Our Boys In Blue

[Mongrel]

Oooooooooh!

[Büge]

[Mongrel]

[Büge]

[Büge]

[nosimpleway]

They even seized as civil forfeiture the last can of Who-Hash.

[Mongrel]

[Yoji]

We took the family to a local Christmas parade a couple weekends back. On top of the kids being super bored, it was also kind of chilling thanks to the police part.

Kiddo 02: "po-leeeese caaas :D"
Lexi: "Yeah, police cars!"
02: "mor-saikoos :D"
L: "Motorcycles!"
Yoji: (quietly recoiling as the motorcycles pop wheelies) (recalls how cops are some of the biggest SQUIDs around)
Kiddo 01: "What is that big thing?"
L: "It looks like an RV?"
Y: "Some kind of... mobile headquarters, I think. For disasters or riots. Or a BLM protest."
02: "Truck! :D"
Y: "Yeah, an armored truck..."
L: "What's that thing on top? The round thing with the big flat part?"
Y: "A machinegun turret. Like, you'd stick a machinegun through the slot in the middle."
L: (uncomfortable face and noises)
Y: "I know, right? Remember, kids: Todos policias son bastardos."

And that's when we tried to find snacks, look for Santa, climb trees, and pretend we didn't see military-grade hardware paraded down the main street of a wannabe tourist trap town.

[Mongrel]

[Grath]

I mean, that's inevitably going to happen a week or two into the new police chief's term, may as well get started rehearsing the lies now.

[mharr]

I 'like' that they can't imagine the black guy being just plain innocent and unarmed even for their press conference role-play.

[Thad]

Time: Protests Reduce Police Killings, New Research Shows

[Mongrel]

Could also go in the Canada thread:

Charges stayed against Niagara police constable in ‘blue-on-blue’ case

Niagara Regional Police Constable Nathan Parker, 55, was charged with assaulting a peace officer, assault with a weapon and assault with intent to resist arrest after allegedly shoving and punching Detective-Sergeant Shane Donovan, then charging at him with a baton. In self-defence, court heard, Det. Sgt. Donovan shot him 10 times.

The unusual “blue-on-blue” case stems from a dispute over a bathroom break on Nov. 29, 2018.

Constable Parker, a uniformed officer, was assigned to help Det.-Sgt. Donovan block a road near Pelham, Ont., so the collision reconstruction unit could collect evidence for a crash investigation.

At some point, the court heard, Constable Parker left his post, allowing traffic to flow through. When he returned, the two officers got into an argument. The sergeant testified that the constable got out of his cruiser and shoved him. Det.-Sgt. Donovan told Constable Parker he was under arrest for assault. But the officer kept coming at him, he said, throwing “haymaker” punches. From there came the baton, and then the two officers drew their guns. Det.-Sgt. Donovan fired.

[nosimpleway]

Any McDonald's cashier is better at conflict de-escalation than a cop




(because McDonald's cashiers will lose their jobs if they don't)

[Grath]

Good news, the cop who "mistook her gun for her taser" found guilty of manslaughter.

[Friday]

good, that was one of the more insane ones.

[mharr]

[Büge]

also, the rcmp is still cracking down on the Wet'suwet'en people, making arrests and destroying homes

canada ain't shit

[Friday]

when my friend was having a psychotic break a few months ago, my friends were all scared and didn't know what to do and wanted to call the police

I very calmly explained to them that under no circumstances would I attempt to get our friend shot and killed

it seemed to wake them up to the reality of the situation a little bit

they're good people but they, like most humans, have trouble transferring stuff they see on the news to real life

one of them said "but he's white" and I laughed and showed them the white guy being shot in the pickup in paradise (linked here some years ago by mongrel) and they said "oh my god i had no idea cops here were like that too"

human beings are

bad at certain things

not that the cops aren't waaaaay more likely to shoot and brutalize and kill with their bare fucking hands non-whites, of course, but as I keep trying to point out to my white friends that even from an entirely cold, psychopathic standpoint of self interest "who gives a shit about minorities" standpoint, the cops are still completely fucking out of control murder monsters

like, it's really really important to continually highlight how racist and transphobic and homophobic the cops are

it's also really really important to continually highlight how they are just trigger happy monsters in general who just do not give a single shit about human life and will terminate you for any or no reason and none of the language in this post

none of it

is an exaggeration or unwarranted

[Mongrel]

North America also has an extremely bad habit of recruiting their police heavily from poor ex-military with no prospects, who by definitions have not only trained to be desensitized trigger-happy murder machines, but who also often have undiagnosed or untreated PTSD, depression, or other mental health issues. The reason for this completely backwards thinking is a terrifyingly simple "They already know how to handle weapons", which also highlights how fucked the recruitment process is and the entire priorities of a PD in the first place.

Other than people with actual serious criminal records, I really can't think of a worse possible recruitment pool for people whose on-paper job it is to resolve conflicts, show personal courage AND restraint in the face of danger, empathize, and patiently investigate complicated (or even simple) matters.