RE Observer:
Regrettably you are mistaken, both on how close and how well I know police officers and what my political position is on anything. I do find it interesting however, that you’re unable to discuss the issues on the merits and have descended into name calling.
What does distress me however, is the inability of cops to debate or even discuss an issue without behaving like liberal Democrats. As far as the ability to deal with facts goes, you Sir, are on par with the Brady Bunch, the Sharptons, the Kerry-Kennedy mob, et al,……….
What saddens me still more, is that you regard anybody who argues on the basis of fact, or even of opinion which is consistant with the facts, as some sort of ivory tower academic liberal. And your self evident tendency to regard that as the moral equivalent of L’ese Majest if not outright treason, convinces me that something is definitely amiss.
What’s dangerous is just how out of touch it shows you to be. A person who is right, knows that he is right, and who has confidence in that knowledge does not have to decend to the intellectual level of some protestor from SWINE, (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything. (And thank you Al Capp, where ever you are, for the acronym!))
If you can’t deal with a discussion of an issue on it’s merits without resorting to that old, tired and lame arguement, “”Shut Up”, he explained,” why ever on God’s green earth should any of us trust you with gun, badge and authority? Why should we trust your judgement when you show so little of it?
Questions like mine won’t go away. Every time a SWAT team kicks the wrong door and plants evidence as happened with that old lady who was killed in New Orleans, and every time they do something stupid like riddling that guy in NYC with fifty rounds when he wasn’t armed, or any of the rest of the scandalous stuff we are assaulted with, it would seem at fairly frequent intervals, those questions grow and the outraged insults of a wannabe petty noble who feels that he shouldn’t be accountable to those whom he regards as peasants, will simply support the increasing consensus that there is something wrong with Law Enforcement.
Thus far, all I can see in your outburst is somebody who is saying, “I’m somebody special, and that peasant is getting uppity!” If you’re actually a policeman, one wonders if such rudeness is how you approach the citizens on your beat. If it is, I’m ashamed of you.
What’s really ironic about this is that on the basis of outbursts like yours and an increase in reports of police misbehavior, I’ve gone from a person who used to give the police the benefit of a doubt and who opposed civilian review boards. Now the reverse is true.
I now think that those boards should be independant, should have their own independant investigative capabilities and should be able to bring charges directly against policemen who violate the law.
Congratulations: You’ve contributed to a commendable job on the part of police to convince me that the liberals are right on this one. And that’s a sad state of affairs.
And a major contributor to that conversion is the overweening sense of entitlement that you guys bring to the table. And it shows in such things as your calling us “little people” or “Civilians”, when in point of fact, you’re C I V I L I A N P O L I C E.
You’re neither military, nor are you some newly empowered class of petty nobility. You’re neither our teachers, nor our nomenklatura, regardless of what you guys say to each other at “Choir Practice.”
You need to be reminded that all you are, are citizens just like us and that while you may be accorded some limited power, we nevertheless are
sovereign. Or in simple English, you work for us, not the other way around, although I can understand your confusion on the matter. I recall a statement by NYC Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy, that he couldn’t understand why we were opposing gun control when the police wanted it, because the police were our constituents. That comment continues to amaze me because I don’t recall ever having to be voted citizenship by a committee of policemen. Murphy’s opinion was and is endemic. So it doesn’t surprise me that you might think that way, when the people who hired you also seem to operate under that particular misapprehension.
Once upon a time, there was a Midshipman James I. Waddell, who later rose to command the Confederate Raider, C.S.S. Shenandoah, but that lay in the future.
He reported after recieving his appointment from the Secretary of the Navy, to Commodore William B. Shubrick, aboard the ship of the line, U.S.S. Pennsylvania, a three decker of one hundred and twenty guns.
On reporting to the Commodore, he was advised by him of the following: “Young Gentlemen you must remember that you are now a servant of the people. They are taxed for your support, and you should at all times be respectful to the people. They can dismantle the Navy whenever they choose to exercise that power.”
I think that you may want to reflect on the Commodore’s advice as well. Why? Because whether you like it or not, the police are becoming ever more arrogant, polarised and in some things delusional and people notice this. And at some point, some outrage will occur and at that point, somebody will display the courage shown by Sir Robert Peel when he dismantled the old Peelers who were the British Police, and then formed what we know today as the London Metropolitian Police.
And as outrage surpasses outrage and as the police only answer when asked to account for it is, “how dare you rise against your betters”, than end becomes
more and more thinkable to many. And that number increases every time you behave badly.
In the meantime, I only can reiterate that your outburst is low on truth, high on vitriol and in the end, it impresses me not at all.
And again, I await your next broadside, Sir.
