I mean, it depends where you’re starting from. I’m starting from the belief that all non voluntary hierarchies must be destroyed. As such the concept of a cop is something that should be dismantled.

Our system of policing in the US self-selects for bullies and tyrants and weeds out those who would seek justice over all, even if it meant going after their own.

I would love to ask a genuinely good cop why they feel the need to work exponentially harder to prove their moral character than, say, EMS or firefighters, clawing their public image from the rot of all the bad apples.

I would also ask them, bluntly, if they would ever blow the whistle on gross dereliction of honor from within their own ranks.

Fuckin’ thank you man.

There are way too many people in this comments section who are thoroughly committed to snatching defeat from the jaws of this good development or finding a way to fit it into their totally counterfactual way of looking at US law enforcement.

I’ve interacted with US cops from a lot of different POVs, from having friends who were victimized by the old school of corrupt US policing, to having friends-of-friends who were both cops and criminals, to a little interaction with the system myself. This reductive bullshit helps no one. Here’s how I see it: Pretty much any group of people that you give power to without checking up on them is going to abuse it. That was US policing for many many years, until in the pretty recent past we actually started making serious efforts to punish bad behavior by the cops, and look at that, they got a lot more reasonable. Pretty much every instance where some cop did something heinously fucked up, in the last few years, has followed up by them not just getting fired but brought up on charges. It hasn’t stopped, because they are human and there will always be “bad people” in the world, but it’s not this wild street gang loose on the streets like it used to be.

(Well, mostly. Institutional corruption can keep some particular agencies corrupt for a long long time. NYPD and LASD are probably the worst that I’m aware of in that regard, and I’m sure there are some small town departments that are fucking horror shows. And they usually see protestors as “the enemy” which sure isn’t fuckin great, I can talk more about that too. But what I am trying to say is that they’re not the cartoon villains that almost everyone on the left seems to habitually get all unanimous about them being.)

I have no idea how far it’ll go. Historically, Chicago was a pretty corrupt department and I have no idea whether they have gotten better (and I can absolutely guarantee that there are some individual Chicago cops who would rather be ICE right now and play-act as them any time they have a chance.) But if they’re beefing with ICE, then good for them. It’s that simple, and I have no idea why people are trying to say any different.

The bastards have their limits one definitely rings true, keeping your guys in line only has so much capacity for function when everyone is getting pushed too far. It kinda reminds me how there was a Nazi German observer in Nanjing during the Rape of Nanjing and he was fucking disgusted.

I was literally thinking about this instance when I wrote the comment. I just put squeaky shopping cart cause it’s funnier and the actual instance makes my blood boil due to the sheer unyielding cowardly stupidity on display.

When is trump gonna WAKE UP and DEFEND america from these VIOLENT TERRORIST SQUIRRELS!