by Crimson847 » Tue Aug 14, 2018 3:44 pm
Ceiling_Squid wrote:I'd appreciate if my fellow citizens gave them the right type of earned respect, instead of reflexively shouting down their fellow citizens whenever someone criticizes police overreach and militarization. The right-wing, divisive "blue line" narrative has done a lot to sour that relationship in the first place, by framing it as supporting the cops against a nebulous sea of undesireables.
Of course they do; that's their experience. When police have a good relationship with the local community, you know which group still hates them anyway? Criminals, and those inclined toward criminality. I used to work private security out in the suburbs, and almost every time someone was arrested for committing a crime on the property, they started ranting about "pigs", how
unfair we were being for daring to stop them from assaulting people or stealing, how racist law enforcement is (even if they were white, oddly enough), and so on. The entire job description of cops is to make life difficult for criminals, and criminals are generally keen to blame their difficulties on everyone but themselves, so criminals hating cops is as natural as sunset following sunrise.
If you're acquainted with (and have the trust of) black people who live in the city and aren't criminals, you'll probably notice that many talk much the same way about cops, but with greater justification. So you won't assume this kind of insulting talk about cops is limited to criminals. However, rural conservatives overwhelmingly haven't had such an experience, possibly because they're racist, but also possibly because it's so white where they live you could blind people by holding up the demographic data. So when they hear some stranger talk about police that way, based on their own experience with that sort of behavior they assume they're a criminal or someone who hangs out with criminals, because in their experience criminals are the only people who act that way toward police.
And it's gone very far to both enable and ignore the problem with police misconduct.
But I work at a gun store, and see this sentiment all the time... I suppose I'm resentful when coworkers and customers roll over for the jackboots every single damn time there's a police shooting or beating. Always with the excuses, or naked disgust for brutality victims that "deserved it".
That kind of support only further embitters the siege mentality. And it's hard not to see it as morally repugnant, where I'm standing.
Yep, their presumptions about their opponents' moral character do only further divide people. And it is definitely hard to avoid returning the favor; harder than a priest at a playground (thanks to
Ted McCarrick we get to make those jokes again). Of course it is; if it were easy someone would have solved the problem already.
Edit: and oinking and cursing is tame. These are public servants, they don't get to keep killing people and seizing property without earning the ire of the populace.
The Portland PD just last week marched alongside a demonstration of armed neo-Nazi and white supremacist thugs, and tear-gassed unarmed counter-protesters. This shit can't keep happening. It looks like the police largely have solidarity with citizens who approve of their excesses.
I live in Portland. PPD fucked up last week, no question. However, your description misses a few key facts, most important being that some of the "unarmed counter-protesters" were behaving violently long before the police turned on the crowd. Here's antifa trying to take an American flag from one of the marchers, then clubbing him in the back of the head when he resists:
Here's a reporter who was hit in the head by a thrown bottle as the cops started trying to clear out the counterprotesters:
I can't find video or images right now, but other people were assaulted by antifa as well, almost all
before the police intervened, including some who were bleeding from the eyes because they were gouged at in a scuffle. That wasn't the fault of the majority of peaceful counterprotesters, and I agree the police overreacted, but the idea that they forcibly dispersed the counterprotesters for no good reason is wrong. My aunt was at the protest, and she's hardcore liberal, but even she said ashamedly that "their side" was being more or less peaceful while "our side" wasn't.
As for the "armed" Patriot Prayer folks, I've seen one viral image of a guy who clearly has a handgun in his back pocket, but for all I know he's a CHL holder who is legally entitled to carry a concealed handgun, even to such an event. I also know that at one point the police apparently made a deal with the Patriot Prayer folks, in which the cops agreed not to take away their shields and potential melee weapons (like big flags with heavy poles, which they were upset at having taken from them) if the demonstrators agreed to stay in Waterfront Park with a solid cordon of riot cops between them and the counter-protesters rather than go out marching around Portland. If you have any additional information on that subject, please let me know.
Edit 2: Also, what do those neighborhoods where people "tip their hat to the sheriff" look like? My gut says overwhelmingly affluent and white.
No need to be affluent and white specifically--there are working class and mixed-race neighborhoods where the police get along well with the community. It is pretty rare for impoverished neighborhoods, though, and very rare in impoverished neighborhoods full of black folks or unassimilated immigrants. Even leaving aside bona fide racism, cultural distance between cops and their communities is great at widening divides.
I don't think it's a mutual respect problem. You can't expect the community to have to hold an olive branch. They're not the ones with the power. They're the ones being stepped on.
The police need to fix their own professional culture first. They need to be held accountable. I'm not going to go tell people to be nicer to the armed, law-immune men who occasionally flip out and crush their vertebrae, or shoot their neighbors.
Good, because they probably won't listen to you. Again, true respect has to be earned, and until their local police earn the respect of these folks they won't be granted it.
"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn