It is not my practice to post serious responses to political Facebook entries. I shall vent my rank here ti get it off my chest
A person who I generally like posted the following quote purportedly from Tim Wise:
" Primer for those who still don’t understand in the wake of the arrest of, incarceration of, and likely murder of Sandra Bland in TX:
1. Asking a cop why they are stopping you/ticketing you is your right. They do not have the right to arrest you for asking, beat you for asking or in any way mistreat you for asking that question.
2. You have the right to say whatever you wish to a cop in response to being stopped. ANYTHING at all, so long as it does not constitute a threat of harm. You can cuss a cop, yell at a cop, and call a cop a fascist pig or a racist if you like. I do not recommend it, you shouldn’t do it (because sadly cops don’t care about the Constitution in far too many cases, and thus, might beat or kill you), and it’s not very nice I suppose (even when deserved), but it is NOT illegal to do so.
3. Refusing to put out a cigarette when asked by a cop is not a criminal offense either. The cop has no lawful right to arrest you for smoking or “disobeying” an order to stop smoking. Only if you are already being arrested for an actual crime and putting out the cigarette is necessary to affect the arrest, can such a request be considered lawful and can failure to do so constitute “resisting arrest.” But refusing to put the cigarette out, in and of itself, does not constitute a crime.
4. If you do any of the above, the cop still does not have the right to beat you or arrest you. And if you end up beaten or killed, it is not your fault. It is entirely and only the cop’s fault. They should be arrested, tried, convicted and jailed. Your “arrogance” or “attitude” is not grounds for brutality, ever.
5. None of the above is made any less true by the fact that “cops have a hard job and put their lives on the line.” That is entirely irrelevant and has no bearing on the rights of the people or the limitations on police power.
6. Any cop who disagrees with the previous points is not qualified to be a cop and should be summarily dismissed from their jobs. Any cop who can’t handle being challenged as to their authority, or who in any way disregards the rights of the people is not qualified to be a cop and should be summarily dismissed from their jobs.
7. Anyone at all who disagrees with these previous points has contempt for the Constitution and would clearly be more comfortable in a police state. Yet these are the same people who think “government regulation” of industry is tyranny, or that the IRS is equivalent to the Nazi SS or that Obamacare is totalitarianism. So they don’t mind actual authoritarian actions (so long as they are worked out mostly on the bodies of black folks and/or the poor), but God forbid government try and ensure health care, or collect taxes from the rich or try and limit pollution. THEN they scream about big brother and how awful the state is…"
— Tim Wise (via la-lobalita)
(via radicalrascality)
The above post provoked me to write the following:
"There are 1,220,000 cops in the US (2008). If only 1% were complete idiots, that would mean 122,000 idiots in uniform with authority and a gun. If 0.01% of those idiots shot somebody for stupid reasons in their 20 year career, there would be 6 people killed or wounded for stupid reasons each year.
News people might report half of those. With the current attention these cases are getting, they would all go nationwide. Thus we would get news of a stupid killing by a cop every 4 months on average. The deaths probably would not be evenly distributed so they would tend to occur in clusters of 2 to 4 at a time every 6 months or so. This is enough to make people feel that things are out of hand, and I don't blame them.
On the other hand, I can't think of any profession that has an idiot rate of only 1%. I suspect that the typical idiot rate would be 2-3% for most jobs. That does not include the number of intelligent individuals who, despite there best efforts, do periodically foul up, sometimes in a big way. The large number of policemen in a country of 318,000,000 people along with the laws of percentages and the fact that everybody carries a webcam in their phone means we will spend a lot of time being pissed off over a situation that, although it needs earnest and intelligent attention, will never completely go away. You might as well blame gravity for dropping the hammer on your toe.
I have more things I can say about people who are stupid enough to intentionally smart-ass a policeman just because it is legal but this rant will take longer to read than the average shit, which is the maximum attention span expected in our current society.
A person who I generally like posted the following quote purportedly from Tim Wise:
" Primer for those who still don’t understand in the wake of the arrest of, incarceration of, and likely murder of Sandra Bland in TX:
1. Asking a cop why they are stopping you/ticketing you is your right. They do not have the right to arrest you for asking, beat you for asking or in any way mistreat you for asking that question.
2. You have the right to say whatever you wish to a cop in response to being stopped. ANYTHING at all, so long as it does not constitute a threat of harm. You can cuss a cop, yell at a cop, and call a cop a fascist pig or a racist if you like. I do not recommend it, you shouldn’t do it (because sadly cops don’t care about the Constitution in far too many cases, and thus, might beat or kill you), and it’s not very nice I suppose (even when deserved), but it is NOT illegal to do so.
3. Refusing to put out a cigarette when asked by a cop is not a criminal offense either. The cop has no lawful right to arrest you for smoking or “disobeying” an order to stop smoking. Only if you are already being arrested for an actual crime and putting out the cigarette is necessary to affect the arrest, can such a request be considered lawful and can failure to do so constitute “resisting arrest.” But refusing to put the cigarette out, in and of itself, does not constitute a crime.
4. If you do any of the above, the cop still does not have the right to beat you or arrest you. And if you end up beaten or killed, it is not your fault. It is entirely and only the cop’s fault. They should be arrested, tried, convicted and jailed. Your “arrogance” or “attitude” is not grounds for brutality, ever.
5. None of the above is made any less true by the fact that “cops have a hard job and put their lives on the line.” That is entirely irrelevant and has no bearing on the rights of the people or the limitations on police power.
6. Any cop who disagrees with the previous points is not qualified to be a cop and should be summarily dismissed from their jobs. Any cop who can’t handle being challenged as to their authority, or who in any way disregards the rights of the people is not qualified to be a cop and should be summarily dismissed from their jobs.
7. Anyone at all who disagrees with these previous points has contempt for the Constitution and would clearly be more comfortable in a police state. Yet these are the same people who think “government regulation” of industry is tyranny, or that the IRS is equivalent to the Nazi SS or that Obamacare is totalitarianism. So they don’t mind actual authoritarian actions (so long as they are worked out mostly on the bodies of black folks and/or the poor), but God forbid government try and ensure health care, or collect taxes from the rich or try and limit pollution. THEN they scream about big brother and how awful the state is…"
— Tim Wise (via la-lobalita)
(via radicalrascality)
The above post provoked me to write the following:
"There are 1,220,000 cops in the US (2008). If only 1% were complete idiots, that would mean 122,000 idiots in uniform with authority and a gun. If 0.01% of those idiots shot somebody for stupid reasons in their 20 year career, there would be 6 people killed or wounded for stupid reasons each year.
News people might report half of those. With the current attention these cases are getting, they would all go nationwide. Thus we would get news of a stupid killing by a cop every 4 months on average. The deaths probably would not be evenly distributed so they would tend to occur in clusters of 2 to 4 at a time every 6 months or so. This is enough to make people feel that things are out of hand, and I don't blame them.
On the other hand, I can't think of any profession that has an idiot rate of only 1%. I suspect that the typical idiot rate would be 2-3% for most jobs. That does not include the number of intelligent individuals who, despite there best efforts, do periodically foul up, sometimes in a big way. The large number of policemen in a country of 318,000,000 people along with the laws of percentages and the fact that everybody carries a webcam in their phone means we will spend a lot of time being pissed off over a situation that, although it needs earnest and intelligent attention, will never completely go away. You might as well blame gravity for dropping the hammer on your toe.
I have more things I can say about people who are stupid enough to intentionally smart-ass a policeman just because it is legal but this rant will take longer to read than the average shit, which is the maximum attention span expected in our current society.
After some thought I decided that the idiot rate for political pundits is probably much higher, say 45%