Just remember… ACAB
It is impossible to be a “good” police officer because the system of rules and regulations they enforce is, first of all, fundamentally unjust. Any laws or regulations which may be considered “just” are not enforced equally amongst different classes, races, sexual orientations, or genders. Anyone who chooses to obediently enforce such a fundamentally unjust system is not “good”. Anyone who is “good” would never choose to enforce or perpetuate such a system and wouldn’t be an officer for long. Anything that could be considered morally good done by a police officer will quickly be offset by their actions taken to perpetuate an unjust system.
Further, the fundamental responsibility of the police is to defend corporate capital and fill for-profit jails that are still essentially debtors prisons that put people, especially minorities, into a cycle of eternal debt and oppression. They are the lackeys of a state owned in full by capitalists, and in most cases they are (by design) too stupid to see it. If they are not too stupid to see it, then they enjoy inflicting violence with the authority vested in them by public trust. If they are neither too stupid nor especially violent, then they are simply ignorant.
People exist on a spectrum. Therefore police do as well. But the point is that all cops agree to enforce laws which are not equitable. Very few of those laws have anything to do with safety and are in fact designed to enhance the comfort of the bourgeoisie.
I’d like to say no, but a good cop that stays silent and enables a bad cop to continue doing their bad shit is just as responsible imo
They can get called out and still have nothing happen, they have powerful unions.
I had to lookup what ACAB meant. Here’s a summary: The Wikipedia article on “ACAB” discusses the acronym’s usage in various contexts, primarily as an anti-police slogan. It explains that “ACAB” stands for “All Cops Are Bastards” and has been associated with criticism of law enforcement, especially in cases of police brutality and misconduct. The article also delves into its origins, history, and controversies surrounding its use, highlighting the differing opinions on its message. Additionally, it covers related topics such as “1312,” an alternative numerical representation of ACAB. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACAB
I’m honestly surprised that someone that spends enough time on the internet to end up on lemmy doesn’t know about ACAB.
If he were not part of the Seattle police I might be willing to put down my pitchfork and give him the benefit of the doubt, but since he is, in fact, a prominent member of a lawless gang that is notorious for egregious civil rights violations, I say guilty until proven innocent. He’s already actively lost the trust of the public.
SPD has gotten “less bad” since 2021, when many officers quit after the protests because their fragile egos were too hurt. Those cops are now “serving” the local rich communities of Mercer island and Sammamish, where there are very few people of color. Seattle proper also lost some of their “finest” when a shit ton of them got caught up in the January 6 insurrection. Fairly sure all of those goons were fired.
Lately, as a Seattle resident, I’ve only seen SPD being lazy and not really responding to anything but the biggest emergencies. They do still occasionally sweep a homeless camp but they now give advance warning and give them a way to get their stuff back.
The city council voted to defund and this is the lukewarm result. It’s probably still a work in progress but they’ve drastically changed the size of the “force” here.
So his current claim is that he wasn’t mocking the victim, he was mocking the process of trying to get justice for victims and holding the police to account.
First responders have to develop a bit of a callous to gruesome scenes, because those that don’t end up not being able to do the job.
The humor is likely a facade that exists to protect him and those around him from the reality of an unfortunate situation that they can not change.
If you’ve ever spent time with EMTs, you will know what I’m talking about. Those guys do not get paid enough and joke about everything in all the worst ways. Still, if you ever get one of them drunk and pry about something they glossed over, they’re as likely to cry as to keep cracking jokes.
It isn’t a good look, but these guys are still human.
You don’t need to develop a callous to gruesome scenes if you don’t cause gruesome scenes.
“unfortunate situation that they can not change” except by not driving over people at 70mph.
Don’t conflate cops with EMTs. The job of EMTs is to save lives.
From an interview on a right-wing talk radio show. Context clues are important. Dude’s lucky he didn’t say anything more stupid that couldn’t be backpeddled like this was.
And as for ‘turning himself in’, it’s pretty suspicious that another city employee who was responsible for reviewing the footage also reported it up the chain of command, but the city couldn’t determine who did it first.
But yeah, let’s trust his version.
What is “super important” about this? They are going to say whatever nonsense excuse they can come up with, it’s completely predictable.
Fair to point out, and prompted me to listen to the video. Having done so, the tone in the minute or so leading up to the comments does not strike my ear as backing up the officer’s claim. It’s not openly mocking like the comments, but it’s absolutely thin-blue-line bullshit, minimizing the possibility of culpability by his colleague, and spinning the facts right from the get-go. I can almost buy that there is an element of wonder that this is the world they live in, but it felt a lot more like happy relief that they have the privilege of their position, rather than the sarcastic gallows humor you might expect from someone who finds the situation depressing.
That sincerely sounds like someone caught saying something stupid trying to spin it into something less bad.
Honestly, I’m the kind of fucked up person who would joke about something like that…so long as I wasn’t the one who did it.
These guys should be barred from law enforcement positions, and probably suffer the same consequences a normal person would for a car accident of the same caliber. It was clear they weren’t using lights/sirens appropriately either. It looked like they were turning them on/off at lights and if they didn’t see anything they kept them off…
@alphacyberranger@lemmy.world would you please edit your post title to change “his police cruiser” to “police cruiser”, like the headline actually says? from the article text it is clear that the cop who made this statement is not the one who killed someone.
(the actual headline is also shitty in that it says that a car killed someone, rather than that its driver did…)
OP, there’s a factual error in the headline. The cop on the call is a union leader who showed up afterwards. We don’t know, at least not from this story, how the officer who hit the woman reacted.
Edit: Best I could find.
