billsfan1959

I subscribe to BN Blitz for sports only...

I am making this tonight - thanks!

Still can't figure out the strategy of taking one of the funniest commercials they made and reproducing it minus what actually made it funny... Amen....

Good summary and spot on. A couple of additional points. First, and you touched upon this, Grossman never talks about a dynamic like "everybody out there hates you and we (police community) are the only ones who love you," in which police are pitted against citizens - and to turn what Grossman writes into that message is a complete distortion. The idea that being in law enforcement is the equivalent of being in an abusive relationship tells me the author of that article doesn't know much about the various and complex dynamics of abusive relationships. Second, what the author of that article failed to mention about Grossman's sheep metaphor is that the sheepdog never harms the sheep. That is what separates him/her from the wolves. Once you cross that line, you are the very thing you took an oath to protect people against. EDIT: I see you did mention this as well. @Capco thanks for the discussion. I have read that article several more times and I have serious questions about the validity of a number of claims and the overarching agenda of his article. If, in fact, he was an officer and behaved how he described, then that was the kind of person he was when he took the job. Law enforcement did not create it, it just gave him an arena and the authority to express what was already inside of him. And that is exactly the kind of people that need to be weeded out. As I said before, I am not denying their existence. I am not even denying pockets of the kind of culture he described. As long as there are human beings, a small percentage of them will always find ways to prey on the rest. No other segment of society has found a way to completely rid themselves of those kinds of people and law enforcement is no different. There was a time in LE when that kind of behavior and culture was even more prevalent. However, like the rest of society, LE has continued to evolve for the better. They are better trained, better educated, and more diversified than they have ever been. All they can do is continue to find ways to continue to improve and reduce the number of officers like Chauvin, and and their ability to harm the people they are supposed to protect. Just remember, there are 50+ million contacts between LE Officers and citizens (over the age of 16) and 10+ million arrests each year in this country. 99.99% are interactions without any issues at all. It doesn't excuse or minimize when there are issues or, God forbid, injuries or deaths because of police misconduct. It just means there are a lot of good men and women out there doing their best to uphold the oath they took. Again, this is all just my opinion based on my own experiences.

Sincere question: How does the simple fact of whether or not one is caucasian, without knowing anything else about that person (traits, life experiences, education, etc.) answer any question at all, other than, "Are you caucasian?" Just what attributes do you think you can then assign to that person simply based on race?

Amen, brother. I still make homemade sauce once a month - but I can never seem to quite get the taste of what my grandmother made Yeah, I’ll give props to Gary for that. Pretty funny ?

Meals were always big in our house. My mother was first generation here and for awhile, when I was a kid, we would spend a few months each summer in Rome with my grandparents. Mealtime there was awesome: Every morning I would ride the bus to the market with my grandfather to pick out food for the day. My grandmother would prepare these amazing meals for lunch and dinner for about fifteen people

Maybe we can get him to add some other topics (music, books, movies, etc.) in the title. I’d hate to think we are just confined to recipes

It is pretty easy, I think easier than grilling. Mine is propane and I set the temperature I want and put what I am smoking in the smoker for a specified time, like a crock pot. For instance, I like to do a 6 to 7 lb brisket every once in a while. I do a rub mixture over the entire outside (plenty of rub recipes on the internet), use apple wood chips, set the temp at 225, and put the brisket in for about 4-5 hours. Take it out, wrap it in foil and put it back in for a few more hours. Falls apart.

Yeah, it's a slow cooker where you can use different kinds of wood chips for flavoring - hickory, apple wood, etc.

I think the issue here, Margarita is that the word "defund" literally means to cease funding. If somebody says "defund the police" and they do not mean that funding for the police should be withdrawn and stopped, then they should use another word or phrase that more accurately represents what they mean. If we start to apply arbitrary meanings and endless interpretations, the word itself then becomes meaningless. Words do have meanings and should be used accordingly.

I actually am lookig for a good salmon recipe. We grill salmon frequently and typically use a lemon pepper coating. Would like something new. That sounds good. I'll give it a try I do have a smoker and did some salmon with Apple Wood. My wife liked it more than I did.

Unless there have been updates I don't know about, I believe they are classified as white. Individual departments may have more classifications; however, everything that gets passed on to the FBI and DOJ pretty much mirrors the census classifications. That way, at least there is some uniformity, which enables better analyses of the numbers. Do you think there should be an expansion of the classifications?

As far as I know, race in all reporting is pretty much the same as the census: White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, or some other race; and ethnicity is one of two categories, Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino.

I'm not sure why Camden is being held up as a shining example of what a police force can be or in regard to the defunding issues. Camden PD wasn't defunded, it was shutdown to get rid of the police union and recreated with a 56% increase in officers and lower salaries for all officers. I'm not sure if there was even any decrease in funding over all. The primary thing they achieved was getting rid of the police union. Therre was nothing really innovative in how they then went about policing. Communiy policing has been around for a long time and all they did was add more officers to help accomplish that. As far as I can tell all other aspects of training and policy are pretty much the same as most agencies. Camden had the highest crime rate of all cities in NJ before the change and, even though it decreased some, it has remained the city with the highest violent crime rate in NJ since the change. If you lived in any area with the violent crime rate in Camden, I do not think you would be holding up as an example of what to do. Camden was about getting rid of the police union. I don't have a problem with that. But, this idea of an innovative, transformational agency that solved Camden's violent crime problem is pure fiction.

I would agree that under the right circumstances many people can commit an act that is out of character. Again, that is situationally driven and specific to each individual. That is different, at least for me, from the type of everyday behavior we are talking or like what we saw with Chauvin. You are right. On their face, my statements really carry no more weight and it is my opinion based on my own experiences. To answer about my life experiences, I will say that I was in a position where I was able to work violent crime task forces for many years. Those task forces were comprised of federal, state, and local officers working the most violent cases in the areas with the highest violent crime rates. During that time, I worked along side hundreds upon hundreds of other LE Officers with literally thousands of contacts with people in high crime areas. At the end of my career, I worked in the analysis of violent crime, particularly offender and victim behaviors. Since my retirement, I have worked for myself as a consultant, working with attorneys in violent crime trials. That spans 35+ years. It doesn't make me right, it is just the basis of my opinion. Just for the record, I think there are so many ways in which we can continue to improve law enforcement. I also appreciate you being open in your discussions.

I read the entire article. MY opinion is if he came into the force wanting to do the right thing, he would have done it. What he describes is not the experience of the vast majority of officers. You don't become bad, to the degreee we are talking about, if that potential is not already within you.. I went through three diffferent academies in my career. There was never an emphasis "that everyone in the world is out to kill" us. The training is typically split between physical fitness (which also includes self defense/how to conduct arrests/ etc), firearms qualification, and classroom (Rules, procedures, the law, etc.). There is an emphasis on self protection, but only from the perspective that it can be a dangerous job and you have to always be prepared. I would also ask @Sig1Hunterwhat his experiences have been. My question to you is, why are you so willing to believe the guy in this article over others who say differently?

To be systemic, it has to be pervasive. That is my point. Not that it doesn't exist, but that it exists in a minority who are characterologically flawed. LE Officers do feel a brotherhood with each other because they share a common bond. It is human nature. It is also human nature to want to believe and protect those you feel close to. But only to a point. Think of your own life in regard to family and friends. Would you willingly assist a family member or close friend in degrading some innocent person for no reason at all? Would you willingly assist a family member or close friend in falsely accusing someone of something to get them arrested and sent to jail? Would you willingly assist a family member or close friend in physically assaulting someone because of their race or other non-justified reason? Would you willingly assist a family member or close friend in killing someone because of their race or any other non-justified reason? Would you just stand by and not try to stop them from committing any of these acts? Would you lie under oath to protect them for any of these acts? Would you actively cover up any of these acts for them? My guess is most people would say no to most of those questions. There are bad LE Officers, just as there are bad people in every other segment of society. Sometimes you don't know those character flaws until it is too late. Sometimes you don't know the degree of those character flaws and whether or not they should be removed. Sometimes you feel they should and it is difficult to actually get them removed. Sometimes you are successful in getting them removed. The law enforcement community has worked as hard as any other entity in this country to rid themselves of this type of s**t. Unfortunately, when it does rear its ugly head, it is on every news outlet around the country 24/7. And the rest of LE gets painted with the same brush stroke

I have no idea if this particular cop did all that he said he did; however, if he did, he is a POS. It was his own character that caused him to behave the way he did, not LE training. For example: In one paragraph he says, "Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a *****. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her." In the very next paragraph he says, "I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations." Either one is disgusted by it or he/she is not. You don't go from "this behavior disgusts me" to "I happily engaged in this behavior." My guess is that he did know other cops who were the same as him and my reply to that is "birds of a feather..." I didn't read anything in that article confirmed systemic racism or even "all cops are bastards. I read about a cop who was a POS and knew some other cops who were similar to him. The saddest part, is that people will read this article, with no verification of anything he wrote and believe every word of it; however, they won't believe the hundreds of thousands of current or retired LE Officers who will say the training they went through was not anything like this guy describes, that they never engaged in this type of behavior, and that, while it certainly exists, it exists in a minority of the LE population - and they are as equally disgusted by it as anyone else.

Actually, I never thought you were black. I never accused you of being black. I accused you of trying to pass your self off as a black victim of crime, which you did. I didn't follow you around, I responded to your posts, until it was clear you just had no interest in honest dialogue. As a matter of fact, my last interaction with you was to answer what you said was a "serious" question about what I felt was the frequency of unjustified shootings. I provided a respectful, detailed reply. I recieved no response. Since then, you have felt the need to keep calling me out in your posts for whatwever it is that you perceive of me in your sad little mind. I have no interest in having any discussions with you. I have respectfully asked once and I respectfully ask again. Please leave me out of your posts and your discussions. If everyone put you on ignore and nobody responded to your posts, then none of us would ever have to see the drivel that you write. And that would make this forum a much better place.

And through it all, not one original thought of his own

We should all just ignore him

Thank you.

He isn't worth the time.

If you want to carry on this kind of behavior, feel free. I respectfully request you leave me out of your posts and conversations. Thanks