Hopefully they remove cops who abuse their powers. While I agree that victims require compensation, ultimately these payouts only hurt the taxpayers who have to cover for these cops who at worst just move to another town to do it again.

As a veteran I agree, with a significant caveat:

Generally those who support the police in general (especially those with the thin blue line American flag displayed somewhere) espouse support for veterans. The clash of a veteran operating legally with police operating illegally helps foster cognitive dissonance and disentangle these two institutions in their mind.

In other words these types of articles are helpful for causing those individuals to confront the issues in their belief structure.

I use them this way all the time with my parents, as they continue to insist that I (a retired Navy vet) should mindlessly support the police. They are not interested in the LONG history of those two populations clashing.

Why not the other way around? First make sure the police department is capable of using them legally and reliably investigating abuse, then we can consider allowing them.

Absolutely. First let's install an extreme surveillance state and give them full police power unlimited by the Constitution. Then, later, if we have any regrets, no problem. Just restore democracy.

But we decided as a country long long long ago that we wouldn't abet abuse, unwarranted search and seizure, and would treat people as innocent until proven guilty even if that meant elevated crime was the price to pay for that

"bad apples" = one rotten apple ruins the bunch.

There are no "good apples" the article itself shows that other "apples" were helping him illegaly surveil. The "good apples" thought it was a good idea to give every apple access to a problematic system.

There are no good apples if there's a rotten in the bunch, we need public oversight of the only people that are allowed to enact violence on behalf of the state.

Nice shitty astroturfing campaign, bro. How much does Flock provide in payola? Five figures and I'll start singing the praises, too, bro.

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