Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
let me clarify... just cause i don't like the way i left this: i don't dislike cops as people. i've met decent ones and ****ty ones just like any other job. my drunken post was more i dislike some aspects of what that job represents/entails... but i like/respect other aspects of it as well.
but i think its a bit BS for cops to say "hey buddy we just enforce the rules we don't write em." that's following the same logic as the nazis 'just following orders.' at the end of the day if you are willing to compromise your principles to make a buck then just say that. or if you actually agree with the law then say that. i can respect either one of those stances more than "i don't agree with the law but i chose as my career to enforce it and oh btw i also assume the moral high ground"
that's a bit like being a vegan who works as a butcher, imo.
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First of all, don't bring nazis into this. Second of all, people can be awfully hypocritical when it comes to cops; they criticize them when they follow the rules and the laws that have been established by society, and they demonize them if they don't. There is literally no way for them to please everyone, so I would much rather have them just follow the law rather than bend the rules whenever they feel like making exceptions. If you don't like the laws, don't blame the cops; that responsibility falls into the realm of the voting public, and our politicians. Expecting a cop to just rewrite laws to follow their own personal morality would lead to more bad situations than it would lead to good ones (for example, cops killing suspects that they think are guilty without actually trying them in court, forcing confessions out of people so that their arrests/cases solved record is beefed up, planting evidence on people that they don't like, shaking people down for protection money because they think they deserve the extra cash, etc.).
And don't call obeying procedural law "compromising their principles". The main "principle" of a good cop isn't to impose their own specific brand of morality onto everyone, it's to provide equal justice as it has been established by society. Saying that cops are compromising their principles for following a set of laws that is created by and applies to everyone is like saying that a society is compromising it's principles for being secular, rather than having the ruler force their religious belief onto everyone.