It’s not a thing where I live. There’s going to be other countries where the police operate like a gang, but it’s just not the case in almost all OECD countries. In authoritarian states like Russia and Iran, sure, but in functional democracies, it’s just not the case. The USA is a big exception, it must be part of that american exceptionalism thing.
Sure they do, and sure they are. But most people in functioning democracies with decent to good police forces understand that they’re just the messengers and hate the politicians that came up with the policies instead.
The policies of politicians and the humanism of police are not the same thing. A new party in power will also not change the culture of the workforce of an established service overnight, such a thing takes time. Time that those politicians usually don’t get in a functioning democracy, because in far less than a generation, another coalition of parties will be in the majority.
You wish. I don't know where you live, but go ask your local queer militants or racial minority, you may have a different answer. Also, yeah, they are here to defends the system, they'll be nice only as long as the system isn't too challanged. Which won't last for much longer anymore, with climate change, rarefaction of resources and all that.
I live in Belgium. There are police officers who are racist, which is to be expected since a lot of Belgian non police officers are racist too. But they are not allowed to be openly racist on the job, because that can have consequences for them.
Are our police fed up with the inner city street youth in Brussels, who mostly have an immigrant background? Definitely, but that doesn’t mean they are any more racist than the immigrants who are also fed up with the with thay inner city street youth. The root cause of those persisting problems is also a failing judiciary, not cop culture.
But the thing is, the conditions, that make it so that “acab” is a thing with many police agencies, are not present in Belgium.
Our police does not have qualified immunity, there are no no knock raids, there is no “we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong”, there is no systematic omerta to protect each other when crimes are committed. People aren’t even afraid of dying or getting their dog killed when they call the police.
There are isolated scandals obviously, police people are human after all and there are all kinds of humans and all kinds of circumstances.
There have been a few police scandals in recent years, but unlike with the USA police we keep reading about, those had consequences for the police officers involved. There is a very recent one of a group of police officers sharing racist memes in a private Whatsapp group and guess what, they got reported by colleagues and after an investigation, several police officers were fired.
Is the Belgian police perfect? Far from it. But are all Belgian cops bastards? Certainly not. Our cops are not a gang that stands apart from society, they are very much part of it.
Funny thing that, European countries haven’t lasted nearly as long as the US on average: revolutions, conquest, coups. Only a couple of monarchies and even those had some big changes in the way the government is structured like with constitutional changes. The US, though, has a ton of new laws but is fundamentally unchanged.
Yep. I can remember not too long ago that French police blinded people when dealing with the yellow jacket riots. Also the president’s bodyguard being there dressed as a cop and hospitalised someone instead of protecting the president. There’s also the murder of Stephen Lawrence in the UK and every year here there’s multiple cops charged with raping women or using excessive force against a minority.
Also in Finland, on 6th day of December (2023), on our independence day, the bastards prohibited the Helsinki ilman natseja (Helsinki without nazis) protest, beating the antifascist protesters and ramming into them with fucking horses, but they welcomed the nazi parade with open hands. Interesting.
Me too. I just don’t understand why so many people think that these “ok boomer / millennials, gen x,y,z does this and that” things don’t work on the same principle tho. I think it’s just as stupidly stereotypical…and I’m not even a boomer.
I don’t like this spread of hate Europe vs US. I think both benefit from each other and non constructive comments about it ar just Chinese/Russian propaganda to break social relations between the two.
Both US and Europe have their caveats, but we are stronger together and that’s the way.
Well and adding to that you are biased af so your opinion is basically irrelevant, all your posts are anti-US. Which you call “America”, which already shows what levels you are on.
One of the ways the state maintains capitalism & white hegemony is through information warfare. The US state has the largest and most advanced propaganda apparatus on the planet. Revolutionary left wing tendencies do not exist for long in the status-quo. This is by design. Ignorance to left wing prefigured politics maintains the status-quo’s legitimacy. The state is incredibly effective at coopting narratives to reform its image.
I’m already speaking German. And elections here look a lot like all of that shit is going for round two. Hell, the right and some members of the more moderate, conservative party have held meetings in the last weeks where they openly discussed deportations of immigrants and German citizens that supported them.
Nice thing you tried in the forties, but you only got the tanks, not the spirit it seems.
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