This is a fantastically encouraging trend. Hasn’t gone far enough but it seems promising. So much for the nightwatchman state.
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Paradigm Shift? After Ferguson Shooting, Nearly Half of Americans Polled, Do Not Trust Police | The Free Thought Project
This is a fantastically encouraging trend. Hasn’t gone far enough but it seems promising. So much for the nightwatchman state.
Interesting article. I would like to see a much larger poll in a few weeks. I think the numbers would verify what this poll suggests.
One of the things I’ve observed with public opinion is that once you lost trust with people, you almost never get it back.
I hope so. If jury’s start convicting police officers of misconduct that will definitely show a shift in how the public perceives authority.
Public opinion is notoriously fickle. We’ll see how it pans out. The irony in all of this is that it might have been a righteous shoot. Time will tell as the evidence comes out.
I’ve seen more articles on the militarization of the police in the last week than I’ve ever seen before in the mainstream media.
I haven’t really formed an opinion yet. The over-funded local police departments have really bothered me for awhile because they seem to harass everyone the same. I have a degree in criminal justice, no criminal history, pistol permit and I mind my own business. Some cop pulled me over for no reason in Indy awhile back, hand cuffed me, took my gun at gunpoint (I was afraid he was going to shoot me in my back with my own gun!) and made me stand in the rain with cuffs until he searched my vehicle (illegally) and figured out I hadn’t actually committed a crime. Then he said it was good that I kept my mouth shut because people “write their own tickets”. Finally, I was allowed to leave because he didn’t have anything on me.
The word is that in Fergason the 300 lb juvenile punched and broke the cop’s nose and then went for his gun. If true, then it was a fight for survival. Then you’ve got the local minority population burning down their neighborhood and fighting with police.
So how will we know what really happened when you have over funded, arrogant police officers who think they are the law as opposed to representatives of the law? Then the other side is blowing their credibility with the nightly ritual of throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at the police while burning down their own neighborhood. I can’t chose sides here.
I changed my opinion after asking a friend why he quit his high paying day job to work 2-3 shifts as a cop. His answer, “to mess with people.” Even one of those guys is too many.
As with most professions, there are good ones and bad ones. It’s unfortunate that the good cops get a bad reputation because of the actions of the bad cops, but I can’t say I feel bad about it. My first reaction when a cop comes up to me is to instantly distrust him and his motives!
I read this this morning and it made me think of Ferguson.
Nevertheless, it remains a riot. Why? It is because, right at the bottom, it is wrong in form. Shy although in the right, violent although strong, it struck at random, it walked like a blind elephant, it left behind it the corpses of old men, of women, and of children; it wished the blood of inoffensive and innocent persons without knowing why. The nourishment of the people is a good object; to massacre them is a bad means. – Victor Hugo
It is always encouraging to see that a great many people are not completely taken in by the mythology of the state. A great many Americans do not file any income tax paper, well over 100 million last I saw an analysis on the subject. A great many Americans do not register to vote. A large percentage of those registered don’t vote. There is also an encouraging trend in not being counted by the census. People are capable, as individuals, of seeing through a lot of the nonsense that passes for mainstream ideology.
In the particular matter of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, there are a lot of things to notice. One fact that seems to slip away, again and again, from people’s view is that St. Louis County has had Democratic machine politics for over a century. It is no surprise to people from that region that the poor black population of Ferguson isn’t represented on the overwhelmingly white city council, nor in the overwhelmingly white police department. Racism and elitism are traditions in St. Louis. The local papers refused to cover the sit-ins that desegregated the lunch counters in downtown St. Louis in 1949, for example, because the papers were owned by racists, judging only by their editorial opinions. Ferguson’s chief of police doesn’t even live in Ferguson, so to say that the police there represent an occupying army is perhaps more true than in some other places in America.
