In so much as I know that's sarcasm, the answer is, fucking everything can go wrong.
LAPD Officer Shoots at Driver Eight Times Over Double Parking Incident
- Thread starter Revnak
- Start date
Well...yes...but I think that's blaming the veterans a bit too much. If the police viewed the populace as citizens to serve and protect, and not as an occupied people to control, then I don't think there'd be such a problem.
While the US police actively recruits from the ex-military, it's not like many places in the west refuse to allow ex-military into the police. It's not such a massive issue for Western nations that aren't the US.
I don't think it's blaming the veterans too much, considering I've lost count of how many cops have come into my VA office, in uniform, and flat out told me they weren't reporting issues they were having, because it would have negative impact on their job as a cop. Possibly even have them losing their badge. To THEM, the better scenario is to just bottle it up, push it down, and pretend it's not a problem, rather than say to themselves "hey, maybe I should find another line of work." And while I have sympathy for what most military personnel go through, I also have no illusions whatsoever, that a lot of them aren't terrible people, with serious issues, that they are too stubborn, and macho (mostly from military conditioning to suck it up, walk it off, don't be a pussy), to actually address their problems. And even the ones that aren't terrible people, they STILL operate under a military mindset, and that mindset, is to not report problems. If you do, you're letting your unit down. You're showing weakness, being a "sick call rider", someone who is trying to get out of doing the work, by always complaining about problems. And sure, there are people who do that too, the fact is, the social/mental reinforcement, of the culture of the US armed forces, discourages soldiers from reporting their problems, for fear of either social reprisal from their unit, to actual negative impact on their career and advancement. So they shut up about it. "No sir, I have no issues I need to report after this combat situation" when the opposite is true. They keep that mindset, and carry it with them, into the civilian life....and often join the police force. Where that mindset of seeing people as "others" is now directed at the civilians of the country. And I know not EVERY cop is ex-military, enough of them are, to make it a problem that carries over. And given how often those ex-military cops will likely go into positions of authority (like the spokesperson in the massage parlor shootings, who said he had a bad day), they are the ones that will often direct the tone and culture of the police force. and you can bet, that their military background, is going to influence it.
My point is that, you say it would be better if the police didn't see the populace as an occupied population to control. I'm saying that that mindset is heavily influenced by their military background. Since it's pretty much the same thing. It's not a secret that the US police force has been modeling themselves after the military, every chance they get.
