personal freedom and “free competition” has been taken too far.

So what are you, too dumb to recognize that the police are nothing but yet another one of your meritocratic/Darwinistic tools? Or did a cop once harass your wife?

mnuez
http://www.mnuez.blogspot.com

Unfortunately, however, the real news here, namely, how this slogan even came to be presented in the first place, appears to be just buried in a sea of irrelevant news. Those running the academy should have put an end to this before it ever became public (and I also mean they should have corrected the prevailing attitudes of those in the class that support this slogan). It’s just going to become more and more common, and more and more buried in irrelevant news, until we as a population are conditioned to believe that this is the way it always was, the way it should be, and the way it always will be. As I’m sure was said before somewhere on this web site, we’re not going to just wake up one day and find ourselves living in a fascist police state, it’s going to happen so gradually no one will notice until it’s too late.

The truth of the matter is, not everyone is cut out for the job (either military or police). The military used to weed out the weak, but they can’t even do that any longer (what’s with these “time outs” in basic training? How are these people going to cope with the pressures of war if they can’t handle the pressure put on them by a couple of drill sergeants?) It is this macho mentality that helps to keep them alive when thrown in bad situations. It’s sad to say, but it’s a necessary evil in the military and as a cop.

Just as the military is able to handle both dealing with civilian populations and enemy combatants, cops should know the difference between regular civilians and the criminals. It’s not a hard thing to teach.

I bet a lot of officers would respond compassionately to a lost child or to someone in need of help on the side of the road. It’s that there seems to be a disconnect between that role and the fighting crime role (the super-bad-ass mode), and so they so easily treat people with such little compassion when they’ve viewed them as a criminal or even if the person gives them some attitude.

Tasering pregnant women? Harassing ex-girlfriends? Beating up Rodney King? These are signs of a dysfunctional and deeply flawed policing system. Coming up with a cheeky graduation slogan? Not so much.

I’m not saying that the Idaho Officer’s Academy doesn’t have its problems. I am saying you guys are taking a single case of juvenile humor and trying to use it to damn an entire graduating class. When someone actually goes out and causes a guy PTSD, I’ll be right behind you guys. But as of now, you’re stretching it.