I was once questioned by police because I was outside my house watering and a neighbor called and thought that suspicious. :lol: It was a fairly friendly encounter but if I’d told the cop to go **** himself and tried running back inside or reaching into my pocket while screaming about how the only good cop is a dead cop, my skin color or bank account would not have saved me (not that I’m rich).
Do you think that all or even most of these encounters start with the suspect? That people who the cops have stopped just start screeching and threatening and resisting for no reason, with no provocation?
Cops have gotten terrible in how they treat people that don't look like they can do anything about it. There is dominance in their training and imposing ones will on others is a potent neurochemical buzz. And some develop a taste for it. Push from maintaining control to bullying.
This isn't all or even most in my experience. But it is real. I have seen cops talk to people and treat people with absolute contempt and disrespect. Often obviously trying to get a rise out of their "perp". Escalating if they do.
It is super offensive to watch and quite chilling to realize that saying something could put you in their crosshairs.
You wouldn't like it. Your wouldn't want to put up with it. You can at least bark back when a civilian starts talking **** to you. But cops get to talk to you any way they want to. And you gotta take it. Or else.
You obviously have never been there.
Nobody who has is as cavalier about this as you are.
I feel it necessary to warn adolescent males to be careful around cops lest they end up dead or in the system for having too smart a mouth.
This sums up my position:
Keeping people safe should never make them afraid.
Police culture in this country makes people afraid. Makes children scream in fear.
How do you think watching that cop pump bullets into their dad right in front of them is going to affect Blake's kids?
You wonder why people have such bad attitudes about cops?
Because people witness this, are victims of it or know those who have. And once you suffer at the hands of an officer of the state and nothing is done about it, the system ignores you or worse looks you in the eye and says they know they did nothing wromg because they asked themselves and told themselves they didn't, it stays with you. Colors your opinion forever going forward.
Because you know different than the narrative that it always goes down the way the cops say it does.
Because you saw it happen.
Maybe to your dad. Maybe got some of his blood splashed on you.
