FTP -- Authority and America

pmills

pmills

Active member
The following clip is from CNN Rick Sanchez on a variety of police violence, and corruption resulting in teenage jailing.

Now i know i've seen a number of stories on NS that exhibit the differences between Gen Y and the authority figures of our society, be it skateboarder vs cop video, "don't taze me bro", or someone's random post about their weekend escapades. Typically i've thought that most of the stories involved dumb people across the board; the cops overtly aggressive, the perpetrators super disrespectful, and nobody wins.

a few things on my mind

Who's profiting off this situation? (obviously the private correctional facilities are doing well enough to throw a few mil in kick backs, but in the long run are they really making out better?)

Why is our law enforcement such a failure?

What's it going to take to change the status-quo?

maybe it's this is all a bit much for NS, especially NSG, but at least contemplate a few more things;

What's it take for you to respect a law you think is unjust?

How far can you go before you disregard the law all together?

What sort of action would you partake in to instantiate change? -- If we ever have to break to the streets and riot, who'll be there?

 
lol i love how you take the opportunity to rip on business.

the one area i say we do need to figure out what the hell we are doing is the drug imprisonments. ide also say we can do a better job of making the distinction between criminals that need jail vs criminals that would be better served by actually doing something. (ie WORK) bring back the chain gangs?
 
please don't project views on to me, i didn't have any intent on ripping on business in general, only quoted the video where the private guys are throwing $$ to judges to get kids in their institutions so they can continue to receive funding for high head counts, admit that's fucked up.

Why does prison need to be privatized anyways, to me that's begging for a conflict of interest, civic laws, civic enforcement, civic punishment. Obviously government is far from the grips of corruption, but at least the public (in theory) has control over elected officials right?

Drug laws are a huge problem, so many of our prisoners are non-violent drug offenders, but to me it's more like the tip of the iceberg. For one, I don't understand why we've still got capital punishment, regardless of the ethics of it, i suspect it's existence plays some role in the psyche of our society. (this is just a side note i'm hesitant to bring up, please don't construe this as a main point, it's simply one example of a main difference between our system and that of most other civilized countries.)

 
Perhaps I will be different then most of the NS suburbanites who respond to this in my experiences with policing and how it has coloured my perception of it. I grew up the son of a Police Officer and strongly considered going into the same field. I also currently work in a security role, where I am empowered to, and do make arrests.

First off all though, with regards to the stories shown in that CNN clip, I think it is important that they are released and that the officers are severely dealt with. There is no excuse for that level of violence in detaining a subject, save if the person is attacking with a weapon or if the officer truly thinks their life may be in danger. In those situations I think force is justified and should be used. When situations like the one with the girl occur it negatively effects all police officers across the country and authority in general, that is why it is important that the officer be made an example of and quickly. If that is done then perhaps the public will be able to maintain some sort of belief in the police and their important role and not cry wolf over every time force is used. If the officer is dealt with and does suffer charges then perhaps the damage caused can be limited. Just like every field in the world there will be bad employees, and unfortunately policing can attract power hungry asshats. They need to be discovered and removed.

What bothers me though is how the police are almost always painted in a negative light. The main reason I have not gone into policing is the public dislike and disrespect. Their job is not only incredibly important, it is incredibly difficult and they are never recognised for it. Videos like these will only reduce the limited respect officers have and do irreparable damage their relationship with the public. Their job is an important one, without them Americans would not be able to live anywhere near the life they do, and most of the affluent NS’ers would have been repeatedly robbed, raped and murdered. Think anarchy works? Try talking to someone who has lived in situations near it, lived in a warzone etc. (I have—not lived there—but spoken with people from situations like that)

 
^Amen.

I think Police Brutality as Plane Crashes. Now once you see a Plane Crash on the news, people become scared to fly. Little do they know that these are rare incidents and flying shouldn't be bastardized as a hole because a Plane sucked in a few birds en route to Hawaii.

I know we trust these people to keep us all safe, and for the most part they do. But just because one day a Cop gets called a Pig once too many and snaps doesn't mean that the entire Police Force is corrupt and in essence, a failure. The great thing about America is we can wipe out the Police who step over the proverbial line. But just because you saw on CNN that some Cop was beating up a Black guy, don't over-react when you get pulled over for doing 50 in a 35.
 
appreciate the response;

something to chew on, although i agree a majority of the good police do is overlooked, perhaps the underlying factor is the amount of ridiculous laws that the police have to enforce. Going from this, i think the police have a responsibility to enforce laws with good discretion (what came to my mind was a cop that was sitting around on campus giving tickets to longboarders going to class because they were on the road)

it's tough, you don't want to shoot the messenger and in this case the cops are just doing their jobs. But it's situations like this that piss you off, even when you're not effected, and it sticks out in your mind.
 
my apologies, i was on a computer where i could not see the video, only read the text. i misinterpreted your opening post.

i agree that institutions should for the most part stay in government hands..

admit it though its an equally fucked up situation when the government just throws money at the problem (even if it is off to private operations) when they are doing a shitty job of re integrating people back into society. (funding by head counts is how everything in the government works)

(capital punishment, ive been there, debated that and we dont need to go there in this thread. if you want to plead your case, ide be happy to PM exchange with you)

what do you think about faith based groups doing work in prison? not one specific religion, but the whole idea of answering to a higher power, living by a set code, etc. can make someone get this shit together fast.
 
Well here the cops are not mandated to give tickets for those kind of things, the laws exist but it is at the officers discretion to give a ticket. In that kind of situation it would be rare for the cop to give tickets for such a minor offence, a good example here is public urination. It is a $310 ticket which I have seen handed out, however, everytime has been because the guy was being a fuckhead and deserved something (even my friend when he got one, he tried to run and pissed on the cop car when they caught him).
 
so my initial reaction to prison work at this point in time was a no, thinking that if we're going to be supplying jobs to people, we ought to be paying them for it, and the workers ought to be free Americans.

i also thought about the problems of reliability with work backed on prisoners. If a prisoner has the responsibility to build a widget** that can effect peoples lives, and the prisoner figures out a way to compromise the widget, he can have a pretty big effect on the community he's supposedly isolated from.

but it all comes down to what's being built, i think i saw it was Arizona who last used prison labor, and i think their projects were contained within the system -- something like the prisoners were building more prisons but i don't really remember. I guess i don't even care whether it's faith based or not, i think we probably could do a good job making them figure out how to live sustainably. Make them figure out how to grow enough food, generate enough power. If we need a testing ground for all this new obama(tec)nology give it to the prisons. (this is a pretty virgin idea, i really havent thought it out, but i like it for now)

I think i see you're aproach; give them a religion, give them a way to get back on track, save their lives, etc. But I think about Malcom X, it's not like you're just turning people into sheep by giving them religion, people can turn it into power. I'm not saying that Malcom X was bad, just that he was very influential. And even though i'm not condemning him, he did take a militeristic aproach, had i not agreed with his ends, he could have been a bad guy.

Putting it all together, if you can get the prisoners to do some work that's benificial to us, and doesn't involve a whole lot of risk to the public, i'm probably for it. I don't think religion is necessary, i understand the benifits it potentially has, and I think it may be partially seeding problems for the future, but i don't think my objections to it are serious enough for me to remove it from the table. Given better information about the ideas involved, i'd have a better opinion on it, as it stands i feel like my understanding of the situation is pretty weak.

**widget as the terminology we used in primary school math class for imagninary products
 
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