Gangsters in Blue

Taken from Maddox’s page, the best in the Universe, this article nicely summarizes the growing divide between police and community. Personally, every time I see a blue stripe, window badge, or PBA card displayed in an illegally parked car, I think less of cops. Every time I see an unmarked cop car going 90 with the lights off, I think less of cops. Every time I see officers flicking their ASPs like they’re going to put someone in a coma, same. I’m sure the all black tacticool uniforms are a blast to mince around in and do a great job of intimidating violent criminals, but cops are peace officers, the gun, law, and endless backup are enough intimidation without having to play Berlin 1944 dress up. Bring back sky blue and khaki, wearing black is not a public service.

To the cops, you already have our money, you can’t demand our respect. If you want to be seen more as heroes and less as the guys who have kicked people into ovens throughout history, drop the thin blue line mentality and get back in touch with real people.

I tell any of my friends looking into law enforcement, become a fireman. You’ll get right with god, trading a career full of “goddamnit” for one full of “thank god.”

http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=message_to_cops

“A message to cops.”

The point of this article isn’t to judge whether cops are justified in doing what they do. This article has nothing to do with police training. And this isn’t just about American cops. This is about the perception that we, the public, have of you when you perform the following actions. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with these perceptions, because right or wrong, they exist. The point of this article is to simply let you know that we’re watching, and this is how we see things.

1. When ten of you show up to make one arrest, it makes you look like cowards.

On my way home from a bike ride a few weeks ago, I saw three arrests being made in under an hour in a relatively safe part of the city. At one of the incidents, eight police cruisers responded to make one arrest. The guy who was arrested was ejected for being too drunk in a bar. Just one guy, and he was drunk. He had a stupid moustache, hadn’t hurt anyone and was drunkenly walking home when he was tased and tackled by 3 cops before 6 police cruisers showed up in addition to the two that were there, for a total of 8 cruisers and 10 cops. The man was unarmed.

How much backup do you need? It’s one guy. If you can’t handle one drunk guy by yourself, you shouldn’t be a cop. Training tells you otherwise? Well stop being trained by pussies.

2. When you tase somebody who isn’t trying to escape, it makes you look like lazy cowards.

A taser isn’t a remote-control for people. Want to talk to someone? Then walk over to them and talk. Don’t tase them and expect them to cooperate. Also, when someone is being tased and is writhing in cardiac arrest on the ground, they aren’t “resisting arrest” by not getting on their knees and neatly kowtowing to your demands. They’re incapacitated. You look like idiots barking orders at them when they can’t move.

Being a cop has certain risks associated with it. If you aren’t comfortable with those risks, don’t take the job. Always trying to minimize your risk of injury at the expense of others by being a tase-happy dipshit makes you look like lazy pussies.

Tasing everyone you see because they might pose a risk to you is like spraying everything with a fire extinguisher so it doesn’t catch fire. Part of the problem might be that many cops are overweight and out of shape. If you fatasses can’t chase someone down, then you shouldn’t be cops. Studies have shown that not being a lardass is just as effective as using a taser.

3. When you set up speed traps, it makes you look like you don’t have anything better to do.

I get happy every time I see a speed trap, because I assume it means all criminals have been locked up, you’ve caught the guys who broke into my car on three separate occasions and my stolen property will be returned shortly, right shitheads? Good job guys, take a break and make some scratch for the city. Because why the hell else would you be sitting on your ass in a ditch if that wasn’t the case?

People who speed are awesome. The last thing this world needs is more slow drivers. Traffic jams occur because of idiots braking prematurely.

And when you pull people over, how about doing it in a place that doesn’t obstruct traffic? You know what’s just as “unsafe” as speeding? Having to swerve into another lane because your stupid car is blocking traffic. Every time I pass another cruiser parked in two lanes, backing up traffic for miles, it makes me punch myself in the jaw until I pass out.

4. When you give out chicken-shit tickets for rolling through stop-signs at 3 AM, or closing down lemonade stands, it makes us think you’re morons.

We know that “the law is the law.” We also know that you’re not instruction-executing robotic morons. When you harass us with bullshit fees and fines, it makes us question your judgement. We know that this kind of shit is all about money:

The legal age for entering into contract in the United States is 18. So that effort to charge them fees by making them apply for a permit? Illegal. Law is the law, right? Arrest yourselves. And speaking of nepotism…

5. We know you guys use the buddy system to get out of speeding tickets. And it pisses us off.

Cops have a code that basically amounts to always letting fellow cops go. When a cop pulls over an off-duty officer, the officer who was pulled over discreetly flashes his badge to let him know that he’s on the force, and he’s simply let go. You think we don’t know what’s going on, assholes? It’s a courtesy not extended to anyone else, lest the officer is having a particularly good day and isn’t PMSing all over the highway.

Sometimes you write tickets for going 1 over the speed limit, sometimes it’s 10. Then when you get called on doing something stupid like writing a ticket to someone for a law that shouldn’t be enforced and rarely is (like jay-walking in New York), you hide behind your tired mantra that it’s the law and that you have to be consistent. Except when you aren’t.

6. When you flash your lights just to get through intersections, you look like assholes.

I’ve followed cops who’ve done this, only to see them park their cruisers for coffee or lunch. And speaking of lunch…

7. When you park in a red zone to eat, it makes you look like lazy assholes.

The argument can be made that police officers need to be near their cruisers at all times in case of an emergency. Fine, but that doesn’t entitle you to eat at the most popular restaurants. If you want to eat at some trendy restaurant, park at a meter and pay, like everyone else. Can’t find a meter? Tough shit, go someplace else. Doctors, surgeons, rescue workers and security all have important jobs where people’s lives are at stake, and you don’t see their cars popped up on the curb, obstructing traffic and parked illegally so they can fill their fat faces with lunch. We know you’ll never get written a ticket (see #5), it pisses us off, and it makes us trust you less, and cooperate less.

Now this is the part of the article where I say “I know that police officers have a tough job,” but they don’t. Being a cop isn’t hard, it’s dangerous. There’s a difference. Being an engineer, teacher or airline pilot is hard. Being a logger, deep sea crab fisher, coal miner or firefighter is hard and dangerous. Being a cop is dangerous, but usually not hard. Driving around, issuing chicken-shit tickets and filling out paperwork isn’t hard, it’s annoying.

This is also the part where I say “now I know that most cops are good,” but I don’t. I only know two cops in real life, and they’re both badass, but so is anyone I choose to call my friend. Most cops I see abuse their power every day by parking illegally, talking on their cellphones while driving, drifting in and out of lanes without turn signals, flashing their lights to get out of intersections and power tripping like crazy. If you’re a cop who’s reading this, rather than being butt-hurt by people’s perceptions of you, do something to change it. Write a fellow officer a ticket. Stick your neck out for us, rather than your colleague for a change. Do the right thing. We notice.

And as for us: record cops. Record them all the time. Record them even if they’re not doing anything. Cops are cracking down on this and they’re trying to change the laws to make it illegal so they can’t be held accountable for breaking the law. They look up your plates every time they’re behind you at a stop, even if you haven’t done anything, just to check up on you. It’s time we started checking up on them.”

- Der Bular

This post was submitted using CopBlock.org’s submission tab.

A Message To Cops is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

There's a blog post at This Ain't Livin' called The Myth of Cushy Prisons that is well-worth reading.  It focuses on the material conditions of the prisons themselves, but the way prisons are run is worth bringing up as well, because in that area the myth goes from being merely mistaken to downright nonsensical. The popularity of the belief that prisons are there some sort of swanky resort or the

Radley Balko has been writing quite a bit lately about incidents of people being harassed, arrested, or having their property confiscated by law enforcement for recording video or audio of their encounters with police in public places, frequently involving police who cite completely imaginary state laws against the practice. From Ohio- where videotaping police is quite legal- Balko brings this

Birchibald T. Barlow: But suppose for a second that your house was ransacked by thugs, your family tied up in the basement with socks in their mouths, you try to open the door but there's too much blood on the knob-Mayor Quimby: Ah, er, what is your question?Barlow: My question is about the budget, sir.The Simpsons, "Sideshow Bob Roberts"The government of Sacramento County, California (Hat tip to

You know, the frequent attempts I see to excuse flagrant police misbehavior as honest mistakes are seldom very convincing, but at least the excuse is usually applied to acts committed in the field. It's still usually a weak and often absurd excuse, and often applied to situations where the officer's claim that he sincerely thought he was doing something necessary for his own safety, if true, is

Over and over again, law enforcement demonstrates that they are not only interested in forcing their alien vision of “law and order” on the people they’re supposed to “protect and serve”, but that they are actively hostile and sadistic towards the protestors. We’ve seen this before, like in Miami’s ‘06 FTAA protests:

The resentment has come out full force, now. On Democracy Now!, the arrested journalists told how the police would tighten restraints when detainees complained about how tight they were. The psychology of the human beings in law enforcement is becoming a serious menace and is being actively promoted in their training:

The police brutality that we’ve seen in Denver and St. Paul this week is the result of ongoing indoctrination of the police against protesters, especially any protesters of the left-wing stripe. Local police departments have been militarized to deal with protesters, with much of this militarization happening during the Clinton administration. After 9/11, local police were further turned into anti-terrorist organizations, with the effect that they see their work as fighting terrorists. Local police are also bringing home the terror tactics that the U.S. has been using in dozens of countries around the world for the past century.

The war on terror has escalated into an increased war on the “rabble” of America, most significantly protesters and anarchists. This doesn’t surprise us, because the U.S. government has always been at war with dissidents of many kinds.

We do not have any hope that the police will change their attitudes or their ways. The purpose of the police is to act as the violent arm of capital and the state. The only way for the people to stop the police is to stand up to them, abolish the police and build a different society which needs no police.

Indeed, this jives with my own research: police are being trained to see civil society as their zoo full of mere animals to keep in line, and many are adopting an abusive relationship with their “wards”. Witness their open sadism in St. Paul:

The sad part about all this is that these attitudes towards the public are going to make the jobs of officers who genuinely want to get along with the public much more difficult. While many officers may look forward to the police state as their chance to beat up hippies (see the end of Daniel Clowes’ Like an Velvet Glove Cast in Iron for a perfect portrayal of this attitude), I’d advise them to take a good look at Iraq. The officers there are targeted by insurgents and are never safe, on or off duty. It’s easy to be a bully when you can still go home to your family in relative safety - a police state turns street protestors from prey into predators. Moreover, it was arguably the attitudes of American soldiers (including cops in reserve units) that turned the people against them and their police. Not only are these attitudes quite similar to those displayed by cops in the twin cities, the attitudes may even be brought back by soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan to new careers in domestic law enforcement.

If cops want to militarize their jobs, they need to consider the down side for themselves, their families, and their communities. There’s a lot more civilians than soldiers and officers, and continuing abuse - including the branding of activists as terrorists - just threatens to push Americans over the edge the same way Iraqis were pushed. If civil society is lost, cops may look back fondly on the days when the public merely committed minor property damage.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve been witnessing a huge leap forward towards a police state over the past week. In addition to the preemptive raids, extralegal break-ins, illegal detentions, disappearing citizens, news media harassment, and general displays of unprovoked violence by law enforcement, we’ve witnessed a very aggressive strategy of mass arrests. Here’s some choice documentation on their strategy for trapping and processing as many people as possible - protestors or not.

While apologists for cops may represent indiscriminate arrests as necessary, it’s actually incredibly sloppy police work. They just declare a “national security event” and suddenly there is no need for self-discipline or judgement whatsoever. Why should people take cops’ authority seriously when they prosecute their jobs so carelessly? If national security is truly at stake, why sweat a few broken windows?

Imagine if this was their response to any suspected crime: just arrest everybody near the scene! Why not just arrest everybody in the city, or the state - surely if everybody’s under arrest, there’s nobody to get in the way of the convention. Cities are a lot safer if you get rid of the people, law enforcement seems to think.

Yet isn’t this the modus operandi of any totalitarian state? By denying everybody freedom and granting police maximum prerogatives to detain, surveil, and otherwise harass citizens, a government blurs the distinction between being under arrest or being free. People under despotic governance experience a sliding scale of captivity, to be moved up or down at the discretion of unaccountable bureaucrat/captors.

It is important to correctly recognize this trend towards a police state. The myths of freedom, civil rights, and the rule of law must be maintained. So instead, the government institutes the police state on demand - invoking it when necessary, and then dispersing it without a trace and shrugging, “what fascism?” You’re never free, really - you just enjoy perpetual probation until the next time the government flips the switch. Under arrest? That’s a relative term; just check the threat level.

This is exactly how police states arrive historically - in easily ignored, irregular spurts. Those are perfect opportunities to train officers in their new attitudes towards citizens, gather data on the effectiveness of tactics, and experiment with new strategies for oppression. The trick is always for the people to wake up before the slow metamorphosis passes the point of no return.

Sadly, it’s clear to me that we’ve probably missed our last chances to reverse these trends. With the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act granting the legal cover for whatever our rulers want to label as “terrorism” and impenetrable secrecy about anything else, there’s no recourse in “the system” for citizens to air legitimate grievances. Meanwhile, any direct action is dealt with in the most brutal manner possible (yes, they could be more brutal - but that would impact the efficiency of their actions).

So if we’re in a police state now, what do we do? Obviously, there was a point at which the citizens of Germany in the ’30s gave up on speaking out. There was a point at which the Soviet citizens stopped protesting the Bolshevik treachery. Throughout history, people who found themselves under a totalitarian government had to face a terrible fact: that the modes of democratic society were no longer tenable.

But to admit to yourself the horrible truth, that we have lost our country, that is the truly difficult thing. Keep in mind, however, that it has always been through denial, self-deception, and lack of honesty on the part of the people that totalitarianism has gained a foothold. We must be courageous, pragmatic, and most of all careful. The rules have changed, and if we’re going to play this game we do well to use our time-outs to strategize, not simply to feel sorry for ourselves. In other words, as much as I hate to say it, we’re going to have to unlearn the bad habits of citizenship in a democratic republic.

The silver lining in the police brutality at the RNC this week is really that the activist movement might finally see themselves on the other side of the rubicon. As John Robb explains:

Very cool demonstration from Minnesota of how police forces have been militarized. In addition to the five fold growth in SWAT forces since the 90’s, there’s been a shift in attitude. All likely due to a misdirection of GWOT Homeland security $$ and thinking towards domestic protest. The side effect: the heavy handed approach here will cause a quick shift protest to the open source/disruption model if things deteriorate. Protest is dead. (my emphasis)

It’s time for the activist movement to modify their tactics to reflect the new environment. Flaunting our outrage in the hopes of media attention and citizen backlash has failed. Throwing our bodies on the gears of the machine has not slowed it, let alone stopped it. Protesting every violation of our rights just demonstrates in spades how vulnerable and dependent we are. Demonstrating and organizing just provide easy targets for agent provocateurs, infiltration, and extralegal, preemptive harassment.

Protest doesn’t work in a totalitarian police state. Acknowledging that condition is the first step towards fixing it. Whatever we’re going to do, it’s time to start doing it underground. It doesn’t have to be violent, but it does have to be realistic about the threat.

Here’s how you don’t fight injustice occurring right before your eyes:

…the crowd of 50 or 60 students, outraged at the police’s ongoing assault, and doing nothing about it other than yelling at the cops and indignantly demanding their badge numbers—apparently in the fantastical belief that a The Law is somehow going to protect them from violence at the hands of its own rampaging hired goons.

Luckily, there are some heroes in the twin cities who are willing to take things into their own hands:

You could argue that I don’t know the full story, but by now police have simply discredited themselves in my eyes. When in doubt, I go with the non-professionals.

Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about the preemptive raids on groups planning to protest at the Republican convention in Minneapolis. I don’t really have much to add to what’s being said elsewhere on the net. It’s an outrage and it breaks my heart that I can’t stand with them, but my place was definitely in Louisville this weekend. And with the convention being toned way down, I wonder if the protests will have the same effect.

It’s therefore important that, as much as I hate to repeat news better reported elsewhere, we all talk about the horror that’s occurring in Minneapolis on our own outlets. Better yet, call the jail where many are held to demand their release; the number is (651) 266 - 9350. Don’t be silent - bring this up in conversations, and let people know exactly how free we are in this country! The police are going to keep pushing the envelope of oppressiveness unless we can build a broad consensus that their actions are simply wrong.

If you’ve been following this story then you know just how frightening this passage is:

A jury verdict that cleared a police officer in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed woman will allow other officers to do their job without hesitation, police union officials said.

Because, clearly, unloading a hailstorm of bullets into a closed bedroom door in a house you know ahead of time has a family with children present is not something about which you should have the slightest hesitation whatsoever. And hesitation (in other words taking a moment to think about what you’re doing) is something that cops have been told for years gets them killed; therefore, end of story, no possible competing interests worthy of consideration from a public policy perspective at all, period. Don’t worry about that, officer; it’s just a flesh wound, and you’re just doing your job.

If only we understood the unique, existential dilemma of police officers, doing a difficult, dangerous job day in and day out with so little appreciation! Why can’t the pussified public suck it up and understand that officers are professionals who are trained to do, well, whatever they feel like doing at any particular moment, which is by definition “professional” and “heroic” and goddamnit who are you to question them, anyway? And we can’t have any breaks in the thin blue line, so any officers who might disagree with Lima’s professional law enforcement standards will dutifully shut up and let the press frame the entire profession’s reaction to the verdict as “cheering”.

I’ll say it again: if the only way you can do your job safely is by endangering others, don’t act like you’re doing the rest of us any favors. If you’re going to frame this issue in a way that pits cops against citizens, don’t be surprised when you lose public support.