Category Archives: The Culture

“The buzz phrase in policing today is officer safety. You’ll also hear lots of references to preserving order, and fighting wars, be it on crime, drugs, or terrorism. Those are all concepts that emphasize confrontation. It’s a view that pits the officers as the enforcer, and the public as the entity upon which laws and policies and procedures are to be enforced.”

Thus Miriam Carey died under a hail of bullets from men who should have been ashamed when they found out she wasn’t armed.

Wonders the Cato Instititue’s Walter Olson: “Why would cops wear camouflage gear against a terrain patterned by convenience stores and beauty parlors?” To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, when you dress like a combat soldier you think and act like you’re in a war.

So thugs like Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin have learned to attack the trigger-happy cops first. The rest of us? We’re reduced to trying “to be careful out there” whenever a cop is around.

“—Individual cops may feel threatened— and may be threatened in the course of doing their jobs — but they still do not have the right to use more force than is necessary. Too often, panicked or angry cops pump multiple rounds into already-wounded suspects, as appears to have happened to Michael Brown.”

If Officer Friendly considers us an enemy to be vanquished, he’s a bomb ready to explode.

Via Instapundit.