7-21-16
This is in response to the people constantly telling me, and everyone else, that we cant just group all the cops together, the "good" ones with the bad. Since that is being unfair to the other cops and "we obviously need them to keep us safe" This is, without fail, coming from people who've had barely any actual contact with police and only see the shitty behavior on TV. People who seem to love talking about how awful police brutality is but believe it's just a problem with individual cops. Not a systemic thing thats been going on constantly for as long as cops have existed. People who tend to not have any friends resembling any of the folks being abused or killed by pigs, on TV and the internet, daily.

What ratio of good cop to bad cop is the tipping point? Are we okay with 30% crooked w/30% obviously complicit and 40% claiming ignorance? Is that acceptable? How about a 40-50-10 division? What about 1/10 of the police force being very openly corrupt and abusive with the rest being described as "honest cops who are just trying to help and make a living", but those 10% are still comfortable working next to people who's violent behavior would've landed them in jail immediately if they didn't have a badge to excuse it. I see a lot more of an effort to convince people that most cops are honest than any attempt to hold the others accountable and keep it from happening. Nobody's ever accused me of having a perfect, or even accurate, moral compass, but if the restaurant I work at keeps serving rats and broken glass to people I will either expose it or quit - I wont keep working there and trying to deflect blame as if I never had any idea what was happening. "Dont lump me in with those people that I worked next to forever who kept spitting in peoples food. I'm still an honest, hygienic cook who wants to serve good food. What was I going to do about them, make some sort of sacrifice that might effect me negatively in order to help people?" Bad analogy. I know. But how often do you need food, and how often do you actually need help from the cops? Not the theoretical if they aren't here to protect us everything will fall apart help, but actually provide a service that doesn't involve putting people in jail type-of help? A-and, who is more dangerous to the public when not held accountable? Un-hygenic cooks or dirty cops.

So where are all of these great cops at? Do they just never ever appear and do good deeds wherever a camera is? Obviously bad shit will get more attention, but the pigs have been trying really hard to improve their PR, as are the news agencies who cover for them while making money off of reporting on their brutality. While I was locked up and had my tv on more often I saw a few cell phone videos of the police being all heroic and Norman Rockwell (as opposed to all the other videos of them being very shady and George Orwell), but they just seemed a little tough to come by. I know from personal experience that a camera can make a friendly cop REALLY aggressive, and that was way before live streaming and Black Lives Matter. So do we just not film the good ones in the hopes we don't push them over the top? Do we give them the benefit of the doubt (that they don't give anyone else) and wait for the bad ones to surface so that they can get suspended for 3 months and then work side by side, yet again, with all them good ones, and all of that responsible, tolerant, even temperedness wears off on the guys who were committing 1st degree assaults on the job and on camera, earlier that year? Possibly those apple-cheeked good cops will even hold them accountable this time?

Technically yes, cops are humans and likely to make mistakes. But everyone is cutting these guys a lot more slack than they would an easily distracted lifeguard or an incompetent nurse who slips up and let somebody die. (I know people doin time for both of those things). How did everyone get convinced that its unfair to hold cops - the people we pay to enforce morality - to a high moral standard? Or even the same standard we hold kids to on the playground? How do they get to file lawsuits to make sure they don't have to have to take the same drug tests as people at WallMart? How do their civil liberties preclude that? If it's not okay for somebody who works at a grocery store to smoke pot, why the hell is it okay to not even check to see if cops are doing cocaine?