It seems appropriate that the one person who committed an actual assault in the "Rand Paul incident" ... didn't assault Rand Paul. God damn, Rand Paul is a whiner.
I'm guessing she's too young to remember when it was only individual cities in certain states that were pulling this kind of shit: That it's now the federales makes it that much more alarming.
Sarasota County, Florida deputy put on leave after getting into a fight with a black teenager in a holding cell. There's no sound but I'm sure there was some "colorful" back and forth. However, if a deputy can lose his temper because a kid got smart with him (if that's what happened) he definitely needs to find a different line of work. I wonder what the deputy's excuse is going to be? ETA: according to a Sarasota website, the deputy says the kid refused to take his hands out of his pockets and called him a "cracker."
This, absolutely this. One cannot condemn political violence on the basis of the impact on innocent bystanders unless they are willing to extend that line of thinking beyond the immediate specifics. All violence without exception causes collateral damage and without exception all violence provides an opportunity for those whose motivations and actions are at odds with the stated ideals to behave maliciously. That this needs explaining is bewildering, that so many people internalize a false dichotomy between idealised notions of pure and noble political causes on the one hand and anarchy on the other. The two go hand in hand, they are both expressions of civil unrest. Indeed they are frequently one and the same thing, the line being arbitrarily drawn according to perspective. The French and American revolutions are prime examples of celebrated political violence but, as you say, absolutely involved extensive human and economic damage, chaos and disorder, collateral damage and a great deal of misery for people living through them. It is only in retrospect that they can be evaluated and even there objectivity is a very fickle and slippery beast.
Let me say upfront that I think cities should have more ability to fire problem police officers than they do. But there are a lot of complicating factors that come into play when trying to fire a cop. 1. Violating the use of force policy, in most cases, is not as clearcut as violating social media policies. The Constitution, and therefore I presume most police departments' policies, require the force used to be reasonable under the circumstances. That has two ramifications that makes things take longer. First, investigaing "the circumstances" can take longer than one might think, and it's a relatively rare case in which it is apparent that no matter the circumstances the force was unreasonable. By contrast, investigating a violation of social media policy is pretty cut-and-dried. There's usually no denying whether someone posted something, and there's usually not much to determine whether that something violated a department policy. In this particular case, the cop posted a picture of her niece holding a sign saying, "Shoot the Fuck Back" and another one saying "Who do we call when the murderer wears the badge?" https://www.boston.com/news/local-n...e-detective-after-pro-black-lives-matter-post The story refers to a labor rights' expert saying the statement crosses the line in terms of being disruptive to the workplace. Second, once all the facts are in, different people will have different ideas of what might be reasonable in terms of force. 2. Police officers generally have a whole bunch of contractual rights, especially once they have passed probation. The officer in this case was still in her probationary period. The story linked to above refers to attempts to fire another officer twice, where he beat both attempts on appeal.
Re: The bolded -- this, esp. in conjunction with reigned in police unions, I very much suspect, would go a long way to mitigating problems and the (rightful) perception of ACAB.
I suspect if someone did a study of the subject, it would show that a lot of times when cities are potentially trying to fire a cop one of two things happen: 1. The cop quits, to avoid possible damage to his reputation or pension or 2. The city's decision is overturned by an arbitrator. The next wave of contracts for big city police departments will be interesting. Up till now, police unions had history and political clout to get themselves pretty sweet deals. I would imagine arbitrators are going to be more likely to side against them. But the thing is, to get something, you have to generally give up something. And I'm not sure the average city has a lot they can give up right now. They generally aren't going to be able to give big raises. I'm not sure what they might have to trade for an increased ability to fire.
Fentress just SOUNDS like a villain in an 80s movie. I'm not surprised in the least he's getting female cops to expose elderly women's norks. I'm just surprised he isn't then snorting coke off them.
