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Originally Posted by ateamstupid
More straw-man arguments against things nobody said.
Don't talk to me like I'm five years old. Obviously we need the police and there are more good cops than bad ones. But the bad ones are doing more and more damage as time goes on because they are almost never held accountable when they harm and kill innocent people. Not to mention the increased firepower they're getting from all of our surplus Iraq/Afghanistan military toys. It's a very bad combination.
It sounds like you live in a bubble where you never have any interactions with hostile police, which is great, but for the rest of us out here, news like the story Jim posted is troubling as hell.
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Your exact quote was that "cops are rapidly devolving into an unaccountable paramilitary force". I think that is absurd. From the events we have had lately, I think it shows that the police need to be heavily armed and need to use more force, not less force. You saw the rioters burn down half of Ferguson. The police used way too much restraint there and they used way too much restraint here in Los Angeles. There weren't any buildings burned down here in Los Angeles but you had a small group of protesters running into traffic and shutting down freeways and inconveniencing a lot of people. Those protesters need to be arrested. They have the right to have a bonehead opinion but they have no right to inconvenience the rest of us (who also have an opinion on the case).
There are always going to be some bad cops. That is expected. There are bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad firemen, etc. That is reality. But just because there are some bad cops that hardly makes them "an unaccountable paramilitary force". Do you have any evidence that the police are using more force than they used to or that there is more police misconduct now than there was 20 years ago?
By the way, just because Al Sharpton says a cop acted improperly, doesn't make it so. Was there "no accountability in Ferguson"? Maybe according to you and Al Sharpton. But the vast amount of people in this country who heard the facts of the case thought there was total transparency and accountability. There was a full investigation and the vast majority of people including the DA, the FBI, and the grand jury found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Officer Wilson. I don't know if that case is one of your examples of police acting out of control. It it is, then your definition is different than the vast majorities of Americans. That doesn't mean that you are necessarily wrong and everybody else is right, but it means that there are different opinions out there and most people would disagree with your characterization of the police being out of control. You are certainly entitled to your opinion but you shouldn't expect me to agree with you.