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The Logic of the Police State in America
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176084If youve been listening to various police agencies and their supporters, then you know what the future holds: anarchy is coming and its all the fault of activists.
In May, a Wall Street Journal op-ed warned of a new nationwide crime wave thanks to intense agitation against American police departments over the previous year. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie went further. Talking recently with the host of CBSs Face the Nation, the Republican presidential hopeful asserted that the Black Lives Matter movement wasnt about reform but something far more sinister. Theyve been chanting in the streets for the murder of police officers, he insisted. Even the nations top cop, FBI Director James Comey, weighed in at the University of Chicago Law School, speaking of a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year.
According to these figures and others like them, lawlessness has been sweeping the nation as the so-called Ferguson effect spreads. Criminals have been emboldened as police officers are forced to think twice about doing their jobs for fear of the infamy of starring in the next viral video. The police have supposedly become the targets of assassins intoxicated by anti-cop rhetoric, just as departments are being stripped of the kind of high-powered equipment they need to protect officers and communities. Even their funding streams have, its claimed, come under attack as anti-cop bias has infected Washington, D.C. Senator Ted Cruz caught the spirit of that critique by convening a Senate subcommittee hearing to which he gave the title, The War on Police: How the Federal Government Undermines State and Local Law Enforcement. According to him, the federal government, including the president and attorney general, has been vilifying the police, who are now being treated as if they, not the criminals, were the enemy.
Beyond the storm of commentary and criticism, however, quite a different reality presents itself. In the simplest terms, there is no war on the police. Violent attacks against police officers remain at historic lows, even though approximately 1,000 people have been killed by the police this year nationwide. In just the past few weeks, videos have been released of problematic fatal police shootings in San Francisco and Chicago...
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The Logic of the Police State in America (Original Post)
Proserpina
Dec 2015
OP
Locrian
(4,522 posts)1. why whould anyone expect anything else?
The worst thing (in the cops view) is to question or attach their "authori-tay". If you do it in the street you get shot - if you do it as an activist/movement you get a war.
Proserpina
(2,352 posts)2. Nonetheless, it must be done, by our elected representatives
Locrian
(4,522 posts)3. absolutely