The Thin Blue Line

This is the type of systemic problem I see.

I understand 'the thin blue line', camaraderie, and taking care of each other. I grew up respecting police officers, and am still kind of uncomfortable criticizing them as a whole. It's a tough job, and they deal with a lot of craziness. 

But taking care of each other needs to include calling each other out when they cross a line. I don't actually care if it's public or private (though public may help restore trust with the lical community, I've always believed in the 'praise in public, discipline in private' leadership style. Deciding what you owe to the local community and what you owe your subordinates is too situation dependent to give a simple rule for. Given the poor relationship with the black community, though, I also understand why they want public accountability.)

Public or private, it still needs done. 

That's not just about masks, or racist policing. It includes drunk driving and domestic violence (which are also things cops will overlook in another cop).

Like okay, fine. You don't want to give a fellow cop a ticket for driving drunk? Then you, and/or your colleagues, and/or your boss need to step up and make sure he doesn't put the people you are supposed to be protecting at risk. Are you taking his (or her, but I'll use male pronouns to keep it simple) keys when he's out getting wasted? Calling him a Lyft or Uber? Telling him to get professional help and removing any roadblocks that prevent him from doing so?

Because if you know there's a problem, you choose not to enforce the laws meant to deal with that problem, and you choose not to do a damn thing further to address the problem -

Then you don't deserve to be in law enforcement. 

And from what I've seen - from stories like the one that started this, or accounts like the one NPR shared, they're more concerned with protecting and covering for each other than doing their job. 

Barr's Disturbing Statement on Policing Communities

Plenty of people have been talking about how wrong Barr's comments are, but nobody is quite capturing the sheer stupidity of his remarks.

There are a lot of complex issues here (as always, when discussing police and minority communities - which is primarily what he's talking about, even if he focused more on protestors) and I don't want to diminish them...

But government monopoly on violence is part of what they do.  And if you utterly abandon policing communities, they will come up with their own way of policing themselves. 

It could be an anarchists dream, I suppose. Or you could see organized crime fill in the gaps (like in Mexico), but outright abandoning communities creates space for that sort of thing.

In other words, this is how you lose your monopoly. 

Idiots. 

Why are so many of our so-called leaders so utterly lacking in wisdom?