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“Freedom is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.” ~George Orwell
Overreaching, power-hungry, ill-trained, hyperviolent cops are a menace to society. There’s no way around this. Not even cop apologists can deny the fact that cops overreach in their duty, they have way too much power, they are ill-trained, and they are hyperviolent.
If cops did not overreach, and if they weren’t ill-trained, and if they weren’t hyperviolent, then, perhaps with enough checks and balances, they could be a benefit to society. But those are some giant, full-size, capital-I Ifs.
As it stands, cops do overreach. They are ill-trained. And they are trained to be hyperviolent. That’s the bottom line. In order to dig ourselves out from underneath this bottom line—indeed, in order to transform the “menace of cops” into the “benefits of policing”—we must at least take care of the following seven reasons why cops are a menace to society.
1.) Cops are ill-trained:
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” ~Einstein
We cannot fix the problem of police incompetence by attempting to solve it at the same level of thinking we were at when we created it. That means a complete overhaul of our policing system. Starting with academies and basic training. No more bigoted, prejudice thinking. No more unvetted psychopaths with guns. We need a police force that we can trust, not fear.
We fear the police not just because they are hyperviolent, but mainly because they are incompetent and ill-trained to handle human interactions. They lack a basic sense of psychology and sociology. They are trained to focus on violent detainment rather than nonviolent detachment. They are trained to use a criminal-justice approach when they should be trained to use a public-health approach.
If this weren’t bad enough, cops don’t have critical thinking skills. They are trained to think in black and white. And they purposefully don’t allow people with above average IQs to become officers. This is a travesty. Police need to be held to a higher standard.
2.) Cops seek quotas and enforce outdated/bad laws:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.
Quota-junkie cops are a menace to society because they will go out of their way (overreach) to find criminality. This tends to create criminals where none would have existed otherwise. This is yet another blatant travesty of modern-day policing.
If police brutality, extortion, and overreach of power weren’t enough, unscrupulous police officials have also been manipulating the deeply flawed federal and state civil asset forfeiture laws that give them permission to seize, keep, or sell any property allegedly involved in a crime.
The solution is simple. Cops need to be more like firefighters. They need to react to violence rather than seek it out. Just as a firefighter reacts to a fire rather than seek it out. You don’t see firefighters out patrolling the streets looking for fires. There’s a fire, and then they respond.
The same should apply to cops. They don’t need to be out patrolling the streets looking for violence. If there’s violence, then they should respond. Simple.
A firefighter defends the public from fire. That’s their job. Police should defend people and property from violence. That should be their job. But the current system of policing overreaches. Which leads to extortion, civil asset forfeiture, and quota-junkie cops who oppress their communities through the enforcement of petty, arbitrary laws.
3.) Cops are dangerous and hyperviolent:
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” ~Samuel Johnson
The modern-day cop is militarized and over glamorized. They are judge, jury, and executioner in the streets. I mean, why in the hell do cops have tanks? It’s the height of insanity. And yet here we are, a brainwashed public convinced that it’s somehow okay. It’s not.
The militarization of the police is the greatest tragedy of justice besides rampant racism and the failed war on drugs.
Police do not need tanks, AKs, and bazookas. We have a military for that. And the military is not in place to police a nation, but to protect it. A militarized police force is an egregious afront to a peaceful nation. It’s the government’s underhanded way of saying it is willing to go to war with its own citizens.
Should we go as far as to disarm the police? Perhaps not. But we should at least de-tank them. Leave militarization to the military. And to all those fretful cops whining “I fear for my life,” you should be fired. If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the fucking kitchen.