Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s videos like the arrest of Sandra Bland, of cops who act like that, that make ordinary citizens lose respect for all police, which makes police feel more insular and more dependent on each other so they close ranks to protect all cops, even the crappy ones.\u00a0 It\u2019s a self-inflicted vicious cycle.<\/p>\n
And the fact it\u2019s a White cop abusing a Black woman on video isn\u2019t just bad optics; in this Presidency, it\u2019s automatically a racial incident.\u00a0 The cops as a whole can\u2019t seem to understand that each of these incidents not only inflames the Black community, it\u2019s distasteful to the White community too and reduces our willingness to put up with it.<\/p>\n
Look for some cops to get ambushed soon.\u00a0 That\u2019s how things are handled in the strata of society that can\u2019t raise $500 bail to get their loved one out of a Texas jail \u2013 they have no meaningful access to the \u201cjustice\u201d system so they utilize \u201calternative dispute resolution\u201d which comes in 9mm parcels.<\/p>\n
I took vacation days to stand the flag line with the Patriot Guard to honor fallen Marines returned from the war.\u00a0 Armed citizens are taking vacation days to stand guard outside unarmed recruiting centers in Tennessee.\u00a0 Nobody would volunteer to stand guard over cops having lunch so they aren\u2019t ambushed.\u00a0 There\u2019s a deep and important lesson there, if only they would learn it.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Joe says “look for cops to get ambushed soon”; not sure if he’s counting the two New York cops killed late last year, in the wake of the Ferguson and Garner incidents.<\/p>\n
In my 22 years in Saint Paul, I’ve met some good cops, and I’ve met some bad ones. \u00a0But it’s dawned on me in recent years that at the moment, “Law Enforcement” as an institution is perilously close to becoming the “Standing Army” that our forefathers warned us about; the arrogant mercenaries that care less about the people they’re defending than about the government that pays them.<\/p>\n
I’m hoping some of the good cops figure this out sooner than later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: It\u2019s videos like the arrest of Sandra Bland, of cops who act like that, that make ordinary citizens lose respect for all police, which makes police feel more insular and more dependent on each other so they close ranks to protect all cops, even the crappy ones.\u00a0 It\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,24,30,286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-culture-war","category-liberty","category-police-powers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54439"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54441,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54439\/revisions\/54441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}