NYC police MUST use violence to justify budget

[Senior citizen]

C'mon, now. All those Homeland Security millions spent on crowd control training and riot gear? Anybody who has ever worked for the government or a corporation knows that the cops have to use up as much tear gas, as many rubber bullets, and as much other equipment as they can in order to justify their budgets.

Of course they will use provocateurs when possible, and attack peaceful protesters when it isn't. A departmental budget has no conscience. The bottom line is paramount. If they don't use the equipment they were given, they won't get more. So they'll use it.

[DrWeird]

1. Is the NYPD still as corrupt as it was under Guiliani?

You know, murdering and torturing innocent black people and essentially getting away with it.

Have there been any serious reformations?

[Gman]

2. What has changed? Have the police themselves changed?

Has the lower level management changed? I don't see why it would have changed. What do you think?

[DrWeird]

3. Don't know if it has, or hasn't.

I suspect it hasn't.

[Senior citizen]

4. Imagine being the poor shmuck....

...of a cop after the convention. Your unit, unlike all the rest, did not expend all its ammunition. So you get called on the carpet. You say, "But boss, where we were we didn't see any violent protesters or anarchists. There was just a lot of middle-aged, decent middle-class men and women in business suits, and they just stood there quietly. It would be like attacking my own parents."

And the boss says, "You idiot--I don't care what you saw or didn't see. We issued you the equipment, and you didn't use it. Now they're going to cut our departmental budget thanks to you."

And you're exiled to wherever they send people they don't like, or the next time you're in a gun battle they don't send backup.

When your job or your departmental budget is on the line, you don't care who you attack or why. You just do it, or else!