(July 9, 2016 at 1:31 am)Losty Wrote:

(July 9, 2016 at 1:24 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: How come people don't feel bad when gang members are shot? 80% of murders in the US are gang violence. Nobody gives a shit because that's the life they choose.

You know what, every police officer supports the system they are part of to some degree. 161 unarmed victims of police murders should be 161 police in prison for life. Other police protect them with their bullshit cop code. The whole system is corrupt and evil and all police to some degree know that and still participate in it. So no, I don't feel bad for them when they get shot. At least they were armed at the time. It's more then you can say for many victims of cop murder. Fuck the police.

I feel bad when anyone gets shot.

Then you must feel bad 24/7. I don't have that kind of emotional energy in me, so I have to reserve it for innocent unarmed people.

I do...I try to block it out mainly because it's hard to function being sad for other people's suffering is an endless hardship on my brain. I practice training my focus or whatever my doctor says. Still...I might be over the top with my caring, but I find your way disturbing. So an innocent person who has a gun but only has ever used it to protect people deserves to be murder because you don't like police officers? That is disgusting.

(July 9, 2016 at 1:34 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: I don't like it when anyone suffers.

I know it makes me seem like a bad guy to call bullshit, but if that were true, you still wouldn't care about those police because they are such a tiny tiny speck in the suffering that goes on in this world. If you cared about all suffering, you would spend every waking hour in agony. The world is full of unfairness and unjustified murders against innocent people. Whether or not you'd care to admit it, like me you probably prioritize who you care about. Everybody does. So like you and everybody else I prioritize and the police are near the bottom of where I can put my emotional energy into.

(July 9, 2016 at 1:38 am)Losty Wrote: I do...I try to block it out mainly because it's hard to function being sad for other people's suffering is an endless hardship on my brain. I practice training my focus or whatever my doctor says. Still...I might be over the top with my caring, but I find your way disturbing. So an innocent person who has a gun but only has ever used it to protect people deserves to be murder because you don't like police officers? That is disgusting.

I didn't say they deserved to be murdered. I never said anything like that and it's a pretty offensive portrayal of what I said. I said that I don't feel bad when they are shot, which is very different. I don't care about the cops the same way most of the suburban white people in this country don't care about the gang members. Also you have no idea whether or not that is true about those police officers or not. Possibly they were these innocent people who were protecting others, but I very very sincerely doubt it. I actually knew a ranger who got shot although not killed and afterwards there were tons of articles about what a brave hero he was. The reality was he was a cowardly bully who liked to terrorize and harass the locals for no reason. Most cops are that way.

I think if you really felt bad when everybody is shot, or hurt, we'd see dozens or hundreds of threads on here about the countless inner city gang slaughter that goes on all the time and the killing of a few people would be drowned in that reality. It shouldn't even get 1/100th the attention that it's getting.

(July 8, 2016 at 9:42 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: Being a black man in the south, I'll take my experience over any rationalization for police attitudes towards POC.

America is not Europe. It is hard to appreciate the racial divide here if you haven't experienced it first hand. I have the added benefit of being light skinned (my mother is white), so not only am I brown, but if the right level of bigotry is applied, I look like any brown person you have a bias against. If I'm in Florida, I look Cuban or Dominican. If I am in Southern California, I look Mexican. If I'm in the South, I look like one of them there A-Rabs. Or black.

I used to drive an Audi, and I got pulled over with my white friend in the car. My right blinker needed to be reset and was doing the super fast blink, and the cop pulled me over. I was asked whose car I was driving. I had a service weapon pulled on me for reaching into my glove compartment without asking for permission. I lived in Tennessee for exactly two weeks at that point. My white friend has lived here for almost his entire life, has been pulled over a bunch, and has never been treated like that.

Now one data point does not make a trend, but if you think race relations in America between police and black people are in any way okay, you're being intentionally blind. I know for a fact that the vast majority of police are great people and great policemen. I think their training and accountability has been hijacked for so long that they are not equipped to handle mental illness, and the self tightening screw of people afraid for their lives because some police will not hesitate to shoot you if you are brown.

Police should be community oriented. They need to be trained to deal with mental illness and drug use/side effects. They need to be trained to de-escalate before using their service weapon. They need to be accountable, and they need to be held accountable. Body cameras need to be mandatory. Profit motive needs to be taken out of citations. Personality evaluations need to be done before allowing someone to be an officer to uncover personalities that have a huge potential for causing issues. This stuff works in large cities, and even better in small cities. Take Los Angeles and Las Vegas for example.

Spot-on. I'm a white member of an interracial family which includes blacks and Latinos. I am most certainly treated differently than, say, my son or my nephew. Odd that a honky like me should have to have The Talk with his son, but I goddamned well did. He will not get the same shake in a traffic-stop that I do, because his Mexican heritage is obvious.

(July 9, 2016 at 1:48 am)CapnAwesome Wrote:

(July 9, 2016 at 1:38 am)Losty Wrote: I do...I try to block it out mainly because it's hard to function being sad for other people's suffering is an endless hardship on my brain. I practice training my focus or whatever my doctor says. Still...I might be over the top with my caring, but I find your way disturbing. So an innocent person who has a gun but only has ever used it to protect people deserves to be murder because you don't like police officers? That is disgusting.

I didn't say they deserved to be murdered. I never said anything like that and it's a pretty offensive portrayal of what I said. I said that I don't feel bad when they are shot, which is very different. I don't care about the cops the same way most of the suburban white people in this country don't care about the gang members. Also you have no idea whether or not that is true about those police officers or not. Possibly they were these innocent people who were protecting others, but I very very sincerely doubt it. I actually knew a ranger who got shot although not killed and afterwards there were tons of articles about what a brave hero he was. The reality was he was a cowardly bully who liked to terrorize and harass the locals for no reason. Most cops are that way.

I think if you really felt bad when everybody is shot, or hurt, we'd see dozens or hundreds of threads on here about the countless inner city gang slaughter that goes on all the time and the killing of a few people would be drowned in that reality. It shouldn't even get 1/100th the attention that it's getting.

Actually you said "what goes around comes around" if that's not an implication that you think it was deserved then my apologies. But that's what it looked like to me.

(July 9, 2016 at 1:52 am)Losty Wrote:

(July 9, 2016 at 1:48 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: I didn't say they deserved to be murdered. I never said anything like that and it's a pretty offensive portrayal of what I said. I said that I don't feel bad when they are shot, which is very different. I don't care about the cops the same way most of the suburban white people in this country don't care about the gang members. Also you have no idea whether or not that is true about those police officers or not. Possibly they were these innocent people who were protecting others, but I very very sincerely doubt it. I actually knew a ranger who got shot although not killed and afterwards there were tons of articles about what a brave hero he was. The reality was he was a cowardly bully who liked to terrorize and harass the locals for no reason. Most cops are that way.

I think if you really felt bad when everybody is shot, or hurt, we'd see dozens or hundreds of threads on here about the countless inner city gang slaughter that goes on all the time and the killing of a few people would be drowned in that reality. It shouldn't even get 1/100th the attention that it's getting.

Actually you said "what goes around comes around" if that's not an implication that you think it was deserved then my apologies. But that's what it looked like to me.

In fairness, it's not exactly a long or detailed statement but you should have given me some benefit of the doubt. What I meant is that if you shoot at people and kill people, expect them to shoot back at some point. Just like with gang members people don't stop to consider if an individual gang member has actually killed someone, many of them have not, but they are still part of a violent, immoral organization. It doesn't matter if they aren't the exact individuals. But I don't think the cops can expect to not be shot at and I don't think that people should be shocked or saddened when they are. Also they aren't even doing their job, which is to capture criminals. Every cop killer is just killed by the police with no trial, no jury, no judge and yet nobody bats an eye at that.

Like almost everybody, I think it would be nice to live in a world with no killing. However there is so much murder and evil in this world, I can't be bothered to care about police, who were probably assholes.

Aren't snipers killed by the police regardless of who they're sniping?

(July 9, 2016 at 1:24 am)CapnAwesome Wrote:

(July 9, 2016 at 1:19 am)Losty Wrote: Ok...but that doesn't make it ok to murder them. Especially not to murder ones who have never killed anyone. Just...ugh. Icky feelings.

How come people don't feel bad when gang members are shot? 80% of murders in the US are gang violence. Nobody gives a shit because that's the life they choose.

You know what, every police officer supports the system they are part of to some degree. 161 unarmed victims of police murders should be 161 police in prison for life. Other police protect them with their bullshit cop code. The whole system is corrupt and evil and all police to some degree know that and still participate in it. So no, I don't feel bad for them when they get shot. At least they were armed at the time. It's more then you can say for many victims of cop murder. Fuck the police.

Hard to argue with that.

The police and their supporters like to talk about how 90% or whatever of the typical police force are comprised of good cops. Oh, yeah? Than why are those 90% turning a blind eye to the 10% of the bad cops? By doing that, they're enabling them! Nobody knows better who the bad cops are than the so-called good cops who work side-by-side with them. If they're so good, why the fuck aren't they exposing them?!

The whole damn system of law enforcement needs to be overhauled. Until it is, I can't blame someone like the Dallas sniper. I'm not ready to call him a hero but until law enforcement cleans up its act, I'll not shed one tear for murdered cops either. This need not have happened. It's a shame those innocent (as far as we know) cops in Dallas were killed for the murders committed by their scumbags in blue elsewhere but it's also a shame that so many innocent victims were murdered by cops - who got away with it.

Is anyone really surprised by this? How far do you think you can push people before they break and violently strike back? It's human nature. If the blue pigs don't want to get murdered, they should stop murdering people! And most importantly, the supposedly good blue pigs who aren't murdering people should start turning an eye toward their evil, murdering brethren who are and realize that their actions are painting targets are on their own happy asses. A good cop should know that there is no more dangerous criminal than a bad cop. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Otherwise, you are part of the problem and I won't shed a tear when a victim of your shit is pushed beyond the breaking point and blows you away.

(July 8, 2016 at 9:50 pm)thool Wrote: It would be nice if our country had a leader that could get through all the politics and do something about the problems. I'm not talking about "thoughts and prayers" which are reactive and ineffective, but tangible actions that make a difference. Put aside the flowery speeches, the quivering lower lip, and the calculated pauses...get the American people stirred up in such a way that they vote away the dead wood that is holding our country back. We have a lot of messed up crap here that needs to be fixed.

Well, you cannot drag a bull by the nose-ring if it doesn't want to move. Racism in America is a grass-roots problem. Many leaders, both in and out of government, have spoken eloquently on the evils of racism.

But this is a battle fought person to person, on the individual level. Laws can address behavior, but they cannot address mindset.