Feredir, I don't bring up every article with a police shooting.
Take a look at a recent shooting in Long Beach. The guy was armed with a hose nozzle. Was it tragic? Yes. Could it have been been better? Yes. But was it done wrong? No.
Then there was the case of the 8th grader with a realistic looking pellet gun. Also tragic, also could have been better, but also not done wrong.
The Kelly Thomas beating was done wrong. It was done so spectacularly wrong that it is a textbook perfect example of how our current system protects police from charges of misbehavior.
The first thing that happened when people looked at that case and said "something is wrong here" is that the police, the police union, the city leadership, and the prosecutor's office all closed ranks and said "you the public keep out we're handling this and we're not going to tell you what's going on so butt out."
The very first thing that was done wrong was that no arrests were made - and as a police officer you know that an arrest all by itself doesn't mean that anyone is guilty of anything yet. No trial yet, not conviction yet, no sentencing yet. A gangbanger would have been arrested, a police officer wasn't. The next thing that was done wrong was the intense privacy of who was involved. An innocent guy who is arrested on a gangbang beatdown resulting in a death would have his name and photo splashed on page one, and then two weeks later have a story on page 20 saying that the police picked up the wrong guy. The third thing is that one of the officers confessed and nobody did anything, the thin blue wall. He bragged in the locker room and nobody did anything.
Now I know that police who arrest crooked cops generally jeopardize their careers. The get denied promotions, get worse assignments, etc. But the oath they took on becoming a cop means that they should do so. Which means that again this highlights a failure of the system. Why are police punished for policing the police? Why are police punished for arresting crooked cops or criminal cops? IF someone had said "that bragging is a confession you are under arrest" that person would have been looked down on by his peers, and that is a failure of the system.
Can you address that particular failure? The punishment of honest police who arrest criminals in uniform?
I didn't address the 8th grader with the pellet gun or the Long Beach shooting because those weren't instances of police doing something wrong. They were instances of how sometimes their job puts them in a situation where they have to make tough choices with insufficient facts, which sucks for them but doesn't mean they are bad for making the tough choice. Those two cases, though, are very different from the Fullerton beating.
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It is a myth that coercion is necessary in order to force people to get along together, but it is a persistent myth because it feeds a desire many people have. That desire is to be able to justify hurting people who have done nothing other than offend them in some way.
Last edited by Cenedril_Gildinaur on Tue Feb 30, 2026 13:61 am; edited 426 times in total