in an ambiguous situation as the video posted of a police incident with a protester at the DNC was obviously edited for the protester. I don't want to go into too much but it was arguable that the police officer had a reason for pushing the protester back (the amount of force used was arguable adequate) while the protester's taunting behavior wasn't being examined or was being justified as a right that all citizens have. I think several other people posted that wasn't the automatic "OMFG police are pigs" stance and those people immediately got accused of being fascists, pig sympathizers, Nazis, etc. So yeah, I find that attitude juvenile.

I also come from a neighborhood in Queens where the citizenry is lawful and the police force is generally very respectful of the citizens. Also, I ironically have had exposure to the actual police because of general family hysterics (long story short, once was forced to accompany my parents to the station to put out an APB for my sister who didn't have a cell phone and was out much later than usual and to bail out my dad who got caught driving with a license that got suspended for too many unpaid parking tickets). So generally, I have experienced a mutually respectful relationship with the police. That is not to say that my neighborhood doesn't have crime but for the most part, the neighborhood police station is that, a part of the neighborhood and it shows.

What I find disturbing is when people are so vociferous in their hatred of the police, they are projecting all their anger and frustration from specific incidents with specific officers on the police in general. This is the exact same foaming at the mouth kind of bigotry that these same people vilify the Nazis, white supremacists and right wing trolls for doing so it's disturbing for me to witness this in fellow DUers who are supposed to be more rational and reasonable.

Just as there are just as many bad stories about bad cops, there are actually just as many good stories of good cops but those stories are never told. It's always stories about police brutalities because those are OUT OF THE NORM. When a police officer helps out, these stories are never told because you know why? They're just doing their fucking job. I don't envy the police for the crap they have to deal with although it's no excuse for the excesses that you hear about on the news.

So here are some good stories from my own personal experience to counter those bad stories:

1) My mom woke me up in the middle of the night to call 911 because she witnessed someone who get injured in a fight (smashed in the head with a glass bottle) across the street while his attackers ran away. The EMTs and police got there to take care of the guy who was left behind and to find out what happened. There was no harassment, just simply a case where they needed to pursue who assaulted the guy. Professional and by the book.

2) One of the commercial parking lots in my parking hungry neighborhood was going to be sold to developers who wanted to pave it over and make a shopping mall out of it. The Koreans in my neighborhood (my neighborhood is a Little Korea, Little Taipei, Jewish town, Chinatown, Little Italy, etc all in one) were especially incensed since that particular parking lot was serving a lot of local Korean businesses. Now, the Korean culture is actually very pro-protests and they're very aggressive in their protests. So they brought out the drums and signs and came out to parade en masse. Even though all the noise and ruckus they were making would have been troubling in any other neighborhood, the police from their membership in our community knew that it was just the locals being themselves and didn't take it as anything else. It was peaceful, the police presence was just to prevent possible accidents (because they were protesting in the street) and it was fun(ny) to watch.

3) My mom (who is a HUGE procrastinator) was doing the final paperwork on her naturalization process after 20 odd years as a resident alien. She needed to have her fingerprinting done. She'd submitted it but was told to re-submit another fingerprint card because a few fingerprints had gotten smudged. So you know what she did? She just went to the police station 2 blocks away and asked the police officers there to help her. And they did. They were professional and helpful and they did it for free.

4) I can't count the number of times that we had to call in a noise complaint because someone's car alarm went off in the middle of the night. And every single time, the police simply came by to either find the owner or disable it. No fuss and no muss.

5) My sister didn't come home one day in junior high school at the time she usually did. After a few hours waiting for her to come back and my parents working themselves up into a tizzy, they decided that they needed to file a missing person's report (Yeah, I know, my parents are crazy). This was when cell phones were still too prohibitively expensive for anyone in my family except for my dad who had it for business purposes. Of course, I knew and told my parents that you need to wait for 24 hours to file a missing person's report but they still insisted on going to the police station. The police there basically said OK, we'll put out an APB for her. I sat there and listened to them give my crazy parents the time of day simply because they were so anxious and the police wanted to help. Of course, in the end, it all turned out that my parents were crazy because my sister just happened to be hanging out with her friends and lost track of time.

So yeah, you can see why I prefer that not all cops get tarred with the same brush. Just like the Korean store on the corner that sells baked yams on cold days, the crazy homeless guy who's been hanging out on the same street corner, the pizzerias who vie with each other for the same customers for over 20 years (with fresh made pizza that you can watch being made), the OTB full of crazy gamblers, the blind accordion player, shish kebab seller, the security guard and super that have watched me grow up, the police officers are a fixture in my neighborhood. They help maintain the neighborhood because like us, they have a stake in it.

Thanks for your post and hopefully, more people will realize that yes, there are police officers that abuse their authority but there are also cops that are doing their jobs.