[lbo-talk] RE: San Jose cop...

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Doug:
> 
> It's wrong to focus on the personal characteristics of cops, esp for
> historical materialists. The job is what makes them the way they are
> in every way, and it probably attracts a certain kind of personality
> in the first place. It's a socially approved way of being violent
> ("just as every cop is a criminal," as the man sang). They're
> constantly thrust into dangerous and ugly circumstances. Years ago, I
> saw a cop - a high-up one, in a suit - on the Ted Koppel show, who
> said something like, "We're expected to solve social problems. We do
> society's dirty work." In a society like ours, which mass produces
> poverty and violence, it's not surprising that cops are quick to
> shoot.

I am with you on that.  That is why I argued for holding cops to high
expectations of professional conduct and public accountability.
Proclaiming that they are pigs hired to solve society's dirty problems
absolves them of that accountability and de facto gives them the right
to be pigs.  It is totally counterproductive from a policy point of view
- it just panders to contumacious infantilism and machismo. 

Wojtek