Matt Taibbi on the NYPD work stoppage

[ellenrr]

This police protest, unwittingly, is leading to the exposure of the very policies that anger so many different constituencies about modern law-enforcement tactics.

First, it shines a light on the use of police officers to make up for tax shortfalls using ticket and citation revenue. Then there's the related (and significantly more important) issue of forcing police to make thousands of arrests and issue hundreds of thousands of summonses when they don't "have to."

It's incredibly ironic that the police have chosen to abandon quality-of-life actions like public urination tickets and open-container violations, because it's precisely these types of interactions that are at the heart of the Broken Windows polices that so infuriate residents of so-called "hot spot" neighborhoods.

...
Most people, and police most of all, agree that the best use of police officers is police work. They shouldn't be collecting backdoor taxes because politicians are too cowardly to raise them, and they shouldn't be pre-emptively busting people in poor neighborhoods because voters don't have the patience to figure out some other way to deal with our dying cities.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-nypds-work-stoppage-is-surreal-20141231#ixzz3NedTgVxv
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[pansypoo53219]

1. imagine life w/ no reaganomics.

[RoccoR5955]

5. Wasn't that in

Lennon's song?
Oh no, my bad. He was assassinated before he could write it in.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Good post...thanks. n/t

[Helen Borg]

3. Intresting... Police as backdoor tax collectors...

On the other hand, who is supposed to enforce those rules?

[ellenrr]

4. Matt Taibbi is saying we shouldn't have tax collection on the poor which

is what these nonsensical summons are.

Enforce the tax code on the rich.
and change it so the rich pay their share.

who would enforce the tax code on the rich?
I don't know.
It's all theoretical bec. the rich will never pay their share. And the rich changed the electoral system so that an unorganized mass of people will never be able to legislate change.

[randr]

6. Our law enforcement officers have been the victims of a politicalization

The forced enforcement of ridiculous laws and the burden of ticketing for financial reasons have degraded our officers. The easy targets for such actions are obviously the poor and minority groups that voters generally do not care about.
Rather that protecting and serving their communities they are directed to work for whatever whim a politician decides to campaign on and they are increasingly being used to make up for tax shortfalls and poor financial policies.
Police unions have taken advantage of this situation by leveraging their "enforcement" against needed revenues. They have also adopted the mean spirited enforcement agenda of the "war on drugs" to justify a racist attitude we see becoming more and more evident.

[ellenrr]

7. ++ well-said. nt