this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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Why on earth would we have no empathy for them? I cannot imagine what it takes to hold and comfort a 10 year old child dying in my arms who has been stabbed by their parent. With two kids around that age myself, I'd be a complete wreck! And he's attended up to 20 domestic violence calls in a night! For years!
Nothing but respect for someone who can do that.
Here in Seattle the cops don't fly an American flag outside their union headquarters, only the "thin blue line" flag. In their salary negotiations they sacrificed a week of back pay so their back pay could start on 1/6/2021 (the date of the Capitol insurrection) instead of the end of their last contract. Dozens of our police here in Washington participated in the insurrection. They were under a consent decree for civil rights violations for a decade. When a cop recently ran over a college student while going 74 mph in a 25, the vice president of the police union was caught on camera laughing with the police union president and saying "she was 26 anyway, she had limited value." Police here have a dismal crime clearance rate, often don't respond at all to property crimes, or take forever. During the protests in 2020, they were absolutely savage with protestors.
I have no empathy for the police, here in America at least. They are an occupying, militarized force that has zero accountability to the people. Maybe if they started treating citizens like human beings, and holding themselves to a higher standard, I would.
Lemmy is full of anti-police propaganda and pure hatred, it's wild. So, I framed it as a hypothetical.
I do have empathy for them, and think any well-adjusted and intelligent person should.
What's wild is how people trust cops in this country. Watch the Moonlight State and know the joke is alive and well.
Most of the vitriol I see is directed at US police. Being an Australian instance, we don't get that so much.
We get plenty of it here. And deservedly so. Ask any Aboriginal Australian how police behave to people in their communities. See how they act when people are protesting on public land. See the NSW police strip searching children. Or the Canberra police choosing not to prosecute a driver who murdered a cyclist while driving a non-roadworthy vehicle (and lied about the circumstances surrounding the crash to cover it up)—heck, while we're at it, try reporting dangerous driving around yourself as a cyclist and wait to see how long it takes the police to blame you. Or their widely-reported problem with domestic violence which they collectively cover up. Or when they kidnapped children and dumped them in the middle of nowhere in the '90s and were still working with no punishment into this decade.
"ACAB" gets a lot more attention in America than here. Partly because of that country's gross problem with guns, which thankfully largely does not exist here. And also partly just because American media is so ubiquitous over here and around the world. But it's no less true that ACAB in Australia than it is in America.
That doesn't mean every action taken by every individual cop is bad. It has never meant that—in America or here. This cop is doing a good thing right now. He's using his voice as an ex-cop to try and help a real problem in our society. It's notable that part of what he asks for is funding for non-police organisations that help with domestic violence situations.
But he's also a former member of an organisation that is part of the problem with domestic violence. Committing domestic violence at a higher rate than the general population, and helping each other cover it up. He may not have actively done that himself, but was he speaking out about it while he still served? Heck, where is he speaking out about that part of the problem even now?
It's a tough job, and giving them adequate mental health services to help deal with that difficulty is absolutely fair. But that shouldn't in any way take away from them receiving all the same "vitriol" you've seen directed at them in America. Because they've more than earnt it.
Years ago I's targetted by WAPol with a Mintie based propaganda campaign on Aussie day. I've been brainwashed ever since. Those sneaky bastards!
Uber did that to me, too! In the early days, drivers used to offer you minties. I ended up buying them for myself for a while there.
There is a little, but it tends to be directed more at police misbehaviour/corruption when it pops up.