Police State, part whatever number I'm up to now:

Radley Balko has an interesting observation on Police culture:

"What Cop T-shirts Tell Us About Police Culture"

When I was a child, you'd never have seen stuff like this.

6 comments:

Grim said...

Funny thing, I was just reading that article and thinking, "Eric Blair will..."

The blurb for the book goes well with the last post, actually.

The last days of colonialism taught America’s revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But according to investigative reporter Radley Balko, over the last several decades, America’s cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops.... Today’s armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit—which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers.

Anonymous said...

Well, this article is from the Huffpo.

This idiot Balko would have us convict our cops of dark humor. Is that even American?

It seems to me that if a person is constitutionally allowed to wear a shirt that says "F**k the police" then an off-duty cop might wear a shirt of similar import. It's like dueling bumper stickers. Obviously, this is not acceptable attire while on duty. Then it becomes a statement made by his employer, which raises entirely different issues.

Also, underlying all of Balko's article is an assumption that military = bad. Meanwhile, the incidents involving unprofessionalism among such police groups as ummmm SWAT teams, have come under some scathing criticism by people who know something about the intelligent application of great force. That would be our current and former military members. Their thesis has been that SWAT teams need far more rigorous training than they are getting by civilian means.

Perhaps Mr. Balko suffers from a prejudice.

Valerie

Yu-Ain Gonnano said...

Depends, Valerie, on what you mean by convict.

If you mean, declared guilty in a court of law and put in jail, then likely no, Balko would not have us "convict".

If by convict, you mean, make public disparaging comments about a group of people, well, nothing prevents anyone from doing the exact same to those who wear "F*** the Police" shirts.

I don't really see the constitutional issue in commenting on the messages of T-shirts and the implications of such on the wearers and declaring Well, there's your problem.

Where I take issue with Balko and his thesis is that the plural of anecdote is not data. These shirts are "popular" because they sell out or cops on web forums quote them. But what proportion? He gives a lot of examples but if it represents 0.01% of cops, is that really problematic?

Grim said...

Well, this article Eric is citing is really just color to advertise his new book. His argument's in the book; the t-shirts are just to draw attention.

It's worth considering the picture from both sides. On the one hand, I stopped today at a gas station inside a city that had bars on the windows, and two young Indian ladies working behind three-inch thick "glass" cages servicing an otherwise-exclusively black clientele, many in gangster costume. I can totally see why the owner of that store, and those young women, would want a strong and aggressive police presence given the high crime rate and the ethnic tensions that attend such stores.

The other side of it, though, is that the IRS and the coming Obamacare mandates will require police enforcement. When we see an us/them divide between the police and the community -- instead of the peace officers I grew up with, who were part of the community and very much 'one of us' -- there's a real reason to think that the police might be willing to be the tools of enforcement even of unjust regulations. Balko's a liberal, but he's got a good point here: it's worrisome to see military-style lingo deployed by the police. I love Ranger Up shirts, for example, but they're pointed at enemies we know we'll have to kill. They're not pointed at a population the Marines or the SEALs are designed to 'protect and serve.'

Mindset matters, a lot.

Ymar Sakar said...

The Leftist alliance has always had boring propaganda. I can't wait to see them act on it though.

The police unions provide a beneficial service to the incompetent or corrupt, but it'll be interesting to see how they perform in a war.

Ymar Sakar said...

Those who dislike the idea of going into the cities controlled by unions and Democrats and using police or military force to free the resident slaves, may be interested in seeing what the police unions and Democrats to do them now that the Left have the power. Use it or lose it. If you don't use it, they get to use it on you.

Police unions may seem like a very strange group of people to join the Left with full membership. Much as Nation of Islam, white bankers and technology CEO geeks, with feminist sand La Raza fanatics. They aren't in the Left because they believe in the same thing.

It is merely that the Leftist Utopia serves all their purposes. Conveniently this allows the Left to benefit by supporting criminals in Chicago, getting money from police unions and political favors, all the while telling blacks that the cops are out to get them, vote Democrat. All the while telling cops that the blacks, lawyers, and citizens are armed and out to get them, vote Democrat + Union.

The people at the bottom who suffer the most... do not matter at all to the overseers and slave plantation masters.

And those who call themselves good, yet pretended this problem never existed or that other, peaceful, ineffective solutions were better, were no better.