Reply #95: Karl Rove you people are not.

[TheMadMonk]

However, many of you are quite good at working from his play book.

No one has said that they find the police actions (or more correctly the outcome of those actions) acceptable. What some (a very small minority I note in cases like these) are attempting to say is that the actions which led to this injury might possibly be justified by events prior to the taking of these photos, of which we have no (or at least insufficient) useful knowledge. Without disputing a single fact presented in this discussion, I could concoct a scenario in which the actions which caused this injury were fully justified. It would require a lot of improbabilities and 'what ifs' but I could stuff something in the 'self inflicted injury' pigeonhole.

Please note that under certain conditions ('roid rage and PCP induced psychosis being two that cops can expect to face) people have been known to walk on the ends of broken bones.


Yes it is acknowledged that there are people in uniform who put it on so they could "legally" kick the shit out of others. However, that is not the real problem. It is merely a symptom of a larger one.

Perhaps the biggest part of the problem comes down to peanuts and monkeys (pay one, get the other). Once the pool of available civic and vocationally minded citizens is exhausted in any given field (policing, teaching, nursing, medicine, etc) you get what you pay for. If you are lucky. And if you are not, you get individuals who have motivations which in all probability well not be desirable or advantageous to the society they are employed to serve.

Compounding that is the level of training that can be afforded AND the level of training that the recruit can adsorb. It by those necessities must be simplistic and robust. Head, torso or wait is the basic order of the day when discharging a firearm and fancy shooting will get a cop in trouble even if the result is a perfect outcome. Hard and fast with batons. Pretty much right across the board, it's what is easiest to do by the numbers, not what is best. A true artiste with the baton could have a suspect whimpering with pain one minute and up and able to walk just moments later. Just as a true artiste with the chalk can if you will forgive a most terrible pun, 'make a dux of the biggest goose'.

Oh and one thing we liberals can pick up right on our own doorsteps is the almost absolute legal requirement that puts the personal safety of the civil servant ahead of the safety of the public. Fire and ambulance must often wait for clearance from the police before acting in an emergency. Nurses and first aiders are pounded with the message to protect themselves from infection before touching a patient. WTF? Whatever happened to Semmelweis? He proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what the biggest risk to patients in hospitals are. While policy might still say 'Protect the patient/client' it is secondary to 'Protect yourself'. Hey bozo's down in worksafe land if you protect the patient then you protect the carer anyway and sometimes because of the role a person choses, he must

And an unintended consequence of this is that this progression puts the perpetrator/(individual member of the public that is bothering them at the moment) somewhere on a par with 'what's for dinner tonight'. Easiest way to protect both self and public becomes put a bullet or at least 40kV.



If I were to bet on who was in the wrong here, I put my money on it being the cops and I would not expect to be given good odds. But we are not dropping the kids shoes on the neddies here. The stakes are the freedom (and possibly life) of a human being (however reluctant we might be to acknowledge that kinship).

AND THAT FOR FUCKS SAKE IS WHAT'S SUPPOSED TO MAKE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN US AND THEM. ISN'T IT?

We hold that a country's constitution is the ultimate embodiment of the law, and that that law applies equally to all. And suddenly you want to suspend it all because some arsehole copper outrages your delicate sensibilities. Would you (or BAH in particular) care to explain how that's one whit different to hooking a fag to a trailer hitch and going for a drag. (Crudity very much intended.)