Such a comparison is in my opinion inappropriate. Even though the Internet has a lot of materials on the facts of illegal actions of the police confirms that they cannot be compared to ISIS. Many times have you seen such materials about the methods of terrorists from ISIS. Have you seen the COP who cut off the head guy?
No, but they did used to hang folks, I will admit the beheading is much more spectacular
Perspective, perspective, perspective (I'll use Snopes, we can all agree on the veracity)
According to Gary Potter, a crime historian at Eastern Kentucky University, a centralized, bureaucratic police system did not emerge until well into the 1800s, but was quickly adopted by cities around the country:
It was not until the 1830s that the idea of a centralized municipal police department first emerged in the United States. In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force, followed by New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place.
These “modern police” organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980).
This would be what we define as a modern day cop, not the constables or the nightwatch, the earliest forms of American policing. State sponsored custodians of the law, officers of the peace. But the primary function they served was anything but:
More than a hundred years earlier, in 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the fledgling United States’ first slave patrol. The patrol consisted of roving bands of armed white citizens who would stop, question, and punish slaves caught without a permit to travel. They were civil organizations, controlled and maintained by county courts. The way the patrols were organized and maintained provided a later framework for preventive (rather than reactive) community policing, particularly in the South
So these were what we would define as a cop as well. Notice they pass the four point test in the previous quote.
In 1822, for example, Charleston, South Carolina, experienced a slave insurrection panic, caused by a supposed plot of slaves and free blacks to seize the city. In response, the State legislature passed the Negro Seamen’s Act, requiring free black seamen to remain on board their vessels while in Carolina harbors. If they dared to leave their ships, the police were instructed to arrest them and sell them into slavery unless they were redeemed by the ship’s master.
Now, if in the 1830s police were being used to discipline slaves, we have 35 years until slavery was abolished. And cops affiliated with white supremacy have illegally killed citizens in the South as late as the 1960s. But the abolition of slavery didn't depower the cops, it emboldened them, because they were able to use preventative policing and discriminatory legislature to harass citizens. And it's not just slaves, it's minority immigrants to America, period. The Chinese, the Irish, Natives. Let me explain preventative vs reactive policing. This is where it slipped from racism to classism, I'll explain in a sec:
Policing had always been a reactive enterprise, occurring only in response to a specific criminal act. Centralized and bureaucratic police departments, focusing on the alleged crime-producing qualities of the “dangerous classes” began to emphasize preventative crime control. The presence of police, authorized to use force, could stop crime before it started by subjecting everyone to surveillance and observation. The concept of the police patrol as a preventative control mechanism routinized the insertion of police into the normal daily events of everyone’s life, a previously unknown and highly feared concept in both England and the United States (Parks 1976).
Preventative policing gave police powers that allowed them to profile, and surveil. We evolved from profiling minorities, to the poor, to finally, everyone but the elite. I've seen cute white chicks get slammed by a cop just like black dudes, shit, I have seen cops fuck over old ladies. Cops are kinda dangerous at the moment, they can act without fear of punishment in the 'pursuit of justice'. Hence all the black bro shootings with no convictions. Shit, I would shoot first too if I were a cop, you have less than a 1/1000
literal chance of being convicted. Seriously, why take the chance of getting shot by some punk?
Now,
ISIS has an evil intent, while the actual mission of a peace officer is a noble pursuit. But let me pose a few questions:
If the police have been around for 200 years, vs ISIS being formed in 1999, who has had more potential for harm? Even if that harm is intentional?
The highest estimate of ISIS fighters I could find was 200000. How does that pale to the number of cops employed, since the 1800s?
With how post colonial American race tensions played out, do you think the cops were arresting minorities, or simply killing them? Private citizens could kill minorities and avoid prosecution, surely a cop could, yes?
And I'm not championing African American oppression. I'm pointing out the legal powers and protections police have been afforded to deal with minorities, have been used by the government to devolve all our civil liberties. Another example, 911. A minority did a really bad thing, and all of the sudden we have the Patriot Act. They actually had the nerve to call it the Patriot Act. Because being a true Patriot is getting my nuts grabbed at the airport
There is much truth to the ideology BD is trying to communicate. He used incendiary rhetoric; y'all stopped listening
As he stated, we expect ISIS to be a dick. But when our protectors that we pay to protect us are a dick, it's a much more sinister betrayal.
And ISIS has never given me a speeding ticket. There's that
