It's already happening here: "The Pogrom on Pico Boulevard".
Over the course of several hours, with dozens of LAPD officers decked out in riot gear largely staying out of the fray, around 100 pro-Hamas activists attacked, bear-sprayed, harassed, and brawled with Jews up and down Pico Boulevard.
The police occasionally stepped in, but their main activity Sunday afternoon seemed to ensure that the activists were able to successfully shut down the front entrance to the synagogue, ruin the event, and harass Jews more or less with impunity. Dozens of video clips from Sunday afternoon have been posted online (a good roundup is here). The striking thing about the footage is that despite the significant police presence, there is scant footage of the police forcefully intervening in the numerous fistfights, brawls, and beatings.
So, I guess the mission of the police was simply to keep the violent harassment of Jews by pro-Hamas thugs confined to a small area? How unfortunate that that small area happened to be the environs of a synagogue. Got to strive for better optics, guys! Am I being paranoid in thinking that, one day, the police might abandon their fraudulent neutrality and openly throw in with the anti-Semites? After all, I never thought I'd see the level of anti-Semitism we're seeing today - violent, widespread and unapologetic. Why can't it get worse?
9 comments:
While I am not a defunder, nor do I reflexively defer to the police. The second part of "Protect and Serve" is... serve, right? Serve... who, exactly? The public good? Or their administrative and bureaucratic masters? If not the former, then who is responsible for it, if not the public as a whole?
You get rid of the cops, you proggies are really not going to like it when the citizens decide that they are responsible for public order and safety. The BLM/Antifa/Hamas mobs won't get a shred of due process.
The cops are not doing anything. Nor is the mayor. Nor is the governor. Nor is the president.
And, most importantly, not the voters.
And the voters are quickly running out of time.
There are a number of police officers and former police officers who are weighing online in on whether a police officer can morally refuse an order from a superior. Apparently they have wider leeway than we imagine. Jack Dunphy (a pseudonym for a retired detective from LA or NYC, I forget which) has outlined several steps they can take, including simply refusing to follow an order that is clearly outside the law, and he also explained what might have happened in the Palestinian riot outside that synagogue, that is that it was a weekend, all the seasoned officers were off duty, and the green new officers charged with protecting the synagogue had no clear orders as to what to do. Not to mention they were outnumbered by the rioters, but that they are required to take an oath of protect the public ... ALL the public.
Disclaimer: my dad was a small town cop with a Great Generation sense of duty, honor, and WWII veteran's love of country, so I'm probably biased but I don't really think the police in general are going to be our greatest danger in the coming upheavel.
Also, most of today's Jews don't seem particularly inclined to passively submit to the last debacle. I imagine big synagogues might be following the Muslim custom of stockpiling weapons in their cellars.
I don't really think the police in general are going to be our greatest danger in the coming upheaval
I think that will depend on a lot of factors, including such things as the local political environment in which the police operate, the degree to which police officers have soaked up the DEI nonsense, and the extent to which a "just following orders" mentality exists. Dunphy is, I believe, a former LA law enforcement officer, and while his explanation may represent the basic facts on the ground, I wonder about why some of those things are the way they are. For example, whoever heard of "all" the seasoned police officers being off duty just because it's a weekend? And how is it that the people in authority failed to see that there's a continuing need for elevated security around synagogues and other Jewish centers these days - such that maybe giving that responsibility to green police officers wasn't a particularly good idea.
But, basically, I agree that it won't be local cops who are the main threat; more likely it will be an increasingly militarized FBI, ATF, etc. who we will have to worry about (or, if you happen to be visiting Washington, DC at the wrong time, Nancy Pelosi's Capitol rent-a-cops).
I always thought stuff like that would not happen in America.
I'm pretty sad it is.
Protect and Serve is just marketing; I remember court decisions that found that the police are not required to protect you; they are there to enforce the laws; and as we're learning, selectively.
Tom, one of the pivotal cases is Castle Rock v. Gonzales, in which SCOTUS determined that the police can not be held liable for failure to protect any individual. There are others.
As for "Protect and Serve," it actually started as the motto for the LAPD Academy. That's right, only one police academy, not the entire force, let alone every one. And yet many if not most departments in the US like to emblazon it on their cars. Because it looks reassuring.
It has always been true, but you are your own first responder. Every human has the innate right of self defense, whatever the left pretends.
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