On my former fellow police officers, that is. I spent 14 years as a cop before leaving the field over 20 years ago. Since then, I continued to believe that American police officers were thinking, feeling, humans.
No more.
Off and on, I've been following some of the law enforcement blogs out there. I have come to the conclusion that today's police officer is a racist, bigoted, birther, creationist, talibangelical, neocon, wingnut, Glen Beck-fellating Oath Keeper, who feels perfectly entitled to "support" the Constitution of the United States by claiming for himself the exclusive right to determine guilt or innocence and the appropriate sentence. This amazing ability to be judge, jury and executioner -- in direct contravention of the Constitution -- scares the hell out of me.
We have cops -- police officers who have allegedly sworn "to protect and serve" -- claiming that they and they alone understand the intent of the Framers of the Constitution; that orders originating with our duly-elected President should not be followed, that they are "unconstitutional" because Obama is a "muslim;" that police officers and military members have an obligation to kill anyone with whom they do not agree; that non-fundamentalist-Christianists have no rights whatsoever; that anyone darker than Edgar Winter is some sort of sub-humanoid.
Can we trust these fruitcakes to protect us?
Or do we have to worry that these armed morans who have fallen under the spell of rootin-tootin-make-believe-cowboy bush and little-miss-you-betcha-wasilla-hillbilly will allow their atrophied sense of right and wrong to run hog-wild, killing those from whom they differ?
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To be fair, the time that you were in is probably the only time in this nation's history where what you state about today's police officers was not true. Back in the good ole' days, racist cops loved going "nigger knocking" and doing shakedowns of people in "nigger town", and if they thought you were guilty, had no problem at all giving you the rubber hose treatment until you confessed to murdering President McKinley. When unionists went on strike against abusive employers cops practically gloated at the opportunity to "beat some lefty socialist heads", and had no problem at all with simply shooting down people they felt needed killing and using a throw-down to justify it.
ReplyDeleteThat's the history of policing in America over the past 150 years, with a few exceptional years where it was not true. And that's just the way it's been, here in the Corporate States of America... and the way the majority of Americans want it to be, sad to say. Because, after all, the cops mostly do it to *those* people. You know, *those* people, who *aren't like us*? Who make us feel uncomfortable and thus are bad people? Siiiiiigh!
- Badtux the History Penguin