Now that I have angered the postal workers I will go on and anger the police. I understand that it is difficult job being a policeman. Sometimes a cop has to make a split second decision to shoot or not to shoot. I certainly would not want to be in that situation. I will always give the cop the benefit of the doubt. But sometimes I wonder if they are actually protecting us or making things more dangerous. The Rodney King incident a decade or so ago led to a riot. On May 1st a relatively calm immigrant demonstration turned violent in LA when a few thugs threw bottles at the police. The police somehow pushed the thugs into a park and started firing rubber bullets into a crowd of mostly peaceful families. Several people were injured. For some reason the police also started attacking some journalists on the scene. While some thugs started it, the situation was not dangerous until the police reacted. In other words the police actually made things worse.
Now I am not saying that the average person would not have done the same as the cops in these cases. But I am saying that the cops are suppose to do a lot better since they are trained for these situations and they are paid to do this. Sometimes they act as if they had no training at all. Like the time they fired about 20 shots into a car with a black woman sitting in it. Granted she was on drugs and had a gun next to her and was startled when she awoke and grabbed the gun. But shot after shot even though she was diabled already? Then there was an incident where a black (sounds familiar?) man stole a car and was cornered by the police. They surrounded him and started firing. Now I said they surrounded him so if they miss the car they can actually hit each other. They fired over one hundred shots! Some ended up in houses way down the street. You tell me anyone with any training would have done this?
Now you may say these are isolated incidences in a large metropolitan area. But those are some of the incidences that happened to be captured on camara. What about the times when nobody is there to film the situation? I bet the cops get away with a lot of use of illegal force. Blacks and Latinos are always complaining the illegal use of force by cops. I usually side with the cops because most of the ones complaining have criminal records. But working in the old Detroit Genraly Hospital I also saw alleged criminals come in with injuries by cops that were probably sustained after they were already subdued. I had a neighbor in Michigan who retired from the Detroit police dept. after serving in the elite STRESS unit. He said he quit when he realized that every time he saw a young black man he instinctively reach for his gun. Unfortunately not many cops come to that realization. Of course this makes things more dangerous because minority groups tend to not trust the police and more crimes are then not solvable.
It is not just the violence by the police that gets me. There is also the financial aspect as with all government employees. There are way too many desk jobs. Whenever there is a call for more money for cops they would say that we would have to transfer some office personels to the streets if no additional money are provided. Well, they belonged on the streets anyway. I suppose the only drawback is that some of these guys are way out of shape from sitting at a desk all this time! A few years ago a woman cop in the police dept of the city I work at filed a gender discrimination suit against the dept. The reason I think this is outrageous is that her husband was third in command at the dept! So either she is making all this up or that the people in charge there are stupid enough to discriminate against the wife of one of the top people in the dept. Of course the case was settled so the public cannot find out exactly which of the two scenarios it was. See how the government is not afraid to spend your money for no reason?
