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| Uvalde. |
So much has been said about Uvalde that I'm not going to go over the points here. For once the police used the fear-for-my-life thing to get *out* of shooting someone. Bottom line: someone was killing children at a school, and the entire police force was too afraid to act. And anyone who had the courage to go in, like the parents? They made sure the parents could *not* get in.
Those police officers were painfully, objectively bad at their jobs. But we have two cases left to look at. One is pretty fucked up and the other would be comical under other circumstances.
Let's take a trip to Vallejo, CA, where badge bending was reported in 2014 and the report had not come to fruition until last year. They have star badges, not shields, although I'm sure they'll make the switch soon. The idea is, if you shoot someone, you bend a corner of your badge. Kind of like WWII pilots painting their planes with the insignia of those they shot down. It was reported to top cops in Vallejo, but guess who did nothing until a whistleblower revealed the practice to the world.
You're not gonna fucking believe the straw that broke the camel's back.
Willie McCoy looks like a criminal on paper, but when you realize that most of the charges against him in his life were dropped, he looks more and more like a citizen. Also remember: when cops kill someone illegally, the first thing they do when it comes to media is to portray that person as a bad guy. This is what they tried with McCoy. But we have to face facts. The way this turned out? It's fucked.
OK, yes, McCoy was initially suspicious in this case. He was probably on something, or maybe he was driving drunk. As someone who has driven drunk, I think that's what happened because he was at a Taco Bell drive-thru when he passed out. Taco Bell called 911 after attempting to get McCoy's attention to no avail.
Six cops show up. They draw their weapons before approaching the vehicle. They see he is passed out in the driver's seat, and they claimed he had a gun with the magazine half out. This gun did not show up on body cam footage, but a time honored tradition among cops is to drop a gun at the scene of the crime when it turns out that they fucked up and must cover their asses. I suspect this might be the case here mostly because the one charge against McCoy in his life that was not dropped was a weapons charge.
Even if it was McCoy's gun, the magazine was half out. Meaning that he *might* have had one in the chamber. At the very most, if he was alert and conscious, he would only be able to fire one shot, and that's provided he carries one in the chamber.
McCoy moves in his sleep, probably to scratch his shoulder. Another story says he jerked awake, and can you imagine the horror of waking up surrounded by cops at a Taco Bell drive-thru? But even so, jerking awake is just that.
It scared the police, and one officer said, "Put your hands up!" The police gave him a mere three seconds before opening fire on him.
They shot him FIFTY-FIVE FUCKING TIMES. And after they brutally murdered him, they again yelled at him to put his hands up.
After, the cops changed their story. They fucked up, and now they have to cover their asses. The gun was now fully loaded with an extended magazine. Funny how magic works. Yeah, no one else bought it, either. The six cops bent their badges, and that was the straw. One of the cops had a badge so bent that it curled up like a dead spider on his chest. They offered to get him a new badge--as he was being promoted--but he refused because he viewed it as a "badge of honor."
Now for the final story, and I'm sure you can guess what it is.
If you're wondering what the fuck this acorn thing is, here's the story. Three cops were called to investigate an incident where a woman's boyfriend *might* have stolen her car. They found him, cuffed him and put him in the back of a patrol car so they could search the vehicle they found him with. One of them approached the patrol car when an acorn fell on the vehicle.
The cop immediately took it for a gunshot. He shouted, "Shots fired!" multiple times, then hit the ground rolling like he was in an action movie, AND HE FIRED INTO THE PATROL VEHICLE. The other cops with him saw this and fired into the patrol vehicle, too.
Somehow the suspect didn't get injured, and that is a miracle in and of itself. He did say, though, "I'm damaged for life." They let him go, and the cop that started shooting in the first place had the decency to resign. So that one has a happy ending. But it could have gone a lot fucking worse.
The police are objectively bad at their jobs. They should not have them anymore.
Just a bunch of bad apples, right? Not enough to get rid of the good apples, too? Remember what I said when we started out?
So what do we do? First and foremost, if we must keep these psychopaths and cowards on our payroll, then we need a body cam system that works. That means that COPS CAN'T TURN OFF THEIR BODY CAMS. In fact, footage from those body cams should *not* go to the police. It should go to a third party, who releases these videos without being tampered with. There should be so many people working at this third party that it should be impossible to bribe them all.
And then the police union must be destroyed. Remember, it's not a real union. It's a tool to keep these cocksuckers patrolling the streets and beating the shit out of whoever they please and putting the screws to children who have no recourse. The union helps police get away with murder. Literally. In addition to this, no more moving bad cops to new departments. No more firings or resignations. These fuckers need to do PRISON TIME. They have broken their social contract to keep us safe, and as such must pay the consequences.
But I don't want to keep these dipshits and scumbags around. What's my solution?
We're stuck with the cops for a little while, but when we're done training the people to take over for them, we should be in good hands. Police should be highly trained. They supposedly are now, but if they were, would I be writing a five-fucking-part series on the subject? They need to be trained to maintain cool heads. They can't fly off the handle and, say, terrorize neurodivergent children.
The replacements should be trained to deescalate, not to be the escalator in the first place. They need an understanding of humanity, not just the distrust of the public that they have now. They need to understand their role is to prevent crime in the least violent way possible. They can use force, but it must be justified. You can't just beat society into a vision of a crime-free America. We will always have crime. That is not debatable. But if we continue using these lunatics as a means of protection, we will eventually reach a day when I'm not just one of the few voices in the wilderness shouting for the abolition of the police. I think on that day everyone will be on my side.
We can do better. We *must* do better.
All cops are bad. Abolish the police.
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