Our Law Enforcement Officers, Good or Bad Now?

Discussion in 'Politics & Government' started by Yvonne Smith, Jan 23, 2015.

  1. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    We are seeing both sides of the fence on this one; at least from what i can tell. We have people rioting about poliice officers who seem to be only trying to do their jobs;, and are forced to defent themselves. My son was a deputy, and I have worked as a volunteer with our local poloce deptartment when I lived in Idaho, so I have a tendency to want to think that at least most of our law enforcement wants to do the right thing, and cares about protecting people.
    The other side of that is, we seem to be getting a more militarized police force, not so much at the local level, but in the more federal areas. We are having more of the SWAT team type of responses to things that really don't call for that. Innocent people have been mauled, shot at, and had their houses trashd and pets killed by law enforcement who stormed the wrong house or apartment. Or it was the right address; but only for a minor crime.
    We are seeing heavily armed law enforcement going door to door, and searching people's homes by force, when they are looking for someone deemed to be a dangerous criminal.
    It is hard to pick this issue apart and see what is necessary and what is not. Our law enforcement put their lives at stake to protect us every day.
    But now, they are also seeming to be turning into some kind of a military Gestapo in some cases.
    That part really worries me.
     
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  2. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    As a paramedic for more than twenty years, I have come to know several police officers well, and I believe that most cops are just people trying to do a good job. However, there seems to be no denying that people are far more in danger from the police than in the past. Hardly a week goes by that we don't hear of another police shooting, and many of them do not appear to be justified. In that, I'm not talking about the Ferguson shooting because i haven't seen or heard anything about that one that seems suspect.

    Even in the rural area of Maine where I live, we've had two police shootings in the past few months. One involved an eighty year-old man who was in his home. Undeniably, he was drunk, and the police were called to the house by a neighbor who called to complain about noise. He answered the door holding a rifle and was shot several times. Okay, you might think, the police were confronted with a man with a gun, and they couldn't be expected to wait for him to actually point it at them. However, from the other perspective, he has every right to be drunk inside of his own house, and he has the right to have a rifle. He lived in a rural area of Maine where ninety percent of the homes have weapons, and someone knocked on his door late at night. Not knowing who it was, he answered the door holding his rifle. I don't know, as I wasn't there; it was found to be a justified shooting, but pretty much all of them are.

    To me, I am afraid that the police are being trained differently now than they once were. Not only do we have a militarized police force but it seems that they are being taught to think of themselves as an occupying force, and the public as the enemy. Some of the comments that are made by police after some of these shootings or other incidents are disturbing. "When a police officer tells you to do something, you do it," one officer said. Of course, that might be the safest course of action but we should not be compelled to obey police orders that may or may not even be lawful.

    I think the problem is in attitude. Certainly, some of it comes from various portions of the public but it also comes from the police, and I don't think it's reasonable for someone to believe that the police are here to help us.
     
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  3. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    You would think that small towns would not have that kind of shooting happen, because it is a small community, and often times, most of the population are at least somewhat known to the police force.
    However, in Sandpoint, Idaho (where I grew up), they had an uncalled-for shooting ,too. A man had taken his wife to the local hospital because she was upset and hysterical about something, and the husband thought that maybe the hospital could medicate her so she could settle down again. While he was inside asking for help, someone called the police because the woman was so distraught.
    When the police arrived, surrounded her, and told her not to move; she instead panicked and ran, unfortunately heading straight for one of the officers, so she was shot several times, and was killed.
    To me, there had to ba a better way for a group of trained law enforcement officers to subdue one terrified woman, than shooting her. Apparently she had a little knife of some sort; but not one that justified killing her.
    Obviously, her husband would not have left her alone if the woman had any kind of a large knife, so it must have been some kind of a small one that she carried in her purse.

    While unfortunate, and seemingly terribly unnecessary, it is still not this kind of an incident that is the worst.
    It is things like the whole highly armed and militarized LE going from house to house, supposedly to search for someone, as happened in California with the Dorner case, and in Boston , when they were searching for the bombing suspect, and several other places.
    One small town (I forget the state) they staged everything at the town highschool, and no one in the town knew what was going on, and even the local authorities had not been notified that there was going to be SWAT teams, helicopters, and an MRAP showing up in the school yard.
    It turned out there were going to arrest a man they thought was selling drugs (small scale, no known weapons), and brought in all of the extra arsenal "just in case".

    We are being conditioned to expect police to just show up with face masks and powerful rifles and crash through people's homes, when they have done nothing to have the house searched for.
    Even more worrisome; now that we have had the riots about the Ferguson shooting; even schools are receiving armoured vehicles.
    Who would have thought America would have come to this ? ? ?

    http://inewsource.org/2014/09/09/why-did-san-diego-unified-acquire-an-armored-vehicle/
     
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  4. Fredrick Jones

    Fredrick Jones Veteran Member
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    Why did you use the term "law enforcement officer" instead of "peace officer" ? Notice the term peace officer went out of use in the 1980s.

    A peace officer is not supposed to enforce laws, but to keep the peace. Versus a law enforcement officer is supposed to enforce laws even if they defy common sense for the situation.
     
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  5. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    The recent riots in Baltimore seems to have everything stirred up again. It is surprising that the mayor just said to let the rioters go and do whatever damamge they wanted to; but it seems like the police actually trying to keep order and stop the riots is not working well either.
    While I agree that the increasing amount of police brutality needs to be contained; there is also the other side to this, that all of the people that they have chosen to "avenge" by the rioting have been criminals. This latest man in Baltimore was a hardened lifetime criminal, and not only a drug addict; but also a drug pusher.
    Not so long ago, parents everywhere would have been all up in arms about a dope peddler that was addicting their school children, and his death would not have seemed like a poor option. Now, the other drug pushers and gang members are leading the riots against this criminal's death.
    We don't need police brutality (for any race, religion, or color); but we DO need law enforcement, and sometimes the end result of committing crimes is that you lose your life.

    http://heavy.com/news/2015/04/fredd...tory-rap-sheet-why-was-freddie-gray-arrested/
     
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  6. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Anyone who doesn't realize that these are planned activities isn't paying attention. The goal is a national police force to replace those that are currently local. That will be the private army that Obama spoke of, which is to be at least as powerful as the military.
     
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