Thanks in advance.
ACAB
Cops have no legal duty to protect or serve the public, rather, case law has determined that a cop's only duty is to enforce the law, which wouldn't be a problem if cops actually knew the law, but case law has also determined cops can have a "reasonable" belief that a law exists and enforce it without repurcusion (qualified immunity, decided by Pierson vs. Ray). Cops often escalate situations when there is no reasonable suspicion in order to create a made up crime, violating the 4th amendment through illegal detainment of the person, and get away with it every day. There are 3 levels of cop interaction: voluntary, detainment (involuntary), and arrest (see terry vs ohio). Cops will stop you voluntarily, you have no obligation to comply or stop, but because you don't stop voluntarily, they then have the legal reasonable suspicion needed to detain you for a suspected crime they don't even need a specific crime, just suspecting you of any crime is good enough, and they don't even have to tell you what they suspect you of.
This is all legal, and all affirmed by case law. We live in a police state.
Very good points. Knowing the interviewer, the whole "we need cops to protect people" thing is gonna come up. This is the perfect response.
No amount of police funding has reduced violent crime as much as the 1978 lead paint ban. In fact, there is no correlation between police funding and rate of violent crime. Police budgets continue to rise but the violent crime rate has been roughly even since 2000.
There's the ol' 40%.
-
Police Officers have formed actual gangs in some cities, including Los Angeles.. If I could recommend just one, bring up the fact that police GANGS are a thing, and well, they're cops that go around committing crimes and no one cares because they're cops. Ergo, they can't commit crimes. Right?
(I might want a second opinion, but use the word "gang" and "terrorist" instead of "white supremacist" or "neo-nazi". Grillman might stop caring because when they hear "nazi" they might just assume we're talking about a normal person and it's just some leftist overreacting.)
All top-tier. Thanks!
I was planning not to use inflammatory terms at all, though I will of course mention the overlap with hate groups.
If you have not done it already, with some of the talking points you have acquired here. Try to practice saying them in a mirror and saying them confidently, especially until you stop stammering while saying anything. Remember that the press is still a pro-capitalist source unless it has directly socialist messaging and goals, so get ready for any potential curveballs.
-
Because most people will give you the normal good stuff, I'll share with you a personal perspective.
I grew up pretty poor, and now I at least have enough money to appear comfortable and "middle class". The difference with how the police have treated me is night and day.
Nothing really has changed about me or my behaviour - I'm basically the same pig-hating rule-breaking shithead I always was. The difference is now they leave me alone, even when clearly breaking a law like drinking in a public park with friends. When I was poor I was constantly brutalized, degraded and harassed by pigs - once they randomly picked me from a crowd, threw me in a paddy wagon and dropped me in the middle of nowhere. They pulled a gun on me when I was 13. When I was 17 I had a German shepherd sicced on me. (For context all of this was for offences of a similar magnitude to my "middle class" self drinking in the park, I never did anything truly "bad"). I could go on. Oh and all those "good cops" just let it all happen, they don't give a fuck.
And I'm white and cis. Imagine if you stack signifiers beyond looking poor on top of my appearance.
Anyways now that I look like I may potentially have some degree of political power, that now it's not so obvious a judge would assume I'm lying if it went that far, the cops just scan past me.
And the thing is, the humiliation you suffer at the hands of the state never goes away. There's never any attempt to apologize, to make amends, to show any regret or remorse at all for the people they brutalize. They just move on to the next target and after they've stuffed this hate in my heart.
So there's a ton of "normal" people just like me walking around who will never forgive the pigs, never give them the benefit of the doubt.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I personally grew up in the middle class, and it took a lot of deep conversations with people who;d been through what I hadn't, but I found my way to a deep mistrust and even disgust for the actions and attitudes of cops.
I was pulled over once in a beater car for going 2 miles over the speed limit, it was 10pm and I was the only car on the road.
Say something like:
"We are told that being a police officer is the most dangerous job in the world. Not only is this not the case, but police kill people by shooting at a rate 20 times that at which they are fatally shot. In all cases of police killings in 2022, cops were only charged with a crime in less than one percent of them. If you watch the released Tyre Nichols' footage, you'll see there was a crowd of cops watching the beating and doing nothing. This goes back to Rodney King. It's a fact that police will not step in because their jobs are on the line for reporting abuse. If police aren't there to protect us, if reporting abuse is something cops are discouraged from doing, then what are they there for? It's not a question of good or bad cops, because the facts show us that there is a systematic code of silence."
Cops also mostly die from car accidents. They won't pull each other over for not wearing a seatbelt or not following traffic laws so they have don't bother doing either.
ooh, ticketing as a taxes for being poor, but I don’t have sources rn, there were some stories from small towns, were you get fined, then get fined for late paying fine etc.
Basically law forbids both the poor and the rich to steal bread. Incidentally not like cops would harass rich people over it.
More incidentally, rich people drug crimes get kinda rehabilitative justice of rehabs, whille poor people get fucked. Like who on wall st was arrested for cocaine dealing or using? :vivian-shrug:
Also “economic harm” of shoplifting vs wage stealing is not comparable, yet cops only pursue one of those
kind of a libertarian angle to take, but if the audience is the average white american who loves c*ps, it may be worth mentioning that response times are way too high for them to effectively "stop crime" as many suggest - double digits (minutes) in the best case and hours in the worst case - and somehow dropping over time despite increased spending. even if you don't think they're bad (which I'd say they are), they're not nearly as helpful/useful as many think.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/17/1149455678/why-data-from-15-cities-show-police-response-times-are-taking-longer
