Not my original content, but something I stand by
In the US cops:
- Take trans kids away from supportive parents in states with laws against that
- Selectively target LGBT people for unequal enforcement of often unconstitutional laws (ex: obscenity laws)
- Disproportionately use force against trans people (more than 1/4th according to the ACLU).
Imagine how much it would fuck you up if a cop kicked you around, threw you in lockup with the wrong gender, and then you see the shit stain getting paid to be at Pride.
And just being there, getting paid to do nothing is the best you can hope for. Plenty of times they just watch bigots harass or attack the people at Pride and either do nothing or arrest the victims.
Cops who want to come to Pride out of uniform on their own time because they’re LGBT+ or whatever, most people don’t care about that.
More importantly, Pride itself a reference to the Stonewall Riots, in which cops brutally assaulted LGBTQ+ citizens with great malice and the citizens fought back.
June 28th, 1969
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots
The first Pride Parade was a year later, on June 27th, 1970
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_parade#First_pride_marches
The reason cops shouldn’t be allowed at Pride is because cops violence against the LGBTQ+ community is why Pride fucking exists to begin with.
It’s a bit of a general issue. The police in itself is good, however… it’s a job that puts people into a position of power. Power corrupts, and if you factor in that they’re not well paid (because tanks and so on are better ways to spend a budget…) but are supposed to put their lives on the line, then get treated either like the enemy or the “thin blue line” I see how things can go bad. Being a public service, they’re managed by the government and sent to deal with trouble accordingly, and the definition of trouble varies with whoever is at the top. Sprinkle in some dangerous levels of nationalism, the US being a super power and you most certainly get to hear about their unrest, while the stuff going on in your own country might be less flashy.
A small trivia bit that you might or might not know: at the beginning there was this organization that was created to protect the people from abuses by local lords. Everyone knows what an unholy shitfest that got corrupted into, given that I’m talking about the mafia…
I’m gonna get eviscerated for saying this, but take what you hear here with a grain of salt.
Lemmy doesn’t exactly reflect the experience of the average American.
Counterpoint: “40 percent of the officers stated that in the last six months prior to the survey they had gotten out of control and behaved violently against their spouse and children.”
And that’s just the ones who freely admit to being abusers. It doesn’t take a huge mental leap to realize that a position of authority with a low barrier of entry is a magnet to people who want to abuse that power.
You can find the source for that survey, as well as the context here: https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-families-experience-domestic-violence/
I understand, but also with no cops we wouldn’t have this beautiful teardown