The honest answer is, people reject the idea that black lives don't matter, as a basic principal, and there is prima facie evidence they do matter. An overwhelming majority of time you hear about police brutality, it's occurring to a black person, when it actually happens to people of all races. They put a racial connotation on an issue that affects everyone. Black lives matter more than white lives to the people who produce and consume mainstream media, at least when it comes to police brutality. So, do they care about police brutality, or are they just leveraging that issue for racial equality? They basically hijack issues to make it all about racial inequality, which deserves to be talked about, but comes off a bit disingenuous when you only talk about certain cases of police brutality. To go broader, and deeper, it perpetuates an us versus them mentality. I don't support BLM because they dehumanize police, and create a polarizing atmosphere.

To most moderates, the us versus them narrative is not productive. BLM attacks/disparages cops. Rightly, or wrongly. It's not surprising you see a certain segment buy into the premise of us versus them, and side with the cops, i.e. blue lives matter.

Notwithstanding my defense of the Atlanta shooting, I can get on board with police reforms, and would not support a "Blue Lives Matter" type campaign for the same reasons I would not support BLM. It's not one, or the other.

What's going on now is, you get pretty big heat if you don't support BLM, or if you don't agree with them. That type of behavior forces people to choose sides, i.e. it's polarizing.

I can think of only two police officers in the last few years, for the entirety of the United States, who have not been complicit in the illicit murder of citizens. They both got fired for trying to prevent other officers From murdering someone.

The entirety of the police wake up every single morning believing they protect the blue line above all us.

**** them.

Officers are the real victims in all of this. I mean everyone is out to get them, they can be easily be sued when they commit crimes against citizens, all their records are public, their union is weak and useless, they are surrounded by internal whistleblowers and the list goes on and on why they are victims. A cop cried in her car bc she thought mcdonalds tampered with her order. I mean c'mon how is she supposed to work in that environment!

https://www.tmz.com/2020/06/17/cop-c...-no-thank-you/

At some point of enlightenment and understanding it becomes intellectual impossible to accept police, who are supposed to defend and protect us from criminals, are instead actively promoting the very worst criminals in society.

I will give consideration to the police who claim innocence and only desire to help when they actively take care of the murderers standing next to them in roll call.

There are no innocent police. They only have themselves to blame.

This is one of your more cogent posts. And while I agree with some of your premise your conclusions veer off where I'm at. But still it's good to see there is some method to your madness

And they also go to work each day saying “I got that murderers back and they are mine.”

If a person is not willing to sacrifice their career to push back against protected murder by their co workers, lol at them.

By the very foundation of all current American law, they are all guilty and all complicit.

Lol. Not the thread for you.

Next time cops bust into Stephen Paddocks room, who is armed to the teeth, don't thank their sacrifice.

grunching...

What's the alternative? Continue to eviscerate and disparage them? That's not going to have the result you want, because as you see, more people are going to take the cops side.

To be clear, support for "Black Lives Matter" - which you claim to be a divisive anti-cop thing - has skyrocketed recently:

You missed the entire point. Popular support is a given, when the alternative is being labeled a racist, or anti-black, or pro-police brutality. A false dichotomy was created. You poll those same people, it's unlikely they support what BLM did in Seattle, or any number of things they've done. You just pointed to a bunch of people who joined the cool kids club. The discussion is about why people argue against it.

but this is the problem

the culture war has been lost

Is it your estimation that the anti-BLM crowd was not labeled racist or anti-black, or pro-police-brutality in 2017?

The best way to support the police is more cameras, systematically supporting good ethics and weeding out the worst as fast as possible. A decent justice system is also required.

This must never be an us vs them situation. We support us and them by fixing the system. the idea that doing these things is any sort of attack on the police has to be defeated and the police need to come to recognise that these reforms are great for them as well

With the exception to the warm fuzzy video of a cop resuscitating a kid or otherwise saving a life, cops for ages have dug there own deep hole that they refuse to climb out of.

Their macho tough guy approach to almost everything has folks fearing and hating them. They seem to have a need to exert some mental or physical pressure to every situation in order to take total control.

When they are not doing that, they are corrupt in the way exercised civil forfeiture to steal your property. You need to spend thousands to fight it and they city or county gets to keep what isn't fought for.

Then there is this:



Definitely need to dismantle the current system and start over.

Don't forget. The rioters have also given themselves the designation of "anti-racist", so they can paint anyone who opposes their criminal behavior and mob tactics as "racist".

I think when ANY criticism of BLM is met with this type of response, you kind of validate my point. It's unpopular to be critical of BLM. Criticism isn't tolerated, really. There's something inherently wrong with that.

you mean the ones who hid in the stairwell while the shooting was going on? Paddock had been dead for over an hour by the time they got into his room, go look at the fact of the case. Same **** happened at Parkland too.

To be fair cops do get really brave when confronted by 75 year-old unarmed men.

police by and large are good people who work hard to keep us safe. they do a good job generally

but they have done a lousy job of policing themselves.

secrecy within the police force and always supporting another police officer even if he's out of line or lying appears to be a narrative that comes up over and over in police stories (books, tv, movies.......... and yes, it's entertainment, but most of us don't communicate with 20 police man on a regular basis and get their inner most thoughts)..

police unions are a big part of the problem too..

but you'll never hear any of this on CNN (or Fox News for that matter) because it doesn't fit their narrative/agenda.

I support blue lives. In any large body you'll get bad elements including the police. But I believe the majority of police officers are decent people who wish to help others and who risk their lives daily in order to keep society safer. Blue lives do matter too.

There are a few extremist exceptions on the individual level (or very small groups), but you don't see anti-police organizations equivalent to the KKK or Stormfront. That is a pretty clear signal that hatred versus minorities / other ethnicities is a bigger problem than hatred of law enforcement. Culturally speaking, that police-officers are heroes is a narrative that is told in millions of books, movies and TV episodes. And outside a very low number of extremist individuals who refuse any nuance, I'm sure you will find that most deeply respect the idea of a police-officer with integrity.

You can't just demand respect for law enforcement. Respect is given, on demand it is just fear. And no, it is not an ideal world. Good men and women in police departments can be swept up in the current political storm and face undeserved doubt about decisions that were correct.

But we have seen that the underlying causes for this political storm are genuine. Incidents were a police-officer kneels on a man's neck for 9 minutes, were they shove an old man to the pavement and write in their report that he tripped and so forth. It becomes too simplistic to write this off as isolated incidents.

So if you want to stop the ones who get unfairly caught up in the storm, you should seek to lower and reduce that underlying cause. Ignoring it, arguing that it is irrelevant or normal or similar approaches will just allow the situation to fester and build even greater distrust of law enforcement.

No you just dislike cops

Police brutality is not the only problem. Police help perpetuate mass incarceration by enforcing laws against victimless crimes. Police are sworn to uphold these unjust laws that create victims and destroy the lives of peaceful people. All cops are bad because of their job description.

RIP to Detective Garda Colm Horkan who was murdered last night while in the line of duty. My deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences to his family and to An Garda Síochána
https://www.thejournal.ie/garda-shot...26196-Jun2020/

https://www.thejournal.ie/garda-comm...26349-Jun2020/

cops are authoritarian racist idiots. the culture around being a police officer is completely broken and corrupted, and we need to start over