The police officers are trained to provide CPR and have defibrillators in their cars, of course. (The reason they don't just dispatch paramedics because the police can often be there faster, either because they have more units or simply happen to be closer.)
That isn't to say violence against Fire/EMS isn't an issue, but the idea that we need cops on every call just in case it's an ambush is silly. One of my first priorities on a scene where there are cops present is to clear the cops as quickly as possible. Nine times out of ten if a cop is going to get involved in something, they're going to escalate things, not cool them down.
Some members of <group X> did <bad thing Y>. Therefore all members of <group X> are bad.
We don’t tolerate when it group X is a racial group or when it’s a religious group, but otherwise intelligent and reasonable people seem to give zero care when group X is cops. It’s weird to me.
You might want to wonder then if those intelligent and reasonable people might have knowledge or experiences they're basing these things off of that you don't have direct access to.
It's not prejudice if it's not pre. For me I didn't come to truly hate all police until I had accumulated years of experience of their violence and dishonesty across so many different jurisdictions and even countries that I realized it really is a problem with the system itself rather than any specific individual within it.
ACAB doesn't mean only bad people become police, it means you must become bad to remain police. Well-meaning people join all the time and they either leave, are forced out, or get in line and start covering for the really heinous shit.
The difference is the geography - when police are used as a “follow every guideline some bullshit group of representatives set forth” enforcer, they tend to be bullshit. When they’re used as a “make sure people are being reasonable” force, they tend to be reasonable as well.
It’s up to the people in the jurisdiction to elect a chief who matches their viewpoint. And it’s up to the individual living in that jurisdiction to choose an area that matches the enforcement they’d like to see.
A less nice way to put this is "all you jerks around here who want to live in some nice urban area/suburb need to come to terms with the fact that this will require using police and state violence or the threat thereof to enforce the kind of conformity that requires."
(Spoiler alert, it resulted in a massive uptick in the Black death rate)
The chief of police is rarely an elected position (in most US jurisdictions). Sheriffs are typically elected, but that's an outlier in terms of law enforcement leadership positions.
> And it’s up to the individual living in that jurisdiction to choose an area that matches the enforcement they’d like to see.
It seems likely you have a pretty narrow view on the world if you think everyone (or even the majority of folks) have the resources to choose where they live based on that criteria.
And I’ve always seen the top officer on the ballot.
My experience is limited to the US, but in most US jurisdictions, the police chief works for the local municipal government and goes through the same hiring process as any other city/town employee.
In my experience, heads of policing candidates each put their “mission statement” and intended enforcement levels in an essay/Q&A hosted online by the local news. The community can read through the statements and choose the policing they feel most appropriate for their situation. If communities have chosen levels I don’t like, I respect their ability to do so - and live elsewhere.
If your community doesn’t have elected control over their police, and you want it to - I suggest you live elsewhere. Oregon is lovely this time of year.
And...maybe people are "born" cops? What if some people are born with ultra high points on "law and order", and they disproportionately become cops through their genetics?
You missed a second clause there... Some members of <group X> did <bad thing Y>. The remaining members of <group X> have failed to hold those members accountable (and in most cases work to actively cover up their misdeeds). Therefore all members of <group X> are bad.
You might be referring to JshWright’s logic not mine.
But if you're going to e.g. help a heart attack victim, I think it's reasonable to ask officers to leave their guns in their car, just as a doctor wouldn't bring a gun. I'd expect exceedingly few officers to be killed as a result.
I’d wager any “blue lives matter” folks would change their mind when presented with urban officers, and on the flip side all “ACAB” people would flip when dealing with rural enforcement.
Unless they have brown skin
In many areas getting pulled over for DWB is a real phenomenon
Before you made the above comment, I had my default small but nonzero belief you were portraying your experience accurately and the same for your source. Thus, multiplied together, the information carried little (but still nonzero!) weight. This isn’t me being difficult, it’s quite literally the at the core of any reasonable legal system.
After you made this comment, willfully and egregiously misrepresenting what I said for the sake of… I don’t know what… I hold zero belief that you accurately and honestly represent underlying facts in arguments — meaning this thread has reached its natural conclusion. Cheers, have a good day.
It seems weird to me how there's a group a people who seem to think the police can do no wrong and are infallible yet shit keeps happening. The police are definitely racist and its more common than you would apparently like to admit
https://knock-la.com/lasd-gangs-little-devils-wayside-whitie...
i wish i could downvote this 100 times, because its just so absent of any factual basis. i live in rural oregon and regularly have to defend my neighbors from the police. the year i moved to my home in rural oregon a young child ~7 yo was accosted on my driveway on july 4th by local police for riding their bike down the street. my wife cried, i had to go out and talk to the police. when disrupted, they provided no explanation for why they had pulled the child over for questioning on my driveway (bringing said child to tears obviously), they let him go while i was arguing with them that they had no reason to accost this child. (they were never able to come up with a reason that this particular asian child was not allowed to ride his bike on a road where many white children had been riding all day)
i moved to rural oregon coming from downtown portland after tear gas was pouring into my 12th floor window during that 2020 protests. this wasnt citizens deploying tear gas downtown, this was police. 12th floor of a high rise in downtown SW Portland. this was in May of 2020 before it got much worse. the policing here in rural oregon is not much better but more infrequent, this does not represent a better police force, but a more lackadaisical one with less accountability.
the idea that rural police are actually more inclined to police their jurisdiction properly is pure hogwash, invented by people who dont interact with those outside the "standard social sphere" and see no problem with outcasting others. sure in rural oregon where you dont know anyone who isnt white, it might seem like the police are just hunky dory; but bring anyone else into the equation and you see very quickly who is and isnt held the the absolute law, and who is and isnt hunted down by those rural police and treated as a criminal despite actions and age. your comment speaks to your incredible ignorance of what many people go through, even in the rural areas of this state.
reminder: oregon is a state that outlawed slavery, not because of the human rights violations, but because it would mean that black people were allowed in the state! please be serious when talking about how utterly depraved the state of oregon is when it comes to treating all people with their basic human rights.