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.
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Works the other way too.
If I take 100 Gallons of clean water and dump a gallon of sewage into it, would you pour yourself a glass?
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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.
Didn’t help Christopher Dorner either.
Would you think the same in another country? In Canada? Or in The Netherlands?
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.