Posted on 07/23/2014 2:59:04 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Imagine if I were to tell you there is a large group of government employees, with generous salaries and ridiculously cushy retirement pensions covered by the taxpayer, who enjoy incredible job security and are rarely held accountable even for activities that would almost certainly earn the rest of us prison time. When there is proven misconduct, these government employees are merely reassigned and are rarely dismissed. The bill for any legal settlements concerning their errors? It, too, is covered by the taxpayers. Their unions are among the strongest in the country.
No, I’m not talking about public-school teachers.
I’m talking about the police.
We conservatives recoil at the former; yet routinely defend the latter — even though, unlike teachers, police officers enjoy an utter monopoly on force and can ruin — or end — one’s life in a millisecond.
For decades, conservatives have served as stalwart defenders of police forces. There have been many good reasons for this, including long memories of the post-countercultural crime wave that devastated, and in some cases destroyed, many American cities; conservatives’ penchant for law and order; and Americans’ widely shared disdain for the cops’ usual opponents. (“Dirty hippies being arrested? Good!” is not an uncommon sentiment.) Although tough-on-crime appeals have never been limited to conservative politicians or voters, conservatives instinctively (and, it turned out, correctly) understood that the way to reduce crime is to have more cops making more arrests, not more sociologists identifying more root causes. Conservatives are rightly proud to have supported police officers doing their jobs at times when progressives were on the other side.
But it’s time for conservatives’ unconditional love affair with the police to end.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
There are a significant amount of conservatives who despise the modern police force.
JBT has become well known acronym in the conservative blogosphere.
Hopefully your knowledge is better than mine, because so many conservatives are obsessed with law and order. They may bitch and groan about this or that issue, but the last thing they will do is civil disobedience. As far as cops go, each incident or accusation has to be individually scrutinized. The incident in NYC with Eric Garner, the fat dude selling loosie cigarettes was totally out of line. I saw video of arrest and bringing in tom the ground etc. The Ferguson debacle is a different. Michael Brown attacked the cop and went for his gun. Cop got his face pummeled by Brown in the police car. Gun went off, Brown was shot in arm. Brown came back,(was this dude screwed up on something?)apparently with hands extended. Now I would have to see videos again. But it seems that possibly officer who got pummeled feared he was going to go after him again—don’t know. Each incident is a separate incident. Can’t generalize. Where I will generalize is the militarization of police forces in general. They are cops, not Navy Seals. This is done not by the police forces themselves—but by Homeland Security throwing all this military hardware at them.
Civil forfeitures. At least in the other third world countries you can bribe the police. Here, the cops don’t even have to ask for the bribe; they can just take it.
Cops have to chose between supporting law abiding citizens and the and mafia government.
civil forfeiter needs to end, unless a person is charged with something and a judge is involved, there should be nothing like that happening
Fire the rouge cops, problem solved.
The good news is that most police officers are good folks, very professional in their work.
Weed out the bad apples is the answer.
Prediction: Look for law-abiding Americans who use their 2nd Amendment rights will help LE departments clean-up the mess that is called the anti-cops protests.
the anticcopper is no conservative
he is a worthless nitpicker searching for fame ad falling on his face
Don’t the public employee unions have some culpability? Haven’t they made it hard to get rid of bad employees?
The small percentage of bad cops are getting national publicity right at this point in time.
I’ve wondered for years why conservatives give such strong support to police.
Policemen and their unions support Femocrats by reaaly large numbers. Time and again I see police unions endorsing Democrats.
But when something goes wrong they expect conservatives to support them instead.
I’ve been fighting this battle for a long time.
Union cops almost always support and donate to democrats. Opened windows to let union thugs trash the state house in Wis? They are not our friends
What we need is more citizens riding with the police. Theirs is a difficult job. The better ones lose support and are replaced by dopers.
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