Here's the best reason to hate cops!

They don't serve US anymore, they serve THEM.

http://www.alternet.org/americas-authoritarian-police-violently-enforce-1s-rule?akid=12643.260394.pfUusI&rd=1&src=newsletter1029625&t=2

It isn't the violence against unnarmed black suspects, or the aggressive stop and searches, black profiling etc. Those are symptoms.

The real disease that's eating America's vital organs is the 1% are directly controlling our government -- and the cops aren't ours anymore. They're theirs.

Reality.

Screw Amerika Inc.! Corporate control of our government through campaign financing.

I disagree. We have real problems with too much budget being allocated to government employees in teaching, firefighting, law enforcement, and general government in employment. They all often have an agenda which does not put the public first. However, most are good people doing their jobs. We need incremental budget cuts, reductions in government employment, and improved training and new paradigms for public service. It does not help this process to have shrill screams that all cops are good and all cops are bad. Hard work and keeping it real would be a good start, and then start making the necessary budget cuts.

http://www.leoaffairs.com/vb_forums/forumdisplay.php?101-Santa-Rosa-County-Sheriff-s-Office

Tell it to these guys loser wordslinger

Do you really think it's the salaries of teachers, police, etc. that are draining our resources? Try their pension plans...and then look to the financing of those plans. How many of these people do you think actually hands-on manage their retirement?

I know rookie cops who can make 90k with overtime, and my daughter who is going on 10 years in the SA office only makes 68k. I know superintendents of schools who make a quarter of a million a year. I know firefighters who make 80k and work a second job making almost as much as they sleep most of the time they are on duty. The problem is with public employees the % of gdp going to government employment at the macro level is all out of whack. Yes, we need all of those employees, but we need to cut back. Since 911 fire and police have had blank checks. It needs to stop. We cannot increase private sector employment and real expansion of the GDP without getting control of the %s.

Floridatexan wrote:Do you really think it's the salaries of teachers, police, etc. that are draining our resources?  Try their pension plans...and then look to the financing of those plans.  How many of these people do you think actually hands-on manage their retirement?  

Teachers used to have decent benefits. We can't even get a COLA raise anymore and lost the ability to have automatic step raises (less than 500 per year) in 2009. Then trick scott comes along and decides that the most solvent of all pension plans in the US (the Florida Retirement System) needs 3% of our income as well.  That 3% is given to his business buddies in tax credits who have not invested in Florida like he thought they would.

To top it off, the DROP program, which guaranteed turnover in state jobs from old to new employees now takes the lion's share of the money earned in interest instead of giving it to the employee who has worked 35+ years.

Here's some facts chick:

http://feaweb.org/facts-about-the-florida-retirement-system-frs

The 2014 legislative session will again feature legislation intended to further degrade retirement benefits for new teachers and other public schools employees. The latest solution to a non-existent problem is called a “cash balance plan.”

Despite assurances from bill sponsors in the 2013 session, any change could harm current school employees enrolled in the FRS. New policies are likely to put pressure on the viability of the retirement plan by ending or lessening the stream of contributions going into it giving legislators the excuse they need to make even more changes to the detriment of public school employees.

The Legislature made significant cost saving changes to the FRS in 2011. They mandated a 3 percent employee contribution, suspended cost-of-living increases, increased the vesting period and reduced the DROP accrual rate.

Fast Facts*

•Investment earnings, not taxpayer dollars, fund the majority of retirement benefits,
•Benefits represent less than 2.4 percent of the state and local budgets in Florida, well below the national average,
•Florida was ranked among the top 10 state pension systems in the nation,
•623,011 active FRS participants and 375,238 annuitants,
•49 percent employed by local school boards, 79 percent of those are female,
•$41,459 average salary,
•$18,625 average benefit; $16,506 for Regular Class,
•21 years of service average for annuitants,
•$36,810 average final compensation (over five years; these numbers were compiled before the higher eight-year requirement was legislated),
•$765 million value of 3 percent contribution by FRS participants in 2012

Here is a more detailed review of the FRS, not from the haters....

http://www.flaflcio.org/sites/default/files/Florida%20Retirement%20Security%20Primer.pdf

nuf said.....the sky isn't falling chicken little.

2seaoat wrote:I know rookie cops who can make 90k with overtime, and my daughter who is going on 10 years in the SA office only makes 68k.  I know superintendents of schools who make a quarter of a million a year.   I know firefighters who make 80k and work a second job making almost as much as they sleep most of the time they are on duty.  The problem is with public employees the % of gdp going to government employment at the macro level is all out of whack.  Yes, we need all of those employees, but we need to cut back.   Since 911 fire and police have had blank checks.  It needs to stop.  We cannot increase private sector employment and real expansion of the GDP without getting control of the %s.

Not in Florida you don't know rookie cops making that much. Supers here make 125k max. Firefighters ARE well compensated here, but who else wants to purposely run into a fire? not me. I'd rather get shot at in the desert. Cut back Seaoat? We can't even get enough qualified people to take local LEO jobs and the same for teachers. You have new teachers in SRC who are making the same thing this year that they made 5 years ago. WTH is wrong with that picture?

10% cut in personnel would not change a thing.

2seaoat wrote:10% cut in personnel would not change a thing.

wrong answer

So you are going to hate ALL cops because of some obviously biased opinion piece?

Does your hatred include the cop on the line saving someones life in a car wreck, the cop on the line stopping a violent attack on a wife, the cop on the line walking up to an erratic driver at 2:00 in the morning not knowing what will happen when the drivers window comes down?

All righty then. I hope you never need a cop and if you find yourself in a position where you do don't call them. You hate them, remember?

Seaoat, you should read Matt Taibbi's book, GRIFTOPIA. Here's a review.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/books/review/Goodman-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Thieves’ Paradise

By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: December 24, 2010


"Among the unfortunate legacies of the financial crisis of 2008 is a tendency among commentators to soft-pedal the outrage over what happened. In too many accounts, blame is considered impossible to assign given the complexities of modern-day finance. Those inclined to point fingers at Wall Street or Washington are frequently derided as innocents who do not grasp how the world really works.

The result is an apologia that goes something like this: Mistakes were made, despite the best intentions of financial professionals. Bankers lent too much money to poor people who never should have bought homes. Models used to measure risk broke down, and regulators were swamped. All of this was a shame, but accidents are a part of life, and an unavoidable part of the swashbuckling style of capitalism that has enriched Americans for generations.

Nonsense, Matt Taibbi says. In “Griftopia,” a relentlessly disturbing, penetrating exploration of the root causes of the trauma that upended economic security in millions of American homes, Taibbi argues that what unfolded was far from accidental. Rather, the nation suffered the equivalent of a hostile takeover of key areas of its commercial life by investment banking houses, while regulators and members of Congress abdicated their responsibilities either because they were influenced by campaign cash or because they believed the fairy tale that unsupervised markets always work best. The result, Taibbi asserts, was a thieves’ paradise — Griftopia..."

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The reviewer isn't particularly enamored of Taibbi's style, but I find it refreshing. He is forceful in his presentation of the facts, to say the least, but that to me only underscores the seriousness of the material, which I believe he explains so clearly that even a person with relatively little knowledge of economics can't help but grasp.

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There's no reason to hate all police. I've had plenty of policemen and women go out of their way to help me. But police need to be held accountable for their actions.