The really sick part: they think this is funny.
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I think the bigger the city, the more difficult it is to look at the whole department and classify it as one or the other. Just the sheer numbers of cops guarantees that youâre getting a lot of bad and good apples. And then what happens is that youâre really talking about precincts, or divisions, that operate under one banner, but can in and of themselves, have their own âcultureâ depending on whoâs there and whoâs in charge of that precinct. And, the police Chief of a large city department like Chicago or Los Angeles is more removed from the day-to-day activity and interacting with the cops in the street, as the Chief has to deal with a larger bureaucracy. Here in San Francisco, we just had a similar situation. A small clique of racist cops found each other and started sending racist texts and stuff to each other. Once the Department found out, it was handled appropriately. So, thereâs always going to be an ongoing process of dealing with the bad eggs in any department, and tossing them out. But, obviously that doesnât happen very much when those at the top of the hierarchy are bad eggs themselves.
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Another isolated incidentâŚ
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Here is a video of the Miami now-retired office Major Angel Vasquez:
His family must be proud of him!
Racism? We ainât got no racism. We still have a problem with uppity N****sâŚbut weâre working on that.
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I feel like I get a good opportunity every day to somehow question that whole âpost-racialâ thingee. Twice todayâso special.
So did the officer that retired retire before the investigation started or was he âallowedâ to retire since he was near the retirement age? And is he going to be collecting a full pension? Those questions need to be answered.
All that, but they canât find the serial killer who is RIGHT THERE bringing them donuts every morning.
SURPRISE, MOTHERFUCKER!
True, there are many good cops. Some version of the Pareto Principle probably applies (80% of the cops are ok, or 20% of the cops cause nearly all the problems). The problem is the good cops are too often completely unwilling to challenge and/or report the bad ones. This is understandable in some ways since they have a difficult job which requires relying on their fellow officers. In the end though, the idea they are all comrades under siege and have to defend one another no matter what only increases the difficulty of the job for the people who joined the police force for the right reasons.
But, sometimes, as you point out, the right person at the top can start to make a meaningful difference.
I appreciate the clarification about the police chief.
My experience in dealing with big city police departments for 35 years is that the good departments are the ones where cops know if they screw up, they will be fired. There are too many departments where the chief is running a department he has worked in for 20 years and knows everybody, and everybody knows him, so he lets stuff slide. If cops know they will be covered for when they are brutal or abusive, you get a lot of abuse. If cops know they will be fired, their names in the paper, etc, they act a lot better.
Deadly force is a different deal, as state laws make it easy to claim âI was in fear for my life so I had to shoot.â With the main witness dead, its hard to prove otherwise, Still, they need to know that internal affairs will try to build a case against them. If they know the dept will have their back, they will act like they think they can get away with murder, because they know they can. Hence the cop planting the tazer in South Carolina.
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What? Racism in a Southern police department?
Then they are NOT good cops.