http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/13/darrius-kennedy-shooting-nypd-defends-killing-man-knife-times-square_n_1772144.html?utm_hp_ref=new-york

http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/13/video-the-drug-war-and-policing-in-21st?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

And it brings to mind a sicko program I watched recently on ‘Current TV’ (supposedly a ‘populist/liberal’ channel). The program follows Miami Dade SWAT cops on their rounds as they invade and destroy dwellings.

Anyway, there’s a newly minted SWAT officer who had been with the SWAT program for a few months. One night after a raid he, rather than going out for dinner/drinks with his unit, told them ‘No thanks’ and instead spent the evening with a girlfriend (I think it was).

So the following day the newbie gets to work and as soon as the other SWATers show up, they give him grief for daring to spend time apart from the group. They make it clear to him that he will not make it as a SWATer unless he fixes his errant behaviour. He apologizes and promises it won’t happen again.

Cops today are entirely seperate from the communites they ‘serve’. They intentionally segregate themselves. Groupthink at its finest.

So sorry I talk about the consequences which your fanaticism would have, in practice. I’m not interested in what you call yourself, but what you call FOR.

When I use 10% of your literally murderous hyperbole, YOU get upset. You start talking about how YOUR sexual gratification depends on suppressing others, since of course in reality your instant, social darwinist, mental analysis is pseudo-scientific bullshit.

I am a libertarian socialist, you hysterical twit. I do not support corporatism. I do not support capitalism and I would like to see wage labor replaced with cooperative ventures and self-employment. That is what I THINK and I couldn’t care less what you think because you are indeed a troll.

You don’t come here to discuss the content on the blog. You come here to start never-ending arguments and to try to piss people off. Because you like it, don’t you. Chaos for the sake of chaos. You get off on that because you are a frustrated little person that feels that no one appreciates your brilliance. If you think the commenters on this blog are so terrible, why are you constantly posting? Because you fucking love to be a distraction.
And I bet you would never talk this kind of vile shit if we were talking face to face. Your kind are cowards unless they have anonymity.

There Leon, that’s all you get from me. I will not address you on this blog again because I will not feed an obvious troll. So go bother someone else. Better yet, get a life and do something more productive with your time. Good day sir.

You refuse to acknowledge any possible consequences, of course, in your drive to murder many of the poor. To throw people back onto charities and being the “right” sort of people for support.

Scared? Once more, you’re being a good little totalitarian and telling me what I think. Can’t allow free thought! Of course you sterotype me as Contrary To Doctrine. You view pointing out the consequences of what you call for as trolling, and it just points out how strongly you reject cause and effect.

I am talking more about evolution than revolution. I am talking about people learning to do more for themselves and their neighbors. I am talking about people learning to manage their own workplaces. Gradually, Leon. Not overnight. Please calm down and stop throwing around scary phrases like “25 million dead.” You infer that my ideas would lead to genocide but you don’t even understand what I am talking about.

When one discusses anything outside the boring Republican/Democrat or Labour/Tory talking points you get scared, don’t you. Why? You told me once that you were a mutualist. I gave you the benefit of the doubt that day, but now I’m calling bullshit. You are too attached to statism for anything like that. And that’s fine. Be what you want to be, but don’t ever accuse me of advocating genocidal policies again, asshole.

Maybe none of this will help. You portray yourself as a contrarian that is out to keep radicals in check. But when you continually post incendiary nonsense and make personal attacks it makes me wonder if you are really just a contemptible little troll.

You managed to invoke Godwin’s Law in perhaps the one comment thread on the entire internet where it does not apply.

Ahahahahahahahahaha aaaaah.

DING DING DING DING DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!

I believe that one can predict the types of people one will find in an organization much better by examining the types of incentives the people will face, than by examining the people themselves. If the incentives will by their nature drive out good people and draw in bad people, the organization is virtually guaranteed to rot unless those incentives change, even if it is at present staffed by the best people imaginable.

The reason one needs to get upset when cops are allowed to skate in “isolated instances” is not because such instances necessarily happen frequently, but rather because whether or not such instances happen often enough to be a “real problem” today, the fact that cops are routinely allowed to skate will virtually guarantee that those “isolated instances” will increase in frequency to the point that they become a problem.

Better yet, codify in legislation what should already be obvious: illegitimate actions by can by definition form no part of a person’s legitimate duties. While agents might legitimately be given immunity from liability for actions done in performance of their legitimate duties, or even for accidental actions which, if done deliberately, would be illegitimate, agents cannot legitimately be given any sort of immunity for deliberate illegitimate actions.

If an officer is given a warrant for 742 Evergreen Terrace and proceeds to raid 744 Evergreen Terrace, the officer should be recognized as a robber, with neither criminal nor civil immunity for his actions. If the cop is given a warrant which should have been for 7442 Evergreen Terrace, but it in fact said 742 Evergreen Terrace, then the cop who conducts a raid on 742 Evergreen Terrace might be protected from liability, but the cop who mistyped the warrant should not be.

There is no reason why every cop involved with a raid should not be required to either inspect the warrant to ensure that the address being raided is, in fact, the one printed thereon, or be held civilly and criminally liable, jointly and severally, for any and all consequences that result from failure to do so.

@33 – Ah yes, when far right fanatics, and gun nuts like you feel something, you ALWAYS invoke “everyone is like me” as a defense. When you act extremely hostile to the police and it backfires, you’ll then blame anything and everything else.

They’re, again, not your friends and never have been, but fanaticism is never helpful.

@37 – So “only” 25 million or so dead then? (What a major breakdown in the US food transport system would cause, fairly quickly, and primarily centered among the poor who can’t save up food of course).

That you blame “liberalism” as a simplistic answer, when you overlook your moralist preaching and unwillingness to embrace any solution which is short of a revolution, using stereotyping…

HOW DARE people do their job helping other people, in your world.

You can make all the demands you want, and get laughed at for your troubles by the authorities and the authoritarians. If getting human rights mealy required you to demand them, then the world would be a paradise.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” ~ Frederick Douglass

If you read me carefully (and perhaps check out my comment history), you should see that I am definitely not making any argument about the proportion of good and bad apples in the police barrel. I, too, feel a mighty urge to vomit whenever someone starts talking about the “X% who do their jobs with honor every single day…”

In fact, I don’t believe in the concept of good and bad apples at all. They exist, of course, but only at the margins and never in sufficient numbers to define the performance of any system.

What I believe in are the kind of apples that respond to incentives. They are the ones who, making up the vast majority of EVERY group at ANY given moment, determine how that group will behave. Which is to say, they don’t determine a damn thing, because the incentives are doing that for them.

(If we agree on nothing else, let’s agree the apple metaphor is now officially cached.)

On an individual level, it is often true that bad things happen because of bad people. But when bad things happen en masse, when they happen repeatedly and systematically, it becomes both lazy and dim to attribute those things to the mere existence of bad people.

By definition, anything that happens a scale equal to the drug war must be the work of ordinary people, carried on with the active consent of tens of millions. The enterprise is simply too big to be staffed entirely by monsters or sadists, or supported entirely by fools.

But don’t you see: what I’m saying is worse, more harsh, and more radical than what you have said. I’m accusing the normal, the decent, and the upstanding citizens of this country of being criminal accomplices to a criminally stupid system. And I’m accusing the police of being what they are: average, ordinary servants in the banality of evil, who lack the initiative for self-determination that is the common feature of both heroes and villains.

You’re letting everyone else off the hook, by insisting that the harm of the drug war is only the work of a narrow band of depraved, power-crazed, perverts.

That’s a well meaning sentiment. But I haven’t consented to most federal policies for the entirety of my adult life. Funny enough they never stopped to ask me for it while they were out arresting people and terrorizing the world.

You can make all the demands you want, and get laughed at for your troubles by the authorities and the authoritarians. If getting human rights mealy required you to demand them, then the world would be a paradise.

The only way you can become a serf is if you allow the petty-tyrants to treat you as such.

Demand to be treated as a human-being.

The government can only govern with the consent of the governed.

Revoke your consent and demand accountability.

Wrong!

Snitches are not all we have.

If Pittsburg Police Department Commander Maurita Bryan would take a moment from her busy schedule of worshipping at the altar of authority she may come to the conclusion that the “police” can just say no.

No to allowing political expediences to run roughshod over the very constitutional protections Pittsburg Police Department Commander Maurita Bryan (etal) swore an oath to uphold.

I have criticized the game you reference in your post many times since I first checked out The Agitator about four years ago. I have also taken my share of shit over the years for denouncing the name-calling and stereotyping on this blog. I still don’t think its very “libertarian” to treat the police as a monolithic blob. But, some people come here to vent. That is the way many blogs are, for better or for worse (mostly for worse). Indeed that is why I only frequent a few blogs. The Agitator is better than the vast majority.

You are correct; the “internet tough guy” approach doesn’t solve jack shit. While I will continue to visit The Agitator for the investigative reporting, my presence in the comment area–on any blog I check out– will likely drop off soon for many of the reasons you have discussed. All this shit does is raise blood pressures and dash hopes for a better future. That should not be the point of activism and protest.

But let’s ignore the tough guys for a moment. What I intended to do in my post is offer an institutional analysis of policing. I maintain that the institution of policing is deeply flawed, though many of the individual actors may come to the field for the right reasons. I certainly had good intentions. It is my fear that the institution will force most of these individuals to conform or it will destroy them. This was a major reason I did not enter the field. Aside from my moral qualms I just felt that I would burn out or be forced out within a few years.

The failures of policing also point to the dark side of liberalism. Liberalism got us past monarchy, feudalism and the dominance of the church. It proved to be more stable than fascism and state socialism. But, in my opinion, liberalism is not sufficient. To paraphrase Rosseau, when people and communities are told to depend on representatives, policemen and bosses, they lose a substantial amount of their freedom. That is why I believe that another revolution (As bloodless as possible, I hope) is in order. Liberalism has always feared the rabble (look at the writings of James Madison and other classical liberals) and this is one reason why organized police forces were developed. I think we can do better.