[Bojangles]

Originally Posted by purist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

^ Hey, knuckle-dragging retard, nobody gives a shit about your opinion.

Obviously you do or you wouldn't have responded to my opinion. It is OK, I realize you lack the intellectual chops to hang with the big dogs but your ego won't let you admit it to anyone. Just fade quietly away and no one will think the worse of you.

Originally Posted by guineapig [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I love how his world is filled with these 2 types of individuals and nothing else.
You really shouldn't try to lump everyone into these 2 categories of yours because that simply isn't the way the world works.

Yet another typically liberal post. You decry lumping people into simplified groups, in a post one of your compatriots started to lump all police into 1 simplified group. And you probably don't even see the hypocrisy.

I talk about 2 ends of a political spectrum and nothing else because that is the topic. Why would I discuss the libertarian opinion on heroin, or the Jewish view of polygamy, in a thread about the liberal stance of those who hate the police? This thread, and the point I'm trying to make, have nothing to do with those things. Again, please read my debate hints. A synopsis: Understand what the topic is, and what you want to say about that topic; pick facts that relate to that. The topic on this thread is the claim that police are violently out of control. Your facts do not relate to that.

Originally Posted by guineapig [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Your typical catholic is anti-abortion but also against the death penalty. So where would you lump this person in your black and white world?

Since this thread is about where on the political spectrum they fall in regards to law enforcement, neither of those facts are relevant. Of course peoples' beliefs are far more complex than black/ white. To quote G.E.P. Box, "all models are wrong, but some are useful." Trying to make a statement about 300+ million people on an individual basis is far beyond our brains' ability to comprehend, so we use simplified models such as the political spectrum to make it comprehensible. Of course there are inaccuracies as with all models, the question is whether it is useful. The way in which many of you can have your reactions, beliefs and arguments predicted by this model show that it is indeed useful. The OPs simplified model that assumes all cops are bad is not a useful model as it is too far from the truth.

Originally Posted by pickled_heretic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The evidence of police corruption, especially in police districts located at large population centers, indicates that police corruption is systemic and may be the rule rather than the exception. The LAPD and NYPD taken together have a laundry list of proven cases of systemic corruption that prove this.

Take, for instance, the LAPD Rampart scandal, where not only were 70 officers implicated for corruption, but evidence was discovered that showed the chief of police at LAPD was obstructing justice and tampering with evidence. The head of the corruption task force investigating the Rampart scandal resigned and sued the department with just that claim.

As far as waiting for cops to come save me? What a joke. Cops cannot stop crime beyond deterrence. Consider response times of 15+ minutes even in populated areas. That's more than enough time for you to be raped, robbed, murdered, etc. The only person that can reliably stop a crime from being committed on your person is you. The cops will only show up in time to clean up the scene and maintain social order, not to save your life or property.

This is actually a fairly decent post. My main problem with it is that you claim a few acts of corruption indicate systemic problems. I would like to see some facts and figures to prove this. 70 officers out of over 10,000 doesn't prove anything.

On your 3rd paragraph: Preaching to the choir.

Originally Posted by Japan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Of course the laws have to change; they allowed the widespread corruption and inefficiency we currently see throughout our justice system to take hold. That our system is weak even on paper doesn't change that the pigs we've got now are corrupted. Purge them.

Only a few % of Americans will ever spend a night in jail. Your changes to the law will not affect them much if at all. It will have very little effect on the criminal class that is the problem. If you truly want to make our system efficient you need to deal with the problem I outlined above, that only a few % of Americans account for a vast majority of our court cases and prison incarceration. Even if every cop was squeaky clean and motivated this problem would still exist. If anything it would increase the arrest rate of over 17 per criminal, costing our catch-and-release system even more money. Of course the extra time in jail would be time they would not be spending committing crimes.

If you got yelled at once by a cop and you went home to cry in the bathroom and tried to make yourself believe that you were 'this close' to saying something brave, get over it.