The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)

[slackline]

At best it was pouting.

And kind of funny too. Because you’ve asked me to repost my questions you didn’t answer in the past.

Everyone’s a critic and everyone’s a hypocrite.

Edit: except you of course......

Whatever garbage you say after this is my own fault for coming back to this stupidity...

Please explain to me why it is worth my time to go back and repost well thought out arguments, documented statistics, and reasoned arguments just so you can ignore them again? If we were arguing some new aspect, then by all means, call out the lack of facts. The facts are all here on everything that has been said by me today. Read the FCIF, son.

You've made some bold statements about the function of the AF with "people like me" and that would lead me to believe you're either not all that experienced, or you're one of those guys in the squadron people avoid because you're incredibly opinionated and just not fun to have these discussions with. Follow the example of some of the other hyper-conservatives on here that listen, respond with reason, rationality, and often, even logic. Don't immediately call someone a troll because you disagree.

Before you say I do the same, why don't you go back and look at (the only person I can think of) when I implied sim was a troll. See just how many garbage, angry, unsupported posts that cat has made before I said anything. FLEA, Lord Ratner, KA and others I can't think of are on your side, but they are head and shoulders above you in the how-to-argue-a-point department. Maybe ask them for some pointers.

I think it was Lord Ratner or FLEA who just said it, but we're (them and me, not you I guess) like 80% on the same page for most topics. The 20% we don't see eye to eye on are incredibly informative for me. They've helped me open the aperture quite a bit, helped me solidify my defense of other areas, and sometimes made me scratch my head.

Dudes/dudettes are legit. You don't seem like a troll, but you do come across like my 18 year old who is an inch deep in a lot of political topics, but gets super emotional super quick trying to come off as knowledgeable in all of those topics.. You can't wait to fight with anyone posting a dissenting opinion, make tons of unsubstantiated accusations, and then ignore when they provide you with well thought-out responses.

Seriously, I'm not sure (unless you are trolling me, then bravo, well done) how you're missing this. Go back and re-read the post I made where I asked you to repost questions. I also did my best to go back and find those questions and answer them. You never responded to any of those answers to my recollection. If you did, my apologies, I'm old...


Your hypocrisy comment is laughable on the surface. I have admitted my error in many posts, acknowledged where others had good points and thanked them even. If I make a hypocritical statement it is out of error, and I try to correct that. Nott perfect , or even in the ballpark, but I sure as heck ain't guilty of 90% of the stuff you say.


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[gearhog]

3 hours ago, slackline said:

Big, massive, enormous difference in what I said and calling that cop racist. Systemic racism doesn’t require racist people. The system has biases that say that POC are more dangerous than white people, so they’re more prone to reacting with violence quicker to POC than to white people.

I highly doubt that cop is racist.
 

You said a black man in THAT video would have been shot much earlier than THIS white guy. The system did not shoot the white guy, a cop did. To say that cop, whom you know nothing of, would have shot a black man sooner means means that cop decides when to pull the trigger based on race.

If you doubt that cop is racist, why do you believe he would have pulled the trigger sooner? How can you possibly stand by this argument?

[slackline]

You said a black man in THAT video would have been shot much earlier than THIS white guy. The system did not shoot the white guy, a cop did. To say that cop, whom you know nothing of, would have shot a black man sooner means means that cop decides when to pull the trigger based on race.
If you doubt that cop is racist, why do you believe he would have pulled the trigger sooner? How can you possibly stand by this argument?

You serious Clark? (Almost time for the best Christmas movie ever)

Let’s slowly step through this. I must be getting old because my frustration with people unwilling to do any mental exercise on their own is growing...

If, the system/training/historical trends teach police to fear POC more than white people, they are more willing to use force, earlier than they would otherwise.

That does not equate to a police officer being racist. He/she is acting on the guidance of said institution. That is made fairly obvious by the fact that there are plenty of police POC that are using force disproportionately against POC as well.

The facts don’t lie. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Guardian, go back and read it in this thread. More white people having force used against them does not equate to them being just as targeted. There are simply more white people, almost 9x more white people. There are countless cases (already cited in here) documenting the fact that white criminals are way more likely to have a weapon and use that weapon against the police than POC are.

Say whatever you want about POC being more violent, more likely to commit crimes, but you are simply ignoring the circumstances they find themselves in.

BY NO MEANS DOES THAT EXCUSE ANY CRIME THEY COMMIT, but it sure does make you understand it a whole lot better. And oh by the way, very few crimes should result in the death of a suspect.

INCREDIBLY EXTREME and apples to oranges example to illustrate my point: a wife is abused by her husband for years both physically and mentally. She’s been sent to the hospital many times by him. She finally loses it one day, and while he’s verbally abusing her, she walks up behind him in the kitchen and stabs him. Her crime is still 100% a crime, but it sure is more relatable and understandable.

Here are two new additions to the plethora of data found in this thread to back up these facts:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2019.1704330
From the abstract:
“I present several approaches considering the shooting locations both as fixed and also as a random sample. In both cases, I find overwhelming evidence of a racial disparity in shooting victims with respect to local population demographics but substantially less disparity after accounting for local arrest demographics.”

https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3660&context=faculty_scholarship
From the abstract:
“We find that, across several circumstances of police killings and their objective reasonableness, Black suspects are more than twice as likely to be killed by police than are persons of other racial or ethnic groups; even when there are no other obvious circumstances during the encounter that would make the use of deadly force reasonable.”



I fail to see how my position that there are problems in the system, leading to racial disparities in the use of force by LEOs, makes me a bleeding heart liberal. Criminals should 100% pay for their crimes, but rarely, if ever with their lives unless actively in the process of trying to seriously injure/kill someone else.


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[GrndPndr]

Oh crap!  I ran out of popcorn, I'll be back ...

 

Next Wednesday.

[DosXX]

6 hours ago, FLEA said:

In general, police are exposed to far more risk than people in the military

And less than landscapers, roofers, fishermen, and truck drivers. The risk is exaggerated to support overly aggressive policing policies and unjust sentencing laws. In my opinion there are too many civilians killed to justify the current rate of risk. There should not be more unarmed civilians killed by cops than cops killed in the line of duty. The balance is way off when there are cases of children being killed.  Training and policies need to change, even if that means an increase in risk of death/injury due to becoming a police officer.

 

[FLEA]

Yes I acknowledge police officers by far don't have the MOST dangerous job in the United States but they do have a higher than normal rate of danger. There are some key differences in the instances of officer deaths. One important one is that when an officer is killed in the line of duty it is an assault on an institution (justice by law) that attacks the fabric of society. This makes it more reprehensible than others occupational deaths. There is also the caveat that police officers work largely an environment where people are attempting to undermine them, where as other occupations do not. Hence their danger is relative to their vigilance. We have to recognize that police officers do not take the same types of Hippocratic oaths, and therefore do not have the same moral obligations to accept increasingly higher amounts of risk like members of the military. Despite that, they already are accepting higher risk. 

People often say "officers need more training" to which I ask... ok? What kind of training? What are they not already getting that you think will solve this issue. Simply pointing to training is like say SAPR training is going to eliminate rapes in the military. Its more complex than that.

When this thread opened I left a page on meaningful police reforms. That was the post I was alluding to and I was hoping people would find it. Regardless, I'll recap some of them. By and large the largest hurdle the criminal justice system faces in the country is lack of focus and lack of funding. They've suffered in much the same way the military has where they continually succumb to mission creep of increasingly greedy political officials who seek reelection, yet their budget is often the first to suffer spending cuts when room needs made for a high priority item that makes the city look good. Seattle is a great example of how toxic the relationship between political officials and the police department are. The Seattle mayor is literally denigrating police officers on live TV telling them they don't uphold the cities standards yet she appointed and empowered every single one of them to include the ones drawing departmental policies. When the military suffers failure it is embarrassing for the POTUS. Somehow police departments do not carry the same weight of blame. Regarding meaningful reforms:

 

1.) Officer manning needs increased exponentially. Most people are surprised to learn officers are no longer partnered. The buddy system is integral to literally every other job in the emergency response industry to include the military and fire departments. We bemoan our police officers for being in  fear for their lives but we send them of into communities that are often very hostile to them, by themselves. When my wife worked her metropolitan district she patrolled an under privileged neighborhood on the outskirts of the city where her nearest response was 18 minutes away. 

 

2.) To add to officer manning, it has long been known that community policing is more effective but far less efficient than patrol cars. Techniques like walking patrols and police kiosks are instrumental to creating communities ties. Think of your relationship with your postman. You probably don't know him by name or much about his family but I bet you know his face and trust him because he drops the mail off to you every day without fail. Because of that, you have developed trust with him, and you would think to tell him if something was wrong with your mail delivery service. When police officers patrol in vehicles, they become unapproachable. Walking patrols are extraordinarily effective but come with less safety for the officer and a much larger task to efficiency. Hence back to my prior point about manning. 

 

3.) Standards for career field entry for police departments are extraordinarily high. Much higher than holding a TS/SCI. The background check is very rigorous. This is problematic though. It makes it hard to recruit people of adversity or difficult backgrounds. Some people screw up in life, but they turn out to be amazing people who would make amazing mentors and roll models. Policing is primarily a community focused roll and the people serving a community should come from within it. Yet in some of the worst neighborhoods we can't do this because the people that grow up in those climates are unlikely to make it to college with a completely clean record. A pathway needs to be created to get these people of excellent character into the field without expecting perfection in their background.

 

4.) End the war on drugs. I'm not sure this one is worth debating anymore. Very few people support the massive resource waste this is at the moment. I'm not saying crack parties for all, but lets be sensible and stop wasting massive resources on find people and arresting people who the only thing they've done was jay walked with heroine in their pocket. 

 

5.) Traffic camera enforcement: This one is unpopular but I've come to realize it has some major advantages. The first one is, it removes cops from pulling traffic which has largely become an industry to prop city revenues and it against waste police officers time and resources. That industry has stained the community perception of police officers and tarnished the reputation of their office. It creates thousands of negative interactions with cops every year. If people have a bad story about a cop its usually about how they were an ass hole for giving them a speeding ticket. Its also a waste of the above mentioned limited resources and manning. 

 

I think any conversation on how to reform criminal justice in the United States needs to begin with how do we increase public trust in the police department and make the work environment safer for cops. If you can start there you can probably start to find solutions. But the problem is, all of them cost money, and no one wants to hold political officials accountable for doing a terrible job of appropriating departments. 

[slackline]

Yes I acknowledge police officers by far don't have the MOST dangerous job in the United States but they do have a higher than normal rate of danger. There are some key differences in the instances of officer deaths. One important one is that when an officer is killed in the line of duty it is an assault on an institution (justice by law) that attacks the fabric of society. This makes it more reprehensible than others occupational deaths. There is also the caveat that police officers work largely an environment where people are attempting to undermine them, where as other occupations do not. Hence their danger is relative to their vigilance. We have to recognize that police officers do not take the same types of Hippocratic oaths, and therefore do not have the same moral obligations to accept increasingly higher amounts of risk like members of the military. Despite that, they already are accepting higher risk. 
People often say "officers need more training" to which I ask... ok? What kind of training? What are they not already getting that you think will solve this issue. Simply pointing to training is like say SAPR training is going to eliminate rapes in the military. Its more complex than that.
When this thread opened I left a page on meaningful police reforms. That was the post I was alluding to and I was hoping people would find it. Regardless, I'll recap some of them. By and large the largest hurdle the criminal justice system faces in the country is lack of focus and lack of funding. They've suffered in much the same way the military has where they continually succumb to mission creep of increasingly greedy political officials who seek reelection, yet their budget is often the first to suffer spending cuts when room needs made for a high priority item that makes the city look good. Seattle is a great example of how toxic the relationship between political officials and the police department are. The Seattle mayor is literally denigrating police officers on live TV telling them they don't uphold the cities standards yet she appointed and empowered every single one of them to include the ones drawing departmental policies. When the military suffers failure it is embarrassing for the POTUS. Somehow police departments do not carry the same weight of blame. Regarding meaningful reforms:
 
1.) Officer manning needs increased exponentially. Most people are surprised to learn officers are no longer partnered. The buddy system is integral to literally every other job in the emergency response industry to include the military and fire departments. We bemoan our police officers for being in  fear for their lives but we send them of into communities that are often very hostile to them, by themselves. When my wife worked her metropolitan district she patrolled an under privileged neighborhood on the outskirts of the city where her nearest response was 18 minutes away. 
 
2.) To add to officer manning, it has long been known that community policing is more effective but far less efficient than patrol cars. Techniques like walking patrols and police kiosks are instrumental to creating communities ties. Think of your relationship with your postman. You probably don't know him by name or much about his family but I bet you know his face and trust him because he drops the mail off to you every day without fail. Because of that, you have developed trust with him, and you would think to tell him if something was wrong with your mail delivery service. When police officers patrol in vehicles, they become unapproachable. Walking patrols are extraordinarily effective but come with less safety for the officer and a much larger task to efficiency. Hence back to my prior point about manning. 
 
3.) Standards for career field entry for police departments are extraordinarily high. Much higher than holding a TS/SCI. The background check is very rigorous. This is problematic though. It makes it hard to recruit people of adversity or difficult backgrounds. Some people screw up in life, but they turn out to be amazing people who would make amazing mentors and roll models. Policing is primarily a community focused roll and the people serving a community should come from within it. Yet in some of the worst neighborhoods we can't do this because the people that grow up in those climates are unlikely to make it to college with a completely clean record. A pathway needs to be created to get these people of excellent character into the field without expecting perfection in their background.
 
4.) End the war on drugs. I'm not sure this one is worth debating anymore. Very few people support the massive resource waste this is at the moment. I'm not saying crack parties for all, but lets be sensible and stop wasting massive resources on find people and arresting people who the only thing they've done was jay walked with heroine in their pocket. 
 
5.) Traffic camera enforcement: This one is unpopular but I've come to realize it has some major advantages. The first one is, it removes cops from pulling traffic which has largely become an industry to prop city revenues and it against waste police officers time and resources. That industry has stained the community perception of police officers and tarnished the reputation of their office. It creates thousands of negative interactions with cops every year. If people have a bad story about a cop its usually about how they were an ass hole for giving them a speeding ticket. Its also a waste of the above mentioned limited resources and manning. 
 
I think any conversation on how to reform criminal justice in the United States needs to begin with how do we increase public trust in the police department and make the work environment safer for cops. If you can start there you can probably start to find solutions. But the problem is, all of them cost money, and no one wants to hold political officials accountable for doing a terrible job of appropriating departments. 

All great points, honestly. I think another great thing to discuss that runs parallel with every one of these points is upping manning/funding for mental health specialists so we can stop calling police to handle situations they have zero business being involved in.

I am curious where you get your data on standards for entry though because I know some huge mental rocks and people that don’t look to ever have seen the inside of a gym. Maybe they were in shape at one point, but they don’t belong in a uniform now... Maybe the criminal background is all you’re referring to, but I don’t think one has to be very intelligent to be a beat cop.

So, an unpopular point is redirecting funding away from the militarization and making of cops to “appear” more like a military force. More time spent on deescalation, legit training that is recurring to constantly ensure they know how to handle the stressors they’ll be facing, and a longer pipeline with actual standards required to be maintained throughout their career.

You redirect some of the funding you can up the manning and their pay. More numerous cops with higher pay equals less danger faced per individual.

Just thoughts I have on it...


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[FLEA]

23 minutes ago, slackline said:

All great points, honestly. I think another great thing to discuss that runs parallel with every one of these points is upping manning/funding for mental health specialists so we can stop calling police to handle situations they have zero business being involved in.

I am curious where you get your data on standards for entry though because I know some huge mental rocks and people that don’t look to ever have seen the inside of a gym. Maybe they were in shape at one point, but they don’t belong in a uniform now... Maybe the criminal background is all you’re referring to, but I don’t think one has to be very intelligent to be a beat cop.

So, an unpopular point is redirecting funding away from the militarization and making of cops to “appear” more like a military force. More time spent on deescalation, legit training that is recurring to constantly ensure they know how to handle the stressors they’ll be facing, and a longer pipeline with actual standards required to be maintained throughout their career.

You redirect some of the funding you can up the manning and their pay. More numerous cops with higher pay equals less danger faced per individual.

Just thoughts I have on it...


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I am talking specifically about the criminal background. You basically have to have never made a mistake in your life. Mental health background has to be squeaky clean as well. Bottom line is the city is going to give you a gun and they see it as a liability if youre ever involved in a shooting and someone can question your mental acumen. 

 

 

[VTguy]

I'll go out on a limb and say I'm probably the only forum member who has been both an active duty AF aircrew member and a full time street cop/detective. Its interesting to see professional aircrew members here citing anecdotes based on seconds-long video clips, with minimal context, in order to make generalized conclusions regarding policing in America. You guys are taxpaying Americans and entitled to make any judgements you want. But oblige me for a moment...

I was involved in a Class A mishap during my active duty AF time. I don't remember anyone taking partial/preliminary information or hearsay from that incident to diagnose the entire AF flying community as a bunch of f***-ups. I've always appreciated the way the aviation industry generally reserves judgement until an objective investigation has been completed. That investigation takes into account every possible environmental factor, human factor, the aircrew's training and experience, the unit culture and adherence to standards, etc, etc.

A lot of guys in this thread are posting anecdotal videos without the full context to supposedly prove a point. Anyone can use Google to find a few videos/anecdotes to fit their narrative in this debate. But the issues surrounding US policing today are so much more complex than that. Is policing in America broken? Yes, in my opinion. Is it because cops are systemically racist? No, in my opinion. 

I've read thread after thread on this site over the years...in which professional aircrew members warn of the cluster f*** that the AF flying community would become when all of the experience and talent decides to leave. Let's consider what the AF flying community would become if the starting pay was <$40K with shitty benefits, a few months of training before being put in harm's way, and a public perception that you were all a bunch of racist thugs.

Edited October 29, 2020 by VTguy
BODN doesn't like my curse words

[Lord Ratner]

3 hours ago, FLEA said:

Yes I acknowledge police officers by far don't have the MOST dangerous job in the United States but they do have a higher than normal rate of danger. There are some key differences in the instances of officer deaths. One important one is that when an officer is killed in the line of duty it is an assault on an institution (justice by law) that attacks the fabric of society. This makes it more reprehensible than others occupational deaths. There is also the caveat that police officers work largely an environment where people are attempting to undermine them, where as other occupations do not. Hence their danger is relative to their vigilance. We have to recognize that police officers do not take the same types of Hippocratic oaths, and therefore do not have the same moral obligations to accept increasingly higher amounts of risk like members of the military. Despite that, they already are accepting higher risk. 

People often say "officers need more training" to which I ask... ok? What kind of training? What are they not already getting that you think will solve this issue. Simply pointing to training is like say SAPR training is going to eliminate rapes in the military. Its more complex than that.

When this thread opened I left a page on meaningful police reforms. That was the post I was alluding to and I was hoping people would find it. Regardless, I'll recap some of them. By and large the largest hurdle the criminal justice system faces in the country is lack of focus and lack of funding. They've suffered in much the same way the military has where they continually succumb to mission creep of increasingly greedy political officials who seek reelection, yet their budget is often the first to suffer spending cuts when room needs made for a high priority item that makes the city look good. Seattle is a great example of how toxic the relationship between political officials and the police department are. The Seattle mayor is literally denigrating police officers on live TV telling them they don't uphold the cities standards yet she appointed and empowered every single one of them to include the ones drawing departmental policies. When the military suffers failure it is embarrassing for the POTUS. Somehow police departments do not carry the same weight of blame. Regarding meaningful reforms:

 

1.) Officer manning needs increased exponentially. Most people are surprised to learn officers are no longer partnered. The buddy system is integral to literally every other job in the emergency response industry to include the military and fire departments. We bemoan our police officers for being in  fear for their lives but we send them of into communities that are often very hostile to them, by themselves. When my wife worked her metropolitan district she patrolled an under privileged neighborhood on the outskirts of the city where her nearest response was 18 minutes away. 

 

2.) To add to officer manning, it has long been known that community policing is more effective but far less efficient than patrol cars. Techniques like walking patrols and police kiosks are instrumental to creating communities ties. Think of your relationship with your postman. You probably don't know him by name or much about his family but I bet you know his face and trust him because he drops the mail off to you every day without fail. Because of that, you have developed trust with him, and you would think to tell him if something was wrong with your mail delivery service. When police officers patrol in vehicles, they become unapproachable. Walking patrols are extraordinarily effective but come with less safety for the officer and a much larger task to efficiency. Hence back to my prior point about manning. 

 

3.) Standards for career field entry for police departments are extraordinarily high. Much higher than holding a TS/SCI. The background check is very rigorous. This is problematic though. It makes it hard to recruit people of adversity or difficult backgrounds. Some people screw up in life, but they turn out to be amazing people who would make amazing mentors and roll models. Policing is primarily a community focused roll and the people serving a community should come from within it. Yet in some of the worst neighborhoods we can't do this because the people that grow up in those climates are unlikely to make it to college with a completely clean record. A pathway needs to be created to get these people of excellent character into the field without expecting perfection in their background.

 

4.) End the war on drugs. I'm not sure this one is worth debating anymore. Very few people support the massive resource waste this is at the moment. I'm not saying crack parties for all, but lets be sensible and stop wasting massive resources on find people and arresting people who the only thing they've done was jay walked with heroine in their pocket. 

 

5.) Traffic camera enforcement: This one is unpopular but I've come to realize it has some major advantages. The first one is, it removes cops from pulling traffic which has largely become an industry to prop city revenues and it against waste police officers time and resources. That industry has stained the community perception of police officers and tarnished the reputation of their office. It creates thousands of negative interactions with cops every year. If people have a bad story about a cop its usually about how they were an ass hole for giving them a speeding ticket. Its also a waste of the above mentioned limited resources and manning. 

 

I think any conversation on how to reform criminal justice in the United States needs to begin with how do we increase public trust in the police department and make the work environment safer for cops. If you can start there you can probably start to find solutions. But the problem is, all of them cost money, and no one wants to hold political officials accountable for doing a terrible job of appropriating departments. 

1-4) Yup. Though I'll add, we can't legalize all drugs. And we can't ignore the use of certain drugs, like meth. America's "homelessness" problem is actual a drug abuse problem, and we are seeing the effects of a laissez faire approach to drug use and addiction. For the best summation of the problem I recommend watching "Seattle is Dying" by KOMO on YouTube. Should be required viewing.

 

5) Agreed but with a caveat: the private interests, if they are permitted (most cities don't run their cameras) must have absolutely no compensation based on the volume of infractions. Secondly, cities must establish a formula for yellow-light duration that is applied to all intersections that matches or exceeds pre-camera duration. 

 

You commentary on police partners is pretty much inline with my point. More cops = less need for fatal force in a given interaction. One on one, the point-of-no-return for a fatal interaction is much sooner. 

[ViperMan]

14 hours ago, slackline said:

Agree mostly, but the risk most definitely is part of the job. If your own life is 100% your focus, I think “serving and protecting” is the wrong job for you. Should be very high on the list of priorities, but you do know what you are potentially signing up for. Maybe just arguing semantics here...

Gotta disagree with you completely on that one. Just because we have formalized/outsourced violence to an entity called the police does not make it their job (in any part) to get hurt while "serving and protecting" the rest of us. This is a "job" that has to be done by someone and is ultimately an extension of all of our most basic rights to not be harmed by other individuals - if we didn't have police is it my job to get a "little bit harmed" while defending my home because the robber has "rights" too? I don't think so. So the police who fulfill this role in society have zero duty to take even the smallest harm from those who are breaking laws - especially doing so violently.

The people who break the law and willfully conduct violence against others (including police officers) are 100% responsible because it is 100% their choice to take the actions that led to those outcomes.

[ViperMan]

2 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

1-4) Yup. Though I'll add, we can't legalize all drugs. And we can't ignore the use of certain drugs, like meth. America's "homelessness" problem is actual a drug abuse problem, and we are seeing the effects of a laissez faire approach to drug use and addiction. For the best summation of the problem I recommend watching "Seattle is Dying" by KOMO on YouTube. Should be required viewing.

5) Agreed but with a caveat: the private interests, if they are permitted (most cities don't run their cameras) must have absolutely no compensation based on the volume of infractions. Secondly, cities must establish a formula for yellow-light duration that is applied to all intersections that matches or exceeds pre-camera duration. 

You commentary on police partners is pretty much inline with my point. More cops = less need for fatal force in a given interaction. One on one, the point-of-no-return for a fatal interaction is much sooner. 

Absolutely agree. Watched it a while ago and two things that stuck out to me were the fact that so many (almost all) of the homeless have either some sort of "debilitating" mental condition or are hopelessly addicted. One officer's quote stood out to me in particular: "Drug dealers selling crack, meth and heroin are evil people preying on the weakest part of society and belong in prison. We arrest them and nothing happens to them. They are back out on the street immediately. We need to acknowledge the disregard for human life inherent in selling life ending drugs and lock the dealers up for serious time."

There are elements in society that literally profit from people's death. I'm open (but skeptical) to the "legalization" argument. Weed has been legal in a lot of states now, and there is still a very strong illicit market for it, so I don't buy the argument that we can just tax it and it'll just all be ok.

[TreeA10]

https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/systematic-racism-in-policing-its-time-to-stop-the-lying/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/03/police-black-killings-homicide-rates-race-injustice-column/3235072001/

https://factcheck.thedispatch.com/p/what-are-the-real-stats-on-black

Couple articles regarding police shootings from a variety of potential biased sources.  IMHO, numbers do not bear out the theory the police are racists or any other accusations made in that direction.

[Guardian]

Guessing slackline might be out plotting “peaceful protests” or else he would have responded by now.

[Lord Ratner]

1 hour ago, Guardian said:

Guessing slackline might be out plotting “peaceful protests” or else he would have responded by now.

Easy, dude. He's not Goldfein.

[kaputt]

14 hours ago, ViperMan said:

Absolutely agree. Watched it a while ago and two things that stuck out to me were the fact that so many (almost all) of the homeless have either some sort of "debilitating" mental condition or are hopelessly addicted. One officer's quote stood out to me in particular: "Drug dealers selling crack, meth and heroin are evil people preying on the weakest part of society and belong in prison. We arrest them and nothing happens to them. They are back out on the street immediately. We need to acknowledge the disregard for human life inherent in selling life ending drugs and lock the dealers up for serious time."

There are elements in society that literally profit from people's death. I'm open (but skeptical) to the "legalization" argument. Weed has been legal in a lot of states now, and there is still a very strong illicit market for it, so I don't buy the argument that we can just tax it and it'll just all be ok.

Local governments are super complicit in this as well, as you alluded to. In California taxpayer money goes to a program that allows homeless drug users to exchange dirty needles for clean ones. 
 

Just exacerbating the problems perpetually.  

[Breckey]

Quote

A systematic review of 15 studies analyzing needle-syringe programs (NSP) found that NSP’s were associated with decreases in the prevalence of HIV and HCV and decreases in the incidence of HIV.[1] For example, a series of three-year longitudinal studies investigating the effect of New York’s legalization of syringe exchange programs between 1990 and 2002 found decreases in:

HIV prevalence from 50 percent to 17 percent (p<.001) [16]
Person-years at risk for HIV, from 3.55 to 0.77 per 100 person-years (p<.001)[16]
Another study that examined the effect of New York’s exchange program on the prevalence of HCV infection between 1990 and 2001 found that it was associated with a reduction in prevalence from 80 percent to 59 percent among HIV-negative intravenous drug users (p<0.034).[1, 17] An evaluation examining the District of Columbia’s lift of the Congressional ban on syringe exchange programs, which allowed the D.C. Department of Health to initiate an exchange program, showed a 70 percent decrease in new HIV cases among IDU and a total of 120 HIV cases averted in two years [18].

A cost-effectiveness analysis of a New York City needle syringe exchange estimated that the program would result in a baseline one year savings to the government of $1,300 to $3,000 per client. [19] Another cost-effectiveness analysis estimated that expanding access to clean syringes through an additional annual U.S. investment of $10 million would result in:

194 HIV infections averted in one year
A lifetime treatment cost savings of $75.8 million1A return on investment of $7.58 for every $1 spent (from the national perspective)[20]

https://www.cdc.gov/policy/hst/hi5/cleansyringes/index.html

The homelessness and drug abuse correlation is 100 percent true however CDC studies have shown that needle exchanges decrease overall government expenditure.

[Guardian]

Easy, dude. He's not Goldfein.

Thanks. I needed that.

[Lord Ratner]

4 hours ago, Breckey said:

https://www.cdc.gov/policy/hst/hi5/cleansyringes/index.html

The homelessness and drug abuse correlation is 100 percent true however CDC studies have shown that needle exchanges decrease overall government expenditure.

Yes, though it's a bandaid on a compound fracture.

 

We need to embrace forced treatment for those unable to maintain a household. This is a weak area for conservatives who have no concept of what a hardcore drug addiction does to your mind. We want people to pick themselves up by the bootstraps, great, we gotta get their mind clean enough to do so. 

 

For liberals this means they have to stop pretending like letting people "live themselves to death" on the streets is some sort of virtue. Homeless people go to jail, not because they are criminal (though many are), but because you have to confine the addict to treatment long enough for it to take effect.

 

For conservatives, just locking people away won't work. It's going to take money to fix this; treatment is expensive. And providing the anti-addiction drugs for free (forever) will also sting. Tough.

[17D_guy]

43 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

Yes, though it's a bandaid on a compound fracture.

We need to embrace forced treatment for those unable to maintain a household. This is a weak area for conservatives who have no concept of what a hardcore drug addiction does to your mind. We want people to pick themselves up by the bootstraps, great, we gotta get their mind clean enough to do so. 

For liberals this means they have to stop pretending like letting people "live themselves to death" on the streets is some sort of virtue. Homeless people go to jail, not because they are criminal (though many are), but because you have to confine the addict to treatment long enough for it to take effect.

For conservatives, just locking people away won't work. It's going to take money to fix this; treatment is expensive. And providing the anti-addiction drugs for free (forever) will also sting. Tough.

All truth.  Ben Shapiro had a good bit of LA history on it his last Rogan podcast appearance.  I've got family in Portland who're outraged at how the city is handling the situation.  "Just give them homes and out patient treatment, problem solved maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan."

I've had to protect my family from some of the crazies when we go to visit.  It's a fucking trip to be in a Burgerville with my young son, having to decide how close is "too close" with a stinky homeless fellow human being dancing in a circle blasted out of their cranuim.  Or having to tell people "No" they can't use our bathroom at church because we're scared they're going to use in there.

Liberal head's in the sand about "wanting freedom" fall on my deaf ears when they clean out these tents and there's shit and needles...everywhere.  These people have zero freedom while they're broken humans.

But it costs money, and it costs time and it costs compassion.  Something I've found in shorter supply from my conservative brothers/sisters, which is interesting with how much the Evangelical movement claims it.  Not throwing stones, don't want to get into the political side, just musing I've had for years on this subject.

I'm in UT now, and just last week they were a big push to get out one of the camps in SLC.  Reading the headlines about it...so many are mentally broken AND addicted to drugs.  There are a lot of shelters here, there's a lot the government does here.  But people don't want to go to a prison like place (they lock the doors at night) and "told what to do" (can't shoot up).  Can't say which came first the mental illness/drugs, but they need forceful help or life in a mental health care facility until they can rejoin us in society. 

I'm happy to pay taxes towards that end, and donate (and will continue to) to the services that provide those ends.  This is a needs a concerted effort by both government (local/state/federal) and communities (individuals/organizations/churches) to solve.

I say all this having had a homeless scare earlier in my life, and later becoming physically dependent on opiates during some prolonged extreme pain.  I was never addicted, but the thought of being dependent on a pill to get through the day was, and is, terrifying.

[gearhog]

Maj Gen Ed Thomas: Too many white guys are pilots. 
 

https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/86-of-air-force-pilots-are-white-men-heres-why-this-needs-to-change-155046366.html?guccounter=1&__twitter_impression=true

[di1630]

Maj Gen Ed Thomas: Too many white guys are pilots. 
 
https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/86-of-air-force-pilots-are-white-men-heres-why-this-needs-to-change-155046366.html?guccounter=1&__twitter_impression=true

I’m all for diversity in the ranks but I doubt we are suddenly going to find a ton of missed high-end recruits in the inner city.

I’ve said before, I could find better recruits by stopping the BS academic and chess club qualifiers that get kids into UPT.

I’ll take medium-intelligence type A recruits any day over the super-high-intelligence weenies I see filling the cockpits.


Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

[busdriver]

It always cracks me up how everybody in the chain of command can find a way to justify the thing they already wanted to do based on the latest strategic guidance laid down by the CSAF.

[Guardian]

Maj Gen Ed Thomas: Too many white guys are pilots. 
 
https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/86-of-air-force-pilots-are-white-men-heres-why-this-needs-to-change-155046366.html?guccounter=1&__twitter_impression=true

Slackline?

[viper154]

19 hours ago, di1630 said:

I’m all for diversity in the ranks but I doubt we are suddenly going to find a ton of missed high-end recruits in the inner city.

I’ve said before, I could find better recruits by stopping the BS academic and chess club qualifiers that get kids into UPT.

I’ll take medium-intelligence type A recruits any day over the super-high-intelligence weenies I see filling the cockpits.


Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

There are a lot of levels to this, but it’s overall culture problem in the Air Force and in society in general. 
 

As the article said, military service isn’t as appealing as it once was, and a lot of American youth aren’t even eligible for service. A lot of the motivated type A, willing to learn inner city youth dedicate a lot of their time to sports, as culturally that is viewed as one of the only ways out. These kids are smart, motivated, athletic, we need to find a way to reach these populations. (Not just the athletes, but I think they provide a larger pool). 
 

You hit the nail on the head with the chess club bs. We need to change our recruiting and our officer training programs. Trying to convince any youth to spend 4 years at the academy or in ROTC marching in circles wearing blues and folding shirts into perfect squares to (maybe) get a opportunity to fly is a tough sell(and that’s assuming we give them scholarships). Ya, there is OTS, but in the context of low income youth they probably aren’t going to have a 4 year degree. I don’t have all answers, but trying to only get 4.0 GPA “smart” cadets isn’t the best strategy to me.

I get we aren’t the Army, but their ROTC program seemed to be a lot better structured than ours. While they were out in the field doing land nav, building shelters, learning weapons/tactics, we were in Blues marching in the gym and doing retarded GLPs bouncing balloons around and formatting Memos. I don’t give a shit how your memo is formatted, I’m probably not going to read it anyway. 99% of our force isn’t going to be on the ground running and gunning, but I think there is a lot more to take away from that training than marching and memos. 

When I’m flying around bum fuck no where, and everyone on the ground wants to kill me, I want a diverse crew/team (not talking skin color, I don’t give shit how much pigment is in your skin or what set of genitals you have). Having the 4.0GPA person brings something to the table, but so does the country boy who can live off the land and fix anything, the inner city kid that fought tooth and nail and has “street smarts”, the athlete, the immigrant, etc. Filling the rated ranks with people that checked the “chess club” box is a major contributing factor to the cultural/bureaucratic nightmare of a organization we have become.