Several days after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, I said to CB that if arrest warrants had been filed immediately for Derek Chauvin and Floyd’s other murderers, the protests would not have been as strong as they were at that time. It just seemed like there was already a mountain of evidence and investigative avenues, and I didn’t get why they hadn’t arrested Chavin & company at that point. Well, I was missing the point. The point wasn’t that Chauvin and other killer cops are rarely arrested, charged and found guilty for their crimes (although that’s a significant part). The point is that the system is rotten to its very f–king core. It was never a few bad apples. We’ve seen that again and again.
What’s absolutely bonkers is that cops around the country (and perhaps around the world) have literally no idea that time’s up on all of them, that business as usual no longer exists, and that the world has watched them violently assault peaceful protesters, shove and baton unarmed women, murder people of color, tear-gas kids and clergy and arrest the journalists trying to cover it. But to hear those cops tell it, THEY are the real victims. Yesterday, the New York Police Benevolent Association (PBA) President Mike O’Meara threw a nationally televised pity party for himself and his (white) cop brothers. This is… not doing what he thinks it’s doing.
These cops are truly throwing tantrums because they aren’t allowed to kill, harass, maim and assault taxpayers with impunity. Do they not realize that these are exhibits in Why Things Need To Change?
Someone did a good edit of O’Meara’s speech.
it's still got a shine on it pic.twitter.com/CKLxDg8svq
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) June 9, 2020
Incidentally, yesterday the New York legislature finally repealed 50-A, a law which kept New York police officer’s disciplinary records sealed. That’s one of the reasons for the NYPD tantrums – all of their brutality and harassment records can now be FOIA’d.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
not a single black face in the crowd behind this rotten motherf..ker. He can go to hell. And take de Blasio with you.
I see one. One!! Very inclusive. There’s even “A” woman in there. Diversity.
Yeah I’m guessing much like Sohla on BA Test Kitchen, they were forced to be there.
Sorry, looked at the picture on my phone screen and didn’t see them. In my eyes it somehow makes the whole deranged circus even worse.
TL;DR on his statement: we have 375 million interactions with people every year and only a few result in the death of an unarmed black man.
The arrogance of this man is disgusting.
Only a few? I guess he’s counting only the few that make on camera and they can’t pass off as something else.
How many millions of interactions is completely irrelevant, “only a few” is still unacceptable.
Hell is too good for them. I can’t even. After weeks of watching the peaceful protestors literally taking one for the team (being beaten, gassed, losing eyes, being run over and in some cases being groped inappropriately) by the police while on camera….They think we want to see THEM whine and moan about possibly having to back off of beating the $hit out of people and murdering them on a whim? At least 5 people this past weekend lost an eye from the police, one was a journalist. The entire protests have been evidence of why BLM exists and now every person with eyes and the desire to be educated has seen exactly what the police problems are. Trump himself showed us how the police could be used to carry out illegal orders on the whim of a Tantrum Tyrant. I went from being someone who absolutely strongly believed police reforms were needed to being someone who thinks the concept of police needs to be completely restructured. An easy start … immediate and permanent demilitarization. They can sell the tanks and armored cars at a bake sale and use the money to make up the deficit when we give some of their ridiculous budget to schools.
He’s freaking out because his job is on the line. People are realizing that police unions are protecting bad cops and leading to civilian deaths. Police union days are numbered.
What’s baffling me about the police unions, isn’t so much how awful they are, but how stupid they are. The union apparently arranged to have all those Buffalo officers cheer for the 2 who got arrested for shoving the 75 year old man. Doesn’t anybody in the union understand the optics? It’s hard to blame “one bad apple” when they all cheer for the bad apples.
Reminds me of the BRF and the Cambs with their treatment of Meghan – the hubris is so big and they’ve been getting away with their racist behavior for so long that they can’t conceive of how bad they look to the rest of the world.
@Royalwatcher, I think you’re right about the hubris. There does seem to be shock that people believe what we are all seeing instead of just meekly accepting whatever they say.
“It’s hard to blame ‘one bad apple’ when they all cheer for the bad apples.” Exactly. It’s disgusting.
here’s the thing…
SO MANY people who try to excuse the bad cop behavior forget the second part of that old saying.
a few bad apples…
…SPOIL THE BARREL. and that’s precisely the problem.
it may only be “a few bad cops” but when all of the other cops try to cover up for the bad ones, and defend them, and cheer for them, and resign in protest for them…THEY’RE ALL BAD. SPOILED.
@whatWHAT? that part is true but with them, I feel like it is more a few good apples tbh
there are too many bad apples that it is so hard to see the good ones (the real good ones not the bystander and complicit)
There also need to be civilians on the review panels preferably rotating members, not necessarily from same county or states. Transparency. I think cops also need better training in recognizing individuals with mental health problems too. Better pay and must live in community with access to AnY school for
their kids
This country needs to rethink public safety altogether. The role of cops is far too is far too expansive and they don’t make us safer.
They can’t be allowed to exist at this point. I am normally a *very* pro-union person but mainly in regards to capitalist enterprise. In government/community? USPS? Fine. Teachers? Fine. Etc. al. But with police, the power dynamic already favors them too heavily; it’s too interconnected to prosecution systems and systemic power structures that do not necessarily protect or benefit communities. If you give somebody the right to fire a gun and kill at their discretion, they have to held the same legal and moral standards as everybody else or it falls apart. You can’t have additional protections for them for exactly this reason.
I’m a teacher & about 10 years ago when our economy tanked, and even before that, the public was very dissatisfied with us. We have a strong union & people railed against it, & a surge of nonunion charter schools moved in. Dissatisfaction stemmed from poor districts & minorities underperforming. Union or nonunion, underperforming minorities in education continues with these nonunion charter schools. I did read about one police force being defunded and rebuilt and the community saw great benefits. I hope they look to them as a model because the defunding of our schools just allowed some rich person to move in with low paying non protected workers & it actually fixed nothing. Rich people have a way of exploiting change for their own benefit.
@virginfangirl “I did read about one police force being defunded and rebuilt and the community saw great benefits.”
That was Camben, New Jersey. ABC Nightly News mentioned it last night. They got rid of the police only to rebuild it from scratch while also bringing in the more local community leaders.
There’s an interesting article, I need to find it, where people have been saying that the KKK and white racist orgs have been infiltrating the police for decades. I think we’re seeing the culmination of that with them and Trump.
The Union is a huge money maker and lobbyist org that donates to political campaigns. They all support Trump. That should be a clear indication of what they support. It’s the Union that prevents the cities from being able to prosecute cops or even fire them. You’ll be seeing cities repeal laws that allow this to happen so should be interesting.
I commented yesterday about public “safety” unions being exempt from Wisconsin’s Act 10. Short hand version is that the liberal leaning unions the represented the majority of public workers and teachers got decertified, while the ones that supported Scott Walker and other Republicans, like most police unions and the state patrol union were allowed to keep their unions intact.
One of the main problems in Minneapolis is that their police union is far more conservative than the residents of the city and Hennepin County. The head of that union, Bob Kroll, was front and center at a Trump rally last year in Minneapolis wearing a cops for Trump shirt and speaking at the rally. The current mayor of Minneapolis is reform minded, along with the police chief. Both banned cops off the clock from wearing their uniforms to political rallies, likely aimed at those who attended Trump rallies in their free time.
In the Compton Sheriff’s department, the white supremacists get matching tattoos.
https://www.essence.com/news/la-sheriffs-office-compton-station-is-a-white-supremacist-gang-incubator/
Goofpuff is right: in 2006 the FBI Counterterrorism Unit published a report on white supremacists deliberately infiltrating US law enforcement. It’s online, but very heavily redacted. However, a researcher named Vida Johnson wrote a follow up piece called “KKK in the PD” for the April 2019 issue of the Lewis & Clark Law Journal, and that’s online, free and full-text. Tl;dr: It’s still happening and it’s worse.
Not just ‘people’, the FBI has been saying it for decades now.
Exactly this! 👏
“Police Benevolent Association.” Just let the irony of that oxymoron sink in.
I know, right? I’ve always wondered about the name. Knowing the history of policing it strikes me as facetious. Maybe it always was.
Take a look at these guys arms. Notice anything? Back in the late 90’s thru the early aughts, I went to Gold Gym with my then-husband. I noticed that some of the biggest grunters (if you’ve been to one of these gyms you know what I mean) were cops. And they looked and acted like roid ragers too. I’ve always had a thing about cops. Maybe because my uncle was one and he held a gun to my aunt’s head on more than one occasion. He was a drunk. I don’t know. I just know these guys are so dangerous. I never dated one and never would. And I’m white. Just my opinion, it’s a free country right? I don’t have to love cops do I?
I just don’t see how America’s *rotten* policing culture ever changes, until they address the guns issue. Whilst guns flood every street and every corner in America, you will always need the people with the biggest balls and almost superhuman levels of courage in the police force. That then attracts the wannabe serial killers, white supremacists, the sadists and the adrenaline junkies. Not great people.
I keep praying that Americans tolerance of and attitude to guns changes. One day.
The problem is – a lot of these guys are freaking cowards. They DON’T step up to the plate when it’s needed. There are some courageous as f-ck cops out there, but they seem to be the minority.
The most devastating mass shooting in Canadian history happened a couple of hours from me recently. They set up an emergency refuge center at a fire hall in that area. An RCMP cruiser and officer were stationed at the hall. Two other officers pull up to the hall around 10:30 am and f-cking OPENED FIRE. The gunman was NOT in the area at this time. The incident was over in a few seconds. Guess what the officers who opened fire did? TOOK OFF IMMEDIATELY.
I need more info Erinn. Did the two cops who arrived open fire on the officer stationed at the hall? Who were they aiming at and why did they flee? What did the officer stationed there do?
At that point in time they were still looking for the active shooter. They knew he was driving a replica police car, which is why I assume they stopped there. SIRT is still investigating.
“SIRT has taken statements from two eyewitnesses who live near the fire hall and described police behaviour as, “shoot first, ask questions later.” On Facebook, Sharon Shipley-McLellan posted what she saw at about 10:30 am, Sunday, April 19, when a vehicle stopped suddenly on the road:
2 men jumped out, ran towards the firehall. One went in the ditch the other hid behind the garbage bin and opened fire. The EMO {civilian} ran inside the firehall and the police officer hid behind his car waving his hands hollering at them not to shoot. Turns out it was 2 police officers in the Hyundai. One of them went around the firehall. The other went inside for a split second then they both walked towards their car and left. I live directly across from the firehall and watched the whole thing. I thought the shooter was in my front yard! I have since heard from someone who was in the firehall that the officer didn’t even ask if they were OK.”
and
“It’s probable the gunfire at the fire hall resulted from a case of “mistaken identity,” if the officers believed the parked RCMP vehicle matched the one belonging to the murderer on the run. That speculation and other questions will be addressed by the SIRT investigation. “
Wow. They’re lucky they didn’t kill someone. I thought they had better training here. Naive me, eh?
Bella, police officer isn’t even in the top 20 of most dangerous jobs in the U.S. It’s not even the profession where you are most likely to be a victim of homicide on the job (recognizing that homicide isn’t the main cause of death in most dangerous jobs). No extraordinary courage required, despite the plague of firearms across the U.S.
I hear you. In Chicago where I grew up, the guys in my white neighborhood who grew up to be cops weren’t the brightest. And with multiple generations pursuing the profession, it was and is very much a family business steeped in racism and ignorance, which I think leads to the anger you describe.
Of course there are exceptions. I know a guy who was a social worker, working with inner city youth, who joined the force hoping to make a difference from “inside.” Definitely not the stereotype that is unfortunately all too real too often. The outsized reverence police has always struck me as a little scary. As someone pointed out, it takes a person more than 7 years to become a lawyer but only 8 weeks or so to become a cop. Letting an increasingly angry segment of the population on the loose with very little training and deadly weapons, shielded by a hero-worshipping mythology…I mean what did we expect?
In my state of NY you need 60 credits of college and the 2 people I know who recently became cops both have bachelor degrees. That was not always the case but it is now.
I agree about the guns. In my city there are certain neighborhoods where people are having guns fights in the streets every week. And then police come in to “lay down the law” with heavy patrols of those areas. But this heavy handed tactic is not actually solving anything.
I live in one of the 5 boroughs and know many cops. You know how many of these white cops are racists? At least 90%. And I say this as a middle aged white Irish-Catholic. There are some good cops for sure but most of them are like this red faced screaming idiot. There is a reason why so many cops transfer to the FDNY after a few years.
Yes. And no one says this, right? I am in the same area, you nailed it.
“There is a reason why so many cops transfer to the FDNY after a few years.”
Another reason is the pay structure. Unless things have changed in the past few years, NYC police pensions are based on what the officer earned his last few years (I think it’s 3 years, but I’m not completely sure). So a lot of NYC police officers retire before they are promoted to a position without overtime. They work as much overtime as they can for a few years, and then they can retire with a nice pension. But, since they are still relatively young, many start second careers.
Yes you are correct, I believe. But in speaking with a few who transferred it’s also because they found the culture to be toxic.
Good for your friends (acquaintances?) for recognizing the toxicity and getting out of that environment 🙂
I’m in Chicago and it’s exactly the same. The accents might be different, lol, but these guys are cut from the same cloth and you can spot them from miles away.
Yes and its by design. Get rid of the cops that don’t follow the white racist agenda. Subjugate the POC cops that try to remain. Those cops get punished hard and advancement is TOUGH if you don’t toe the line with their police union. Basically they hang you out to dry.
@goofpuff, you speak truth my friend. I am a retired police in Canada. I am sickened by what is going on here, that @ssh0le union guy is representative of the culture. I am a POC female and was abused daily for 20years. I was screamed at by jag offs like that guy for absolutely no reason – other than that I am Black, educated, and kind to people.
I HATE that so many cops are centering themselves on Social Media as ‘really good people who would NEVER….,; and how they spend all of their time helping the elderly carry their groceries in. I hate that they (everyone?) are saying that 99% of cops are good and courageous people, that’s a load of crap. Maybe 30% are really good and courageous agents of societal protection and enlightenment.
Once I got screamed at for sitting with a widow for 3 hours after her husband had committed suicide due to terminal illness. She needed me, and I caught Hell for seeing that and attending to her distress. I caught Hell once for arresting a White guy who had beaten his (POC) wife badly enough to require hospitalization- when the junior White cop did not arrest. (in Canada we have a duty to arrest in domestic violence matters, but as a freaking human being you should know that woman needed protection.) I caught shit because I embarrassed the White cop who didn’t do his job. Oh- and then the time when a colleague beat the Hell out of his wife- and our Sergeant took the call (not at all the way things are supposed to happen) and made NO ARREST nor any report at all.
I could go on and on and on. This profession needs a complete overhaul. It is rotten and ugly.
I’ll leave it with with this, one POS in my dept in Canada, left to go police in a border town so he could ‘kill a Mexican.’
I must go pet my dogs now. Please excuse my poor grammar and punctuation, this ish makes me LOSE it!
+100000000% YES
This guy is not a NYC police officer, he’s a transit cop, probably hasn’t walked a beat in 30 years. His accent and attitude says Long Island to me, land of the blue pens for white people and black pens for black people when applying for a mortgage, just to keep things in order. SMH.
Adding: the NYC PBA head is named Patrick Lynch, who is beyond anything this guy said. I was driving around doing errands yesterday and he was on the radio spewing hate; I wanted to crash into a gas pump or something.
Patrick Lynch has been a hate-spouting meathead for quite some time.
He’s literally repeating back what everybody has been saying to the police.
Do you know it takes about 840 hours to become a cop and 1500 to become a barber.
3000 hrs + bachelors + 3 yr masters + 3 yrs of supervision to be a therapist.
And we make 1/2 to 1/3 as much as they do.
Depends on your area. In my city you have to have a bachelors degree, criminology preferred.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on the policy changes that get proposed and implemented to combat systemic racism. Symbolism is all well and good but just keep an eye on the policies.
The first policy is to removed the power the police unions have over the city.
I have only one response to this: Defund the police.!
I have never agreed with you VV..until today! Defund the police!! Give the money back to the people!!!
Now is the best time to really look at how policing policies are created and supported. The pressure is on and police all across America are showing their ass for the world to see. Police are not much different than any other gang, ruling by brutality and intimidation. It is really time for a sea change. An easy way to start is to hire a lot more women and people of color to reflect the neighborhoods they patrol. Also demilitarize them. Also spend more money on community resources to help rather than punish blighted areas. I hope voting participation is at an all time high this November and that it funnels down to the local elections. Time to undo what the GOP has been trying to do for a generation, stacking state assemblies with far right nutters. Bring it all down while we are still pissed
@Michael, I think we also need to bring in social workers, mental health experts, and teachers, to be the first line that people interact with within the system. So many folks out there struggle with mental health, and the solution to mental Illness isn’t the police. We have a HUGE homeless problem in my community, and they make up like 60% of calls to the police. The police ignore the bike theft rings happening, but then force the homeless folks to constantly keep moving, never rest, which deteriorates their mental state further. Yes, they will give them information about open shelters, but there is no way to get these folks TO the shelter, which is like 10 miles away. All this to say… so many problems within our communities will never be solved if all we do is throw a police officer into it. We need community efforts, including more folks (Social workers, mental health practitioners) on the front lines.
I’ve been doing a mental inventory of sorts, and I realized that every cop I’ve personally known was a garbage human being, even in my own family. My maternal grandfather was a state trooper and a drunk who refused to pay child support. I dated a cop briefly, and he ordered his subordinates to maim a woman who was suicidal. A retired state trooper in my town trained his dog to bark and snarl at black people. My father was a fire chief, and he was almost shot by a deputy during a massive flood. My dad was trying to get to a couple trapped in their car. So yeah. The whole orchard is rotten.
You can’t demand respect from ppl you’ve been terrorizing for decades! It has to be earned. And we don’t care about that little badge! It also makes me laugh that it’s only been two weeks and they’re pitching a fit…imagine how BIPOC feel! Imagine how tired WE ARE!
YES!!!!!!! Exactly! How can he whine about RESPECT after 2 weeks when EVEN STILL they have impunity and immunity and think they are above the law. RESPECT is code for SUBORDINATION. They have NO RESPECT FOR THE CITIZENS they are sworn to protect. They dont police their own, but instead are “disgust”ed when we try to hold accountable the violent and or racist ones.
Black people, People of color have been living under the threat of violence THEIR ENTIRE LIVES!!!!
How HOW HOW Can you be OK with them shoving a 75 year old man????????????
HOW can anyone be ok with tear gas rubber bullets and batons against PEACEFUL PROTESTORS that are US CITIZENS ????
it is enraging
Continuing with the Cops are Idiot Assholes theme along with Florida Continues to Embarrass Itself:
Brevard County Fraternal Order of Police: disciplined and jailed cops should apply here.
A Brevard chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police posted a now deleted advertisement over the weekend calling on those officers involved in violent incidents in Buffalo, NY and Atlanta, GA, to join the ranks of local police agencies.
Posted to wrong place
Ugh the number of cop wives that are friends of friends that are boosting this with ‘yes! Cops are not the enemy’ is mind boggling. The system is racist, you are part of that system even if your husband/uncle/neighbor is a ‘good’ person
On the day of George Floyd’s funeral. With a sea of 99% white male faces. It’s crazy. The gaslighting of black people throughout makes me sick. And it’s because they are scared of being called out. NY repealed the league that allows for the records of bad cops to be sealed. The light is going to start coming in.
I mean, I’m sure it REALLY sucks to be one of those wives. If you’re married to someone who IS a decent cop who WILL call out the bullshit, then it must be very frustrating hearing your spouse get ripped on even if it’s not ACTUALLY directed at them. It would be upsetting. But they need to take a seat, and listen. And while it does suck for them right now – it doesn’t suck anywhere even CLOSE to how hard it sucks that so many families are losing beloved family members for absolutely no reason.
And on top of that, a lot of them need to self-reflect on top of taking a seat. Because chances are, the majority of these women are married to pieces of shit. Just because they’re okay with their husbands abusing power and murdering black people, doesn’t mean that a single other person has to be okay with that – and they shouldn’t!
@Erinn
SO WELL SAID
Willful ignorance. Of course there are good cops but the system is racist and they enforce the system. I really would challenge cop wives, cop family members to reframe the way they look at the events in America the past few weeks. They cannot keep operating under their biased, sheltered experience any longer.
Also, I dated a cop and he was a secretive man who shattered my heart. He did great things and became a good friend after and helped me thru significant hard times but He also did awful violent things on his shifts. Beating women in the same of “resisting arrest.” Just awful. I struggled to understand him and why he would do the things he did to people on his shifts. I had more respect for him when he became a sex crimes detective because I felt he was helping victims in that role. I couldnt relate to him romantically. We were so different a relationship between us was impossible. I believe in defunding the police.
The man who thought it was his right to beat women, joined the sex crimes unit? That’s not at all horrifying, nope not at all.
Jesus. Um, that story has an alarming ending.
Yes, white women uphold the system and the suburban white woman glorification of police officers is pathetic. It’s weird timing that you guys are talking about this, I just wrote about suburban white women and cops this morning.
https://dildockdystopia.com/blogs/news/suburban-white-women-and-badge-blowing
With all my downtime I started blogging. I dont’ care if anyone reads it or not, it’s a passion project I’ve wanted to do since the aughts. And I’m getting all of my frustrations out. I used to post it on FB and that’s why I have no fb friends left. lol
The irony is I went on to date an abuser for years after and it was my ex, the cop, who was one of the people I turned to and who helped me leave the abusive relationship. Point is, he was a complicated dude and he was there for me as a friend during the worst part of my life but it doesnt change the fact he beats people on duty and gets away with it. We cant put these guys on pedastals. I can acknowledge the good work they do, as the cops did on my domestic violence case. But Cops and their wives have a god complex and they do think they are superior human beings. They are incapable of insight. Thats why we cant trust the police. They are both dishonest about the racism in their police system and lack insight. Thats why “reform” is not possible. We need to stop funding them so they cant buy more weapons to assault us with. We need to explore alternative response teams. We need to invest in our community programs.
My experience dating him was a peak into their bizarre insulated world.
It’s because they pretty much train them to be that way – reinforcing it always to the point you’re on autopilot. Cops see a lot of horrible things, and if you’re a good person, you are affected by that. And those assholes take advantage of you while you’re vulnerable and reinforce their aggressive racist agenda to turn you.
I have family who are cops, and I see it all the time. It’s a systemic brainwashing supported by their racist union. And police chiefs and city mayors have very little control after the academy because senior officers trying the junior ones. And the senior ones train them to be exactly like them or the juniors get punished.
Many of the people who go through that have severe PTSD not unlike war time because they enforce a war time military type of outlook where everybody is the enemy.
I agree with defund the cops, demilitarize them, and disband the police union, refund the polices that actually help people.
I just listened to his speech lol. About respect. He has ‘abusive’ tattooed on his forehead.
If they were all so proud to be there….why are they all wearing mask?
I think requiring licensure is an idea whose time has come. As long as it’s more rigorously applied than licensing gun owners! Everybody else has to recertify every couple of years and prove that they are paying taxes, not causing harm, and continuing to keep up with developments in their profession.
Translation: “Don’t treat us like we treat you!” F*ck off, dude.
Frank Serpico was right.
All I see is a poorly done public dressing down of his employers…who are the public…to attempt to reestablish his preferred status quo of dominance and fear. Which is a joke. He would be fired for that kind of insubordination elsewhere. But then he doesn’t realize that he works for us in our name. That’s where his authority is supposed to come from.
Also this status quo is gone. The fact he hasn’t realized that makes it even sadder. He personally isn’t equipped to transition into something that’s better for the people he works for. It’s time for him to sit down and let other people and cooler heads talk.
He’s trying to pull a Trump. And that isn’t even working for Trump anymore.
I’m getting Brett Kavanaugh scared-so-i’m-going-on-the-offensive-with-righteous-indignation vibes from that header picture
I immediately remembered Kavanaugh and Lady G. making the exact same face during their melt downs at that hearing.
Defund the militarization of the police and get abolish the police union.
Law enforcement all over the country are literally being backed into a corner. So they’re fighting back. The police unions have way too much power and their tentacles are all over the political process. Maybe it’s time to start disassembling and start making police forces more people friendly and also maybe realize that a fake twenty dollar bill isn’t grounds for death.
So.. they are being treated like normal people would be treated in the press and they don’t like it? Cry me a f£&+&- river man. Nobody cares. You have let the rot get into your system so badly that there is nothing but rot left. The good people leave, or go to other services.
You think respect means treat you as an authority. No. It means treat you as human beings, and we are, even when you don’t return that favour.
I am a civilian member of a large police service in Canada. I know that things are done way differently up here compared to most US cities. My city has a police commission where there is civilian oversight, as well as a provincial serious incident response team that investigates any police involved shootings, or serious complaints. They lay charges against police members when appropriate.
My police service has partnerships where police members work together with mental health professionals (psych RN’s, mental health therapists, psychologists, etc) to go out and respond to mental health calls. We have social workers partnered up with detectives and constables who work on serious domestic violence files. We have a crime and trauma unit that supports all citizens who have experienced any kind of trauma, be that being broken in to, assaults, family disputes, etc;
Are there troubles in my police service? Of course. There are obvious cultural issues in my city, with a large first nations population that are over represented in dealings with police.
But I just don’t see police as being inherently as inherently evil as they are being portrayed in the media. I see how deeply they care about the victims that we work with, how they do everything that they possibly can to ensure that the accused person is held in custody (the justice system is very very different up here, and charged persons are most often released on orders that have conditions)
Do US police services not have the the civilian oversight or the serious incident response teams that investigate the police?
Yes, and still there was that welfare check in NB last week that resulted in the shooting death of the indigenous woman they were supposed to check on.
Our Canadian Police Forces have a great deal of work to do, also.
The closet thing we have to civilian oversight is the thousands of people you have seen marching in the streets in protest.
A young woman “fell” from the 24th floor of an apartment building in Toronto recently after her family called the police on a mental health call. This is NOT the first time it’s happened. In Canada, we have a lot of work to do.
I also think that you’re ignoring the MAJOR issues with RCMP policing in the North, especially towards Indigenous women. Or in Pickton where the RCMP willfully ignored the mass disappearance of sex workers because why bother. Or ANYTHING to do with the Highway of Tears and any RCMP investigation into the disappearance of an Indigenous woman. We aren’t very far removed at all from the US, just very slightly less armed.
I’m sorry if I didn’t articulate myself properly. I know that police services in Canada are far from perfect, but it seems that all police officers are being demonized because of heinous acts committed by some bad police officers. Not all officers are prejudiced monsters who wake up every day with their goal in life is to hurt and maim the citizens that they are sworn to serve and protect. Obviously there needs to be reform in pretty much every police jurisdiction around, but all I’d like to see is for people to acknowledge that there are some good police officers out there and not lump them all together, saying they’re all rotten to the core.
@kat, it wasn’t in Picton, it was a pig farmer in BC named Robert Picton who was bringing sex trade workers to his farm in Port Coquitlam and then murdering them and feeding their carcasses to his pigs. Said pigs were being sold at market as feed animals. He told police he killed 49 women and wanted to kill an even 50. It remains Canada’s largest ever serial killer investigation. I lived close to there at the time and the stories coming out were so so bad, each one worse than the last. The TV show Criminal Minds did an episode about it and used the Ontario town of Picton in the show.
So they’re upset that they’re being treated how they treat BIPOC? That’s rich.
NWA was right: F*ck the police. The last 6 years have radicalized this white, middle-class, middle-aged lady on this in a way I couldn’t have imagined 20 years ago. And it’s all down to (a) seeing with my own eyes what they do to Black people and (b) learning more about what they do for most actual crime victims (nothing). Enough. ENOUGH.
“Police are the smallest cogs of the machine”- Charles M Blow. As a white passing person, I have to see how my priv & fragility is a big cog, a giant crank.
It is threatening. I don’t know what this chief thought the optics of this would be, but I see an intimidating boys club. Maybe to some men this looks like a brotherhood but that kind of the problem. Police aren’t a fraternity. They should symbolize safety for everyone.
Roberta and Emily
Yes you are so right
I am a white woman and it scares the crap out of me
I can only imagine the terror this creates in the hearts and minds of all POC