Comments

1
fuck off with this stupid bullshit, Ansel
2
Fuck off with defending racist, bullying law enforcement pricks.
3
You know, I agree with a lot of what you write, Ansel. But this one was a bit petty. If they had the same stickers about Trump instead of Obama, would you have chuckled or had a problem with it?
5
I wonder if The Stranger would have been find with anti-Bush stickers? Hmmm the mind really wonders.
6
@1: have you ever said anything that wasn't snarky or snotty, here or anywhere at all?
7
OMG, not crude stickers?

Fetch the smelling salts!!

Does Ansel ever read the detritus his boss posts on Slog?
8
@2
Hey,
Don't forget the MURDERING IN COLD BLOOD thing….

9
I do research and my funding comes from the state. I am not allowed to have any political expression at work, including things like t-shirts or buttons or stickers. Anyone funded by the government (police included) should have the same restrictions.
10
If we're excusing this with pathetic reversals, remember when Republicans gleefully got a bus driver fired for giving Bush's motorcade the finger?
11
@3, the stickers portrayed derision of a sitting President, everyone's President (including those cops). Trump (and also Clinton) are simply running for office. That's the difference.
12
@6:

Per @7, apparently not...
14
@11

WTF

This is not a Monarchy.

The sitting President is entitled to JackSquat but the opportunity to earn the respect of the nation, or their scorn and loathing if he fails.
16
@15
Supporting the president;
any President,
is not a requirement to be a police officer,
or any other public employee,
in this nation,
Herr Mistkerl...
18
It's not enough that they're illegal, and these officers are supporting plagiarism by purchasing them?
19
If, at the end of the day, I came home and sat down knowing I have accomplished the following feat - two stickers that once existed within an effectively private enclosure are no longer - I would not feel satiated, satisfied, sated, bettered, improved, empowered, or enriched, but maybe embittered.

To each his own.
20
@16: Expressing an overtly political view while acting as an agent of the state means that the state itself is promoting a particular political viewpoint. (There are a whole host of reasons why we must avoid this.)
The cops don't need to support Obama's presidency; they just need to not talk shit while on the job.
21
@11 If Trump becomes President, would you laugh or be offended at the same stickers aimed at the sitting President?
22
@21 since he'd be in a concentration camp, how could he be offended?
23
I like how Sawant hand picked a group of the media to walk the precinct with her. Of coarse one of them would be Ansel. Out of the walk of the precinct that is over crowded and been on the list of buildings to redesign since the 90's the only thing you chose to talk about is two bumper stickers. Not the added cost of the building to make it neighborhood friendly which added millions of dollars. You and Sawant had an agenda. Find a reason to exploit the station and the police. Congrats mission accomplished.
24
@21:

Whether or not one is personally offended by such displays isn't the point. What IS the point is that these are being displayed by public servants (who, while on-the-job are expected to exercise a certain level of neutrality) in their taxpayer-funded workplace. They can do whatever they want to their personal property; it's their Constitutionally-protected First Amendment Right - just as it's the right of people make take offense. But, defacing public property to make a political statement isn't protected speech - it's vandalism. Seriously, what do you think one of these cops would do to you or me if we tried to plaster one of those very same stickers on an SPD patrol unit?
25
@24 "It's not a policy violation." I take that to mean it's not vandalism. One would think that the "Clinton did nothing illegal" crowd would appreciate the "it's not a policy violation" statement. It's perfectly legal free speech in a "semi-personal" space with an assigned locker. It reminds me of the stickers that my high school used to not care about, but they always made the kids scrape them off at the end of the year when lockers were reassigned. Only these were in an even less public space.

Ansel did not note if there were other non-political stickers hanging around (though he did note there were no pro-Obama stickers).

Also, I miss the "it's the claw" sign from the north end of Broadway.
26
@3: If they'd had the same crude stickers about Trump (or Ed Murray, or Bill Bryant, or plenty of other public figures), I certainly would have reported it. That information would have been of interest to readers, just as the anti-Obama stickers were. While making those comparisons, it's also important to not be "colorblind" and to recognize that Obama is the first and only black president in a country founded on anti-black racism.
27
…" in a country founded on anti-black racism."

holycrap
is that what they teach kids these days?
explains a lot.
if you ever manage to get your head out of your ass you might see that there is and always has been a lot more than anti-black racism (Oh My!!) to America.
28
@25:

Strangely, though, despite not being a "policy violation" the stickers were ordered summarily removed. And I'll bet dollars to doughnut holes some sort of disciplinary action will be meted out should they mysteriously reappear.
29
@27:

Yeah, anti-Red, anti-Brown, anti-Yellow, anti-Semitic, anti-woman, anti-everybody-who-isn't-a-white-anglo-saxon-protestant (and sometimes, even them too, particularly if they spoke strange, gutteral non-Latin-based languages)...
30
@26 I'm just jaded because I've seen anti-President stickers since I can remember. Anti H.W. Stickers, anti-Clinton, anti-W, and now anti-Obama. These didn't strike me as any worse than Worst President Ever, really. Of course, I'm also used to seeing Calvin urinating on any number of corporate logos (mostly Ford or Chevy) and seeing far more sexist drivel aimed at Clinton. I remember seeing a noose with the words "support Bush" next to them.

I can't really feign racism at these two stickers all things considered.
31
jesus this comment thread is extra fucking vacuous.

Cops put stickers on their lockers in a *private gym*

Ansel's ass would never have seen this were it not for the tour and him "lingering" as he called it

This is so not any kind of an issue anybody needs to care about.

Do you want Ansel to go check out all of the other precincts to help confirm your (glaringly obvious) assessment that a lot of cops might be *conservatives* who *aren't super-smart either*?

This is a golden example of how this paper has turned to shit. Both the articles and you identity-politicking outrage queens who gobble it up.
32
Rather than further restrict speech in the work place, it should be protected. This feels like going backward.
33
@27

You do know that anti-black is fundamental to your own mindset, right?
34
Guys this crude and anti-social can't possibly be capable of enforcing the law with restraint and fairness. Does anyone think this kind of a troglodyte just puts on a "good cop" mask and goes out and manages to fake being a decent person? Do you think these kinds of knuckle-draggers can be reformed with a few sensitivity classes? All they need to reign them in is a good and wise police chief?

I know most cops are not this bad, but so what? One thing we know about decent cops with a conscience: they do nothing about the actions of bad cops. Without cell phone cameras revealing what really goes on, the "decent cops" weren't ever going to speak out. They still don't. They're mum.

The police cannot be reformed. Police reform is a pipe dream. Shut the police down. Draw down their staffing, put their funding on a terminal plan. Create new agencies, with totally new staffing, a totally different mentality, to handle the police functions we actually need.
35
@34: So, are you proposing that we basically just fire all the cops and create a new police department from scratch?
36
Heres to Murray and the Socialist city council.You did it again.I know what let's paint the lockers in rainbow colors
37
Hurray for workplace censorship!
38
I love all the fake outrage at how "crude" the stickers were. From readers of a paper that routinely uses the term "pigfucker" in its political musings.
39
The real Crime Against Humanity here is not that some officers had stickers in their private space mocking a failed president but that a so called "journalist" is so intolerant of opinions that differ from his own.
40
@38

Do you think the Stranger's use of words like pigfucker will make it less likely for civilians to call the paper for help in an emergency?
41
@39:

As I said before, if these cops want to festoon their own private property with Confederate or Gadsden Flags, Oath Keepers logos, Nazi swastikas, or other White Supremacist symbols, they have that Constitutional right. But they don't have an unrestricted right to deface property paid for by their employers, namely, us taxpayers, regardless of who may or may not see it. It's pretty clear SPD senior staff only ordered their removal precisely because they WERE seen, so I guess from that we can deduce such behavior is tacitly tolerated by top brass, but only so long as the public doesn't find out about it. Which seems pretty par-for-the-course from SPD: cops are allowed to get away with any sort of egregious conduct - so long as they don't get caught.
42
@40: Even you can't possibly believe the point you are so painfully trying to stretch here. When you get off the fainting couch and unclutch those pearls, think about if it really makes sense that people will stop calling 911 over a pissing Calvin sticker.
43
It is entirely possible that these stickers were put out there to shock and appall CM Sawant and her entourage, in which case, mission accomplished.

Guys like these cops live for stuff like this. They're like adolescent boys, and they're probably laughing about how they got everybody all worked up.

44
@35

We can't really fire all the cops, I think Contracts and whatnot give them a lot of job security. But we can stop hiring more of them, and don't try to keep the ones we have. We don't owe them a fancy new police station, for example. If the don't like it, good, let them leave and go be a cop somewhere else. The don't like us anyway.

I don't think a new police department would help. They'd just hire ex-cops and cop-types. Most of the functions done by the police can be taken over by non-police. Like traffic stuff, parking. Intervening in domestic disturbances, or drugs or other social problems. A social worker working for a health and human services agency is needed there more than a cop. Cops shunting homeless people or drug dealers from one neighborhood to another is pointless, expensive, and unjust. Somebody who can address the real problem would be a better use of our dollars.

Obviously the UK's unarmed police is one model, but those are still cops. Expanding the staffing of several other city departments could take over most of what police do. That only leaves a small part of their job where violence is expected, and responding with violence is actually helpful. I'm not sure ex-cops or cop-types are even the right people for that job. But whatever kind of SWAT team we have, it should be tiny, rarely used, and heavily supervised.

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