Reply #15: Regarding firefighters and EMTs, I'm with you...

[Iowa]

...but I won't be shedding any tears over fewer cops.

Considering the direction this country is headed with exploding police brutality/sociopathy, torturers getting off scot-free, fascism on the rise, a judiciary willing to shit on the Constitution whenever it serves their corporate masters, a fast-growing prison-industrial-complex, civil liberties under continual attack by all three branches of government, and a rapidly expanding surveillance society... with all of this as a backdrop, any reduction in the number of police is fine by me. I value both my freedom and my safety, and both will be better served with fewer cops. We need just enough cops to deal with the genuine bad-actors, so maybe when we stop reading about the tasing of grandmothers, or arrests of five-year olds, or ________ (fill in the blank)... maybe then we'll have reduced their numbers enough. But as things now stand, (and as things appear to be headed) a weaker police force is something we should be cheering, IMO. As the corps continue to tighten the screws on us, it will eventually be us against them.

So I think it's time progressives make a distinction between firefighters/EMTs and cops when we speak of funding cuts. The former deserve our strong support. The latter is slowly morphing into an army of oppressors not too much different than Blackwater.