Rising disrespect for cops not only wrong, it puts us in danger

Serving as a cop in America is harder than ever — and it comes down to respect. A deficit of respect for the men and women in blue who daily put their lives on the line for the rest of us is hurting recruitment and retention and placing communities at risk.

This month, Sgt. Christopher Brewster of the Houston Police Department was shot and killed while responding to a domestic-violence call.

Several hours later that same day, Officer Stephen Carr of Arkansas’ Fayetteville Police Department was ambushed and executed while sitting in his patrol vehicle. Last week, Det. Joseph Seals was shot and killed by those who carried out the Jersey City massacre. Seals’ funeral is Tuesday.

There is no tougher job in the country than serving as a law-enforcement officer. Every morning, officers across the country get up, kiss their loved ones and put on their protective vests. They head out on patrol never knowing what threats and trials they will face. And their families endure restless nights, so we can sleep peacefully.

Policing is only getting harder. Police officers are now required to handle the fallout from a vast range of social pathologies that were once the domain of social workers, psychologists and family members, such as mental illness, widespread homelessness and drug abuse.

Even more demoralizing, police officers must look on as the criminals that they have risked their lives to apprehend get turned loose by “social-justice” DAs and “progressive” judges who no longer see their role as protecting the community from predators. Some DAs have even exposed police officers to greater danger by announcing that they will not prosecute those who resist police.

Increasingly, police officers find themselves the subject of physical attacks. Assaults against police jumped 20 percent from 2014 to 2017

What have I said that wasn’t honest other than not realizing Shaver pointed his pellet gun out the window? Once I read up on the links you sent, plus some independent research, and realized I was incorrect, I made the correction in my posts. And that doesn’t even matter, because the pellet gun was stowed by the time the cops arrived.

Bringing god into the discussion doesn’t offend me. I’m not religious, but I don’t have a problem with people who are. It’s just that I thought you can’t seem to see the forest for the trees. I mean, you’re talking about god hating when you acquit the guilty and convict the innocent (complete with handy bible verse reference), yet you pay absolutely no mind to that pesky commandment stating not to kill. Just seemed bizarre to me, not offensive.

As for offense. Cursing. That people get offended by cursing is fascinating to me. Is it the sound or the way the written symbols look? I don’t see how it could be the sound or symbols. Are you offended by truck or funk? How about chit or ship? Probably not. Could it be the definition? Are you offended when someone says “fornicate” or “poop?” Probably not either. So it’s this weird combination of sounds and the definition. Cursing doesn’t offend me, but that might be because I used to be a sailor. Who knows?

Now, what I do find offensive is anyone who thinks it’s fine for someone to be snuffed out because he pulled up his pants while crawling on the floor, crying and begging for his life. This absolutely blows my mind.

And you’re over there saying, “Yeah fuck that guy! He shouldn’t have pulled up his pants! The cops told him not to move. And besides, he shouldn’t have been drinking in his hotel room with a pellet gun present! He deserved every bit of what he got!”

I can’t imagine what his two daughters are going through.

I don't know if I'm going to reply anymore after this. I'm not going to keep arguing with someone who's determined NOT to see the truth. I get that frequently, whenever I try to discuss things with liberals/non-Christians. As I said early on, it's the same sort of disingenuous reasoning that has impeached the current President -- and that even while members of the previous administration and their sympathizers were actually abusing their powers and trying to undo the results of an election. Try to get liberals to see and admit that, however, is like talking to you here. You've toned it down a little bit, but you're still trying to slip in lies like this one, that all Shaver did with the pellet gun was have it present in the room:

"And besides, he shouldn’t have been drinking in his hotel room with a pellet gun present!"

And as for your trying to shame me, as if I don't care about people, it's the people who bear false witness in the matters that are the ones who don't care about people, no matter what they say. Just like all the white liberals who lied about what the facts were and what they meant in the Trayvon Martin case truly don't care about black people. False information confuses people and makes them ignorant, and many, many more black people have died who wouldn't have due to those lies.

You don’t have to reply, that’s fine. I can keep at this all night and will likely wear you out.

You keep implying that I’m a liberal. Yet you’re the one who’s seems much more comfortable with totalitarian government, not me. I’m a small government, leave me alone type conservative.

Oddly, out of where I do not know, but you brought up impeachment. Are you attempting to categorize me as someone who supported the impeachment? (”Oh no, I didn’t say that. I said you’re like the people who support it.”) Again, I’m the one who’s for small government, and you’re the one comfortable with a police state. I’m the one much more sensitive to government abusing their powers, not you.

Slipping in lies, huh? You can’t even recognize when someone is mocking you, can you? Remember when you sent me some sort of instruction manual on pellet guns stating not to drink and use them? You made a big deal out of it, like that’s a combination that justifies the taking of another’s life. That’s absurd, and you deserve to be mocked for it, whether you can tell you’re being mocked or not.

Look. We’re never going to see eye to eye here. I find it appalling that Shaver was murdered. You think a guy drinking with a pellet gun who pulled up his pants when he wasn’t supposed to deserves to be shot for not listening to the cops. We’re never going to agree on this.

However, if you do decide to respond, tell me why the lone unarmed hotel worker had more courage than five or six cops armed with semiautomatic rifles. In your links, it says she knocked on Shaver’s door when the people in the hot tub reported a guy pointing a gun out the window. He answered and she saw the pellet guns. It says so right in your links. Yet the armed cops couldn’t do that? They were so scared for their lives that a crying Shaver begging for his life makes one little move and they have to light him up? Maybe those cops should all be working at a desk in a hotel and that girl should be a cop.

From your first to this last reply, you’ve played hard and loose with the facts.

I’ve pretty much done what I can to call you on it, so yes, I’m done responding point by point when it does seem that you just want to try to wear me out, and waste my time in the process.

So I’ll address just one more piece of willful ignorance on your part and one more claim.

There are a lot of mistakes that people can make in life that may bring about their deaths, and recognizing that truth doesn’t mean you think a person “deserved” to die. It means sometimes a person’s mistake or mistakes can be deadly. I’m sure all that’s not news to you, though once again, you just ignore that truth.

On the hotel worker who went to the room, that argument apparently didn’t sway the jury, who considered that the police were going on the fact that he was seen pointing the rifle out the window, and that he was demonstrating very bad judgment. And by the article alone, we don’t even know what was conveyed to police, if anything, about her going to the room.

Yours is just the sort of “reasoning” that the left used against George Zimmerman, as I said. And the sort of reasoning that had two Democratic presidential candidates recently referring to Michael Brown’s shooting death by a police officer as a “murder.” It’s the same sort of reasoning that also got me to stop watching TV news after a lifetime of watching it up until then, and never expecting that I’d quit watching it.

It’s also the same sort of reasoning that encouraged the media to describe the death of another black man at the hands of police in Louisiana as “an execution,” and to bear false witness that a bystander video showed that he was pinned and couldn’t move at all when he was shot, when instead the video clearly shows him being able to pull back his arm. That same sort of reasoning also encouraged CNN to move the sound of the gun shots in the video, so the man appeared to be just lying there motionless when shot rather than struggling hand-to-hand with one of the officers, who had just noticed his gun.

You’re the only one playing hard and loose with the facts by continuously referring to his pellet gun as a “rifle.”

So my “one more piece of willful ignorance” is stating that I think that you think that if you don’t listen to the cops and are shot and killed, you deserved it. That’s my one more piece of willful ignorance?

Does this now mean that you’re saying that Shaver did not deserve to die for not perfectly following the confusing shouting of the cops? That’s a pretty big step forward, and I’m glad I could help you see this travesty for what it is.

No, of course that’s not what you’re trying to say, but one could hope. Basically you’re saying that my terminology is misleading. You say “justified” and I say you said “deserved.” It’s kind of like calling a pellet gun a rifle, no? Frustrating, right?

Interesting argument on the hotel worker. You don’t really hit it head on so much as deflect by saying it didn’t sway the jury. And then of course, you go right to the defense of the police. “We don’t know what was conveyed to the police about her.” Damn, how much shoe polish do you have on your tongue!?!

Since you went right to the jury on this, do you even know if her actions were conveyed to the jury? You know that the jury was not allowed to view the whole body camera footage, right? The jury doesn’t get all the information. Using their verdict to dismiss the disparity between the hotel worker’s response and the cops’ response is not unlike sticking with a bad call from a ref after the replay shows the ref was wrong. Juries do not always get it right. Think about how many people locked up for crimes they did not commit and are freed due to DNA evidence.

By hiding behind the jury, you don’t even address the disparity between the hotel worker’s response and the police’s response. Does it really seem reasonable that five or six cops armed with AR-15s feared for their lives when the hotel worker simply knocked on his door and spoke to him without incident between the report of him pointing the pellet gun out the window and the police arriving?

I just don’t see any reasonable person agreeing that the police responded appropriately to the level of threat Shaver posed.

The rest of the crap you posted has nothing to do with the murder of Shaver. All of those have a racial component and an actual struggle, only two of which are with the police. Of the two involving the police, only one is specific. Brown. Well, I’ll say this much: if you attack a cop, grab his gun, and attempt to aim it at him, you pretty much deserve to die.

Yeah, I’m about done here. You play just as fast and loose with what I say. You judged someone to be a murderer without even having the basic facts of the case straight. Not surprising, then, that you’d twist their meanings so much, too, as well as my words. Leticia Jimenez, the hotel worker who went up there, thought the men were selling an actual rifle.

It’s almost like you might not even understand what murder is. I had a high school teacher explain it to our class. Homicide is any killing of a person by another, while for someone to be guilty of murder, they have to the intent to kill that other person out of animosity. It’s also like you don’t get that sometimes people make mistakes that get them killed. It doesn’t mean they “deserved to die.” People sometimes make tragic mistakes. It doesn’t mean a crime is committed on anyone’s part, much less a murder.

Ah. You’re saying homicide is a perfectly acceptable response if a hotel worker thinks you’re doing something perfectly legal and protected by the Constitution if it’s just a little bit scary. Got it.

You still sidestep the fact that an unarmed female hotel worker felt the threat to be so low that she did not fear for her life when knocking on his door, yet several police officers with AR-15 rifles were trembling with fear over an unarmed man on his knees, sobbing and begging for his life.

This murder thing... what do you suppose having the words “you’re fucked” etched onto your AR-15 means? How does a gun fuck someone? Unless it falls off a shelf and hits you in the head, I’d say it would be by using it to shoot someone, no? One might say that cop Brailsford had intent to kill someone for some reason some day.

Joining a police force would be one way to get away with murder. All you have to do is say you feared for your life. You may simply believe that Brailsford was not as brave as Leticia Jimenez and feared for his life, but I’m a cynic. I think if he hadn’t killed Shaver that night, some other night he’d find someone to “fuck” with his rifle.

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