White people, especially those who call themselves conservative or Republican tend to always excuse police abuses UNTIL it is their own body (or that of someone they love) in the crosshairs. Even in those cases many will excuse the police by stating that the incident was ‘isolated’.

And, when they read or hear of police abuse, they excuse it with ‘oh it’s just a whiney liberal’, or it happened to ‘gangsters’ so it’s OK.

Its Cult of Personality law enforcement style.

Same idea here, now that dissent and constitutional principles are listed as signs of terrorism.

In a search situation, when your home is invaded by stranger carrying guns, it isn’t clear that the REAL badges mean anything, either.

This issue should separate the men from the boys in blue, won’t it? Houston will be able to tell good ministers from the bad.

The badges undoubtedly *imply* authority, the question is whether they *grant* real authority. But reading through the article, it becomes clear from the discussion of the badges by the HPD and the good reverend that *taking away the badges* is the form of leverage the HPD is exercising to try to keep their community partner churches in line. That definitely implies that the badges are a perk and have some kind of real advantage. It is inappropriate and a corruption incentive to hand out such markers of authority to *any person* who is not actually a cop and doesn’t actually have any authority to enforce the law. More likely than not, the perk is that the ministers get to flash the badge to avoid security checks, avoid speeding tickets, etc. This kind of thing is a low-level problem that pervades departments across the country.

So if you turn a blind eye toward malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance in Houston Texas the Houston Police Department will let you carry your very own PACA badge.

What a great bargin for the ordinary folks who fund the Houston Police Department with their taxes and the churches with their tithings.

The darkest depths of Dante’s hell await the souls of these sellouts.

While racism may have motivated this beating in Houston, I, as many here no doubt, see it as a larger problem – the cops believe they can beat us without consequences. All to many times, the juries agree.

If the point of the program was to promote and celebrate Houston’s police officers, I suppose you can’t really fault HPD, here.

Well, can’t fault them any extra for this particular part of that, anyway. There’s still plenty of fault in wanting a program that “promote[s] and celebrate[s]” unconditionally.

On what parallel Earth is that occurring?

The church/state concerns would exist if the church became a mouthpiece of the state or if the partnership granted the church some exclusionary benefit. If the PACA program goes forward as HPD plans, where the church is bound from criticizing the state, those concerns are valid and real. But it seems like the church’s dissociation from the program precisely because of that injunction shows that the separation is live and well.

In short, the HPD took what could have been a fantastic community relations program and tried to turn it into transforming community leaders into willing mouthpieces for the baton-wielding arm of the state. Brilliant.

Is it just me or is the government getting more thin-skinned by the minute?

The nation state’s grip on power is weakening. They hope that they can buy time by shutting up people who would question their legitimacy as a source of peace and order.

In the end, though, it will avail them nothing. One day people will recognize that government is a disease pretending to be its own cure.