No Reasonable Purpose other than the Self Serving

Q: Anyone reading here know the difference between a hero and a terrorist?

A: You can negotiate with a terrorist.

And who define themselves and are presented as "heros" in our culture?

People with guns. 

Think about it. Every day, farmers, commercial fisherman, roofing contractors risk their lives to put food on your table and keep the rain off of your head. And often they do it for a lot less money than a police officer gets paid (well, maybe not with Alaska fisherman... they seem to do very well).

Anybody ever hear of a government agency lowering their flags to half staff because a roof repair worker fell off of a roof in an effort to keep a family dry?  Or a commercial fisherman drowned or farmer hacked up by his tractor in an effort to keep you food on the table of the Average American?

Of course not. These people are doing these jobs for their own self interests and accepting the risks associated. The same thing that police officers and firemen are doing - yet even though police and fire public servants have much safer jobs somewhere along the line someone needed a hero and - Viola!

Our Hero.

They get paid every friday, have more vacation, sick, and holiday time than fisherman, roofers, or farmers... but somehow "we" owe "them" our gratitude for their "service".  Bullsh#!. Every payday I am square with the farmer, the roofer, the fisherman, and the police officer. I owe them nothing more, and the first 3 owe me nothing more, but that is not true of a police officer. He does owe me something. We entrust him with powers of arrest and death for the sole purpose of maintaining order not for the purpose of extracting and extorting money from the citizenry. Yet that is precisely what the job of police officer has become for the majority of an officer's time while on duty.

Look in the file of any local police officer. How many arrests for violent crime or serious property crime versus how many traffic citations? They are not here to maintain order. They are here to extort money. What was (if it ever was) "serve and protect" has become "cite and collect". Just try and do an outside "time motion study" of a police department. Just try. We can't even get an accurate count of the number of people killed by the police. And that is not an accident.

You doubt this? California is home to 1 in 8 Americans. Yet most of California's killings by police are not reported to the FBI!! Here, read it and weep. Or be disgusted. Or sick. I am. The Copely decision (here is a link to a copy of that disaster) is just one more incestuous back scratch between the police, prosecutors, and the prosecutors' future job in the judiciary.  Yet police will claim that only 400 people per year are killed by local Law Enforcement Officers across the U.S. in any given year. This is a national disgrace.

The crazy thing is that violent crime is in absolute free fall across the U.S. It is unfortunate that the writer of this article can't (or won't) get his facts completely straight. The ONLY number that matter is the per capita rate. He uses this initially, and then moves over to absolute numbers for his percentage declines. For example, while all rapes are down 35%, since 1970 rapes per capita are down 90%!!

So what the heck is up with ever increasing police budgets? Part of it is the Federal effort to support the economy out in "fly over land" (the U.S. between New York and California). Part of it is to provide jobs for veterans returning from war with little to no skills - but they can carry a gun or a stretcher. Never mind that these people are willing to kill their fellow man and to put human beings in cages for decades over a non-violent "crime" and that the U.S.  has the largest prison population in the history of mankind... never mind that they don't know the difference between Malum en Se and Malum Prohibido.... challenging this system has, so far, been an effort in futility. And challenging our "heros' will be met with derision, ad hominem attacks, vitriol, and rage. Well, given the police use of steroids this should not be unexpected. (Does any one out there, besides me that is, have a problem with enforcers of our drug laws using illegal drugs?)

And is it any surprise that the kind of person that wants to carry a gun for a living and is willing to use force is more likely to use steroids than say, lawyers or doctors? You tell me.

But the internet changes everything. We have data, or proof of the lack thereof, at our finger tips. The U.S. needs far better management of far fewer Law Enforcement officials. We will all be safer for it.