JustAlice said:You are saying that an entire group of people, based on their chosen profession, are all inherently bad and evil.
I neither said nor implied any such thing at all, nor do I believe that. Please read more carefully next time, and consider your response accordingly. If you don't understand what you're reading, ask.
My post had absolutely nothing to do with any inherent belief in whether police officers are good or bad. My entire point was that the situation at hand goes beyond the number of "good cops" versus "bad cops", and beyond what any of us may believe police to be. When we talk about the actions of police, it doesn't matter if some or even most cops are good people; the presence of good cops, whatever their numbers may be, does not diminish the reality of what is and has long been a distinct, documented, repeated pattern of unacceptable collective behavior by police departments across the country. That's the problem being discussed here.
I'll clarify this concept with a simpler example:
I once rented an apartment from a person whose behavior was a little questionable at times, but mostly she was nice enough and most of our encounters with her were uneventful. When we vacated, we left it in the same condition as when we moved in. She then decided that she was entitled to keep 80% of our security deposit, based on a bunch of claimed "damages"... it turned out there was some barely-visible water damage originating from a leaky pipe outside the apartment... so it was actually her own negligence that caused it, but she somehow felt she was within her rights to charge us for it.
In any case, when we took her to court, she attempted to build a case for herself by bringing in nice thank-you letters and things that other tenants had written to her, and explained that those things showed what a good person she was. Needless to say, the judge completely dismissed all that... because obviously, it doesn't matter whether she's a good person, it only matters whether she was entitled to keep our money (the judge made her pay the full amount + 20% interest).
Likewise, a good cop indiscriminately killing a person who poses no credible threat to the lives of anyone around them, has still committed murder. If this passes without consequence, a good cop has been taught that they can get away with killing when they feel justified in doing so, and them being a good person doesn't change the lesson. Morality is as fluid as any human quality, and the line between good and bad is thinner than we'd like to think. Why would we believe that the mental leap it takes to cross that line is any different for police than for the rest of us? They are human beings, and they are flawed too. The difference is: as officers of the law, they have been given the incredible responsibility of being allowed to carry deadly weapons and utilize physical force, when it becomes necessary, to keep dangerous situations from getting out of hand. With that comes the responsibility of using those powers appropriately and with sound judgment (kind of like what Spider-Man taught us). If their power is abused, it falls to the rest of us to call them out, and it is our civic responsibility to do so.
This is not to say that police in general are all disasters waiting to happen... but we must recognize that it can happen, to anyone, and letting police operate above the law means that when it does happen, it will get ugly. All people (even good people) are susceptible to doing bad things, and if the cost of those things is someone's life, and we let it go because we see them as "good people", we're on our way to a very bad place. The inherent nature of the human beings behind the problem does not alter or excuse the nature of the problem.
I'm not going to directly address most of the points in your argument (as I might normally be inclined to do), because the fact that you so thoroughly misconstrued what I wrote makes that a pointless exercise. However, you may want to look up Jim Crow and collectivism... they don't mean quite what you seem to think they mean.
Perhaps you thought I was agreeing with Harvey's
No, they aren't good cops nor good people because they stick up for the institutionally criminal cops 99.99% of the time
but it didn't appear he was implying that all cops are inherently evil, as you state. It seemed to me he was talking more about police departments as institutions tending to hide wrongdoing by their own... which, as we all know, has happened and does happen. However, he doesn't need me to speak for him or put words in his mouth; and I wasn't echoing his statement, I was using it as a jumping-off point for my own, which I've now explained.
Hope that helps. And if you don't know, now you know.
uderonomy said:Take away everyone's guns.
