Meanwhile, in Missouri...

[Josh]

"Do you generally feel safe around the police?"

They've put me on edge for as long as I can remember.

[NeoZeedeater]

I know a lot of that is skin color but I'd be interested in seeing how TNL's political lines fall compared to the answer of a single question: "Do you generally feel safe around the police?"

I feel a slight unease. I have been harassed too many times for "walking while being a teenager" in the past. I don't really like binary liberal/conservative labeling but I'm pro-freedom on social issues (legalizing drugs, prostitution, etc.) and believe in limiting/monitoring the powers of authority figures.

Most cops are fine but I think there are enough power tripping douchebags to warrant a mistrust. My least favourite part of visiting the US is the huge amount of law enforcement around by comparison.

Vancouver's police chief, Jim Chu, is my aunt's sister's husband. He always seemed really cool when at family gatherings, very much the opposite of an asshole cop stereotype.

[Brisco Bold]

Vancouver's police chief, Jim Chu, is my aunt's sister's husband. He always seemed really cool when at family gatherings, very much the opposite of an asshole cop stereotype.

Wait—does that guy do press conferences? I think I saw him on CBC Newsworld a bunch.

[NeoZeedeater]

Yeah, he has been on TV quite a bit.

[Diff-chan]

I live in a nice neighborhood and the cops are all "hello sir" and what not so I'm cool with them. But this is a unique situation. I don't know exactly what happened between Wilson and Brown but I do know the cops have been shitting on people in that community for decades and there was no justice done in this case.

[gamevet]

I live in a nice neighborhood and the cops are all "hello sir" and what not so I'm cool with them. But this is a unique situation. I don't know exactly what happened between Wilson and Brown but I do know the cops have been shitting on people in that community for decades and there was no justice done in this case.

I've done a lot of work on the bad side of Dallas. I can say that even though I'm not being threatened, I do have an uneasy feeling about working in that area. One time I was asked to check out a phone line at an apartment complex, and I was pretty much the only white person there. I just did not feel comfortable with the situation and how I was being looked at by the people that were there.

I can understand why there is a higher amount of tension between the local police and the residents of those poor areas. The crime-rate is higher, the police have to deal with more hostile situations and they often get more flack from witnesses to arrests in the area. It's almost like the police have been dropped into a warzone and it's us vs. them every time they have to respond to a call. I feel bad for the police and the people that are actually law-abiding citizens in the area.

I was working with a black guy, while in Kansas City. We were driving through an area where a lot of people were hanging out in gas station parking lots and other areas; that just wasn't something you would see in a more affluent area. I made the comment that the neighborhood was bad. He would later tell me (we were having a few beers at the time) that I was prejudice, yet the reason why he had said that really didn't dawn on me at the time. I guess to him, hanging around in a gas station parking lot was the norm for a person that had lived in south Dallas, but to me, people hanging around in a parking were just looking for trouble.

[Josh]

[Fe 26]

No. California style conservative

I've never been given a reason to trust cops. MS has far more Troopers than cops, and they are pretty much thieves. All they do is write people up for speeding, head lights, and having booze in their car if they are in the wrong town or county.

I can recall one time my family needed the police. A man had broken into the side window of my dad's shop and was grabbing things left and right. The cops were called and it took them like an hour or more to get over there. The police were probably less than 50 yards away. Like, the station was on the opposite corner of the block.

I've had far more crappy or bad experiences with them than good.

[icarusfall]

Fuck The Police.

[FuryFox]

I've never had a negative experience with police. I've had stolen property found and returned multiple times and the police have always come out to deal with problem neighbors or investigate break-ins. I even tested to be on the force. I don't doubt at all that things work differently in places I haven't lived.

If you have a place full of shitty people, then yeah, you'll probably have shitty police by default...it's the pool they were selected from, and it's who they have to deal with in the worst human scenarios, over-and-over again every day.