There are indeed parts of Baltimore and Detroit where I certainly wouldn’t go walking around at 2 am. And I’m certain that somewhere you can find a case of some mailman being roughed up by thugs in a bad part of town. But they are the exception, even in most big cities.

But hey… if we can make the sheeple believe that there IS a war on cops then that provides justification for increased police staffing, equipping and spending.

Coming soon to your house: A SWAT raid because you didn’t pay your water bill.

Fuck the police.

Thanks for the amusing story, but I don’t think you really read what I wrote in #38. If your mind is made up, far be it from to bother you with real life issues. Maybe if we all just took up Sea Steading it would all be better.

Apparently Radley has more Latin than I gave him credit for.

I kinda see his point, that we should not use inflammational language, and all that. I reckon I’m just feeling right grumpy in my old age, remembering as I do that this was a much freer country when I was young.

Now that the shrinks are revising the DSM, I would like to propose a new category of mental disorder.

I would call it vigilism, by analogy with autism. People who suffer from vigilism seem to have this desire to mind other people’s business and tell them what to do, and fly into a rage if they are not obeyed.

I suspect, like autism, that vigilism is genetically transmitted. Fortunately, it seems to have skipped my generation. I seem to have a touch of the family autism gene instead, which makes me just hoppin’ (quite literally) mad when I hear or read about any injustice.

I think that if I ever get a good sword, I’ll name it “Vigilicide.”

You young doodahs like Radley who don’t have any Latin will just have to look things up to figure out what I am saying here.

Policemen, as are we all, are subject to Sturgeon’s Law.

Off-duty Cop: It’s really bad on the streets out there, man.
Civilian: Oh really?
Cop: Yeah, I can’t even begin to describe how bad it is the ghetto. Criminals, gangs, and drug dealers everywhere. Just last week a got his brains blown out in a robbery/drug deal gone wrong.
Civilian: Wow, that bad?
Cop: I’m telling you, some of the stuff I’ve seen out there on our own streets. Indescribable. It’s basically a war zone.
Civilian: Like Iraq?
Cop: Worse than Iraq.
Civilian: Wow, I guess I’ll have to watch what part of towns I go into.
Cop: Yeah. You wouldn’t last a minute out there. They’d gun a white kid like you down just for showing his face. There are even cops who are afraid to patrol there. Not me – I accept danger as part of my job. But I’m telling you, even some of our bravest officers are afraid.
Civilian: Where is it again you patrol?
Cop: The east side ghetto. Corner of 23rd and Washington. I’d rather they just wall off that entire neighborhood, but somebody’s gotta patrol it. But if I were a civilian I wouldn’t go anywhere near it.
Civilian: (chuckles)
Cop: Wh…what?
Civilian: (laughing loudly) Dude, that’s your idea of a ghetto? I live 3 blocks from there and walk through that intersection every day on my way to the bus stop!

Don’t be so sure about that, PW. When I was completing an internship with a midsize PD during my last year of college, I was with an officer that was assigned to a “postal service protection detail” in a ghetto (I don’t use quotation marks because it WAS a ghetto. It met all commonly accepted standards.) neighborhood of the city. Postal workers had been harassed in the area. One had a gun stuck in his face. I don’t recall if shots were fired or not. One thing I have learned about the ghetto is EVERYONE is a possible target, especially if you look like you aren’t from the hood.

“It’s not at all a far leap to conclude from this comparison that (1) cops are more reckless drivers than the rest of us, (2) cops encounter trouble in certain neighborhoods because they seek it out and create it themselves, and (3) cops are trigger happy when there’s no legitimate justification to be”

Yes, some cops are crappy drivers and feel that they can get away with it. However, they are also expected to respond to critical incidents at relatively high speeds. Many motorists are clueless about how to respond to an emergency vehicle and can cause accidents. Also, some officers get “tunnel vision” and occasionally run into each other responding officers. Finally, some officers (particulalrly newer officers) en-route to trouble calls may push their abilities to the very limit and crash. This happened in my area a few years ago when a rookie driving to back up an officer in trouble lost control while turning. The crash killed his training officer. It was a sad case, but the guy just wasn’t prepared to drive like that yet. If officers don’t respond fast enough, Agitator readers will be eager to mock them for being lazy or incompetent. If they drive fast and crash, they are reckless. Alas, damned if you do…

Regarding point #2, that may be the case at times, but you are being a bit harsh. After all, the police are expected to be there to deal with “trouble.” Are police starting trouble when they stop a person with warrants? Of course not. After all, a warrant says that officers “shall” take the subject of that warrant into custody. Are officers starting “trouble” if they stop to investigate a fight in progress? What about a possible burglary? Look, in some ways I appreciate your point. Drug war policing is overly aggressive an provocative, so some of those tactics are pretty much like starting trouble. But there is real crime occurring out there, PW, and the police have to address it, whether you think it looks like starting “trouble” or not.

Basically, actual assaults or the suspect flinched while being beaten?

The most interesting stat on that link is far and away the disparity between cops and the general public on sexual assault. The others are fairly close, or only slightly skewed to the cops or the general public. But for sexual assaults, cops show up at more than twice as likely than the general public.

This speaks to a deep-seated psychological problem with the way police are trained, think, and operate. While most other crimes are motivated by property (theft) or anger (assault and murder), sexual assaults are motivated by a desire to force oneself upon another – a desire for control, which we know is a prominent feature of the police psyche.

I hate to put it so bluntly, but cops have a lot in common with serial rapists on a psychological level. It really is that simple, and it manifests in the fact that they are more than twice as likely than the rest of us to become rapists themselves.

Postal workers spend just as much of their job behind the wheel, yet I bet their automobile accident rate is far less than cops.

Postal workers go “into the ghetto” every single day of the week and personally visit every single house in those exact same “bad” neighborhoods that cops are always whining about, yet you never hear about them being attacked or shot.

Postal workers probably encounter more dogs on any given day of the week than cops, yet you never hear about shooting the animals in “self defense.”

It’s not at all a far leap to conclude from this comparison that (1) cops are more reckless drivers than the rest of us, (2) cops encounter trouble in certain neighborhoods because they seek it out and create it themselves, and (3) cops are trigger happy when there’s no legitimate justification to be

“Radly Balko is a died in the wool POS cop hater. And NOTHING that jerkoff has to say is worth discussing.”

This from a “Platinum Member,” no less. It seems the cream rises to the top even in virtual cop circles…

In all seriousness, it’s precisely this ignorant, arrogant attitude that is turning more and more people against cops. If they post this way on the Internet, then they almost certainly act this way when dealing with suspects. We’ve all seen it here in numerous videos, and many of us have experienced it first-hand.

Too many cops are government-sanctioned bullies…nothing more. As more people realize this fact through news reports and first-hand experience, it stands to reason that more people will want them to get their comeuppance. Some will be crazy enough to do it, too. And though the data currently indicates that there is NO “war on cops” (and I don’t condone one) I’m not holding my breath that this trend will continue for long. You can only push free people so far.

I’ve never seen Radley say “I hate cops.” Likewise, I’ve been reading TheAg for years, and have found his arguments soundly reasoned and supported by actual evidence. I’m sure he would allow the police the same chance to speak that cops like the one who posted the above drivel would clearly deny him…but there won’t be one word spoken. There never is.