You Will Anyway: #PoliceLivesMatter

Saturday, September 3, 2016

#PoliceLivesMatter

Don't forget Eric Reid.

The Santa Clara police union has sent a letter to the San Francisco 49ers, warning that police might stop working the team's home games due to Colin Kaepernick's statements on police brutality and his wearing of socks during a practice that showed cartoon pigs dressed as police officers.

The letter, obtained by NBC Bay Area, states that if the 49ers do not discipline Kaepernick, "it could result in police officers choosing not to work at your facilities."

The letter also states that "the Santa Clara Police Officers' Association has a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their working environments free of harassing behavior."

[...]

The team reiterated Friday night that it stands behind Kaepernick and respects his right not to participate in celebrating the national anthem.

ESPN

No police officer has been "harassed" by Colin Kaepernick.

Here's my take on the Santa Clara Police Union: officers working 49ers events are getting paid above their regular salaries as police officers. Some other off-duty or retired officers will happily step in and pick up any slack left by Santa Clara officers who don't want to work the games.

Police officers work protest events, for Pete's sake, and without extra pay. If there's a Black Lives Matter march in Santa Clara county, there are police officers in the regular course of their duties guarding them.

In fact, regular boozed-up fan brawls are actually the dangerous part of any pro sports policing job. Is somebody needing a hug? #PoliceLivesMatter.

I don't know what these guys make today, but in 2013, it was $55/hour. Here's a job listing in the San Jose Mercury News when the stadium opened:

SANTA CLARA -- Looking for some overtime? Have a gun and a badge? Want to get paid for soaking in the atmosphere of a San Francisco 49ers game?

You're in luck: With Levi's Stadium set to open next summer, Santa Clara officials are looking to hire 120 police officers for stadium duty.

[...]

In addition to preventing and breaking up fights, the Levi's Stadium officers will direct traffic, make sure vehicles are not parked illegally, look out for DUIs and haul unruly fans to a jail being built below the stands.

[...]

The pay for the part-time gig is $55 an hour.

Mercury News

Yes, being a police officer is a highly dangerous, underpaid and often thankless job. But nobody makes anybody else be a police officer. You choose to become a police officer for whatever reasons you have. You know what the job entails. Police officers don't get to pick and choose which citizens they'll protect (at least not theoretically). Policing the 49ers games is a nicely paid "gig" funded from stadium revenue.

If there are Santa Clara police officers who are assigned to the stadium in the course of their normal duties, I take some of this rant back in their case. But the crux remains the same: you're a police officer. Your job is policing. I bet you don't threaten to withdraw from KKK or Nazi Party events. And if you feel like police officers themselves are threatened in any situation, I'm damned sure you don't withdraw. You double down.

Officers as American citizens have a right to protest, but so do football players, and officers are not going to quit working the 49ers games because of Colin Kaepernick. The Santa Clara union is showboating.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Full disclosure: I have two sons - one a former police officer and the other a current police officer.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

------
ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

------
GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

------
GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

------
PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.