Justice Department tells Ferguson police to stop wearing bracelets

[gollygee]

32. What if they wore a bracelet that said

"I like to kill black people."

The issue isn't the bracelet, it's what is on it. The message is threatening to African Americans, which means a majority of people living in Ferguson, whom the police officers should not be making feel more threatened than they already feel.

You think it's a violation of free speech for someone to tell them how completely inappropriate it is? Their uniform is to wear what they're told to wear and to not wear anything that distracts from or interferes with their job. My kid in school doesn't get to wear whatever she wants, and if she wore a bracelet that said, "I am (name of someone who killed a teacher)" she'd be told to take off the damn bracelet.

I can't believe people a) see this as a free speech issue - it's a police officer's uniform, and they don't get free speech in regard to clothing when they're in uniform (or even complete free speech in general - lots of regulation over how they talk to people when on duty); and b) don't see how horribly inappropriate and insensitive these bracelets are. They're supposed to be serving and protecting the public. The public is freaking out about a member of their community getting shot, and they're visibly saying, "Yeah I would have done the same thing" when they don't have enough information about the case to know he didn't just shoot Michael Brown even just for sport.