23 August 2008

If You Are Scared of 'The Job,' Get A New One

Officers in Prince Georges County, Maryland, continuing to defend their botched drug raid, now say they killed a local mayor's two black labrador retrievers because . . . "they felt threatened."

Which is interesting, considering that reports note that one of the dogs was running away when it was shot.

Okay. Here we go again. At the risk of offending the many great LEOs who read The Ready Line, I feel compelled to say the following:

If you are afraid in this job, leave it. It is not compulsory service. It is a job you voluntarily signed up for. It's a career you chose, it didn't choose you. Nor were you tapped to step up. You are paid to do the duties you chose over being a software engineer, plumber, PR practitioner, teacher, or any other myriad of career choices. Remember, you never received a police department draft card. You volunteered.

Botched raids occasionally happen. But to penalize others, to rationalize your actions in botched raids and the aftermath, restrict others rights', to criminalize otherwise lawful activities "because you are afraid" speaks volumes.

If you are afraid, get the heck out of your police department. Now. Before you get someone killed. I hear the postal service is hiring.

3 comments:

Home on the Range said...

I'm a LEO, but at the federal level.

My parents were both police officers.

The actions of those officers is a black mark on all good officers.

I have a black lab. They are about as threatening as a Smurf.

And if anyone shot my dog, well, I'd probably shoot them back, and likely go to jail for it. Still would. My dog's family. It's not a pit bull, it's not a German Shepherd. It's a lab. . friendliest dog on the planet.

Inexcusable, no matter what you do for a living.

Quentin said...

I'm a 51 yr old white man, and I grew up supporting the police. I used to support the police 100%. All of them, all of the time. I thought they were great guys doing a really hard job. I thought all these people in poor neighborhoods were scumbags and dope dealers and were making up these stories about excessive force and police brutality to detract from their crimes. But the blindfold has fallen from my eyes.

After these incidents that have occurred in the last few years where cops have been using tasers and shocking people, not once or twice, but ten or fifteen times. Using tasers strictly as methods of forcing compliance. Using tasers and having people die. Not one or two people, but many (291 so far). Using tasers, as a method of TORTURE. That’s right I said torture and I meant that word with all that implies. Police in the United States of America are engaging in torture.

Where police are killing old women in their homes and getting off scot-free. Where police seemingly routinely enter the wrong house, in what I now consider to be illegal and Unconstitutional no-knock raids. Where incidents like the home invasion (and that’s what it was) in Prince George County of a Mayor and his family have occurred and the police pretend absolutely nothing was done wrong.

With all of this my support for the police is gone, and I doubt if it will ever come back. My attitude is now, the less contact I have with the police, the better off I am. The misdeeds of police across not just the United States, but in Canada of all places, have cost me my faith in the one thing that I thought was unshakable.

Police at the local level in this country had better policing themselves. Rogue cops better start being prosecuted and fired or imprisoned. The Blue Wall of Silence better start being torn down. The use of tasers better start being treated just like the discharge of a firearm. In short, these Gestapo tactics had better cease. Because, if these things do not happen, then the police will have permanently lost the faith and support of people like me.

Anonymous said...

I HATE to say... I AGREE with
"Quentin" her in Columbus Ohio... I have NO USE for Them anymore... NONE of Them.