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Comment by hollandheese | Hacker News Reader

The police (FBI and ICE included) are never your friends. They work to protect the rich and powerful and not us.

They work to protect the government. Now, for peasants there isn't much of a distinction, but the rich and powerful would do well to remember it.

Cynical responses like this are meant to make the speaker sound smart, but actually what you're doing is making further tyranny more likely, because you're deliberately overlooking that-- whatever the existing problems with the FBI-- there is a significant difference between their behavior now and their behavior before.

Not even bothering to run the established investigation playbook when law enforcement kills a civilian is a major departure, and one worth noticing. But if all you do is go "same old same old", then you can safely lean back in your chair and do nothing as the problem worsens, while calling yourself so much smarter and more insightful than the people around you.

Furthermore, going back as far as I remember, if you take part in a protest the police personally disagree with they will use violence against you regardless of your occupation.

I would disagree to a certain extent. "Law enforcement is not your friend" is a good mindset as a citizen. You should never hand them information without a lawyer and you should always push for oversight.

I agree that the "same at it ever was and always will be" attitude isn't great. It's defeatist and I choose not to live my life that way, even if it would be much easier mentally.

I think part of the reason I see this attitude so often is that, especially since 9/11, a large portion of the US population has decided that the police and military are infallible and should be trusted completely, so any large-scale attempt at reform runs into these unwavering supporters (and, in the case of the police, their unions).

I don't agree law enforcement is not the problem. Its the people in the system that are making these problems worse. You start blaming systems and then its a catch all that does nothing.

I won't disagree that the people inside the system are making it worse but the system is currently setup to incentivize bad behavior.

- Overly broad qualified immunity

- The power of the police unions

- Lawsuit settlements coming out of public funds

- Collusion between prosecutors' and the police

These are all issues that need to be resolved to restore the sanity in policing.

At the federal level, the FBI needs to be reigned in...somehow. They all to often work outside the bounds of their defined role and powers. This isn't a new problem and one could argue it has been an issue since the beginning.

agreed. I dont think bringing down our institutions is the result we are looking for though, that's only going to create more corruption.

cmon man seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter?wprov=...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/newb...

The only significant difference is that law enforcement is treating white people the way they've always treated everyone else. Which is a difference in degree, but not character.

They've always treated white nationalists and other weirdos like this. I mean, the whole "any infraction is a grounds for execution" ROE is very reminiscent of Ruby Ridge, for example.

But the kind of white people we have here have never really had anything in common with those people so now that the Feds are coming after people of the sort of political persuasion they identify with for the first time since, the 1970s it "feels" like they're just now going after white people.

I guess nothing matters and there's no point to expecting any sort of justice from the system. And at least now I can laugh at those other people being hurt. (</s>)

Considerable amount of cops are white nationalists themselves.

Back in the 1980s we had jokes about the KKK being a barbecue club for law enforcement. The punchline of the joke invariably hinges on the ambiguity as to whether they're there on the job as informants or "organically".

ICE just hired 12000 Ruby Ridge types as their untrained SA brownshirts. It is inevitable that they have no understanding of basic civics and rage against lawful protestors they see as the enemy.

The irony is that Ruby Ridge and Waco were big rallying points for the “patriot” right when it was precisely this mentality that led to those events.

Now a lot of those same patriot right types are cheering this on if not enlisting.

By before, what do you mean? COINTELPRO?

This is exactly my point. Yes, COINTELPRO was really bad. But it was intelligence and disruption, they weren't executing people on the street and then bragging about how they'd get away with it. Do you not see the difference?

They drugged and executed Fred Hampton and no one suffered any consequences for that as far as I know.

COINTELPRO included assassinations. They kind of didn't stop there either.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170201130225/http://www.nytime...

Nothing cynical, that’s just the truth. They’re called law enforcement for a reason, not emergency hugs.

Whether they behave like civilized people or like thugs should be besides the point regardless of your political leaning in the matter of the system. Naturally from a basic human perspective civilized law enforcement is much more preferable than the alternative, but they aren’t your friends!

Software engineers are definitely among the class of people protected by the police

There is no protected class from malevolent government. Everyone from oligarchs down to the have nots can be targets. Let's not keep relearning that lesson.

Depends on the race of the engineer. If you're gay or live in a blue city/state then you also lose your protection

Sorta, if you live in a blue city—so really just a city at this point-then it wraps around a small amount and your local police are, at least when it comes to this crap, largely on your side. ICE is making huge messes and leaving it to the local PD to clean it up which is not exactly endearing. Nobody likes when a bunch of people come in and start pissing in your Cheerios. Especially when those Cheerios are "rebuilding trust with your local community."

911 informs the cops of your sexual preferences when they dispatch them?

Have any of you tried talking to a police officer in real life? If you're just polite to them they treat you like they're your private protection force.

Moreso in blue cities, I have no idea what point you're making there other than crime you've seen on TV is scary.

It’s conditional on whether you are affirming the opinions of your employer or oppositional

Engineers are just workers

I'll be sure to bring my mechanical keyboard and secondary vertical monitor out in public so they'll know I'm one of the good ones.

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