Erase it all and start the fuck over.

and she's a good one, along with tens of thousands of other good ones all over this country.

But the questions I would ask her, in all seriousness and candor, are these;

Have you ever seen a fellow member of the NYPD, or any other police or law enforcement agency, do something illegal, and not act accordingly?
Have you ever seen a cop break the law, ANY law, and not stop them and arrest them?
Have you ever seen a fellow cop show blatant disregard for the civil and constitutional rights of a citizen, and violate them?
Have you ever seen another cop cause unnecessary harm to someone during the course of an arrest, and do nothing about it?
Have you ever participated in, or observed an arrest that resulted in the suspect being taken to the hospital for treatment of injuries caused by the arresting officers?

I would ask these questions because I absolutely KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt, the answer would be "Yes" to MOST of those questions.

It is unfathomable that your "best friend" could have reached the rank of Lieutenant in the New York Police Department and not once ever seen another officer do something illegal. And if she didn't do anything about it, ......


Well...there you go.

As long as there is one bad cop on a force that others know about and do nothing, there are no good cops.

Please enlighten us as to how you "know".

You have made it absolutely clear with scores of your posts over the time you have been a member, that you are VERY well to do and a long time New Yorker. Perhaps that has allowed you to have a certain privilege not all your fellow New Yorker's enjoy.

But please don't for a minute presume to feign ignorance of the regular and well documented misconduct of one of the most notoriously abusive police departments on planet earth.

Please.

Spare me.

The idea that ANYONE who has been on the force long enough to attain the rank of Lieutenant in the NYPD, has not at least ONCE been a witness to more than one instance as I described above, is fucking ridiculous.

And you know it.

On edit to add this: I did not accuse the posters friend of committing any of those acts. I am saying she has observed them and likely not done anything about it.

...and taking an absolutist "EVERY Police Officer has witnessed criminal and racial violence and has done nothing about it" position (for a police force that is 47% non-white) calls for evidence beyond "I know".

Is it okay if I put ""There are no good ones" in quotes?

I'm out. I have to work later today.


Do as you see fit.

But that isn't defunding.

Many who want to defund the police want to eliminate police entirely.

That is never going to sell.

But the way the police departments have set themselves up to be beyond questioning, to be their own investigative body and to make their own determinations when accused of wrongdoing, absolutely must change.

They have perpetuated a myth that modern policing is this terribly dangerous job (it isn't) and that without that "thin blue line" society would collapse (it wouldn't) and have used that to position themselves so that they can not be brought under control.

The stories of individual cops doing utterly heinous things to non violent citizens are legion, and if an individual seeks to file a complaint, in many jurisdictions it is met not with an earnest attempt to rectify the bad behavior, but a circling of the wagons and intimidation of the complainant.

The basic foundations of modern policing have severe violence at their heart. The police are not the friend of the citizen, they just aren't.

Sometimes you just have to tear the building down and start over

although I think most people are smart enough to know this isn't going to happen on a large scale.

GOP has been selling shit for ages. And it has a lot to do with labeling. E.g., Sanders proclaiming himself a democratic socialist was self sabotaging. A GOP consultant would have branded it democratic capitalism - much easier sell. Don’t call it Medicare for all, call it it equal healthcare access system, etc. Americans have always been obsessed with labels. We need some GOP consultant converts to democratic side.

It's our collective definition to do this

If you simply start with "reform", you'll end up with "oh well, nothing we can do".

There are a lot of things which need to be done regardless of increasing or decreasing the dollar value of that section of the state/county/city budget:

Demilitarizing their equipment,
Removing qualified immunity,
Requiring data collection/reporting of all uses of force to a state-level entity,
Requiring misconduct investigations and discipline be controlled by an independent civilian entity,
Requiring liscensing/certification at the state level not unlike doctors, lawyers, barbers, etc,
Requiring body cameras and treating their misuse/nonuse as a disciplinary/firing offense,
Require more training on tactics of de-escalation so there are fewer instances where the issue of use of force tactics even arise,
Require reporting, with episodic independent auditing, of all uses of firearms, pepper spray, tasers, rubber bullets, tear gas, bean bag guns, etc.

Demilitarize, educate and prosecute.

We don’t need that right now. Kick Trump’s ass, take back the Senate, then have at it.

It’s a bad slogan. Bad branding.

A whole lot less going for military-grade weaponry. Better screening and training of recruits, with mandatory continuing education thereafter to include non-aggressive and humane methods of crowd control. Mandatory body cameras.

The "defund" rhetoric only plays into the hands of Hannity et al. They are clearly on the losing side of this struggle, and will glom onto any and all propaganda to twist messaging in their favor.

There's precedence!

While increasing budgets and militarization of police, and massively increasing spending on prisons.

All with systemically racist results.

Time to turn that shit around. Full stop.

Thank you.

... from Libertarians and Republicans.

If you're rich enough, with plenty of money for healthcare and other necessities, then it might be easier to think that way. (It's still very short-sighted since a solid infrastructure helps everyone in the long-term.)

My son's class has 36 kids in it in Chicago Public Schools. DEFUND THE POLICE.

The police are garbage, and a massive drag on our economy. The first way to make that an acceptable opinion is to say it out loud, timid fucking critics be damned.

That's what is driving this whole thing.

We need a body of people to uphold the laws and standards that we, as a community, have agreed on and are willing to abide by to ensure a harmonious society.

Accept that society needs police persons. Work on how they can best reflect the standards and ethics of the citizens they police.

In-depth background checks
Character references
Mandatory training in, (and I'm not sure of the term to use...) sympathetic policing
Rigid accreditation process before licencing
Psychological assessments

The community should set the standards, not the cops.

We can achieve those policy goals without such divisive messaging. Dems are terrible at messaging. This is one area republicans excel at. We need to start focus group testing like they do.

who just come up with whatever sounds good to chant at a rally instead of what may be good policy and good messaging.
And then some idiot uninformed politician like AOC just adopts it without questioning whether it makes sense for a political or policy perspective.

is that ‘reform’ or ‘rethink’ won’t be accepted from Biden by a portion of the ‘progressive’ left. He’ll be pressed on ‘defunding’ and if he says anything that hints at lowering police funding he’ll be killed by the GOP, while if he refuses, the ‘progressive’ left will snarl about voting green, presumably so that they can achieve their ultimate goal of a judiciary packed to the brim of lifetime appointments for young, right-wing extremists.

Let’s be honest, a huge reason the GOP is still relevant is because it understands the power of simple, dumb but appealing / reassuring slogans, whereas a contingent of the left thinks that people will sit down to read a fucking essay about the nuance of a misleading one. I hate to break it to ya, but there’s a reason Donald - Fucking - Trump is in the White House, and it ain’t because people are big on critical thinking and delving into the details.

My fear is that Trump has gotten his miracle this weekend and will ride it to re-election, an increased Republican majority in the senate and a drawn out battle for the Democrats to cling on to the house. This chaos does not reflect well on Trump, but the interminable cry of LAW AND ORDER! will carry far more weight with the low-information voters and their independent and nervous, suburban counterparts now that it can be chained to a handful of elected Democrats. It’s fair to say that Biden erred in giving Ocasio-Cortez a place on his climate task force - he now has to own a connection that he needn’t have, at a potentially fatal cost come November.

Democrats still hold the advantage. But they are very capable of overplaying their hand. There's a big swath of voters disillusioned with Trump who will be repelled if the Democratic campaign turns into a progressive pep rally. Democrats need to show they are a reasonable, steady alternative to Trump. Do that and it's a win, probably a landslide. Make the race a choice between two extremes and it gets very dicey.