I\u2019m going to take a moment to talk about the recent murder of George Floyd, and how it\u2019s part of a continued trend, and try to take a swipe at one of the pillars of the problem.<\/p>\n
Pretty much everyone can agree that Floyd\u2019s murder was beyond the pale. That it was deliberate and totally unjustified and the officer responsible should be punished. That\u2019s not a radical opinion. Officer Chauvin has been fired and charged with murder, and those who stood by and did nothing while George Floyd died begging for his life on the sidewalk have also been fired, and will probably be charged. So that\u2019s something.<\/p>\n
But I doubt that would have happened without the video. The same with Ahmed Aubrey, where his murderers weren\u2019t even charged until video surfaced. It seems that only when the public sees the murder first hand is there any chance that there will be consequences, and even then maybe not, as Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and Walter Scott\u2019s cases demonstrate.<\/p>\n
I could go on.<\/p>\n
Sadly, I could go on.<\/p>\n
But while nobody is denying there\u2019s a problem, the excuse that I hear is that this is \u201cnot all police\u201d and the work of \u201ca few bad apples.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a paramedic. I\u2019ve been in public safety for over two decades. I\u2019ve worked in some rough cities, and worked closely with the police. I\u2019ve definitely been protected by the police, and felt safer for their presence in certain circumstances. So I\u2019m not anti-police. I just want accountability for the police<\/p>\n
I know it\u2019s not all cops. Anybody who is engaged in reasonable discourse knows it\u2019s not all cops. It may very well be a minority of cops. A few bad apples.<\/p>\n
But the rest of the saying about bad apples is that a few can spoil the bunch.<\/p>\n
The problem won\u2019t go away while the police shield the bad apples, make excuses for the bad apples, defend and cheer when bad apples are acquitted or fail to be indicted. As long as the establishment closes ranks and circles the wagons around the shitbags, they will continue to give the whole institution a bad name.<\/p>\n
This is a tendency of organizations, to cover for their mistakes. But it makes them complicit. Just like the Catholic Church or the Boy Scouts should have to answer for covering up the crimes of their people, so must the police.<\/p>\n
If you truly want to claim that these \u201cbad apples\u201d don\u2019t represent all cops, the whole organization needs to demonstrate that. We give tremendous power and authority to the police. We arm them and give them broad powers to detain and arrest people. But that power should come with responsibility. And part of that responsibility has to be the removal of those who would abuse that power.<\/p>\n
If the police want to claim any integrity, they need to cut the cancer from their ranks.<\/p>\n
Or those few bad apples will spoil the bunch.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m going to take a moment to talk about the recent murder of George Floyd, and how it\u2019s part of a continued trend, and try to take a swipe at one of the pillars of the problem. Pretty much everyone can agree that Floyd\u2019s murder was beyond the pale. That it was deliberate and totally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,26,33,14,16,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ems","category-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it","category-mr-sunshine","category-politics","category-rebel-in-the-making","category-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}