Dangerous Neighborhoods
I have been forced to turn on the TV because the WiFi has been flaky and I don’t have the strength yet to fix it.
I was listening to a wing-nut attempting to justify police brutality by repeated references to the dangerous neighborhoods they are forced to work in. If they are looking for dangerous working conditions they should look at rehabbing houses in Southern California. On one show that features buying houses for Hundreds of thousands of dollars and then repairing them to sell them. On the show called “Flip or Flop” the ‘stars’ have had their SUV stolen, the houses looted after some repairs are made, thousands in tools stolen. These middle-class neighborhoods in Orange County are real cess pools
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You are 10 times more likely to be murdered as an average citizen of Oakland, California, than you are to be murdered as a police officer in Oakland, California. I don’t have any sympathy for the notion of police work as being so extraordinarily dangerous as to require suspension of the Constitution in order to perform it. The average citizen of Oakland doesn’t have body armor, doesn’t have Motorola to call for backup, doesn’t have a taser and pepper spray and a service weapon, yet somehow manages to go through life without being an utter cringing basket case.
I wish I could say the same about the cream puff princesses who are our current police officers, but they seem so scared of the people they’re supposed to be policing that it’s hard to have any respect for them at all. Not at all like the big Irish and Polish cops of my youth, who were violent bruisers who had their own problem with administering “street justice” but definitely were *not* scared of the people they were dealing with and would have sooner died of shame than admit fear of anything at all. But those were days when men were men and had big brass ones that clanged when they walked and where even if you didn’t like them, you damn well respected their ability to handle themselves and to mete out whatever violence they felt was warranted. Today… not so much. Maybe we need to equip police cruisers with fainting couches nowadays? Sigh.
Not just Orange County; It happened to my sister in Victorvile to a house she was rehabbing.
Having grown up in the cesspools of Orange County (moved there when Ike was the POTUS) I can tell you it wasn’t always that way. When the Daily pilot ran a story about my immigrant family we woke up with our driveway flooded with donations; the neighbors came out and helped organize things while we gawked.
(couldn’t even speak the language) That’s the Orange County I’d like to remember. I don’t know how or when or why we began to fear each other.
When you have a gun, everyone looks like a target? I’ve read that Blackwater (whatever they call themselves today Academi, Xi, etc) was training police departments around the country. And if they were training them to treat us like Iraqi citizens…. explains all the dead bodies.
And Bryan, thought of you with this: http://i.imgur.com/0DmEWRN.gifv
Ha! my first real-life encounter with GIFv, ellroon! Thanks!
I love it when a cat does that, as long as I’m not carrying a stack of dishes. Viewing the video made me think of the word “catwalk”; in turn, I was soon humming along on behalf of the beautiful black cat: “I’m… too sexy for my hair… too sexy for my hair… so sexy I’m there…”
I’m using the current Firefox, and the GIFv was not particularly quick to load. Perhaps only the first one in a browser session is slow while it loads a player; I’ll experiment.
BTW, the residents of Our House are NOT under water! At one point, I wasn’t so sure we’d get through the event without flooding, but we did.
Yes, Badtux, in many places the police are just another street gang. They aren’t interested in respect, they want fear. Instead of keeping the peace, they are escalating the violence. They have become militarized.
In the old days, Shirt, people knew their neighbors, and realized the necessity of getting along, even if they didn’t like each other. These days people don’t take the time to even learn what their neighbors look like, much less what their names are.
Ellroon, too many police officers are using weapons as their first resort, not their last and don’t seem to be very concerned about the possibility of harming bystanders. Even if the individual who was the target was a real threat, you shouldn’t shoot at them in a crowd. [Yes, I have had that dance quite often.)
I never noticed that file type, until you mentioned it, Steve. I’m glad you escaped dousing, although Houston had a tough week.