First of all, I'm no fan of Donald Trump and don't support the riot, insurrection, or what ever you want to call it on January 6 2021, and I don't think the Capitol police should have been subject to abuse by them; however, the Capitol police and many other police departments have been suppressing many peaceful protest for decades, while politicians ignore the will of the people on one subject after another, in favor of the will of their campaign donors, while the media refuses to provide fair coverage of honest candidates. John F. Kennedy once said that "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable," and he has proven to be at least partially correct over and over again.
Capitol police may not intend to protect those with political power from those without political power, without protecting the rest of us when the political and economic system is rigged; but when they blindly obey orders, that's exactly what they do. Private First Class Harry Dunn of the U.S. Capitol Police said that he tries not to allow politics impact how he does his job; which might work if the political system is working reasonably well, but not when it's totally corrupted by wealthy campaign donors. Just because the election wasn't stolen from Donald Trump doesn't mean it isn't routinely rigged for the wealthy people, which both Trump and Biden support, at the expense of the vast majority.
One of Andrew Cuomo's recent accusers made this clear when she said, "People don't understand that this is the governor of the state of New York. There are troopers that are outside of the mansion. They're not there to protect me. They're there to protect him," as reported in Cuomo Groping Accuser: ‘It Was Not Welcomed and It Was Certainly Not Consensual.' 08/09/2020 This has been clear to many of us for decades; the political establishment has been ignoring the will of the people on one issue after another, and there's plenty of evidence to this, although traditional media buries it in an enormous amount of hype and propaganda to keep us distracted.
For those of you who haven't figured this out, including police officers like Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone, who are now becoming part of a propaganda campaign to convince us they're defending democracy, intentionally or not, that this even leads to what should be considered negligent mass murder, when they ignore the will of the people and the best science on many issues. This negligent mass homicide includes intentionally withholding health care so money collected for this is diverted to profits or spent on lobbying, advertising and other expenses not related to health care; epidemic levels of pollution contributing to thousands if not millions of deaths when alternative solutions are available; wars based on lies; and many other issues.
In a Democracy elected officials respond to the will of the people they're supposed to represent; the following polls show that on one issue after another the people overwhelmingly support one position; but campaign donors support the other side of the issue and the vast majority of the political establishment support the donors, while a minority of politicians speak out for the public, they often cave when it counts:
70% support Medicare for All & 89% of Democrats;
63% (another poll puts it at 67%) support a $15 minimum wage (these were old polls, so updated one might support a higher wage);
81% support a Green New Deal, with 61% supporting efforts to end Climate Change;
72% (another poll puts this at 76%) support expanding Social Security;
75% support immigration, with 81% supporting a pathway to citizenship, and presumably not so they can be exploited for virtual slave labor;
86% support only using the military as a last resort;
76% support higher taxes on the wealthy, with 59% supporting a 70% Top Marginal Rate and 67% support taxing corporations more;
77% support campaign finance reform;
83% (another poll puts this at 86%) support net neutrality;
57% support breaking up big banks;
65% support reforming racists incarceration system;
64% support guaranteed jobs program;
60% support tuition free college;
90% support universal childcare;
68% support capping interest rates;
63% support curbing wealth inequality;
58% support strict Wall Street Regulation;
70% of Americans say arms sales make us less safe
83% oppose outsourcing.
The poll from AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 83% of Americans, including 79% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats, are in support of funding for roads, bridges and ports.
While about two-thirds of Americans, 67%, favor funding for affordable housing, just 41% of Republicans do, compared to 85% of Democrats.
Democrats were also most favorable to funding for pipes, at 85% support, with 70% of Republicans supporting this.
I reported these polls previously in The "Big Lie" Used As An Excuse To Censor An Even Bigger Lie! which also includes sources for the polls. The last few polls about infrastructure were just added and sources are listed for them below.
In almost all of these polls it shows that campaign donors are on one side of the issue and a large majority of the public is on the other side, and politicians routinely take the side of campaign donors, which is incredibly obvious evidence of bribery or a rigged system that accomplishes the same thing, even though politicians claim there's no quid pro quo. It's not hard to find other evidence of obvious bribery, or something that accomplishes the same thing, yet politicians routinely ignore the will of the people. The only reason the government and legal profession doesn't refer to this as obvious bribery is because the people defining it are the same people benefiting from it; it's hard to imagine a well informed sincere person not recognizing this as obvious bribery. Perhaps the clearest exception, in recent weeks, involves a couple of the polls supporting funding for infrastructure, which Joe Biden may have partially addressed with his recent bill. However, even in this case, it may only be because the deterioration of our infrastructure has gotten so bad over the decades that it's even impacting the profits of his campaign donors, and his bill did little or nothing to create affordable housing which helps people that didn't donate to his campaign.
Furthermore, in many of these issues, including Medicare for All there's an enormous amount of evidence that shows that if the political establishment served the will of the people instead of their campaign donors they could literally save thousands of lives every year and billions of dollars, according to several studies including Medicare for All Would Save $450 Billion and 68,000 Lives: Study 02/18/2020 and 22 studies agree: 'Medicare for All' saves money. 02/20/2020 There are similar studies showing that the destruction of the environment is killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people prematurely every year; and of course, wars based on lies, which our government routinely fights kill thousands more people every year, including many civilians all over the world, and our own veterans who are convinced these wars are to defend freedom, even though this isn't true.
On one subject after another there's a good case to be made that politicians and their corporate allies are guilty of negligent mass murder yet there's no accountability, and when there are peaceful protesters that try to point this out and the fact that our politicians aren't responding to the will of the people, police routinely strictly enforce petty laws which ignoring the much bigger crimes by the wealthy, including those giving them orders. In many cases they even use violence to suppress peaceful protests about obvious epidemic levels of corporate corruption that are costing people their lives. Police aren't hired to protect us equally they're hired to protect those rigging the economic and political system, blindly obeying orders and pretending that when they do this they're not being political.
In many cases, usually in the military, if they need someone to blame it's those following illegal orders, like at Abu Ghraib, when those giving the illegal orders that created an illegal war and resulted in the torture, which was what they were ordered to do, those that gave the illegal orders were never held accountable; instead those that obeyed them from the enlisted men were convicted and sent to jail. At the same time, many veterans who refused to participate in those illegal war, refusing illegal orders were charged for disobeying, while of course the real mass murderers that created the lies to get us into wars aren't accountable at all. Which means, in some cases whether veterans obey illegal orders or disobey them they could go to jail, while the real criminals aren't accountable to the rule of law at all.
This is just one of many cases where one larger segment of society is held accountable to the rule of law, even when the law is rigged against them; while another smaller, wealthier, and politically connected segment of society is hardly held accountable to the rule of law, especially when it's rigged in their favor. Another example of this is how Shoplifting Is Big News; Stealing Millions From Workers Is Not. 07/19/2021 In many cases we spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to prosecute people for petty shoplifting, often even when the theft is for amounts less than fifty dollars, and sometimes even when it's less than ten dollars; yet wage theft is considered a civil matter and it's often difficult to get the government to prosecute it. Police certainly never handcuff and arrests management or CEOs for crimes much worse than petty shoplifting.
One increasingly common example is switching price tags so they pay for a cheaper product, which is often referred to as "theft by deception;" however, when corporations commit "theft by deception" using many deceptive practices, including epidemic levels of false advertising, bait and switch sales, union busting, or many other fraudulent means of increasing profits, they're practically never prosecutions and many forms of "theft by deception" are perfectly legal and considered good business practices, which police don't protect us from.
I could go into many more examples; police will suppress protests about many things, often with violence and act on behalf of corporations to help suppress union organizing, protest about wars based on lies, corrupt politicians that are practically never held accountable to the rule of law, and even protests against police killing many unarmed people, sometimes even those not guilty of any crimes with impunity. Then when peaceful protesters speak out they have repeatedly tried to portray them as terrorists and responded with violence often worse than what the Capitol police had to face during the January 6 insurrection.
Now I'm not arguing that these Trump supporters should use violence against the police, nor are many of the protesters supporting issues listed above with support from a large majority of the public, including opposition to police violence against peaceful protesters, (polls about this aren't in the above list, and fluctuate widely depending on how they're phrased or the most recent media coverage on the protests), however, when the political establishment refuses to respond to peaceful protests and the will of the people, and especially when the police often respond with violence against those peaceful protesters, it's a matter of time before our own government incites violence one way or another against them, with the police on the front lines. As it turns out, it appears to be irrational supporters of a demagogue who betrays his own voters, and scapegoats minorities that turned violent against police.
Some of the police had some legitimate concerns about these right wing rioters; however, they remained silent about them for years until they attacked them, often ignoring them when they attacked progressive protesters, including when Kyle Rittenhouse killed an unarmed protester and they initially supported him until it was clear that this was an obvious unjustifiable murder. Officer Daniel Hodges expressed surprise that people carrying the "thin blue line" flag, which is a symbol of support for police, yet they refused to obey orders and attacked the police; which didn't come to a surprise to many of us who recognized the obvious fact that many of these right wing extremists didn't support the police until the protests against police killing black people. It was obvious to us that this was never sincere support of the police, but support for oppression of black people. If police didn't see this it was only because they didn't want to, and many of them were also racists, including some police among the January 6 rioters.
The Capitol Police are very selective about expressing their concerns and ignore long term causes of crimes and the fact that they're being ordered to suppress legitimate protests on a regular basis so that corrupt politicians and oligarchs donating to their campaign aren't accountable to the rule of law, which pushes many people to desperation. As it turns out the most irrational of the people falling for deceptive demagogues are the ones resorting to violence, not the peaceful protesters with legitimate concerns supported by large majorities of the public. Even though Officer Daniel Hodges doesn't cover many of the most important issues he does make some points in Here's what the officers testifying said they want the Jan. 6 committee to investigate 07/27/2021 including the following excerpts:
"As patrol officers, we can only deal with the crimes that happen on the streets, the misdemeanors and occasionally the violent felonies, but you guys are the only ones we've got to deal with crimes that occur above us. I need you guys to address if anyone in power had a role in this," he said.
"Because we can't do it. We're not allowed to. And I think the majority of Americans are really looking forward to that as well," Hodges said.
There should be no doubt that the police don't have the jurisdiction over Congress or the President if they helped incite the riot as they clearly did, nor do they have any jurisdiction over the vast majority of white collar crime including crimes being committed by Congress or their campaign donors, or even worse epidemic levels of fraud committed by campaign donors that is perfectly legal due to the Congress passing laws for their benefit. However, they're under orders to routinely suppress protests about epidemic levels of fraud both illegal and legal, due to a corrupt political system. This will inevitably drive many people to desperation, including Trump supporters that don't understand the demagogue they've come to worship is as responsible for this as the Democrats, both of whom are selling out to the oligarchs.
You rarely ever see police request that they be allowed to protect and serve all people equally, instead of enforcing laws only against working class people, while no one holds white collar criminals accountable, nor do you hear many police officers demanding that even if it's not their jurisdiction to prosecute or arrest white collar criminals, the least they could do is not be required to arrest the victims of white collar criminals when they violate petty laws during peaceful protests, especially when politicians refuse to address their concerns or issues with the support of large majorities of the public. Furthermore, some police even go one step further and try to portray protesters against police violence as terrorists, and while most police don't join in with this claim, they don't refute it either; which creates a problem with they face violent people that do fit the definition of a terrorist, as Officer Daniel Hodges claimed.
According to Police Officer Daniel Hodges repeatedly calls Jan. 6 rioters 'terrorists' 07/27/2021 and he came prepared with the definition of terrorism according to the law; however, this has been turned into a propaganda term decades ago and a close look at the definition and how it applies clearly indicates that both the definition and his interpretation of it are biased. For a long time terrorists primarily referred to attacking civilians that aren't even involved in a conflict, not military veterans involved in a conflict, who might have been considered a legitimate target, since they were killing others and had the weapons to defend themselves.
The short version of defining terrorism is that violence not authorized by the government is terrorism, while violence authorized by the government is considered justified, with the implication that the government is standing up for a fair sense of justice and democracy; however, this assumption is often false. The actual definition according to 18 U.S. Code § 2331 - Definitions: Federal code definition of terrorism says "(5)the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that— (A)involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B)appear to be intended— (i)to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii)to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii)to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; ..."
There are at least two major problems with how this definition is applied; one is that our government routinely invades one country after another, or overthrows democratic governments by supporting coups, which in many cases are followed up by state sponsored death squads, with support and often training of our government. On September 2nd 1945, shortly after Vietnam helped us win World War II, supposedly to defend democracy, they signed their own Declaration of Independence; instead of honoring it our government supported puppet governments in the South and eventually invaded for the purpose of depriving them of their right to control their own government and terrorized the entire population while killing at least two or three million for the crime of trying to control their own government. The United States, with the help of the CIA overthrew Democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Brazil, Chile and many other countries to install tyrannical regimes that controlled their people by terrorizing them, with death squads killing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people in each country. Our government either declines to call this terrorism or blames the puppet regimes, even though they know damn well they never would have gained power without the support of the CIA!
Clearly this is an incredibly obvious double standard; however, the government and media simply refuse to report on these activities properly, occasionally admitting to one coup or lie at a time without acknowledging the obvious fact that these are standard operating procedure, not exceptions. They're so common that those of us who don't ignore inconvenient history know damn well that our veterans, who trust the lies from their government, at least when they enlist, are routinely killed not to fight freedom, but as a result of lies from politicians. Furthermore, many of the terrorist attacks against the United States, including 9/11, the Boston Bombing and many more, are actually retaliation for these wars based on lies, which should be considered terrorism. They terrorize many more people and impact policies using violence; but since they're authorized by our government they don't call it terrorism.
The second is that it's based on the belief that our government has the higher ground, perhaps because we're supposed to be a Democracy; however, as I pointed out the political establishment has little or no regard for the will of the majority of the public, even when there's an enormous amount of scientific research showing that many popular positions, like Medicare for All, protecting the environment, often with conservation or clean energy, or preventing wars based on lies saves an enormous amount of lives and is in the best interests of the majority of the public; yet the political establishment clearly serves their campaign donors who increase profits by ignoring the will of the people and good science.
Refusing to see these basic and clear flaws in our beliefs in America leads to many more false beliefs, intentionally or not, including the claim that we fight wars to defend freedom, that we're a democracy, that police protect and serve all people, not just politicians and the oligarchs that corrupt our political system often with the help of massive amounts of propaganda while the truth is relegated to the fringes where few people hear or read it. The result is that a large portion of our political and economic system results in epidemic levels of fraud, stealing billions if not trillions of dollars from the working class and negligent mass murder, and in some cases, like wars based on lies, intentional mass murder. Even though the evidence for this isn't completely secret and a lot of it is overwhelming, due to epidemic levels of propaganda many people refuse to believe obvious facts, especially when they benefit from it.
Politicians and their campaign donors are almost never held accountable for their crimes including an enormous amount of insider trading which Nancy Pelosi, Diane Fienstien, Joe Manchin, John Boehmer, both the recent GOP Senators that recently lost a special election and many more are caught at; an enormous amount of other white collar crime by both politicians and their allies doing far more damage than petty shoplifting by the poor, and much worse, including when politicians make decisions to enrich their campaign donors even though it leads to the deaths of many innocents. This includes depriving people of health and price gouging, massive amount of pollution killing people in poorer areas, wars based on lies directly and brazenly murdering many more. And in one case after another, instead of arresting those responsible for negligent murder, or sometimes intentional murder, police are routinely ordered to suppress protests against it, often by people much better informed than the majority that relies on corporate media.
This essentially means that instead of protecting the majority of the public, police often become accomplices by helping to suppress solutions and allowing those that are really guilty to remain above the law.
This doesn't necessarily mean all police are bad; I've met at least four or five police officers off duty, and saw a couple of them on duty, and they were decent people. However, it's important to remember what they were trained to do which is different in many police departments. The police I've met off duty all worked in relatively non-violent middle or upper middle class cities, and didn't have to deal with large numbers of poor people or big protests; they were hired to direct traffic or deal with relatively mild conflicts. There may not have been any need to train them to act in an authoritarian and abusive manner.
I went into the training of police in several previous articles including Cops Going Wild To Preserve Oligarchy? which cites Hazing and Bullying in the Police Academy 12/16/2013 by David Couper, the former chief of police of Madison Wisc., who reports about how abusive police training practices teach police to be abusive to civilians, and recommends reform in the way they're trained. This is authoritarian training to blindly teach police to obey orders without question. Whether it's intentional or not, it also teaches police to go along with the crowd of other police when it comes to the blue wall of silence where they encourage us to rat each other out, but they never rat out police, especially when it comes to excessive use of force against working class or poor people, especially minorities.
Police are supposed to protect and serve all the people equally, just like teachers are supposed to teach all students equally; however, when it come to the political activities there's an enormous difference, with the police often trying to lobby to get immunity for themselves, regardless of how well they protect the people, while teachers often buy supplies for poor students and lobby on the behalf of those students, often balancing it with demands for reasonable pay, even though police are typically paid more. There are many stories about teachers buying school supplies although the media rarely covers them, while they're much more likely to provide high profile coverage when police help replace a stolen bike or do fundraisers. Stories like #OutOfMyPocket: Educators Speak Out on Buying Their Own School Supplies 09/14/2018 get far less attention from traditional media, although those that seek them out can find them.
It's extremely rare for police to speak out in favor of more educational spending which would do an enormous amount to reduce the long term causes of all crime, especially violent crime, protecting both the public and the police. If you go through enough studies, which get little or no media attention, you'll find there are some good police that support this, but few hear about it. One exception which happened five years ago and has been mostly forgotten was “Every societal failure, we put it on the cops to solve”: Dallas police chief David Brown. 07/12/2016 Chief Brown said,
“We’re asking cops to do too much in this country. We are. Every societal failure, we put it on the cops to solve, Not enough mental health funding, let the cop handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding, let’s give it to the cops. Here in Dallas we have a loose dog problem. Let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, give it to the cops. 70 percent of the African-American community is being raised by single women, let’s give it to the cops to solve as well. That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems. I just ask other parts of our democracy along with the free press to help us.”
If there was a large follow up on this hiring many more teachers, social workers or other people to address the root causes of violence then an enormous amount of violence, crime and other social problems could have been solved, but after the news cycle was over this was quickly forgotten. This is typical of a lot of the most effective research showing productive solutions by addressing the root causes of violence as well; unfortunately what is far more common is police unions demanding qualified immunity or other excuses to avoid accountability when they abuse or kill working class or poor civilians especially minorities, and they almost always win. The few exceptions come after massive amount of protests like Derick Chauvan's prosecution or the firing of Cariol Horne for stopping abuse and possibly saving the life of a victim, but that wasn't reversed until about twelve years later.
The most recent news on this story says Former BPD officer Cariol Horne has pension reinstated. 04/13/2021 This took twelve years and she obviously never should have lost her pension, while the person responsible for this dispute, Officer Greg Kwiatkowski, was allowed to stay on the job years longer than she was even though he should have been charged with use of excessive force in 2006, and he continued to use excessive force against suspects and other police officers, including Cariol Horne, who he attacked after she prevented him from continuing to choke or assault a suspect, possibly saving his life. This officer was implicated in many other assaults including an attack on four teenagers, who were also attacked by at least two other police officers, at a time they were under federal oversight, but they were slow to get caught since they simply declined to fill out a use of force report. There were also other stories about him attacking at least one or two other police officers, yet for a long time he was defended and treated better than her, thanks to the Blue wall of silence now often called the thin blue line, where police are rarely held accountable for obeying the laws they claim to enforce.
It was only after massive protests and more police brutality in Buffalo, including a couple police that knocked down a peaceful elderly protester on camera and left him without medical treatment as they continued to abuse other peaceful protesters that Common Council Passes Law Requiring BPD Officers to Intervene to Stop Excessive Force 09/29/2020 and shortly after that Cariol Horne got her pension back. There are many more cases like this and in the vast majority of them police are still not being head accountable. Supposedly this new laws and perhaps some other reforms might improve things in Buffalo, and there are a few more cities making some reform around the country, but there's no guarantee that they will work; and the vast majority of cities aren't reforming things with virtually no reforms at state or federal levels.
If the case of Cariol Horne is an exception then, like the case of George Floyd, it's an exception because the police officer responsible was partially held accountable because there was massive amount of attention drawn to it. Part of the reason for this is because police brutality is getting caught on camera far more often, but the police brutality has been around all along. This began to change starting with the filming or the Rodney King beating, but even then they were found not guilty with overwhelming evidence; it wasn't until after the riots where they filed federal charges and found them guilty, but they still got relatively mild sentences. In the past ten years the reason attention has increased to this is because far more people have cell phones and are recording police brutality of all kinds, including murder.
The most effective efforts to reform the system and hold police officers accountable for excessive violence have never been passed with the help of many, if any police; instead they passed over large objections from police unions or other organizations. There ahve been small numbers of police who tried to help bring about reforms, but they're routinely ostracized and fired by other police. There have been many efforts from the grassroots to track police violence, including a few articles of my own like A Brief History of Cops Convicted of Murder and other organizations that track much more police violence than me. There no reason to beleive that police are less likely to commit crimes, including violent crimes than the rest of us; if anything they're more likely to be criminals, often because they're rarely held accountable for their crimes.
Nevertheless, the biggest problem isn't the police; it's those giving them orders who are also not accountable to the rule of law, and their campaign donors who get away with much more fraud, often even at the expense of innocent lives. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the public supports Medicare for All and studies show it saves billions of dollars and thousands of lives every year the vast majority of the politicians are adamantly opposed to it. Instead of arresting those profiting off a corrupt system police routinely arrest protesters for incredibly petty reasons even though politicians refuse to address the will of the people. The same goes for protest about environmental destruction, wars based on lies, and many other subjects. In one case after another politicians ignore the will of the people, partly with the help of the media that refuses to provide fair coverage for honest candidates, ensuring they can't get elected, and police want us to believe that when they suppress legitimate protests under orders from corrupt politicians that they're protecting democracy.
When it comes to any given subject, especially the destruction of the environment, the police are aiding and abetting in corporate corruption by suppressing protests, and this includes epidemic levels of environmental destruction already killing thousands if not millions of people every year, and if we haven't gotten to the point where we're committing ecocide inevitably leading to the destruction of our society and the extinction of thousands of species possibly even including the human race.
Instead of protecting us from environmental destruction the police are helping to ensure that it gets worse. Furthermore, when it comes to the root causes of crime and violence police are constantly suppressing protests that could help address this making us less safe, not more, especially in abandoned inner cities where they have the highest rates of violence, or the South, with the most abuse of children leading to more violence later in life, including higher murder rates in this region. In many cases the protesters that are suppressed by police are demanding better social policies that reduce crime and violence making both citizens and police safer. This is the same kind of policies that both Dallas Police Chief David Brown and Black Lives Matter promoted and there's an enormous amount of research showing that investing in schools, social workers and other programs do far more than get tough on crime laws to reduce violence.
One of the leading causes of violence that I've tried to draw the most attention to is early child abuse, including corporal punishment, which is far worse in states still allowing corporal punishment in schools and this clearly correlates with higher rates of violence in those states. States still allowing corporal punishment in schools had murder rates in 2019 of 6.07 per 100,000, while those not allowing it only had rates of 4.22. The same goes for more police being murdered in the line of duty of police killing civilians in the line of duty. Even though the 19 states still allowing corporal punishment in schools only have about 41.5% of the population they routinely have between 50% and 65% of police murdered or police killing civilians on any given year.
Another one of the leading causes of violence is abandoned inner cities where there are few educational or economic opportunities leading to levels of violence normally only seen in dysfunctional failed states. Many of these cities have murder rates at least two or three times our national average and in a few cases six to ten times the national average. These cities are the ones that need the best police but typically get the worst and the most corrupt. There's plenty of research showing that this crime could be greatly reduced by repairing schools and other social programs that are far more effective than militarized police, yet the political establishment routinely does the opposite, in favor of ideologies of their campaign donors, not the will of the public, or based on the best research.
There's an enormous amount of research showing that effective social programs which both Dallas Police Chief David Brown and Black Lives Matter recommend, including comparisons with other wealthy countries with similar cultures, like Europe, who only have a fraction of the rates of violence, especially murder. In many cases European countries banning corporal punishment in both schools and at home and providing far better educational and economic opportunities with far less income inequality have murder rates a fraction of ours, often between 75% and 90% lower than ours.
Looking into all this research will take longer than one article, but it is available; however, even though polls show that there's large support for productive policies and more research shows we can solve many other problems if the media reported on this research and politicians acted on it, corrupt politicians are far more concerned with rigging the economy in favor of their campaign donors and the media refuses to provide fair coverage for honest politicians. In order for them to get away with this they need police to blindly obey orders and suppress protests supporting the will of the people, often with violence.
It's not even in the best interest of the police to treat the majority of citizens as their enemy, as inevitably happens when they blindly obey orders. With all this talk about how police are putting their lives on the line so they have to protect themselves you might get the impression that abusing or killing civilians actually helps protect them, yet if you look at many of the police who are killed, which isn't nearly as common as they imply, a lot of them are retaliatory killings including the five police officers killed in Dallas and another three in Baton Rouge the same year. These were just a handful of the police killed in retaliation, indicating that killing more civilians actually puts them at risk, not protecting them, and it's often not the most violent ones killed since they're often random.
We supposedly learned that blindly obeying orders is no excuse after World War II, but in many cases that clearly isn't the case, with our military invading one country after another based on lies and terrorising people all over the world, and police at home often gearing up in riot gear with weapons of war to deal with peaceful protests. They seem to be taking the same attitude of the Nazis including Dr. Werner Best, Heinrich Himmler’s right-hand man in the Gestapo who said "As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally." By suppressing peaceful protesters trying to promote effective solutions they're helping suppress those solutions and eventually social problems get worse and they wind up dealing with unstable people like the rioters, who previously supported the police when they were suppressing Black Lives Matter protests with force. They supported the violent faction and it turned on them!
Furthermore, another reason why it's not in the polices best interests to blindly obey orders is that in a growing number of cases, when the political establishment and courts need a scapegoat, instead of accepting blame for their own actions they throw their own police officers under the bus and let them get convicted for excessive force. For a long time there seemed to be an implied unspoken agreement that as long as the police look the other way at the crimes of politicians and enforce abusive practices against the poor or working class, especially minorities they will let them get away with just about everything. That's no longer the case, and by suppressing effective solutions from peaceful protesters they're ensuring a more violent society even endangering the police.
Frédéric Bastiat once said "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." —Upton Sinclair
The following are some additional sources or related articles:
Mapping Police Violence
Killed By Police 2017 (includes May 2013 through July 2018 from archives)
Killed By Police (includes 2015 through November 2020 from archives)
Police have Killed 1,065 in 2020
Key takeaways from Jan. 6 hearing: Powerful testimony counters revisionist history 07/27/2021
Reporter Removed From Kevin McCarthy Press Conference After 1/6 Commission Question: Video 07/05/2021
Capitol Police Arrest Black Caucus Chair Joyce Beatty and Others as They March to Defend Democracy 07/16/2021
Broad Support for Spending Plans 04/26/2021 Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure proposal is broadly popular, registering 68% support and just 29% opposition. Support for this spending plan – covering a gamut of projects from roads and trains to clean energy and internet access – comes from 94% of Democrats and 69% of independents, but just 32% of Republicans.
Majority of Americans Favor Increasing Infrastructure Spending, Poll Finds 07/22/2021 The poll found that in order to pay for the spending, most Americans believe the country should raise taxes on corporations. More than 80% of Americans favor increasing infrastructure funding for roads, bridges and ports, a new poll found. The poll from AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 83% of Americans, including 79% of Republicans and 87% of Democrats, are in support of funding for roads, bridges and ports. While about two-thirds of Americans, 67%, favor funding for affordable housing, just 41% of Republicans do, compared to 85% of Democrats. There is also a wide gap on favorability for free community college tuition, with 27% of Republican in favor, compared to 76% of Democrats. Second to funding for roads, Republicans were most in favor of funding for pipes that supply public drinking water, at 70% support. After roads, Democrats were also most favorable to funding for pipes, at 85% support. Earning the same favorability was funding for caregivers for the elderly and funding for affordable housing.
75 Groups Ask DOJ to Oppose 'Racist' Anti-Protest Laws 08/10/2021
Poll: Americans are more concerned about police violence than violence at protests 07/07/2020
Poll Finds Most Americans Support Protests Against Police Brutality 06/01/2020
Revolution Needed, So Our Corporate Overlords Are Fanning The Flames For Second Civil War 08/15/2021
Baltimore police can no longer earn overtime while on vacation, ending a practice that cost taxpayers 08/12/2021
Civil monetary penalties for labor violations are woefully insufficient to protect workers 07/15/2021
Nearly 200 Wisconsin police officers back on the job after being fired or forced out 08/21/2021
Ex-Buffalo cop gets 4 months in prison in 2009 excessive force case 12/12/2018
Ex-cop seeks to renew judgment from slander verdict against Cariol Horne 05/01/2021
It was all staged. No real supporters! 06/25/2021 Cariol Horne showing Mayor Brown staged the applause for him at a baseball game.
Former NYPD cop indicted for fatal shooting of Long Island friend 08/20/2021
‘Law Must Apply Equally’: Philadelphia DA Announces Charges for Three Former Cops Who Lied Under Oath In Case of Black Man Wrongly Imprisoned for 25 Years 08/23/2021
Syracuse Police Officer Files $33 Million Lawsuit Against the City and Department Alleging ‘Blatant and Extreme Racism’ 08/22/2021
Former Lexington NC officer accused of robbing home while posing as federal officer 08/23/2021
California Police Officer Accidentally Kills Bystander After Attempting to Shoot at Suspect 08/23/2021
Cop Filmed Dragging Student Facedown During Wellness Check Charged with Assault 08/24/2021
Body camera video shows Monroe man beaten by LSP 08/25/2021
Harris County Sheriff’s Office off-duty deputy arrested, charged with violence against family member 08/27/2021
Harris County Sheriff's Office deputy accused of beating intimate partner 08/27/2021
People convicted by "Jim Crow juries" still incarcerated despite Supreme Court ruling 08/24/2021
Only Those Taking Action Against Climate Violence Are Labeled ‘Terrorist’ 08/27/2021
Attorneys for Texas Cop Indicted on Second Murder Charge Slam DA for ‘Waging A War on Police Officers,’ Say Client ‘Will Be Exonerated’ 08/28/2021
Cops Killed a Man Who Was Passed Out in His Car, and No One Knows Why 08/27/2021
Bodycam Footage Released Showing Alabama Cop Fatally Shooting Suicidal Man in 2018 08/28/2021
Mesa Ariz. police officer terminated after internal investigation 08/28/2021
7 Ohio prison employees fired after Black inmate’s death 08/27/2021
Two Weeks, Four Cop Shootings 07/07/2021
Newton, NJ police fatal shooting body cam video of armed U.S. Army veteran, Gulia Dale 08/03/2021
Austin Police Officer Is Charged With Murder in a Second On-Duty Killing 08/27/2021
Mom adds new defendants to lawsuit against La. cops over fatal shooting of son 08/24/2021
Florida cops launch app that lets users film interactions with police after three officer-involved shootings 08/25/2021
LA police officer investigated after 'pressing knee to the neck of NBA player' 08/28/2021
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