RICK ON COPS AND GUNS! PL RESPONDS!!

Well, I knew the stuff about cops would draw Rick out, and sure enough, he sent me an "earful!"

Here's Rick:

"Surprise surprise!

Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can’t believe. Unbelief is won’t believe. Doubt is honesty. Unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light. Unbelief is content with darkness.
- Henry Drummond

Wow! There are only a few people who actually know the truth about this "racist" incident. The facts keep coming out. However, people have taken the irresponsible and intellectually dishonest liberty to paint this as racist. That is a "cop" out if there ever was one. Or, people are just so trapped in their narrow thinking that it couldn't be anything else.
Me? I see it as a pompous blowhard "Do you know who I am?" guy verses a working class, "I'm not taking your guff" cop. You write about this all the time how our egos get the best of us and it appears as though this certainly played a role in this story. Race? I, along with anyone who wasn't there can't make that claim.
I grew up next door to Cambridge and if there is a force that is more politically correct and racially sensitive, it is Cambridge's. We used to think of them as wussies because they were so careful with murderers, rapists and thugs making sure to protect their rights. Even so, the force just settled a race based case for $4 million. (Yes, I'm actually providing a fact to weaken my own position because I know there are 3, yes 3, sides to every story.)

It might help your readers to read the following article that has a black commissioner previously recruiting the arresting white officer to teach cadets about racial profiling. He's an expert on racial profiling and defusing situations.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_harvard_scholar_arresting_officer

Nice try diffusing the obvious argument of good cops by only claiming that we all only have exceptions of them. Also, nice work in shaping our responses by trying to make us feel as though we should also feel intimidated by cops with guns. Lions and tigers and bears OH MY! You probably know the fear mongering, intimidation and self-proclaimed truth loses its ability to steer my thoughts. Some people may tiptoe on this blog because of fear of your usual demeaning and angry wrath. I, like you, say bring it on!

My experience with cops? All have been extremely supportive, professional and even kind.

It started in elementary school when they would routinely come to school to speak about life choices and tell us about their jobs. Cops were wicked awesome up to that point. I am not intimidated as you are by a cop. They could be outfitted with machine guns + machetes and that wouldn't change my impression.

Next?? During middle school cops were the only guys to volunteer as football coaches. No biased uneducated (in sport), inexperienced father overcompensating for their lack of success as a youngster. These cops were great coaches as life lessons ruled over x's + o's. It takes a village? These guys were very special people who helped shape the lives of generations of young players.
Next? A deacon at my church was an officer. Again a role model and real person who was welcoming, compassionate and really was there for teens (he actually grew up in Cambridge).
Next??? Friends who became cops. They remain the same humble kind people, men+ women, who I knew growing up.
Next??Just the other day I was taking carrying a pizza in one hand and my son in the other out of a pizzeria. A cop, whom I've never met, saw me and offered to carry the pizza out to my car.

Now I have had a few run-ins with the PO-PO that were ugly but they were because if inexperience on the cop's side. Their lack of judgement and strict adherence of protocol got the best of them. (Sound familiar?) I didn't paste all cops as bad after those incidents. The Judges rightly dismissed everything. They just were rookies who made rookie mistakes.

Hopefully, once all of the hateful + incendiary rhetoric subsides, we all can learn from this incident.

As an aside, Judge Sotomayor's decision to support the disallowance of test scores in hiring firefighters can only be construed as racist. The reason the city ignored this practice is that it feared a lawsuit because actually hiring the most qualified would mean no blacks would get hired. Sooooo, it was a race based decision. MLK would cringe at this. You can say the end justifies the means. Get more blacks on staff. Affirmative action. Those are certainly worthy, but racist nonetheless. Obama won the election because the voters felt he offered more than anyone else, not because we need a black guy in the white house."

PL:

Well, Rick, first of all, I do generalize for a reason, and likewise, I make the disclaimer that "there are always exceptions" for a reason. In the final analysis of any situation, the responsibility of the individual rules. And there are certainly good cops, priests, teachers, doctors and lawyers, therapists, heck, even "benevolent dictators" in history. But it seems that you want to exonerate the diseased collective because of those good individuals, which is of course, no wonder, why you and others detest affirmative action. "If we aren't discriminating against blacks and women, now, why do we need to help them catch up or, God forbid, make reparations?"

Right.

Racially conscious is not the same thing as racist, Rick.

See, I don't take the approach to social illness typical of our psychopathic and utterly non-holistic medical establishment's approach to physical illness, which is to isolate the infection or tumor, then cut, burn or drug it out. If I have an infection, the first thing I ask is why do I have this? Then, I enlist my entire body's immune system to heal the sickness. I don't play the convenient "bad apple" game with myself, whether I'm dealing with a flu, or a sexually acting out priest abusing his parishioners, or a corrupt cop abusing citizens he's supposed to be serving, or a soldier abusing, humiliating and torturing a prisoner he's supposed to be guarding. I want to know why the particular body in question has a particular infection, and then I want to heal the whole body.

And the reason I don't subscribe to the "bad apple" cover-up? Because I don't need to idealize any parental authorities anymore. I'm a grown-up!

Rick (on gun control):

"We have over 20,000 gun control laws on the books. So you think we should have more?? Unless you banish all guns, an impossibility due to the black market, write all the laws you want and you will not limit the violence.

Education, community policing and removing illegal guns from circulation are the only things that have proven to be effective in reducing gun violence.

I do not know the facts, but would be interested to know how many legally owned guns were responsible for the deaths of the officers you quoted. Also, unintentional deaths???? You flushed those numbers out + your "truth" becomes clearer and less convenient. I agree with BM and would encourage % to be used the first time around not just numbers. But, as you usually prove, your do over is much better + believable.

It's like universal health care. You already exposed the waste + profit based, inefficient healthcare system we have. Soooo, lets add more people to an already flawed system?? It doesn't make sense and neither does adding gun control laws unless you add the only one that matters-ban them all."

PL:

I am actually not that interested in researching how many laws we have or should or shouldn't have on this subject. I am more interested in being honest about why people own guns. I mean... really honest. Is it for shooting tin cans to improve our eye-hand coordination? Yeah, that's the ticket!

Guns, unlike some other devices or tools, do not have a variety of uses. Guns are specifically designed to kill something that is alive. Now, look, I eat meat, which means an animal was killed for that purpose. And I could definitely kill in self-defense if my life or the life of a loved one was being immediately threatened. Although I choose not to, I can possibly understand someone having a handgun in their home for self-defense. But I couldn't kill for sport or fun, because killing is neither, nor could I choose a profession that included killing as part of the job description, and finally, I couldn't kill for any paranoid fantasies about rooting out groups of people who weren't like me or with whom I disagreed about something... because I'm not insane!