A woman is facing two felony charges after a witness said she purposely hit a cyclist with her minivan in a Key West road rage incident on Monday night, injuring her and fleeing the scene, according to the city’s police department.
I would love to live in a society where police are genuinely and unironically referred to as peace officers. It would be a step in the right direction—the destination of course being a society where they need not exist, at least in their current form.
Unpopular ^(or popular but unspoken) opinion: Despite what the ACAB crowd would proclaim, I believe there are plenty of officers out there who may deserve such a title already, for trying their best in spite of being painfully aware of the system’s shortcomings and the public’s perception thereof.
There are not “plenty”. I will concede that there are, in theory, a few.
Those that join the police force with such positive things in heart and mind either get ground down and quit, a burned out cynical husk of a person, or get corrupted.
Very few have the diplomatic skills as well as the temerity to be able to stick it out. Those very few that can and do are working within a system that is at best so obsessed with measurable statistics there is no leeway for officer discretion, and at worst actively designed to incarcerate as many as possible.
Which version of the system you get exposed to is mostly a matter of one’s skin colour and apparent wealth, which strongly suggests the number of “good ones” is so vanishingly small as to be statistically insignificant.
I would love to live in a society where police are genuinely and unironically referred to as peace officers. It would be a step in the right direction—the destination of course being a society where they need not exist, at least in their current form.
Unpopular ^(or popular but unspoken) opinion: Despite what the ACAB crowd would proclaim, I believe there are plenty of officers out there who may deserve such a title already, for trying their best in spite of being painfully aware of the system’s shortcomings and the public’s perception thereof.
There are not “plenty”. I will concede that there are, in theory, a few.
Those that join the police force with such positive things in heart and mind either get ground down and quit, a burned out cynical husk of a person, or get corrupted.
Very few have the diplomatic skills as well as the temerity to be able to stick it out. Those very few that can and do are working within a system that is at best so obsessed with measurable statistics there is no leeway for officer discretion, and at worst actively designed to incarcerate as many as possible.
Which version of the system you get exposed to is mostly a matter of one’s skin colour and apparent wealth, which strongly suggests the number of “good ones” is so vanishingly small as to be statistically insignificant.