Gosh it's almost as if cops are inherently incapable of self-reform or self-regulation. Cop culture will never be anything other than cop culture.

Take all the tasks that we normally think of as SPD's responsibility and spin them off. Traffic and parking goes to SDOT. Drugs are a health and social services issue. The coroner can investigate deaths just like the fire department instigates fires. The idea that you can't find who did a crime and refer the case to a prosecutor unless you're also a sworn officer who always carries two guns (plus a drop gun *wink* *wink* ) is silly.

IRS agents catch criminals. Firefighters catch criminals.

We can still have a barracks with some paramilitary guys we can call once in a blue moon. But you don't put guys with that mentality making big decisions about your whole law enforcement program.

They always fuck it up. Case in point.

The FD *investigates* fires.

Now, lets investigate, prosecute and dismantle.

I'm not a police abolitionist, but I think I need to hear more of a case that we need "proactive" policing, where you're stopping people on suspicion or pretext. Is it really worth the damage?

I am truly amazed that any blather I post on a publicly available web site of "social media" platform would be available to the public. Who would have thought? I mean, when one thinks of Facebook and Twaddle, one automatically thinks of privacy, right?

Hilarious- then when someone does decide one day that the West Coast hasnt had any excitement everyone will be crying "Why didnt the po'leece have the intelligence to protect us"? While they are bawling and buying their 10 tons of memorial flowers such as the mindless herds love to do. People dont know what they want and frankly if you arent doing anything illegal, then you shouldn't have to worry. If anyone thinks that the SPD's cheesy little tracking software compares anywhere to what Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Samsung, Amazon or The US Government has at their disposal, then most really are living in their own little dream world and should just let the SPD try and solve crimes that whiners have no clue how to do nor the attention span to do it.

@1, cops will not always be cops, as soon as people like yourself start signing up to change cop culture from within.

We're waiting.

@7: If you aren't doing anything illegal, then you don't use curtains on your windows, right? You send personal financial and heath-related information on postcards, since there's no reason to hide that stuff in an envelope, right? Please post your e-mail password here so we can all look through it to see if there's anything interesting in there. You've nothing to hide, right? Hilarious.

@6,7
It was surveillance software purchased with tax payer money in secret and not disclosed which is illegal in Seattle. That is the issue. That social media is not private is well known and accepted.

@8

Change cop culture from within? I owe them that why? Just listen to the kind of entitlement built into this thinking; cops can fail and fail and fail year after year and what do we owe them? Another chance?

The deeper flaw is that we just need more "good cops" and everything will be fine. We already have lots of good cops. The vast majority. Yet what good does that do? All the good cops in the world can't do as much justice as one video.

Cop culture does not hold cops accountable. Being a good cop means a lot of things but it doesn't include breaking the blue wall. The job itself precludes it.

Cop culture is the product of the structure of the police force. That structure must be removed and its functions taken over by totally different structures.

Crazy idea, but it might help if different types of people than those who currently seek to become cops, decided to do the same. Police unions might even begin to change their stances on issues if the body it represents hold different views than the current status quo.

Downside: most people who bitch about cops are way too pansy to sign up and show us how it's done. How we change that pesky fact is the real question.

watch out everyone, @12 is an internet tough guy.

I am? I freely admit I don't have the balls to be a cop.

Yeah, fuck nuts here thinks the key ingredient in building the perfect cop is big balls. That's what we need: cops even less afraid to take risks. Cops even more willing to escalate violence. Talk about missing the point.

Look at how crime peaked in the late 80s and early 90s. A couple years went by and the writing was on the wall. Crime was plunging down and it wasn't going to stop. Something had to be done!

What had to be done? Somebody had to jump in front of the stampede and pretend they were leading it. Somebody had to take credit before people noticed what was happening.

So places like NYC said they were implementing the horseshit broken windows theory. They came along with other horseshit like stop and frisk. Bill Clinton tried to get credit for the crime drop already underway by belatedly pushing through his 100,000 police officers on the street. And of course mass imprisonment. Three strikes laws. All after crime was on the way down.

Crime kept going down until about 2005 or 2010 at different places around the country, then pretty much leveled off. And now you hear all these belated cop activities as what gets credit for it. The cops were not doing shit for years after the decline started. In half the cities in the country, they didn't do community policing or stop and frisk or any broken windows bullshit or hiring a bazillion more cops. Yet THEIR crime went down too. Why?

Because crime was up for reasons that have nothing to do with all the diddling and jacking off we pay cops to do, and crime went back down for reasons that have nothing to do with cops. Crime is a social phenomenon and cops are not agents of social change. What cops do is mostly theater, with real live victims.

What's the point in trying to reform an institution that's useless, at best, and at worst a threat to life and liberty for whole segments of society?

We can fix this without much drama. Just quietly fund things that really do address crime and people in crisis, like building housing or offering drug treatment or family services. Just fund that stuff and quietly stop shoveling money at our useless police force. Let it wither.

If pansies like you became cops, we wouldn't have a problem, would we? Imagine how much nicer you would be when dealing with criminals day in and day out. Imagine Ansel with a badge, racing to the scene of the crime, ready to do everything perfectly.

Why just imagine?! You, too, can sign up to be cops and show us how it's done! For srs, you can. We're waiting.

You just don't read, do you?

You're like some kind of bot script programmed to spew generic comments found on similar discussions archived 10 years or 20 years ago. Take some old usenet thread about police and copy some of the "you're wrong because you're a pansy" comments. You can simulate whole conversations with a few lines of code.

Where's that video where children read out loud commenters calling each other pansies. Can't find it. Here's one like it. Close enough.

Cop culture is the product of the structure of our police forces. It doesn't change because there are individuals within in it who disapprove. Wipe the slate clean and re-create whole police forces from nothing, and they will revert to cop culture. Cops didn't create it. It created them.

Oh, you couldn't become a cop because the structures would prevent it?

Pretty sure you, and Ansel, and thousands more of you, could easily join and change the culture and structures from within.

So, maybe think about it, dear? I could totally see the denizens of Capitol Hill driving around on cop fixies fighting crime. Imagine the new union you guys could form, and sweeping changes you'd easily be able to initiate.

What is stopping you people from joining, if not the "structure"?

Your third grade reading teacher is going to be so disappointed when they find out what you've turned into.

@18

Change police culture from within? How many lawsuits have the SPD alone had to settle from minority officers complaining about discrimination and rampant racism in the work place? And thats not including places like SF, NY, Oakland, LA, Chicago, etc.

You cant change police culture from the inside anymore than you can de-rot an apple from its core.

You have to get rid of all the bad apples and their cultural stink before you can make fruit from the tree safe for all to eat.