When I was born in the 80s, police drove 1982 Crown Victoria's with a turbo.
When I graduated high school in the 2000s, they drove 1982 crown Victoria's with a turbo.
Then, sometime during the Iraq war, these motherfuckers started getting brand fucking new Ford explorers, Ford f150s... Every couple years.
Of course we fucking hate you, stop stealing our money for toys you don't need. Why don't you tell us about the new array of artillery in the trunk?
My local force recently bought a used armoured personnel carrier (APC) for $100,000 which didn't go over well with the community. They posted a message explaining they were coming up on fiscal year end and had excess budget they wanted to use up so their budget wouldn't be reduced next year. That didn't really help.
It's mostly used to park next to public events. Arts in the Park? Don't worry! We got an APC here to protect you! Weekly farmers market? Don't worry! The APC is here! Sometimes the emergency response team (our version of swat) will also put out a table with all their rifles and gear so they can look cool in front of any teenagers in attendance. It's weird.
"we have to irresponsibly spend the remainder of our budget so it doesn't get reduced next year" followed one month later by "we need more money because we maxed out the budget last year"
Fuck this atrocious cycle. It's everywhere. Military, police, any other government branch, corporate politics, 501c orgs pretending to be charities... The greatest crime is stockpiling unsent capital, apparently.
There are way better things to spend your money on so that your budget doesn't shrink next year. Arguments of whether they need they money or not aside, that's a real problem for them. Ideas off the top of my head that probably wouldn't signal to the town that they're under occupation:
• Ammo and range time • Conflict management training • Public relations block party • Solar panels on the roof • Diet, exercise, and lifestyle training • Law review classes
Dude, the cops in my town of 25,000 got a fucking TANK. Why the fuck do we need a tank??
🤖 DO YOU FEEL SAFE 🤖
Y = YES
N= NO
Your town likely doesn't need a tank, but the major metro area within range of that tank is gonna need to call upon it next time the cops decide to kneel on someone's neck.
Defund the police, give the money to social workers
...Well, those were 1998 crown vics but yeah
Unfortunately, it seems like most people not on Lemmy are with them.
This is highly questionable evidence, but I've noticed more anti police messages in graffiti and restroom walls. And I don't get weird looks when I say "police shouldn't exist" anymore.
I think there might be a tiny bit of selection bias if you're looking at messages today were written illegally.
Of course, most of the messages I see every day are legal. The reason I'm interested in vandalism is because the author wants people to know it, but is safeguarding against repercussions. It reduces the bias towards saying what's good for you personally.
Red state?
Even red states hate police, as long as they're hurting white guys, that is.
True. The things they say about the ATF and FBI would make you think they're extremely anti-police, but then you notice they never badmouth the DEA or ICE even though they inflict the exact same kind of brutality on the civilian population.
But because the FBI arrests white supremacists and the ATF sends you a fine for engraving a punisher logo over your AR15's serial number, they're the worst.
Ehhh purple-ish state.
Nah, my understanding is that many people don't even want to be police anymore. Many retired and their hire rates are low considering the easy and decent pay.
I grew up to cops, or Philadelphia's Finest blowing up a neighborhood.
Every decade, there continues to be less and less accountability.
Even a few years ago, Philadelphia's Finest kidnapped a child then posed themselves as heroes
All cats are beautiful
conservatives would try to justify this in the modern day still
Why's he oinking (confusedly)?
Cause they dont let smart folks become pigs.
It's not common (and I would argue IQ tests have limited value) but I feel like I should remind everyone this actually happened
If officers are too smart they might start to think minorities are also people and that kids should be protected. We obviously can't be having that in America
Or maybe during their "Killology" training (yes really) one of them might say "Wait, this is insane bullshit. And has this trainer even seen a gun before?!"
I saw at the end the plaintiff became a prison guard. It's been over 20 years now, i would be interested to see how long he stuck with it seeing how their whole thing was about smart people quitting the force
The elites are cultivating an us vs them culture, but the cops aren't masterminding it.
Yea but they LOVE to fall for it. At a certain point, a useful idiot still becomes an enemy combatant.
At a certain point, a useful idiot still becomes an enemy combatant.
Perhaps, but since this is a war of manipulation, you always have to consider: are you fighting those responsible for turning us against each other, or are you fighting who they want you to fight?
I'm not saying to let the cops off the hook. That depends on the answer to the question. I'm speaking more generally here.
there's a point where who's responsible and who's a victim doesn't really matter to most people and survival against aggressors becomes more important than considering the philosophical/psychological implications
navigating through the complexity of the mind to determine who really "deserves" it is mostly just a lost cause, you get wacky results like concluding that the people in power are actually just victims of their own greed and human psychology, that the universe and therefore life is deterministic and no one is truly at fault for their actions, etc. etc. which could all be easily justified standpoints but are mostly irrelevant to our actual situations
Yeah, you're right. We are all victims, the people in power too. And most of us involved in politics are aggressors, and are to blame for it. I try my best not to be, because I'm a disciple of love, and my real enemy is hatred, of which political hatred seems to be the most prevalent these days. I still push back against other forms of hatred when I run into them, to be clear.
It's not a game of survival against aggressors, or at least not nearly as much as it seems to be. The propaganda tells you conservatives want to kill minorities, but most of them (discounting the leaders and the crazies) wouldn't dream of it. A lot of them are conservatives mostly because the propaganda tells them that liberals want to kill babies.
The actual minority-haters do fall into the conservative bucket, yes, but that's because it's the closest bucket to their position. The leaders take advantage of it to boost their numbers, but I don't think it's exactly fair to blame the rest of them for it when there are only two buckets.
Most conservatives are people with souls and morals if you'll get to know them. You don't have to cave to their position, I'm just asking you to put aside your differences and try to understand them. If you try to understand one and learn that they're a disciple of hatred trying to slowly drag the world back to the 1700s so they can own slaves, that's a yike, but don't paint the rest of them with that same brush until you've taken a fair sampling.
I don't know why I expected a cat meme here...