Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities ‘highlights the illegitimacy of actions’
Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities ‘highlights the illegitimacy of actions’
Some wear balaclavas. Some wear neck gators, sunglasses and hats. Some wear masks and casual clothes.
Across the country, armed federal immigration officers have increasingly hidden their identities while carrying out immigration raids, arresting protesters and roughing up prominent Democratic critics.
It’s a trend that has sparked alarm among civil rights and law enforcement experts alike.
Mike German, a former FBI agent, said officers’ widespread use of masks was unprecedented in US law enforcement and a sign of a rapidly eroding democracy. “Masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls,” he said.
At this point, my first reaction to seeing anyone in law enforcement at any level is they are a criminal thugs that cannot be trusted, should be undermined at every opportunity, insulted relentlessly, and if necessary, worse. I know there are some good cops, and not everything they do is bad, but goddamn they do they suck in general.
I heard this one recently: Take 100 gallons of dirty sewage water and add 1 gallon of clean water. What do you have? It's not 101 clean gallons of water or even 100 gallons dirty and 1 clean anymore..
You now have 101 gallons of dirty fucking sewage water.
As human beings, our interests, philosophies, politics, etc, yes.
As workers in a job, not so much. The analogy works in that scenario. We all conform, to varying degrees, to the groups that we join. Especially when that group is your full time employ, where you spend most of your time and gain most of your money.
There's a HBO show called The Wire that is amazing, and I would recommend to anyone to watch, but particularly to yourself because "Simon has said that despite its framing as a crime drama, the show is "really about the American city, and about how we live together. It's about how institutions have an effect on individuals. Whether one is a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge or a lawyer, all are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution to which they are committed."[5]"
The challenge today is that their legal job may now require them to do things that are constitutionally questionable and ethically repugnant. So even if they’re good people and upstanding citizens, they may be required to, at any point in their day, to choose between doing the right thing and losing their job.
They only have to choose wrong once to no longer be the “good cop”.
Now, because of the way policing works in the US, it may be possible to have an intrinsically good police department. At least until a state or federal agency rolls into town and demands they do something they wouldn’t otherwise do; then they become complicit.
After all… in any other organized gang, there can be good people, but they’re still going to be found guilty of gang activity due to supporting the others.
I don’t have experience with either of those places but when I was in Rome, Italy it was plainly obvious that the 5 or 6 different kinds of cops, none of whom were helping people, are useless thugs and goons just like the Americans.
But was there a situation where they were needed? Or were they standing doing nothing because there was nothing?
I have known multiple firefighters which were happy most of the time to get the support from the cops to handle the situation.
The cops I have seen were always doing something even if it were just patrolling. You can call that useless, but at least they are outside and can be called.