If You Consider Holding Bad Cops Accountable, Cop Hating, Do you Recognize the Formula you are Following?
I have often been accused of “bashing cops” and being a “cop hater” because about once a week on facebook I will post a video or two of abusive officers caught in the act. In general I don’t even say much about my view when I do these posts, I simply link to the article like any other I might post.
The most recent example is this article Police chief ‘shocked’ by cop interfering with man recording arrest on video.
You can read the story and watch the video for yourself. The short version is cops are busting some folks for fighting. I doesn’t appear that they did anything wrong in that action. They were just doing their jobs. Some passer by starts videoing it from what looks to be 25-35 yards away, totally within his rights, and one officer gets in his face, threatens him, lies to him, etc.
What “cop hating” rant did I post about this? The following is all I posted along with a link to the story,
Seems like the Chief of Police is headed in the right direction with this, but the officer intimidating him is another cop that needs to at least get some remedial training.
You can see The Original Post Here
Along comes a fellow named Micha who says among other things,
Look, the cop was kinda being a dick. But I don’t think this rises even to the level of minor annoyance, let alone outrage. When exactly did you start hating cops jack?
So me saying the Chief seemed to be going in the right direction and that an officer that violated the rights of a citizen was in need of “remedial training”, makes me a “cop hater”?
Keep in mind, I never called him a name, didn’t suggest he be fired or anything of the sort. Just that he needed remedial training, because as bad cops go, this guy wasn’t really that bad. But you see what the formula is here right? If you say anything bad, about any cop at all, ever, even when you have conclusive proof that it is true, then you are to be called a “cop hater”.
You do likely realize that most people that do this are right wing types right. I mean typical right wing conservatives. I am not saying that is good thing or a bad thing. I am just saying that in my observations, it is the right that is the most staunch in supporting those who work in both Law Enforcement and Military service. Most that will stick up for cops in spite of facts and make the “few bad apples” excuse are typical conservatives.
Can we stop and ask ourselves if there is another hot button issue these folks have a strong opinion about? How about “sealing the southern border”?
Conservatives will often point to criminal activity and illegals living off government benefits as to reasons why. They will then cite conclusive proof that it does happen. They make it incredibly clear that they are not against immigration or Hispanics, only illegal immigration by any and all. To their credit most such people are being dead honest and sincere about what they present and where they stand. They make a clear, concise and true argument that can’t be countered with facts.
So with out the ability to engage in a factual debate how does the other side counter this?
Of course the opposition counters by saying conservatives are racists, hate all immigrants especially “brown people” and of course that 99% of those coming across the border are just looking to do jobs Americans won’t. No matter how logical the conservative voice is on this issue, no matter how clear, no matter how correct, the counter punch is call them haters, racists and cite 99% even though no one can prove anything close to the 99% figure.
HELLO!
When this formula is used on most right wing conservatives they rightly assume the nation has lost its collective mind. Yet on this issue they turn around and use the same old “racist/hater” formula when it is convenient for them to do so.
Simply put the fact that a person is concerned about an open boarder, illegal immigration and a broke ass nation paying benefits to people here illegally, DOES NOT make them a racist. It also doesn’t mean they are anti immigration or anti “brown people” either. Such claims are made by people who want to be right in spite of facts and turn to such accusations when the facts can’t make their case for them.
Okay, then when a person points to abusive law enforcement activity and asks that something be done, it doesn’t make them anti law enforcement or a cop hater. What it make them is a citizen concerned for their rights and the rights of others, demonstrating that we have problem with the facts to back up the claim. So the only way the argument can be silenced is once again with the use of the old “racist/hater” formula.
I really think this is another pattern that people complain about all the time, at the exact same time they apply it to others. I would ask you the reader, do you not see it now?
Remember another pattern to watch for is the formula to control a society. This formula is as follows,
- First make yourself look weak
- Allow your citizens to feel helpless
- Find an enemy or three, build them up
- Look weak in front of this found enemy
- Hope they attack you, create an attack if they do not
- Divide your people on all possible issues
- Call anyone who speaks out against government a terrorist, conspiracy nut, etc.
- Wait until your people beg for “protection” and demand tyranny
- Give them what they ask for
- Repeat as necessary
Folks pay particular attention to step number 6. In any event I will continue to show bad officers doing bad things and ask people to do something about it. I will continue to say that the “good cops” are the ones with the highest obligation to speak up and do something. I will continue to tell you guys in Law Enforcement that you’d be better off saying you are an “Officer of the Peace” than to call yourself a “Law Enforcer”. I will also continue to recognize the courageous service of MOST of our men and women in law enforcement.
No amount of the application of the “hater/racist” formula can stop me from saying what is right and speaking the truth. The truth is simple, there are about 780,000 police officers in the US. That number doesn’t include Federal Marshalls, FBI, and other federal agencies, that is local and state boots on the ground members of the LEO community. If 95% are outstanding and only 5% are “bad apples”, then that is 39,000 abusive officers with a club, a gun, a tazer, a shotgun, handcuffs and the authority of the state in the form of a badge.
That number would equal an average of 780 such people in every state in the nation. That is a big problem.
My message to citizens, know and invoke your rights, record everything you see and please remember there are good men and women doing their jobs right along side the abusers. Don’t be an asshole, don’t provoke officers and don’t try to set up bad situations just to make a point.
My message to officers, you have been trusted with some serious privileges not extended to most of your fellow citizens. The people rely on you to use those trusted privileges with respect for and in defense of their rights. Stop lying to people, know the law you swear to uphold and defend and remember your oath isn’t to the state, it is to the people.
Any officer that won’t speak up when your fellow officers do something abusive you don’t deserve the honor of serving, so go do something else. The brotherhood of the “thin blue line” is fine, just remember that that line should be on the side of the people, not the state.
Now go ahead and call me a cop hater!
Love it Jack! Not all police are evil. But they all are paid to enforce punishment for victimless crimes, so their moral standards are up for purchase. We all need to keep an eye out to keep their system in check.
The problem with holding bad cops accountable is that if we let people do that, they might start thinking that they can hold politicians accountable. Can’t have that!
Hi Jack, I was a sworn LE for 25+ years both with a Sheriff’s Dept and City PD and worked with many a jerk like the guy in the article you linked to and his clique pals too. I stepped in many a time to put guys like that back in-line whether it be excessive force, being an over zealous dick, or whatever. After a while that kind of stuff stopped happening around me because I wouldn’t put up with it and I didn’t care I wasn’t there to be liked I was there to do a job for the folks that paid my salary like the guy who was videoing. I probably would have taking a totally opposite approach thanked him for having our backs by filming it for us. Please keep pointing out this stuff out – it keeps us humble and honest!
Thanks for your service! Did you notice the gang like behavior of the cliche? The “monkey dance” posture but the one cop in the middle, young looking guy when the dick says, “so that makes him part of the investigation right”, the go along on the left says yes, the guy in the middle look at his eyes.
I think that guy wanted not a damn thing to do with this at that point, he had the cat that ate the canary look and just kind of mills around to make sure nothing bad happens at that point. Bet he was junior to both of the other guys and just wasn’t sure what to do. Speaking up takes courage, it is why it is worth doing.
When you let police get away with ‘kinda being a dick’ they will, over time, become the real thing. There is a reason why most of the world fears the police as much or more than the criminals.
We are too often shown that our police are becoming third-world thugs.
This is actually quite true. All you have to do is look at Brazil for that one. Up-and-coming nation, tons of businesses and rich moving there, and they have a police so armied out its insane.
Agreed Jack….this videographer is out of the way and is polite/cooperative with officers on scene. Unlike many YouTube videos out there, this person is not up on the officers sticking a camera in their faces. Unfortunately, behavior like this turns a normally-supportive citizen against the police in their area due to continued abuses or perceived abuses.
I am just shocked that you wasted that much time talking about this BS, especially when the show has been all about switching this shit off and getting down to work. BTW, the show has just been kicking ass lately, keep it up brother.
@Nick, no I never said to shut this shit off, where the F did you get that?
This is not the news, this is not Fing TV, this is individual citizens recording and reporting abuse, this is the shit the TV doesn’t tell you hardly ever. I say to focus on what you can effect.
If every damn American started doing this, the effect would be instant. Pull your head out of your butt. Police departments are responding to this, positively all over, it is a peaceful revolution and worth doing. Frankly we better do it now before it goes to far and isn’t doable.
Check out Chief David Brown of Dallas PD’s twitter account. It is a direct response to this movement. He has fired officers for abuse, he has fired them for turning off dash cameras. Do you think Chief Brown would even be Chief if not for this push back. The answer is no, I had the good pleasure to meet him, he told me his rep was why he got the gig and that Dallas knew that something had to be done. He also said 5 years earlier he would have never gotten the job due to the same rep.
Couldn’t agree more. The more you dig into common police training the more it kinda makes sense. In a lot of cases they’ve been alienated away from the populace and have had the “fear of death” beaten into them. It is not uncommon in the slightest for a police officer to “go through the motions” in their head of how they’re going to take you down, etc just for walking up to them. (I’ve heard this from numerous cops from alllll locations).
I’ve also seen so many people become jaded from having to deal first hand with these issues day in and day out.
Odd, I’ve never considered Jack to be a “Cop Hater” rather, most of the time I’ve considered him to be on the “Cop Apologist” side. Though in more recent shows I think He has made his stance more clear when speaking about the scumbag-cops and those Cops, whom turn a blind-eye, to those criminal-cops.
You know you are moderate when both sides say you are on the other side. In general getting though to either side about your position takes a lot of work. Note I don’t mean convincing anyone here, just being understood. Item 6 it is all about item 6.
My experience is that every cop I’ve known in person (which is not to include the couple interactions with cops that were flat out illegal – gee seems like everybody has a couple of those somehow…) has been a good person who knew there were issues with other cops but could only do so much before they could do nothing. That contrasted with every single vocal cop I’ve interacted with online has been an ultra thin skinned sniveling little pansy to the point it has just been painful to listen to them pull their blue version of the race card at even the slightest non 100% ass kiss comment regarding anything remotely connected to their job. I won’t even engage them anymore. Kind of makes me think that a lot of vocal online cops are some combination of the basement dwellers of the industry or the corrupt cops themselves with dirty consciences.
Being called out directly, not only here but on the show actually made me laugh. I was only jabbing you a little. When I have to scroll the page to read your original posting I think its a bit much. My head has been way out of my arse for a long time. I fully support what the citizen did, and have my phone set up best I can to click it on immediately to do the same. I am from Chicago, so I might be a bit jaded, but as long as we have employed other human beings to “police” human beings, they have been cracking skulls. It scares me when the local forest preserve officer’s cruiser is outfitted like a battle wagon. By us, all the local municipalities have removed, “to serve and protect” from their vehicles. The training and the superiors are the problem. The demise of our police force is another cancer on our society. Chicago paid out so ungodly amount last year for lawsuits awarding citizens for being abused by officers. I think it was over $200million. I say its no different then the teacher’s unions. IF you want to act as a collective you will be judged as a collective. I have never met one teacher that is a bad teacher, I have never met one cop that is a bad cop, but collectively both institutions are failures. So asking the one good cop to hold his comrades accountable, is like asking the one good teacher to storm into the teacher’s lounge and demanding the other teachers do their job. Unions and bureaucrats will go to the ends of the earth to protect one bad cop.
So like so many times, the digital comment does not come across as intended. I agree with you and the citizen who filmed this. I was just nudging you in the ribs and saying lets move on.
Jack I think you are being called anti-cop because of misread perceptions. Something I have noticed when you talk about these stories is that you seem to spend the vast majority of your time and words listing the negative things about police, often getting very angry with shouting and so forth, and then tagging on a small amount of lip service to the good cops and positive things about police.
To take your example down another path, say I were to rant about illegals being criminals, gang members, parasites on our society for 20 minutes, and then at the very end calm down and say “but of course not all immigrants are like that” and that be the only time I even tried to mention the “other side” if you will. It would certainly be understandable if people assumed that I was anti-immigrant or didn’t *really* believe that some immigrants are good. It would be the appearance of just giving lip service. That’s just how people tend to perceive things. Everything I said may be factually true. The thing I said about illegal immigrants being criminal may be true as well as what I said about not all being bad. But when one devotes 95% of their time to one side of an issue, and 5% of the time saying “oh yeah, here’s the flip side too” it becomes apparent where their feelings really lie.
I think that’s what you’re running into with your discussions about police. I do not think you’re anti cop. I have never been given a reason to believe you have lied on your program or mislead anyone in your audience intentionally. So when you say “I’m not anti cop” I believe you. And you have defended police on a few occasions as well, such as the officer who broke the window of the driver who would not sign the citation. I’m simply stating that whatever your thoughts, beliefs, or intentions on the matter are, you do seem to devote the vast majority of your time listing the failures of police, and almost no time even mentioning that not all, or even most police are like that. It gives a certain saturation bias to the whole topic. Just as how the mainstream media can decide to focus on telling stories about negative incidents with CHL holders over and over and thus give the impression that most CHL holders are irresponsible, even when actual negative incidents are actually very very rare. One can give an impression of something just by how much time one focuses on it and make it seem more common than it really is. I think this may be what is happening when you talk about police.
I’m not suggesting you do anything different. You’ve gotten this far running your show your way and it would be improper for anyone to think they have the right to tell you to change something in your own program, especially if that change would be counter to your natural thoughts. I just wanted to point out the impression to do tend to give. You focus A LOT on negative things with police and almost (not entirely, but almost) not at all on anything positive, even though in real life nearly all cops are actually doing the right thing. You also bring up how good cops need to speak up. Maybe a lot are? Maybe they do speak up and we’re just not hearing about it because they are actually stopping an issue before it becomes and issue. Just like it’s impossible to tell how many crimes are stopped and not reported by CHL holders for the very reason that they were stopped and thus not reported. We don’t know how many time good officers are indeed speaking up for the very reason that when and if they do, we’re not going to see a news story or YouTube video about a non-existent incident.
Just some observations. Sorry if I pissed you off.
@Ragnar, bad cops are a huge problem and one I won’t approach with kid gloves and it isn’t flipping lip service when I speak about the good, it is the truth. The truth is right now though many of the so called good officers are just as much an oath breaker as the bad cops. I don’t give a shit if you don’t abuse your authority, if you cover the ass of someone else who does it, don’t speak up, don’t stand up, etc. you are a fing oath breaker, you need to find a new line of work.
Clear enough!
There is no need to praise good cops for simply not being dicks! If you cops want to hear me speak better of you, fix your shit, how clear is that.
Illegals? IMO not as big a problem as shitty cops. Most of the bad ones, we know who they are. Gang bangers are kind enough to tat up for us and advertise who and what they are. One bad cop is a bigger problem then 1000 illegals in many ways. Those illegals do not have the authority of the state to cover their actions.
Glad you don’t want anything to be different, FTR I have been called a cop hater by plenty of people who never listened to the show and don’t know a fing thing about it.
In the end this abuse of citizens by law enforcement is a cancer, and the best corrective surgery can only be done but the so called good cops. So I say to any LEO that gets butt hurt about anything I say, stand up and speak up or again go find a job more in keeping with your spine.
Hi Jack. I appreciate your candor and message that you share with the world and I have listened weekly or more since around episode 270 or so. I live my life to where my dealings with uniformed officers is brief and to the point then off we go our separate ways and thats what is comfortable to me. I don’t go out of my way to provoke uniformed officers. Thats just me. There are some deep psychological issues I see on both sides of the so called “fence” that I’ve noticed in history, somewhat recently, that leads me to question the mental health of certain small groups of unorganized individuals on this issue. Then another group of organized well moneyed groups with ‘inc.’ after their names that is exploiting the dogshit out of those small groups of individuals, my go-to-knee-jerk borderline tourettes phrase is ‘stupid people’, isn’t helping either by clouding our collective unconscious with taint and in turn we pay a higher psychic price. But anyways, for some that falls into the category of entertainment and I do recognize the value of sensationalism in the perpetration of the ‘great distraction’. I choose to turn to podcasts such as yours, technology, music, and appreciating the universe as it presents itself. Anyways I’ve gotten off track. We grew cale, green beans and blueberries this year and they turned out abundant and delicious. Abbodanza. Be well.
Jack, if that makes you a cop hater, I would hate to think what it would make my family… and both my husband and my oldest son are both LEOS. Seems like every time we turn around, there is another badge wearer that is pushing the limits, if not outright violating, someone’s rights. And our small community is no exception. There are five officers right now that DH and DS have warned female family members/friends not to trust for even a second, especially if we were to come across them while driving alone on a county road. And that’s scary as our little town (pop just under 20K) is the largest within a 50 mile radius and most of what we have around here are back roads. We agree totally that if an officer doesn’t stand up for what’s right, he is not not much of an officer. And sometimes doing what’s right can cost you your job, especially if what you uncover casts a negative light on the department’s relationship with the state (recently BTDT). But you just can’t put a price on honor and integrity.
BTW, due all of our preps and the extra “just in case” funds that had been put aside over the past few years, we don’t need to go shopping and we have enough to pay all necessary bills such as house pmt, utilities, ins, etc. (no credit card debt!) for several months easily, or a year or more if we’re careful.