August 24, 2014
By Mike Caccioppoli
Someone needs to tell me why cops have tasers. Are they for when a kid kicks them in the shin? Or maybe when a woman starts to argue about being pulled over for doing 66 in a 65. Is that what tasers are for? Heck I’m so old I can remember when there was no such thing as a taser. Only on Star Trek. You know, when their ray guns were set to “stun” instead of “kill.” Seems like the guys on the Starship Enterprise knew when to set their guns to either level. If only cops were as smart.
Or as courageous. I think I remember when cops had courage. Been a while though. Now when an “assailant” is 25 feet away with a knife, and that assailant is on crack or heroin or meth and can barely speak or move, it’s OK for a cop to shoot that person 15 times. Come on, you only do that if you want to kill someone. If you’ve just been waiting for your chance. Maybe that’s why you became a cop in the first place.
According to the police chief in St. Louis that kind of action is actually protocol these days. When a guy who is shaking and frail is within 20-25 feet with a knife, even a Swiss Army knife, he is considered to be “life threatening” to the officer. An officer who is armed with a baton, mace, taser, a bullet proof vest and a gun. I’m no hero but I wouldn’t consider that to be “life threatening” to myself…without all of that weaponry and armor. I would probably look to just knock the guy out when I got my chance. But if I were a cop I would opt for the safer route and just mace the guy. If he kept coming which is highly doubtful, I would go to the taser. End of story.
Now cops seem to shoot when someone yells “Boo.” Well especially if it’s a black guy yelling. If this is the case why do we even need cops? Any civilian can kill someone for little or no reason. Where does the training come in? With cops like these we might as well just have law of the jungle and kill each other. Who needs them? Who needs to pay them with our tax dollars? Hey, speaking of which why aren’t conservatives screaming about our socialist police department being out of control and over militarized? Why don’t they want our police force defunded like Obamacare? I mean I haven’t heard a word, a whisper, have you?
I digress. We call our cops “warriors” these days but I’ve never seen warriors so cowardly. Like when they shoot at a black woman in a car full of kids because she might have been breaking the speed limit. I mean how dangerous she is! Or when they beat a black woman into submission on the side of the road because she isn’t “obeying.” Or when they beat the crap out of the wrong guy and charge him with “bleeding on their uniforms”. That’s YOU Ferguson PD. Or when they choke a guy to death because he is selling cigarettes on the street. Or when they shoot an unarmed black kid six times because well..who knows.
I could write 100 paragraphs about the 21st century cop and how afraid they are to use their brains or fists or less lethal weapons because someone standing 25 feet away without a firearm is considered a “threat.” Example after example of police “overreach”, of escalation instead of a calming deescalation which is what they are paid to do. Escalation usually means homicide. Sometimes it’s tear gassing an entire crowd because one guy threw a bottle…of water. Once again I’m no hero but I will take the “water bottle challenge” and allow 20 cops to throw bottles of Evian at me and if I survive, all of those cowardly cops (and I don’t give a shit if they were under the command of Ron Johnson) that tear gassed pastors and woman and children, lose their jobs. How about THAT challenge?
I mean cops with helmets and shields and tanks and guns and mace and tasers and they gas an entire crowd because of thrown bottles? And yes there were many journalists who reported that it was only the bottles that got the the cops going…into their default escalation mode. What courageous officers of the law we are hiring! Yes WE are hiring and paying them which means WE can fire them? Right conservatives? I mean you guys would agree with that right?
So here is one of our modern day heroic cops. He continues his complaining and racist ways on twitter. I’m not going to get into all of the disgusting things he says about Eric Holder or the people he is supposed to be “protecting and serving.” I only have one question…why not find another job? I mean he hates being a cop so much, complains about everything he has to deal with so why not quit? Nobody is forcing him to be a cop, and nobody forced him to become a cop. It’s a lifestyle choice.
Our cops are also getting dumb and dumber. When you start to push, threaten and arrest journalists, point your weapons at them and have them overhear you bad mouthing protesters, you really can’t be too intelligent. I mean your I.Q. can’t be very high. Speaking of which, here is an example of what I’m talking about. It is indeed possible to be “too smart” to get hired as a cop in the USA. I’m guessing they don’t have these regulations in any other country. It takes a certain kind of dumb to actually lose the support of the mainstream media!
Then there is the cop who pushed CNN’s Don Lemon. How did this loser get hired in the first place? It’s not like he is able to hide his grotesque beliefs. Maybe it’s because the people who hired him have similar beliefs. These are some of the same cops who were enforcing those protest rules in Ferguson. Like walk but don’t stop. So the protesters couldn’t take a breath and stand in one place without getting harassed by the police. I don’t seem to find any clause in the First Amendment which says “Freedom of speech, except no standing still while exercising those freedoms.” Or “Freedom of the press but only in designated areas as assigned by local police.” Can you? If so send those clauses along to me please.
Where are all of those Second Amendment purists screaming and yelling about all of the First Amendment violations? I can’t seem to find them anywhere. They believe a group of white people protecting a rancher from having to pay taxes is “patriotic” but black people protesting the murder of an unarmed teenager is not. A German Journalist had to come to Ferguson to realize, as so many Americans are finally, at long last realizing, that the USA is not a free country. That all of those heroic soldiers really died for nothing, for shit. But hey, because of “freedom” right conservatives?
Speaking of Germany, police officers in that ENTIRE country shot off 85 bullets in a full YEAR. In the U.K. it was three shots, half of the number of bullets Mike Brown was hit with. In Iceland the first civilian ever was just killed by a cop. The entire country is in mourning. This is civilization, this is freedom, this is real law enforcement.
Maybe we need cops who aren’t afraid of their own shadows. We don’t need super heroes or anything, just people who aren’t 300 pounds, who can run or use their hands to protect themselves in situations where someone doesn’t have a gun. Where the training and the laws REQUIRE them to use the mace or the taser when the suspect has a knife or a bat and is 30 feet away. Cops who can disarm and apprehend without discharging their weapon 6-15 times. Maybe this is what we need.
By the way I love firemen. They put out fires, unlike the police, who ignite them.
Mike.Caccioppoli@yahoo.com
@CaccioppoliMike
Correction: I’m reminded by the loyal followers of DailyKos.com that the Star Trek weapons were known as Phasers not Tasers. If only our police forces had those instead.
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America The NOT SO Beautiful 
Well said, my friend
thanks
Pingback: WHEN DID COPS BECOME SUCH COWARDS? | Words From A Wicked Woman
Thank you
Reblogged this on Words From A Wicked Woman and commented:
I could not have written a better post myself. Thank you!
Finally! Thank You! I’ve been noticing this more and more in recent years. This whole “I feared for my life”, “officer safety is our first priority” crap is about more than we can bear. If your own personal safety is your first priority you should take off your badge and go work in a nice padded wall cubbyhole! If a child, a family pet, an unarmed teenager,or a fussy senior citizen can make you “feel for your life” you have less balls than a UPS driver, a bartender, a cab driver, or a home health aide – and the LAST thing you should have is a firearm on your hip!
I find your lack of understanding of law enforcement and the dedicated men and women who do a job that you don’t have the stones to do disturbing. When was the last time you kissed your wife good-bye before leaving for work, and hoped that you’d live to come home to her at the end of your work day? When was the last time you parked behind a car and worried that someone was going to jump out of it and shoot you? When was the last time you walked into a room and had to check behind the door to make sure someone wasn’t behind it ready to bash your skull? These are the daily fears of law enforcement officers, yet they suit up everyday and face them head on. They respond to horrific crime scenes and see the worst that mankind has to offer, Blood, guts, tears and despair. Once in awhile, they have to take a life, and I will tell you, of the officers I know that have had to do that, they are not gleeful about it. They regret that the situation escalated to that extreme, but they know they had to do it…there was no other choice. You mention that you would not feel threatened by a man with a knife if he were twenty feet away from you. Law enforcement training begs to differ with your opinion as a subject can cover that distance in two to three seconds. The likelihood that you would sustain injury, potentially life threatening, by not being at the ready with a weapon drawn, is 90%. I have worked the streets as a police officer, and I can tell you that the officers I served with were not perfect. They are human beings that make mistakes, but they have heart. They have dedication and above all, they have honor, which is a concept that escapes you. They serve with distinction going into the places people like you run out of screaming like little girls. I have had occasion to draw my weapon and aim it at another human being. Being 1/8th of an inch from killing a man is an uncomfortable feeling, but not as uncomfortable as being shot myself. I never had to shoot anyone during my career, and for that I am grateful, but I know that if I were forced to, I would have done it. I was going home to my family. I don’t know what has stirred your hatred for police officers in general, but it troubles me that you are ready to throw a blanket over an entire group of people, the majority of which would put their life on the line in the effort to save yours. Neither you or I were in Ferguson that fateful day, so we don’t know, first hand what actually happened. We have only hearsay evidence from YouTube videos and people who flock to news reporters to say they saw it all. We need to let the investigations run their courses, and stay clear of the racially charged reporting by the media. The initial news reports said that there was a struggle for the officer’s gun (which would, by the way, escalate to a deadly force situation), to reporting that a white cop shot an unarmed black teenager. If you want peace, if you want the people in that town to stop burning and looting, then be a voice of reason. You made mention of doing away with law enforcement. I invite you to do some research on how well that works in places like Somalia where organized law enforcement is no where near what it is here. I’m sure that you would be welcomed there with your ideals and completely safe from harm. I will admit that there are bad cops who do bad things, just like there are hack writers who convict people before any criminal act has been determined to have been committed. That’s the beauty of living in America the Beautiful. You have the right to be wrong.
Look cops are supposed to do good things..to do their jobs well. Too many bad apples now and if you don’t see this you are ignorant or blind. Also the “good” cops often turn their backs or straight out lie (blue wall of silence) when it comes to bad cops…this makes those cops just as bad.
Huge problem. No doubt. And only in this country by the way when you look at other civilized countries along side. Stats don’t lie…reality is reality.
You should be trying to solve the problem not yelling about how hard the gig is.
Screeds like the one above….from a person who clearly Doesn’t want to be protecting the writer or keeping order in a lawful society, but instead seem to want to beat the shit out of someone who dares question the attitude or tactics of the law enforcement people – whom WE trust to carry weapons, bestow the power of arrest and incarceration and undergo training in how to hurt people – makes Mikes column all the more timely and relevant. Ryan, you forget yourself sir. you work for us, not the other way round
I feel that I owe the author and MichiganChet and apology. It is painfully obvious to me now that my writing style is above your individual reading comprehension levels. The purpose of my reply was to enlighten the uneducated about the men and women who do a tough job and risk their lives to protect the public, even those who despise them. Are all cops good? No. Are most? Yes. Do you care? No. You are all too busy bashing them all based on the deeds or perceived deeds of a few. Not once did I say that I wanted to beat the shit out of anyone, however, I must admit, the idea is becoming more appealing the more I ponder the stupidity of the replies to my post. I DID say that officers like I work with would place themselves in danger in order to protect your lives if need be. I DID say that officers that I know that have had to take the life of another person did so as a last resort, and found it disturbing that things went that far. I DID say that if you preferred the idea of living in a place without law enforcement, try Somalia where the police force is scattered and poorly organized and about as close to your “why do we even need cops” scenario as you’ll find. If you are the victim of a crime, you will have no problem calling upon these men and women you so easily tear down to come to your aid. You will expect them to do their job, and they will, because they are professionals who have taken an oath. When they leave, you will sit back down and your computer, and blog about how you hate them. People like you do not deserve the sweat from their brows. I offered you insight, and I was met with insult. Well, gentlemen, I leave you with this. As much as I detest the idea of your idiocy, rest assured, if you ever pass through my bailiwick, and you find yourself in need of emergency services, I will see to it you get the help you need. I am a man of honor. I take my job and duty seriously. You may now return to your shallow existence of building yourself up by tearing others down.
You still work for us Ryan, so you might want to consider a serious attitude adjustment.
The last time I checked, no where in the job description of a police officer was there a clause that says they must bow to the idiot thugs they serve. Remember they do work for you. There job, however, is NOT to allow the safety of themselves or others to be jeopardized by the ever increasing amounts of violent thuggery! Let someone come into YOUR workplace wielding a weapon and then check your response. My guess is you be too busy wetting yourselves or singing kum-by-ya and hoping the punk in front of you will see the error of his ways whilst someone else is on the phone calling 911 pleading for help. Guess who will show up to protect and serve?
The cop is supposed to see the person as a human..a civilian..not a thug cause they are black. I notice your type wont call white people with guns threatening to kill cops at bundy ranch thugs. You are an ignorant hypocrite..more nonsense from dumb America.
I tried to play nice and offer insight about the job that those on the outside may not think about. I agreed that there are bad cops that do bad things, but simply asked that rather than buy into the racially charged sound bytes from CNN, etc., that we wait and see how the investigations came out. What do I get from you? “You’re ignorant.”, “…consider a serious attitude adjustment.” and “you work for us, not the other way around.” Let me explain something to you right now, and get it through your thick skulls. Yes, I am a government employee charged with public safety duties, but I am not, nor will I ever be yours or anyone else’s whipping boy to be talked down to, especially by the likes of you! In my career, I have saved lives and that is a fact. I’ve spent over 20 years in public service, and even volunteer time in other service areas. Tomorrow when I go to work, there is a chance that I may save another person’s life. What might you accomplish? Another hateful blog?
I see so a guy with a gun equals a job well done. A guy who writes..a writer equals shit according to you. Mentality understood and not surprising at all.
Hemingway was a writer. You, sir, are an internet hack with a blog. Do not confuse the two.
And modern day cops are just paid bullies and thugs..
You wound me so with your razor sharp wit, and masterful command of the English language. I’ve seen better writing on bathroom walls.
Every single day I read about a cop who used excessive force or was caught stealing or beat the shit out of his wife or raped several women or beat a homeless man while off duty, etc, etc, etc. Every. Single. Day. WHY? If cops are so brave and honest and heroic, why are so many of them doing these things? Cops wield too much authority and it goes to their heads! That’s the problem. They’re cocky, abusive, dishonest, distrustful assholes! You can say that most are not but the fact is that ALL of them know cops that ARE and they say NOTHING! They protect them. That makes them part of the problem! And it’s why ALL cops get the wrap of being bad cops.
In 2008, it was estimated that there were some 765,000 full time sworn officers, plus an additional 44,000 part time officers, for an estimated total of city/state/county officers of around 809,000. If you have a new story everyday for a year about a police officer accused of misconduct heinous enough to be national news, which I doubt, but for your argument I will allow it, that means .00045 of the total number of officers in this country is being accused of that kind of misconduct daily. I hardly think that number is significant enough to start saying that all police are abusive, cocky, etc. But you go ahead, bash everyone. Don’t you dare call them if you hear a prowler, or crash your car. They’d probably just beat you or steal from you anyway.
Correction, .00045% of the force is annually being reported for misconduct worthy of national media attention.
Selective reading? Do you lack reading comprehension? You must have missed this part of my comment –> “You can say that most are not but the fact is that ALL of them know cops that ARE and they say NOTHING! They protect them. That makes them part of the problem! And it’s why ALL cops get the wrap of being bad cops.”
It is a SYSTEMIC problem that needs addressing. Again, even if cops themselves are not being abusive or misusing their authority, they KNOW cops that are and don’t do ANYTHING about it! And I haven’t even mentioned why we need organizations like The Innocence Project, the ACLU, or even Internal Affairs within the police departments themselves! You are fucking naïve to think that police misconduct is not a problem. Please pass the pipe! I’d like to be as high as you are so that I can avoid reality, too!
You hit every point in this article that I’ve been tearing my hair out over regarding the ridiculous suspension of First Amendment rights in Ferguson and the subsequent unsubstantiated arrests. (It’s like you’re me, but a better writer). In fact, I just referenced in a post last week the story of they guy who couldn’t be a LEO because his IQ was too high. Only one thing was missed. Although Missouri is an open carry state, when black protestors had guns, they were immediately considered criminals and the weapons were confiscated and showed off like it was a huge military coup. When the angry Darren Wilson supporters where making BBQ, listening to country music and selling t-shirts with their guns on their hips and their assault rifles in the bags at their feet, there were police there… no tanks, no tear gas, etc., and no confiscation of the
wilson supporter weapons (which were then laid out for CNN to video and release to the world). The bias was clear, and just as clearly accepted by the various police departments and many politicians. Even Holder. He should have made a public statement about the assult on the people of Ferguson and the First Amendment rights of everyone in the country. Ol’ Cap’n Ron was just as bad as the rest of them in his agressive police actions against the citizens of the community. Bottom line…he was a company puppet pushed out front to manipulate the locals. I heard a reporter with a British accent ask him at one of his 2am pressers when he was going to give the people back their right to assembly, and he got visibly angry and abruptly walked away stating over his shoulder that he was allowing people to stop for a few minutes. Hey Ron, you don’t give people that right. The Constitution does that.
Thanks for writing this article. It’s about time somebody did.
I will type slowly because I know y’all don’t read very fast. Not once have I denied that bad cops exist. Internal Affairs investigators exist to investigate all complaints lodged against officers, of which the majority are filed in retaliation for being arrested and are bogus. I know you won’t believe this, because all cops lie, but I have never seen a fellow officer go over the line. Does it happen? Yes. I’m not stupid. I just know that I’ve not seen it, and I do not believe it to be as prevalent as you haters want to make people believe. I have repeatedly asked that you not judge every officer as being bad based on the actions or the perceived actions of a few, just like you do not judge all doctors based on the number of malpractice suits filed. I guess that is too much to ask from a group of people that is as self righteous as you all are.
If you’re really a LEO (which I doubt) your comments here show your lack of critical thinking skills and your obvious bias, narcissism and lack of personal insight. These are the worst qualities a law enforcement officer can have, yet so many seem to have them. You don’t “save lives”, you’re not a surgeon or in cancer research. Many people have professions that help people. For you to assume you’re the only one in a helping profession is arrogance. The only “hater” I see here is you.
I am medically retired from law enforcement due to a knee injury, but rest assured, I have worked the streets as an officer, graduated from a law enforcement academy, been a certified instructor, chemical test operator and now work in emergency communications. In my road career, I pulled injured people from crumpled cars, did CPR until EMS arrived, arrested drunk drivers before they had the chance to make that fatal swerve into the path of an oncoming car, and used the critical thinking you believe I lack to not shoot a man who had beaten his wife nearly to death and wanted me to kill him. I dare say, I have done more critical thinking in three seconds than you have done in three months. When was the last time you attended the funeral of a co-worker who was murdered simply because they did the same job as you? I have done that. In April, 1999, a State Trooper and I were standing next to our cars when dispatch came across about an officer involved shooting, the suspect vehicle was southbound on a highway that runs through our county. As we get into our cars, they update us, saying the vehicle is southbound from a town over 100 miles away. Later, I learned that the officer that had been shot died. He was a Trooper who was in the same recruit class as the Trooper I was talking to that night. He had been a Trooper for three months. On down the road, I learned that the shooter had rigged a switch on his tail lights, so he could turn them off at will. He wanted to kill a cop, any cop. He accomplished his goal. When your job throws those kinds of things at you everyday for twenty or more years, then you talk to me about critical thinking and narcissism, etc. Until then, do not judge (all) what you do not understand.
See? You don’t know a thing about me or my education and you brag (narcissism) and insult strangers. Everyone has stories. So glad you’re not out on the job anymore.
You are correct, I know nothing about you or your education, but from your replies, it is evident that you have little understanding of law enforcement of those who do the job. I offered some background into that for the readers of this blog, and was met with insult time after time. I find it humorous that you doubt my background, and when I offer anecdotal evidence to back up my claim, it is seen as bragging. Yes, you twit, my not killing a man who repeatedly told me that he wanted me to shoot him, and attending the funeral of an officer who was murdered simply because he wore a badge is very much me bragging. I asked that first, we not rush to judgement of the officer in Ferguson, as NONE of us were there. Let the investigations run their courses and then rejoice or be upset with the results. Next, I asked that not all officers be lumped in with those who do cross the line. The number of good, honest cops far outnumber the bad, but no, that’s asking too much of you all. Lastly, I asked that given your apparent lack of understanding of what officers face daily, between seeing the crap mankind does to each other to worrying about what mankind wants to do to them, that you not judge what you do not understand. By that, I meant what you may see as narcissism or what have you is part of a self preservation mechanism. With what officers see as a group; what mankind does to each other, and being concerned with what mankind may want to do to them, unless you have been there day in and day out, you cannot understand it. They deal with it each day when they go to work, wondering if they’re going home, wondering if the person in the car they stopped for no tail lights has a person in it who wants to kill them, seeing children who have been victims of crime, and in the faces of those beaten and broken little ones, seeing the face of their own child, but holding back tears because they must remain strong. It weighs on them, and they may appear somewhat as you describe them, but that is not accurate. They care, and they give, but never enough for you. With your willingness to judge all cops, I’m going to assume that you do not go to doctors because some estimates say that medical malpractice claims some 98,000 lives a year. All doctors must be incompetent boobs with a license to kill! Your logic fails, but don’t let that get in the way of a good old fashioned name calling session.
you are not a hero, you did not save lives, your ignorance and ego has made you believe this, think about what you said, you pulled over a drunk who may or may not have has a accident, so does that make every person whose taken the keys from a friend a hero? you pulled someone out of a car, as have i, as have many others, all heros? you decided NOT to kill someone, you saint, these ‘hero’ examples of great times in your great career is what we normal people or ‘civilians’ as you know us call being a decent person, you shouldnt jump and praise yourself for doing what any normal person would do, this is the problem these people are trying to explain to you, your mind is twisted and corrupt from being a good little sheep too long, think about if you want but i doubt you can free your mind at this point, let me just ask, did you ever see a fellow cop do something wrong? did you report it? your a pawn, nothing more
Because of your personality disorders, you don’t process information in a functional way, and you have no insight into your disability. Why don’t you go to the local Starbucks and join your fellow phantom officers at the place where they really hang out when they’re not in their cars driving around aimlessly between calls to take traffic accident reports. You’re really a drama queen. Get some help.
Again with the personal attacks, and I am the one with a disorder? I give up. You win. All cops are bad, beat and shoot black people at random, and I’ve never been a cop…matter of fact, I’ve never even seen a police car up close.
Yes. You are the one with multiple disorders. If you think all cops are bad, that’s your problem. I never said that. I’m white suburbia. Never see them. Thank god.
No, screw that, and screw you! You and your insanity are what is wrong with this country! Our justice system is set up so that man, any man, is innocent until proven guilty. Now, I know your bleeding heart is going to scream about the unarmed child shot by the racist cop, and all of that, but hear me now, and listen good. There is just as much TV evidence to support the scenario that the officer was acting in self defense when he shot the sainted choir boy who didn’t strong arm rob a convenience store even though it was caught on tape! The mope went for the cops gun. Law enforcement training when I went to the academy in the early 90’s when I graduated and still today is the same in that area. If you are trying to take my gun, you are trying to take my life, and that is a deadly force issue. I have tried to play nice, here in the sand box, but alas, I think it’s time I act as a cat and bury you turds and walk away. You have no desire to see cops as anything but evil, uncaring, bigoted robots and after wasting my time trying to change that perception, I have no desire but to see you as stupid pieces of shit that steal oxygen from those who really deserve it.
Really showing your true colors now, aren’t you? Get help. You’re a nutcase. A bully. The kind of person who should never be in law enforcement. The kind of person that shoots people for no reason. I won’t be engaging with you again, so rant away. No one will be here to read it.
You’re so nuts, Planters is thinking of replacing Mr. Peanut with your picture! You push me until I’m not nice, and not nice on the Internet equates to homicidal. Now who is being a drama queen? Go color a picture for Nurse Ratchet and quit bothering people, okay? Thanks.