Larken Rose: Cops Are Cowards


jts

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I've never seen a brave cop in brave action. I've seen the contrary as described. The gentleman is over the top too much, however, to make his point as he needs to do that or the response is, ho hum. But note, he's not much of a victim so most of his anger is manufactured. I also don't agree with police as a gang. There is too much definition violation for the classification. They may act like a gang.

I've known brave soldiers--you get ready to go out on a combat mission: well, today might be the day I get killed, have I got enough ammo? My uncle ran for his B-17 when when Pearl Harbor was attacked--it blew up in front of him (iconic photograph).

--Brant

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You can find no end of stories, just by putting "officer dies saving" in your search engine. The police are put in danger and they place themselves in danger.

Two months ago (September 18/19), a deputy sheriff here drowned when her car was washed away by flood waters. She was in a residential neighborhood. She was sent in to inspect the streets. Another deputy elsewhere drowned attempting a rescue here.

As for Larken Rose, look at the picture at the 10:13 mark. Where was it taken from? Who took it? I suspect that this picture was posed; it is a fake. (Much else is wrong with the scene. The officers have two different uniforms. Were they from two different jurisdictions? They typically do not like crossing those lines of authority. That rifle is not the usual police patrol gear which is most often a handgun and a shotgun.)

As for warrants, police are shot and killed serving lawful warrants. See here, just for one recent example: two shot; one dead, a mother of four, in fact.

I am fully aware of the failings in police work. I give those problems a lot of thought.

"Active Defense and Passive Aggression" on my blog here.

"Minimizing the Likelihood of Bad Cops" on my blog here.

Routine traffic stops "over a little sticker" is one of the easiest ways to find fleeing felons and parole violators. Law-abiding people tend to take care of those details. Sometimes, we forget… Most often, we get a written warning and fix the problem. However, we know that, statistically, police with college educations issue more citations and have fewer complaints lodged against them than those with just high school. Similarly, women tend to write more tickets and get fewer complaints than men. So, the best police force would be college-educated women. They would still face idiots like Larken Rose, violent offenders, probation violators, domestic abusers, and much more.

Absolutely no safe way exists to issue a citation on a highway. More highway patrol officers die struck by a second vehicle after having stopped another than from gunfire. The videos are all over YouTube. This past winter, I had a project at the Texas Department of Public Safety. The nationwide state chiefs have an awareness program about the problem of cops killed by motorists. It is dangerous work every day. Anyone who does it is brave every day.

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It might help if we clarify the two different types of bravery involved in police and military actions.

A soldier on a battlefield with an enemy discernible as such merely engages. If the enemy seems to be embedded in the civilian population the soldier's orientation is to separate the combatants from non-combatants which dresses out his function and mission to what could be describes as a semi-police function.

The police are almost always in the position of having to give the civilian first go. This means sometimes responding officers may be gunned down as soon as they drive up to a scene. They may not even know it is a scene of criminal activity. There may only be one officer who may or may not be supported by a back up.

Some stupid, ignorant 12 yo kid in Ohio was just gunned down because he had a replica gun he was pulling out of his pants--so the cops say. A day or so later his name was revealed and it was apparent he was a black kid. They don't ID race in news reports. It may be if he had been white he wouldn't have been shot. Blacks have a long history of police abuse and now they--some of them--are supposedly ready to riot in Ferguson if a cop isn't indicted for homicide on a black man in what was likely a justified shooting. Does a cop not fire because an alleged perpetrator is black in order to avoid a race riot? Does a grand jury indict him if he does to avoid a race riot? (I don't think there will be much of a riot for Homeland Security seems to be out in force in Ferguson. We'll see.)

There seems to be a real problem in police protocol in handling these situations that boils down to don't be a hero, open fire if X, Y, or Z situation. So they do. It institutionalizes personal cowardice. In the Columbine massacre did one of the cops say, "To hell with protocol, I'm going in!"--nope. So the massacre continued while the responding cops hunkered down outside. The model seems to be shoot first but go in last. The increased militarization of the law-enforcement mind set does not encompass heroism. It's still do your job by the numbers: BANG! BANG! BANG!--if that's called for. It's probably less damaging psychologically to be a soldier who kills--apart from the general overall stress of continual combat--than a cop who kills. Both are blanketed by the idea of simply doing their jobs as trained. Soldiers flying drones over Afghanistan from Nevada watching as they kill people by gunning them down and blowing them up are probably going to end up fucked in the head. That's quite different than actually flying overhead and lobbing bombs not seeing what those bombs actually do no matter how precisely targeted. Even in WWII fire-bombings, the bombing crews didn't see the Japanese babies burn and sizzle. They didn't hear the death screams of 100,000 residents of Tokyo. Only the Japanese on the ground did while they themselves died.

--Brant

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Soldiers flying drones over Afghanistan from Nevada watching as they kill people by gunning them down and blowing them up are probably going to end up fucked in the head. That's quite different than actually flying overhead and lobbing bombs not seeing what those bombs actually do no matter how precisely targeted. Even in WWII fire-bombings, the bombing crews didn't see the Japanese babies burn and sizzle. They didn't hear the death screams of 100,000 residents of Tokyo. Only the Japanese on the ground did while they themselves died.

--Brant

American airmen in WW2 that flew level incendiary raids over Japan reported smelling burning fleingsh at altitudes of 6 to 8 thousand feet. Curtis Le May switched over from high altitude bombing by day to low altitude bombing by night, because the Jet Stream over Japan made precision aiming from high altitude impossible. He also made most of his raids, incendiary raids since most Japanese construction on the ground was wood. Their houses and most of their buildings burned nicely. The flier knew precisely what kind of damage they were inflicting. They were burning people alive.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Why don't you bother reading more precisely what I write? You're not the only one. Grump. True, what they smelled--some of them smelled--supports what you say, but I doubt how common the experience was. Seeing someone half a world away of no threat to you dying when you push the button or click a trigger is something else. Your B-29 crews flew into a situation where they might be killed. Today a lot of combat death's been turned into a grotesque video game with no threat to the player. Everything costs something, however, but who is calculating this new cost?

--Brant

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