A few days ago, I found this article on Calibre Press, which is critical of Radley Balko. I don’t recommend the article itself, but at the time, the commenters were having a field day taking the author’s arguments apart, and from what I saw, they were being generally very respectful of it (no name calling or trash talking, etc).
Today, all those comments are down the memory hole & comments are closed. Totally their right to do so, but I find it telling. Police & their supporters are not helping their case by silencing critics, ignoring criticism, or labeling critics as bad people.
Balko is an idiot. I stopped following him when he said there is never a need to take up arms against either bad cops or government.
Idiot or not, he’s still right about the ‘rise of the warrior cop’.
Chris,
That is a pretty odd metric for determining an idiot. I mean, sure, Mike Vanderboegh can get away with such statements, but a journalist who tries hard to ride the edge between recognizing the civic utility of the police, while being openly critical of them when they go too far, & being taken seriously enough by others to have a hope of effecting non-violent change is someone who has to restrain talk of taking up arms against cops unless & until the soap & ballot boxes have failed.