I think that this point should be brought up.
Back in late 2010 when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his cronies in other states worked to strip police officers their right to bargain. The protesters were there defending you.
We marched, sang chants and held signs giving praise to the men and women in blue. We stood in solidarity with law enforcement. We stood in the snow, wind and rain for them.
Now that the protesters are fighting for everyone, the situation has changed. Now the men and women in blue (exception Baltimore) are helping the very same people who work hard to strip their rights are now helping them to strip ours.
They are concreting our “free speech zones”. Despite the fact that the whole country is a free speech zone. They are beating and macing unarmed, untrained peaceful protesters. They did this indiscriminately. These protesters have no helmets, no pepper spray or stun guns or any means to provoke a threat nor to protect themselves.
They are giving permission to march then trapped and arrested. They have constantly violated our civil and Constitutional rights, even though we fought to protect their rights!
The police in Oakland, even went as far as joyfully cracking a 24 year-old Marine veteran Scott Olsen’s skull open and leaving him for dead. The cops fired twice at the protesters trying to remove the victim from the scene.
The beautiful thing about OWS is the amount of forgiveness they extended to the officers. They never turned violent toward them. The people themselves are from all walks of life, black, white, men, women, old, young, rich and poor. All converged to exercise our right to freedom of assembly. All rights must be preserved by all or enjoyed by none.
Why is that cops are so willing to protect the very people who betray them? Is your paid police detail that important to you that you must hurt an unarmed person? With this in mind, law enforcement, to me, seems a little ungrateful.
I have been a police officer for 15 years in Madison, Wisconsin. I took this job for all the right reasons: to help people in my community, to keep people safe from the predators that exist in our society, and be part of a career that allowed myself to feel good about the contribution I was making. I am also a diehard progressive and liberal. If you truly understand the job police actually do every day in our country, you will understand that there is no contradiction in that statement. We are not all jack-booted thugs, most of the 500,000 or so cops in this society are dedicated, underpaid individuals who truly want to help their fellow citizens.
You got your facts very wrong as to what occurred in Wisconsin. From the beginning, police officers and firefighters were EXEMPT from Scott Walker’s legislation stripping Wisconsin workers of their collective bargaining rights. Yet, from day one, we stood with YOU to stand up for what is right despite the professional vulnerability that created.
Despite our exemption from this terrible legislation, I and my coworkers marched for 30 DAYS STRAIGHT during the protests in Madison this past winter. We and countless other police officers founded the “Cops for Labor” movement, and stood shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with teachers, students, social workers, and every one else who came out to protest. What this meant is that we worked 12 hours shifts around the Capital in Madison in freezing conditions on duty. When our shifts were over, we came back to the station, changed into our “Cops for Labor” shirts, grabbed our “Cops for Labor” signs, and returned to protest for several hours. When it looked like Governor Walker was going to try to forcibly clear the Capital, I and other off-duty officers came to sleep among the protesters so that, at the very least, Walker would have to contend with the uncomfortable images of police officers being led out in handcuffs by other officers. If you perform a Google search of my Cops for Labor, Madison Police protests, etc, you will see what I am describing is accurate.
I can tell you that the very fact of having off-duty officers join the protests on such a large scale totally changed the dynamics of the situation, and there was an extremely good relationship between the on-duty police and protesters in Madison. During weeks of protests, in which hundreds of thousands of citizens came to be heard in our great city, there was absolutely NONE of the strife and violence we are seeing between police and protesters in New York and other cities. The on-duty police were respectful, compassionate, and even-tempered. As an aside, there are about 30,000 police officers in NYC, and it isn’t fair to judge them all by the actions of a few. I have been told by numerous occupy protesters that the majority of the rank and file of NYPD have been respectful and fair.
I am horrified by what is happening in this country, and how the 1% are ruining our great nation. There has been war waged against the poor, working class, and middle class for 3 decades in this country, and we are on life support. I spend a great deal of time and energy speaking out against this, and being a police officer adds a meaningful dimension to the debate. It pains me greatly when I see the same bigotry and prejudice displayed by the right adopted by my brothers and sisters on the left toward police officers and our role in society. As part of the 99%, ALL of our futures are inextricably linked, and demonizing all police officers based upon the actions of a few is exactly what the 1% want you to do.
There very well might have been 99% of the Oakland Police officers who were either ashamed or embarrassed about what they were doing, but the fact remains that not only were they still doing it, they did not prevent the thug Cops who committed the assaults from doing so and are therefor just as guilty.
I’ve been attending the protests in Oakland since their inception. It really is just an awesome sight. I witnessed everything on tues and pretty much everything I’ve read or watched on the subject usually misses the point. When we marched you could see the shame and embarrassment on the faces of so many of the officers that were there. You could practically see it in their eyes that allot of them have families, and mortgages, etc. that they were thinking of and that they were no different than us. It was just that there was a definite percentage of officers who antagonized and pushed plenty of people around, completely unprovoked. One of the biggest issues here that no one seems to be attaching to is that this has been a problem within Oakland for awhile. The oakland PD will likely go into federal receivership after this situation due to consistent overuse of this kind of force on oakland citizens. This is not close to a first-time mistake. It’s an ongoing problem and it’s being investigated as we speak. Oakland had a police chief who left the department not that long ago. He left because apparently he claimed that he didn’t feel he could be an effective law enforcer because of all the limitations placed on his job. He pretty much said that he had to sign off with like 10 different politicians every time he needed to make a move. He said he just felt like he couldn’t do his job. There’s so much bureaucracy apparently in Oakland when when it comes to law enforcement, and mismanagement in the past and present, that it’s simply that one hand doesn’t know/care what the other is doing. Or worse, they are just that bad at their jobs. But now we’ve also learned that Oakland PD and San Francisco PD have both withdrawn their opposition to the protests