Originally posted by JWH44
This is my first post although I have watched these forums for a couple years. I will be very open with you all and tell you that I work in a
management position with a Federal Law Enforcement Agency. I am very open minded and also feel that there are many dangers facing our country that
you all clearly see as well and discuss. I admire the spirit that you all display in your concern for our country's well-being.
Well said.
That being said, I take great offense with the above-quoted post. Your sweeping generalization of all law enforcement officers as being
jack-booted thugs is the kind of rhetoric that only shows how narrow-minded you are. You generalize us all to be power-hungry monsters, yet you
disregard the dangers we face and the sacrifices we make to protect those that we serve. Am I saying that there aren't bad apples? Off course not;
that would be ignorant on my behalf.
Yes, that is a sweeping generalization, but in this context, I feel that it is accurate. Good Apples in law enforcement are the exception today, not
the rule, and even those few police officers who are not corrupt don't appear to be stopping those who are. Maybe you are a Good Apple, but if you
are put in the apple barrel with a bunch of Rotten Apples, eventually your're going to stink just like the rest of them.
Your words only make our jobs harder.
Good. It would appear that your job is to intimidate the public and produce revenue for your employer, the corporate olagarchy (i.e. the
prison-legal-industrial complex), and enforce the political insanity of the state. We incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than any other
empire in human history. If that is your job, then I'm happy to make it as difficult as possible for you. Yep, that's a good thing.
You encourage confrontation with law enforcement with your remarks, then cry foul when you see the results. You can never imagine the
headaches we endure to protect those that need it, yet you have the luxury of Monday-morning quarterbacking everything we do.
Perhaps if the results were not almost always so bad for the civillians involved, we wouldn't have to cry foul. I never encourage confrontation with
law enforcement under any circumstances. Why invite a vampire into your house? I believe the lawyers that say nothing good ever comes from talking to
the police. Everything in my experiance and those of others that I know would confirm that.
You can spend hours replaying a video that supposedly captures someone's rights being violated without having to make a split-second life or
death decision or knowing the context of the encounter.
No. I only watch those types of things once. If I want more porno for facists, I'll watch "Cops" or "DEA".
Are there videos which do show excessive use of force? Absolutely. And of course, those are the ones that are spread around the internet
like wildfire.
And there should not be ANY!!!
The fact that there are so many means this is happening all the time. If this behavior is what was caught on
camera, imagine how much more brutality wasn't caught on camera.
You may never see the video of the officer that is shot and killed just because of the uniform he wears; never hear the audio of that video as
he pleads for his life and cries our with his dying breath. You never see the video of his supervisor having to tell his wife and children that their
husband and father will never be coming home.
Nor do we see the videos of planted evidence, entrapment, execution, torture, extortion and all the other tools law enforcement uses to ruin lives and
send what are often non-violent people to places where they have to become monsters to survive.
Yet we are all monsters...
I'm pretty certain the word I used was traitors and we'll get to that in a minute.
Your words disgrace those officers who have given their lives to protect those that could not protect themselves.
Like the ones at Columbine where the police sat outside for 3 hours while crazy punks executed people at will unopposed? How many cops died? How many
civilians? Oh, that's right. "A dead cop can't save anybody." Well, neither did any live ones on that day. Ditto on Waco.
I had to get that off my chest. I'm sure my first post, coupled with my stated profession will make me anything but popular here. I see that
your post was given several stars, so obviously there are many here that feel the way you do.
More than you know, and not just on this forum. To many, many Americans, you seem to see yourselves as, and have tried to set yourslves up as, a
different, somehow special social class seperate from the rest of us. What makes a police officer's murder anymore horrible than a housewife's
murder? Nothing, but you will pull out all the stops, beat all the bushes, terrorize the informants, and spend buttloads of money to catch the cop
killer while the housewife is just another homicide. As if the life of a cop is somehow more important than the life of a housewife. You wont say that
is what you have been trained to believe but your reactions say different.
You perpetuate the Us vs. Them model of public interaction by militarizing your organization in everything from uniforms, to ranks, to your lowered
intelligence standards in recruiting. Fear will never replace or be as effective as respect. Law enforcement in this country, in this century appears
to be fine setting for fear.
To all of you I can only ask this; like any other group, avoid stereotypes and generalizations and think about the farther reaching effects of
you comments.
I consider my comments carefully and intend them to have an effect, far-reaching if I'm lucky.
While I cannot speak on behalf of the entire Federal Government, I can safely say that we are not here to harm you.
But you do harm us! You allow big business to poison us, drug us, and program us. You enforce laws that serve no other purpose than to keep your
corporate masters in power, then you let those same masters and each other walk on what you put the rest of us in jail for. You help them tax us at
every turn and fine us or imprison us at every opportunity, real or fabricated. You allow those to stay among your numbers who abuse their authority
and power. You expect repect from us that you haven't earned, or have sold for profit, and then tase us when we don't give it to you as fast as
you'd like. You DO harm us!
I have taken an Oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and I can tell you that we take that very seriously.
I do not use the term "Traitor" lightly or with any satisfaction.
You Sir, have posted an articulate, reasonable, and certainly heartfelt response to my post. I appreaciate that. You do make some good points.
You may very well be an exception to what more and more citizens are starting to figure out, namely that our entire government system, from the
fat-cat congress critter, through the states on down to the counties and local law enforcement is hopelessly corrupt and hypocritical.
But if you, Sir, are not wiping your behind with the Bill Of Rights, it is highly likely that you are looking the other way while others are. To me,
that would make you a Traitor. If you condone the policies that have stormtroupers using sound weapons on peaceful demonstrations and protests carried
out by American citizens as shown in the first video, then to me, that would make you a Traitor. If you can stand by while your law enforcement
brothers terrorize the public with pain complience and not condemn it or refuse to be a part of it, to me, that would make you a Traitor. If you would
allow yourself to be used as a tool of those who's goal it is to enslave and control what was once a free society, then to me, that would definately
make you a Traitor.
Perhaps none of that applies to you. Perhaps it does. If you know for a fact that my comments are untrue, then you really shouldn't take offense.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you, and if your law enforcement service is honorable, honest, and just then thanks for that as well.
The sad fact is, that if you can't tell the difference between poisonous snakes and non-poisonous snakes, you pretty much have to treat ALL snakes as
poisonous if you want to survive, don't you?
