This is NOT about excessive force in my opinion. It is about discriminatory targeting of gay bars, that resulted in excessive force. Stop the raids and you don’t need to worry about force.

There is a much bigger issue that some allude to here. We are living in a police state. It feels like Martial Law. You can’t even be in your own home and disagree with a cop. Gates simply disagreed and got testy and insulted that cop, who should be fired for making an unwarranted arrest (at least that much is fact…it was not disorderly conduct as he was doing the conduct inside his home).

Here in Mass local cops check your speed on 25mph city streets ignoring gang violence on the other side of town. They would rather worry about who has a liquor license and is using it properly vs. who is committing real crimes.

I remember ordering splits of desert wine from J. Fritz in Sonoma many years ago only to discover that the ATF had denied them shipping as the bottles they used did not give the volume in english units…it had mL instead. They had to rebottle all the wine.

That is a good use of scarce resources?

We don’t need and ATF. Perhaps an F but the A and the T are not needed. We don’t need “transit cops”, “university cops”, “turnpike troopers” (yes we have them!), all these extra cops walking around juiced up on testosterone with their big chests and tiny dicks just looking for trouble to prove their manhood to themselves.

America has become a police state. I voted last night and had to walk past a cop with arms folded looking at me like “I dare you to step out of line” with gun and all hanging off his hip. We need a cop at a suburban polling station while gang violence is taking place across town???????

Everything from tackling someone who is just standing there to tasering people left & right when they simply disagree with an officer. Increasingly there seems to be a use of force instead of simple psychology. That needs to stop and stop soon or we will wind up with a bunch of jackbooted thugs policing us.

Given the numbers provided in this article, that 39 out of 234 allegations resulted in disciplinary action, one can easily discover that this is OVER 16.5%! That is right at TWICE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE!!!

I don’t even understand why there is a specific alarm with this agency, when in fact they are well above the national average in punishing offending officers. Somebody, please find fault in my reasoning.

Oh, and here is the link to the study I have cited if you want to check it out yourself.

http://www.policeone.com/officer-misconduct-internal-affairs/articles/137664-Study-says-about-8-percent-of-police-brutality-complaints-justify-discipline/

They also further break down case outcomes (i.e. insufficient evidence, complaints withdrawn, etc.)