Hatred of Cops and Support of Drug Legalization

[Savannahmann]

51. I'm for legalization, and against police lies and abuses.

Now, legalization of Marijuana for me would be meaningless. I'm allergic to it, and nothing could be so good as to cause me to risk days in ICU for the chance to enjoy it. Yet, I am in favor of legalization because I believe that the laws are wrong.

Now, to the Police part of the question. I take some things, and I hold them sacred. The way some people hold their wedding vows, or their children, or their parents. I hold ideals sacred in my heart and mind. One of those ideals is truth. If I say something happened, and I was there. It happened, and I was there. If I say it did not happen, well you get the point. I tell the truth when I say I am, and will.

My proposals to reform the police in the past have been as follows. First, polygraph testing every six months. Ask the cops a few simple questions. Have you abused anyone in the last six months. Have you seen anyone abused. Have you lied on your reports or in testimony, have you seen anyone lie. If you can't pass that test, you're not going to jail in my proposals. But you don't wear your badge and gun out of the test.

Second, body cameras on the cops. One of my interests is aviation, and finding out what happened and why it happened depends on information. More is better obviously. The Flight Data recorder and the voice recorder make it possible to reconstruct the events leading up to the accident as accurately as possible. It allows us to find out what happened, and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. I made a post suggesting this just a couple days ago for police.

We are told there are only a few bad apples, but that doesn't stand the test of even basic logic much less any other standard. Those bad apples do not operate in a vacuum. They have co-workers, fellow officers who write reports covering the misdeeds of those bad apples. If the police really were an organization dedicated to weeding out those bad cops, then the bad cops would be terrified of acting out for fear of exposure. Imagine a prospective bank robber who sees a half dozen cops standing around in the bank. He would be terrified of acting because he would be caught, or killed in seconds. The bad cops would be similarly fearful, but they aren't. They plant evidence, they lie, they fabricate confessions. No one says that none of that happened, they stand and nod their heads, supposedly in fear of retribution by the bad cops. So we are at least agreed that the bad cops are the majority in that scenario, because if they weren't, then they would be fearful of retribution.

We must break the cycle of the thin blue li(n)e. We must do so, because it is tearing our society apart. At one time, we might have been able to get the ball rolling by making small changes, but now, it is going to take major changes to even get the ball slowed down from the direction it is headed in.

So I am no fan of the police. Because I've seen their abuses, and it sickens me. The abuses happen so often as that it is "normal", and that is unacceptable. An example of that if you like.

Pepper spray was marketed as a less than lethal means of preventing an attack. The pain is so excruciating that the attacker would seek escape, instead of harming someone else. If a person is combative during an arrest, the police could use it to distract the person, and then take them into custody. It was never marketed as a punitive measure. We would not have allowed it to be produced and used if we were told that people would be sprayed with this chemical in punishment of some perceived slight. Yet, it is used as punishment.

This happened in 2012. It wasn't during the Bush years, so we can't blame Republicans. It didn't happen in some redneck haven in the South. It happened in Maine, one of the strongholds of Democratic Politics. So we have no one to blame but ourselves as Democrats.

The man was strapped to a chair, and sprayed with the Pepper spray. He was begging for forgiveness for his transgression, and promising to never do it again, and they didn't care. They wanted him to suffer. That is the dictionary definition of cruel and unusual punishment. If it is a State Prison, and I was the Governor, I would have pardoned the man ten minutes after viewing that abuse.

The system is completely broken. If we are to salvage any semblance of it, we must start with major changes now. If we don't, the reputation, the position of Police will become one of absolute disgust to a vast majority of our people, and chaos would reign. I don't want that, but we have to stop it now. We can no longer give the police the benefit of the doubt. We must hold them accountable for such barbarities. Because if we're going to allow pain to be given as a punishment by our judicial system, where do we stop? Public floggings? Do we bring back pillaries?

So yes, I am pro legalization, and yes I hate the actions of the police, and thus the police themselves. But I am not involved in any way with the drug culture. So what does this do to your theory or observations now?