lpetrich
Contributor
Good Cop Files Lawsuit Against Corrupt Department That Told Him ‘If you snitch, your career is done’
So that's what happens to good cops, it seems.
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Good cop fears his fellow cops
- Thread starter lpetrich
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So which ones are the thugs again, the cops or the perps?
Jason Harvestdancer
Contributor
Why do we have this desire to find out which side are the good guys when both sides are bad?
fast
Contributor
It's not that both sides are bad just because bad deeds come from both sides.
arkirk
Veteran Member
So where do you go to look for justice?
fast
Contributor
The courts.
The presence of corruption among police doesn't mean the entire scope of the deeds of police do not have justice as an aim.
Jason Harvestdancer
Contributor
Ha! They're part of the same system. The government class protects the government class. This is the true class warfare in this country.
WAB
Contributor
Indeed. The more statist a country becomes, the more brutal and intolerant its police. It's an inevitable and necessary feature of the state attempting to groom and control its Great Unwashed. I've noticed a marked increase in aggression in the cops I've encountered over the past several years. You could joke with them thirty or so years ago. I remember doing it, and the cops just laughing and poking fun at my long hair (I was a mouthy little douchebag, and they were unnecessarily lenient to me). Now I wouldn't dare talk back to a cop, or disobey them. Least of all out here in the wild west. NY cops were pussycats by comparison.
I respect the police, have donated to them, and have found the majority to be decent; but there have been a few I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw them.
Which isn't terribly far.
Underseer
Contributor
George Soros funded the Furgeson riots! I bet this "good cop" is also funded by George Soros!
The government is a bunch of Jack-booted thugs. That's how we know that anyone who speaks out against abuse of police power is part of the liberal conspiracy to take away our freedoms!
Freedom isn't free, people!
[/conservolibertarian]
The government is a bunch of Jack-booted thugs. That's how we know that anyone who speaks out against abuse of police power is part of the liberal conspiracy to take away our freedoms!
Freedom isn't free, people!
[/conservolibertarian]
fast
Contributor
Street justice (which is not a kind of justice--don't let the term mislead) is not (most certainly not) a good choice to turn to when seeking actual justice. Clearly, or at least I'd like to think it's pretty clear, we should turn to our justice system when we what we seek is justice. Are there injustices amidst the justice system? Absolutely there is, but a system that has pockets of corruption here and there does not mean it's not the arena to which we turn when justice is what we seek.
Jimmy Higgins
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Yeah, as shown in Ferguson, that doesn't necessarily work either.
Jason Harvestdancer
Contributor
Although I do not advocate violence against police, I must point out that when injustice is carried out under color of law, it becomes the job of the criminal to enact justice.
Jimmy Higgins
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I don't advocate A, but A!
fast
Contributor
Criminals have no such job as you state. If there is an injustice within the justice system, it's still the justice system to which we turn when seeking justice.
No that's absurd. If a system is unjust or oppressive etc the people need to overthrow it not give it legitimacy by turning to it.
Jason Harvestdancer
Contributor
And overthrowing it is illegal, bringing us full circle to what I wrote.
I understood you meant that in your post. However while this may seem pedantic I think the term criminal is meaningless in the context of an insurrection. Law derives from legitimate authority and a legitimate authority derives from a consenting populous. Therefore law and all the things that implies like crime etc doesn't exist in a rebelling population.
WAB
Contributor
I always thought that if a governing body becomes corrupt it's generally considered the right of the people under that government to forcefully rebel?
"Or did I dream it?" (Monty Python humor, Life of Brian, Brian's mom, falsetto [Pepperpot])
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution
- Just fodder for discussion. I'm not advocating revolution...quite yet.
bilby
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I don't know about 'generally considered'; Rebels always consider themselves to have the 'right' to rebel, in the same way that thieves always consider themselves to have the 'right' to steal, but the idea amongst the general public, or amongst academia, that revolution is the right of an oppressed people, or becomes the right of a people if their government becomes corrupt, seems to be a fairly recent idea, limited to inhabitants of the USA, France, and a handful of other countries - all of which had rebellions before this doctrine was generally accepted.
Rulers and governments rarely consider that revolution is a right of their people; and where they consider revolution to be a right of other oppressed peoples, it is generally as a part of a post-hoc rationalisation for their own prior rebelliousness.
If the US government was careless enough to condemn revolution outright, then it would risk accusations of hypocrisy, given its well known and very recent origins.
Of course, Americans rarely consider the 95% of people who don't live in the US, or the 95% of recorded history that occurred prior to the establishment of their republic; so it is an easy mistake for an American to make to think that their cultural excuse for past behaviour is a general moral principle. But really, it isn't.
In most places, at most times, revolution has been considered amongst the worst possible offences, and has attracted the worst possible punishments. This rather suggests that it is not generally considered to be the right of people, whether or not they believe their government to be corrupt - particularly as the very idea that government might NOT be corrupt is relatively recent.
If you had told any of the kings, queens, tsars, emperors and chieftains who were knocking about prior to Magna Carta that corruption was wrong, they would (after you had explained what the fuck you were even on about) have laughed their socks off at the idea; and then had you beheaded. Of course, the same is true for the next four or five centuries after Magna Carta, albeit with less effort needed on your part to explain what 'corruption' means, in the context of rulers imposing upon their subjects.
Even after the beheading of Charles I, the English Parliament and the Lord Protector ruled in a fashion that a 20th or 21st Century American or Englishman would consider a totalitarian military dictatorship. It wasn't until the French and American rebellions were done and dusted that the idea of non-corrupt and/or non-oppressive government was given any serious consideration at all.
Revolution is the last resort of the oppressed. If all other avenues to reverse corrupt practices of the ruling classes have failed, it is an option that the people have always been able to exercise, at considerable risk to their lives. But the idea that it is a 'right' would certainly be a joke to almost everyone in the history of civilisation. Historically, even revolutionaries typically didn't think they had a right; just that they had a chance.
Jason Harvestdancer
Contributor
Saying the people have a right to revolution is not saying that a revolution is legal. What is legal is clearly and explicitly whatever the government says is legal, that is the definition of legal. No government ever makes it legal to oppose the government, making all revolutions illegal.
The questions of "what is right?" and "what is legal?" are two different questions.
The questions of "what is right?" and "what is legal?" are two different questions.