Neo Deist
Th.D. & D.Div. h.c.
In the wake of public scrutiny, outcry and lawsuits, police officers across the USA are standing down on the job. In other words, they are not doing anything except showing up for work, clocking in, and sitting in their patrol cars. Crime rates are starting to soar because the criminals know that they have a larger window of opportunity.
Police officers have an extremely difficult job to do. They have to make split second decisions based on what they observe in that moment. Everyone else can take days or weeks to sit back, scrutinize and armchair quarterback those decisions. Police are often hated, assaulted, shot at by criminals and betrayed by the very department they work for in order for the department to "save face" in the public eye. More times than not, police officers are judged in the "Court of Public Opinion" long before the facts of a case are even known.
Many people hate a cop simply because he wears a badge. He could be the most courteous, lenient and understanding officer you'll ever meet, but they don't care. He is a cop, and all cops are corrupt, evil tools of a system of oppression. Sigh.
There are roughly ~1 million LEOs in the US.
99.5% of those LEOs will NEVER have to fire their weapons in the line of duty.
Only .5% (or roughly 5,000) will engage in a gunfight or have to fire at a threat, and of those only a small handful are actually "illegal" shootings. If a cop does an illegal shooting (such as Officer Michael Slager) then YES, they deserve to go to prison.
But when you paint all cops in a negative light, constantly complain about them, the media constantly running with a story despite the facts to the contrary, and the Mayor's Office telling the Police Chief "we need more revenue...write more tickets and make more arrests" only to burn the cops when something happens...
...it is no wonder that cops are saying to hell with it.
Police officers have an extremely difficult job to do. They have to make split second decisions based on what they observe in that moment. Everyone else can take days or weeks to sit back, scrutinize and armchair quarterback those decisions. Police are often hated, assaulted, shot at by criminals and betrayed by the very department they work for in order for the department to "save face" in the public eye. More times than not, police officers are judged in the "Court of Public Opinion" long before the facts of a case are even known.
Many people hate a cop simply because he wears a badge. He could be the most courteous, lenient and understanding officer you'll ever meet, but they don't care. He is a cop, and all cops are corrupt, evil tools of a system of oppression. Sigh.
There are roughly ~1 million LEOs in the US.
99.5% of those LEOs will NEVER have to fire their weapons in the line of duty.
Only .5% (or roughly 5,000) will engage in a gunfight or have to fire at a threat, and of those only a small handful are actually "illegal" shootings. If a cop does an illegal shooting (such as Officer Michael Slager) then YES, they deserve to go to prison.
But when you paint all cops in a negative light, constantly complain about them, the media constantly running with a story despite the facts to the contrary, and the Mayor's Office telling the Police Chief "we need more revenue...write more tickets and make more arrests" only to burn the cops when something happens...
...it is no wonder that cops are saying to hell with it.