Forbidden Donut

Dan must have been one of the SWAT members to suck so hard.

I saw this on Reddit. There was one really good comment about why the SWAT members did deserve the medal.

The mistake wasn't theirs. They didn't chose which house to bust into. It was a mistake higher up in the ladder. The Members of the SWAT team handled the situation with care. No member of the household was hurt, and since the officers were being fired upon, they would have had the right to use deadly force. The SWAT team kept their heads cool and didn't kill anyone before they figured out what was going on.

If I were a member of the team, I would have refused the medal on principal. I wouldn't want to be rewarded for terrorizing civilians, even if it wasn't my mistake.

I believe that whoever made the error, should pay.

So let's break this down:
Investigators coax some info out of an informant. Inform appropriate police department(s).
PD's realize it's a "high risk warrant" and call in some guys with body armor and automatic weapons.
Guys with guns bust down the door of the house in question (still the wrong house)

Now this is where their heroism starts. A man, defending his family, fires several rounds from a shotgun at the officers. The officers OPEN FIRE on an innocent man. He lives by grace of their being terrible shots, or divine intervention. Medal.

cmon. they don't deserve a medal. It's their job as the fucking special weapons and tactics units to go into dangerous situations where they could come under fire and to be able to neutralize the threat while minimizing casualties.

This isn't kindergarten, lives are at stake and this sends a ridiculous message. I don't want them to be punished... but seriously the medal was for acting professionally. I think by that standard everybody I work with deserves a medal.

We give police guns and badges and authority. I hold them to a higher standard because of it and they don't even measure up to normal standards sometimes. Then they get a medal for it. It's BS.

Anyone ever think that this cud just be a cover up for the SWAT mistake. This makes them look like heroes instead of retards.

ding ding. we have a weiner.

this sets off so many alarms it hurts. I'm glad somebody else thought of that too, it makes me feel less tin-foil-hat-y.

I can see it now:
Investigator/Journalist: your team broke into an innocent mans home and opened fire on him and his family without identifying themselves.
SWAT: our team is made up of highly trained highly decorated officers of the law. Occasionally a mistake is made, but the lack of injury in this particular incident proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that their training and expertise saved lives that day.

The article on reddit said (I'll look it up at home if I remember to) that the station gave medals to officers who came under fire. The chief found it morally obligatory. I mean, they were getting shot at. I don't care who is shooting at you, it takes balls to not run away.

If you were an officer in a similar situation (looking for drug-dealers with guns and then getting fired at in a suspected location), would you have stood there and said maybe we're in the wrong place? The gift of hindsight only comes post hoc.

Now I can clearly see why they shouldn't get medals, but they did act the way they were supposed to in the situation and had the information been correct, should they have gotten medals? Would they have acted differently? Or do we only reward people for results and not effort?

I strongly disagree with you on this one, Andrew. I don't really understand what frustrates you about this, actually. The cops break down the door and a man shoots them with a shotgun. They respond by opening fire. Luckily for both parties, no one was seriously injured. Why exactly does the shitty detective work preceding this event devalue the extreme danger the officers (and the man, for that matter) were put in?

Who cares if they get paid to do that? All U.S. soldiers get paid to do the job they do; does that mean it should disqualify them from receiving military recognition for their courage and service?

It's not like body armor makes the cops invincible. A well placed shotgun blast could have killed any one of them.

I'm not saying the whole situation couldn't have been avoided, but it wasn't. And I'd be willing to be the brave men that went into that house didn't really have a say in which house they entered.

medal deserving situations handling = non-violent denouement unless absolutely necessary. the lad was probably in full on "please don't fuck with my family" mode, opening fire on the intruders not with the intent to kill but discourage further fucking.

if i were a member of that swat team i would've taken cover and tried to talk to the guy, try to reciprocate to him what the fuck's going on, that they aren't trying to steal his brass candlesticks and silverware. Certainly not guaranteed to work since the guy was probably shitting bricks, but did they even try?

When did they realize the mistake? They may have still been thinking it was a drug dealer's home filled with weapons.

It pisses me off because there is a right way to conduct these raids that has been warped because of the war on drugs.

1) Wait for people in the house to leave, arrest them.
2) Get on a loudspeaker and call out for the remaining people to evacuate
3) Only after anybody who is going to leave actually leaves, go in and prepare to come under fire
4) Fire only when fired at
5) FUCKING HIT THEM OH MY FUCKING GOD HOW ARE THEY THIS BAD AT THEIR JOBS
6) Don't collect a medal for doing the job you signed up for

What they did was skip steps 1 through 3 and neglected 5 and 6.

The reason we don't do those first three any more is because it gives gangsters an opportunity to flush drugs and arm themselves. But since they show that getting shot with a shotgun won't hurt them I don't think I'm too worried about the arming. They have flashbangs. They have smoke grenades. They chose the absolute WORST approach to raiding this house in an attempt to get a drug bust too and they are lucky nobody died.

and all drug dealers deserve to die for selling drugs. which in certain places means owning weapons to keep from getting shot or losing your drugs. which are going to be illegal to own because you get arrested for selling drugs.

Coffee, you wouldn't do that. I'm sorry. No person in the right mind who was carrying a gun at the time and who got SHOT at would find a hiding place and try to talk down the assailant as they unloaded their 12 gauge. Police carry guns to protect themselves. They have pretty strict rules for the use of those guns, and I whole-heartedly support such regulations. Many times, the use of a gun is really hard to determine whether it would be justified or not. Do you shoot someone who is threatening to kill another person? Do you shoot someone who is threatening to kill themselves? Do you shoot someone who is unintentionally putting others in danger? These are all really tough questions that demand heavy scrutiny. However, there is one clear and unquestionably correct time for a police officer to use their gun: when they are shot at.

There isn't time for running through your firearm regulations book, and this isn't the fucking movies. You don't get the opportunity when someone is firing a shotgun at you to dive behind the magically bulletproof lazy-boy. Your best chance for survival (and your friends' best chance for survival) is to pull the trigger. That's what it is for; when would it be more appropriate for the use of deadly force than when someone is trying to kill you?

And he shot the cops. They were lucky that he happened to hit their chest which happened to be the most heavily armored part of their entire body. Once again (and I'm really not trying to blame the guy here), the guy didn't have time to think about where he could conveniently place his shots on the off-chance that the intruder might run away instead of simply shooting him and his family dead. He shot to kill because it was the only reasonable defense against a group of armed intruders. He shot to kill because he's not a dumbass who thinks he'd have enough time to evaluate the situation before making a decision about his next course of action.

Andrew, you have no idea what the situation was. I agree with you on your first point to an extent, but there are plenty of reasons why that wouldn't work. Fuck, even the god damn animal cops have trouble apprehending suspects in that way, and they're just there to collect a fine.

This isn't just about the war on drugs. In some situations, the megaphone works. In this particular situation, it would have ended the entire situation without a shot fired. But had the intel been correct, who knows who was inside that house. Maybe the use of a megaphone could have turned into a hostage situation. Maybe the guy they were actually after was such a danger that they knew he'd simply open fire out of the windows putting the lives of all of the neighbors and other police personal outside. Maybe surprise, as it has been on other occasions, was considered the safest plan for the people inside the house, the swat team, the police, and the bystanders throughout the neighborhood. Surprise raids work. They often go down without any shots fired. I'm all about the alternative you mentioned, but I'm also not naive enough to assume that course of action is right in all situations.

As for the missing part, you once again are unaware of the situation. It is extremely difficult to fire a well aimed shot when you are quickly spinning around. I'm sure it is 100x more difficult when it is dark, you're in an unknown surrounding, you are caught by surprise, and you're taking fire. To top it all off, this isn't the movies. I doubt the dude came running out of his bedroom guns ablazing. He could have turned a hallway corner or just out of a doorway expecting to see one or two guys, saw a ton of geared up dudes with sub machine guns, and simply fired a shot as he pulled back into the room he came from. Because they're not batshit nuts, the team would then return some fire, if for no other reason, as a reaction to taking fire. I have no idea what the situation was, but I certainly think that sounds pretty plausible.

And your last point about the "job you signed up for" is absolutely bogus. Who the fuck cares what they signed up to do? That doesn't devalue the work at all. They weren't rewarded civilian medals, they were rewarded police medals for their work in a life-threatening situation. Fuck, the bouncing bombers that flew all-but-guaranteed suicide missions in WWII volunteered to do it; does that mean they don't deserve the distinguished honors they received?

And finally, they are lucky no one died. That would have been awful. Of course, it is fortunate that the guy survived. But it is equally fortunate that they survived. Body armor doesn't make them invincible.

I'm incredibly disappointed with your reckless abandon when approaching this scenario with a clear bias against the authorities. In my opinion, you usually seem to hit the nail on the head when it comes to controversial or political issues, but I sincerely think you are way off-base here. All of your points are relying on board assumptions at best or wild speculation at worst.

QFT

until you know this job please do not try and talk like its something that you have experience in or you think you have a better way of doing it. many things go wrong for many different reasons.

A guy e-mailed the chief of police and received a response. http://www.reddit.com/comments/6udf6/chief..._wrong_address/

That paints a different picture. But color me skeptical.

I'll say that if that's the real story than hell yes give these guys a medal. Otherwise they actually did a pretty mediocre job. That's all I'm saying. They are all brave men, who put themselves in harms way every time they are on the job in an earnest and sincere attempt to keep people like you and me safe. Most of the time they do a damned good job. But when they don't do a good job they shouldn't get medals.

Listen, I distrust cops for a number of reasons. When you get repeatedly harassed carrying your skateboard through a town borough on your way home, but can't get them to come to your house when there's an intruder, you start to lose faith in them. So yes, I'm biased against the authorities. I don't believe they function to protect or serve any longer. I don't believe they think they are in the employment of the citizens. They don't have to answer to mistakes they make. They don't have to answer to abuses of power. I'm hyper critical of law enforcement.

For what it's worth I respect each and every officer I've never met. I respect most of the ones I have. I don't know what I would do in the situation, and they had a very difficult choice to make. I'm not even entirely sure what actually happened. I've been arguing against giving them a medal because typical step 2 is to deny the family any money to repair their bullet riddled house and use the fact that these guys are decorated as leverage. They don't seem to be doing that here and I think that's awesome.

/I wasn't privy to all the new shit.

(Their body armor is apparently good enough to keep them alive after getting shot in the face and neck with a shotgun...?)

PS: I'm having a shitty week and am feeling pretty much all around curmudgeonly and adversarial. Probably could've toned down the rhetoric a bit. I don't know what they got the medal for, if it's just a "here's the medal you get when you get shot at" then my outrage is completely unwarranted.

The only real problem on the SWAT side of this story is the guy with the shotgun didn't die. Not saying that i want to see him die but he did fire upon police officers who are trained to fire back. There are many different things that could have happened in the house that prevented the SWAT team from hitting him. The owner for the house obviously knows his house better so he probably has a better idea of where to hide for the best advantage.

If anything I'd say be mad and go on your rant about the Task force that handled the investigation. They got the bad intel, they sent them to the wrong house.

The SWAT guys were doing what they are trained to do, take orders from investigators or task forces and execute warrants and other high risk operations.

What is it you do for work, Andrew? Just out of curiosity.

I'm in IT. I am a code and support monkey. We just got a goofy new pair of printers that I've been trying to get up and running for about 2 weeks now and it's been a new problem every day. Hence my short fuse.

To accurately convey my point:
If this is the way we deal with all high risk warrants, innocent people WILL die. I think that when you're an agency whose job is to make the streets safer, then you have a duty to limit the risk that you are a menace to innocents as much as possible. I don't think this system is sufficient. You folks are right, I don't know the details of what happened, I wasn't there. So I shouldn't speak about their receipt of the medal. However there is something fundamentally wrong with this approach.

Having recently read this also made this story boil my blood. There ARE a bunch of shitty, shoot first ask questions later, sweep under the rug SWAT officers. These people are lucky to not have been another set to make an appearance on that page.

I agree with you to some extent. That being said, claiming that Andrew shouldn't use hypotheticals when talking about in house gunplay, and then using hypotheticals to back your own arguments is weak. Also, being familiar with firearms does not a tactical firefight expert make.

Also, whether the right coarse of action was kicking down the door or using a megaphone is entirely unimportant to this argument BECAUSE of a lack of details as to who's house they were supposed to be visiting, and without that detail we have no idea. Do I think they deserved a medal? I really don't know. The letter from the police chief says that they were literally using their bodies to shield the kids in another room from getting lit up with buckshot. If that's entirely true, than shit, I'll pin the fucking medals on them myself.

I think in the long run, andrew doesn't know the details any better than we do, now. That puts us all on pretty even ground, so going after him because his opinion in this situation is different than yours is kind of... self important, I guess. Noone else knows what really happened any better than he does, so, we lack the perspective to say "this is correct/stop overreacting..." etc.

Also important is that, regardless of the whole mess, it wasn't the swat officers who fucked up the house number. It was the people above them. So that's who made the whole fucked up situation possible.

There is a key difference between Andrew's assumptions and my hypothetical examples: Andrew used his assumptions to draw a sweeping conclusion about the scenario (one that happened to also be built upon his previous stereotypes of police officers); I, on the other hand, was using hypothetical situations to show that there could be different, completely plausible alternative scenarios to Andrew's that would appear to shed an entirely different light on the situation.

I'm not disappointed that Andrew thinks the cops don't deserve their medals. My hypothetical situation was just suppose to show that they could deserve the medals. No, I'm disappointed that Andrew would develop such an extreme opinion about a situation that he knows he has a clear bias on and that he knows extremely little about what really went down.

This wasn't a "the cops unloaded their entire clips twice into an unarmed black father of four who actually died instantly from the impact of the first bullet" scenario. This was a "bad intel led to a shitty situation where shots were fired and luckily no one was hurt" scenario. But since we don't have any good information about the extent of the intel, we have no idea what actually happened in the house, and we're completely unaware of how the swat team handled itself, it is simply unreasonable of us to draw any conclusion about the merits of anyone involved.

Out of curiosity, not that I'm against having Guns, but why did this guy shoot at SWAT? I mean they have swat written all over him. Not to make it worse for the victim, but he shouldn't have shot when he saw SWAT shield, helmets, and other stuff.

It says the raid was done in the earlier morning hours, so if I had to guess I would say it was dark.

That same news channel has more links to the right that they have done on this incident. This link shows their own time line as to what happened before the raid

Timeline

lolwut?

They STill do SCREAM POLICE OR SWAT, so I mean unless the guy was like.. oh noes they is be lieing, I shudn't see why he had to shoot.

And yes, I can vouche from personal experience that they do scream something!

Oh and I'm not sure whether it's jsut NY state law or throughout the country but, you can only do these raids from 6am to 10 pm and currently it's visible outside at 6 in the morning!

There have been numerous cases of SWAT failing to identify itself during a raid. And I don't know that if I were that dude I'd believe it. There's nothing stopping a robber from yelling SWAT GET ON THE GROUND NOW!

What are the chances robbers are gonna have shields and shotguns? I mean I can agree with your first statement but the second one seems a little skeptical imho.

I think you're underestimating how long it takes to process information like that when you're taken completely be surprise and have adrenaline pumping from your kidneys in waves. A lot of times when a situation is this stressful, people have a hard time remembering what happened afterwords much less being able to clearly process the sights and sounds as they happen.

You just stated the problem I have with the way these raids are carried out much more articulately than I ever could have.

I understand exactly what court is trying to say but I just wanted to point out that there are two people at fault if I should say. I mean I can't blame him per say, but he just had a part that could be avoided in this situation.

One of those people has a badge and training and a get out of jail free card. Just saying.

And with that training he didn't hurt anyone.

Don't get me wrong, I completely am baffled at the fact that he's not dead right now because with their training he should have been shot at and hurt atleast with one bullet. But all I'm saying is that, he acted irrationally ALSO.

Can't blame the SWAT for everything.

I'll roll with that. A lot of this lies on the ways investigators are allowed to get information.

On the flip side, the man with the shotgun's a goddamn superman. If they HAD been robbers or what have you he'd have three headless robbers on the floor. Proof positive that people with guns and some basic training are better protected than people with police.

<rant. run now, last chance>
Ima take the fight back there actually because I feel like I misrepresented myself. Raise your hand if you feel like police make you safer. What are the police's primary duties? The oath is to protect and serve yeah yeah whatever. But what do police spend most of their time doing? Enforcing laws, right? What laws? How much of their time do they spend doing what?
Let's look up an example: PDF sorry...

o Patrols: they drive around looking for crimes being committed. Speeders will be ticketed. And if they stumble on something cooler, then good for them.
o Meter Maiding... I feel safer already
o Responding to calls. If you feel threatened by something, 9-1-1 isn't going to help you. They wait until you get shot or stabbed then they send out investigators to bully the locals and an ambulance to pick you up. They don't have time to take everything seriously. This isn't their fault, it's a limitation on the system.
o Other non-violent crime calls - car accidents, fires, violations of parole, etc. Paperwork.
o Living traffic light
o Prisoner escort
o Confiscation: my favorite. I call it "stealing". Isn't that clever? (have had 2 skateboards stolen by police. I wasn't riding them either time, and my complaints were answered with "did you get the officer's name?" the first time, and the second time, when I HAD the name I got a big fat, "You know better. It says here you've had a previous run in with us over the same infraction.")
o reloading ammo at the police academy

So 2 of this posting's assignments actually help keep you safe (3 if you count escorting prisoners). And they inherently do crappy jobs of it (except that 3rd one). Most of the rest are basically oppressive. Speeders don't scare me. Parking violations? give me a break. It IS nice to have a cop in an intersection if he/she knows what he/she is doing. And seizure of property.

About that prison escort thing. I leave you with this:
"In 2000, an estimated 57% of Federal inmates and 21% of State inmates were serving a sentence for a drug offense; about 10% of Federal inmates and 49% of State inmates were in prison for a violent offense."

So there's less than a 50% chance that the people they are escorting are violent criminals. That's nice.
</rant>

Speeders don't scare you??? You do realize that if there were no speeding laws people would be driving around like crazy assholes. If there are laws, you need someone to enforce them.

I think they do an excellent job protecting us.

I mean i understand your argument, but you have to realize that they do put their lives on the risk for us, and they definitely do NOT get paid enough for that shit. I was reading a article in the newspaper recently and they mentioned how new recruits in the NYPD get a starting pay of like 35G if i'm right. Realy, that pay sucks in my opinion especially for what they do.

Do not get me wrong, there are a lot of people that represent the police force wrong, just like any other job force
but they do deserve respect out of all things.

There is a lower accident rate on the portions of the Autobahn where there is no speed limit than there is on US highways with speed limits.

Speed doesn't kill... Poor driver training and lane control kill.

Cops don't "deserve respect" just because their job sucks and pays poorly. In fact, they deserve to be meticulously examined in everything they do because we give them guns and power.

also: you realize that WITH speeding laws people drive around like crazy assholes.

Experiment. Push the envelope with a cop next time you see them. See how fast and unreasonably they escalate the situation in an attempt to intimidate you. Report back here when you're done. I've seen a local cop threaten to throw a guy in cuffs and take him to the station for asking what he did wrong. What he had done wrong was speak up when his (and my) friend jaywalked and not only got a ticket, but a 5 minute lecture on road safety while the cop rested his hand on his holstered pistol. All of us were 13. Sorry. Cops suck. If you can't handle the pressure of a 13 year old asking you to lay off a little bit without blowing a gasket you shouldn't be allowed to carry a pistol, mace, taser, nightstick, drive a car with a laptop in it, wear a badge or a uniform.

Experiment 2. Go to a criminal justice class in college and see what caliber of people are going into law enforcement. I went to 1 before I dropped the class because when the teacher asked why they wanted to go into the field over half the class responded, "because I want to carry a gun" or "because of the respect that comes with it."

We should respect cops because of the job they do. They put their lives on the risk for your safety.

Again, i'm not saying all the cops are god's and angels, but many of them actually are. I do understand you having a bad experience with a cop, but I have seen the other side also.

I worked at the District Attorney's Office last summer in the Narcotics and Drugs Department. I worked with cops there and I also realized the effort they put into it. Shit yo, I actually went to these raids. The mental stress, the preparations. Knowing that you might just get shot into the face when you fucking enter the house, yeh scares the crap out of you. Shields and kevlar can only protect you so much.

Sounds like you have a "beef" with cops, due to your run-in's, nunes. Just because those cops may have been "assholes" doesn't mean all cops/enforcers of the law are the same. The SWAT team was misinformed obviously, but they did their job to the tee. I don't see why they shouldn't get recognized for what they did. They followed their orders, and thanks to their training, no one got injured. You can still argue the point that they should have double checked the address, but who would have thought that the information was false?

There really is no way the SWAT team can double check the address. It was their orders, they were given a house, it's location, the way it is, what the threads and possible charges could be and then they were on the job.

I'm not arguing that they don't deserve recognition anymore. I conceded already, and continue to concede that these guys did the best they could and that I simply don't know enough to condemn them. But STOP giving cops the benefit of the doubt. That's the point I'm trying to make.

Sure, I shouldn't assume that all cops are bad people. But it's undeniable that some are. I'm obviously not going to be able to convince you otherwise because of your closeness to the situation, but you need to think about this a bit harder Anotherevil.

Drug dealers have guns for one reason and one reason only. To protect themselves against each other. If you think these people are a danger to you then you're being more paranoid than me. The last thing a dealer wants to do is kill anybody who isn't a dealer. Dead dealers don't make the news. Dead regular folks and dead cops do.

So if you actually feel safer because the guys you work with are busting down doors and filling prisons with these people fine. But don't complain to me when the homeless guy down the street stabs you, or you get your identity stolen, or YOUR house gets mistakenly ID'd by the very people YOU think belong behind bars and consequently raided.

The DEA just raided 4 medicinal marijuana distributors in California. You know... where those places are legal. No guns were found. They arrested 3 people aged 26, 39, and 59. They also raided a guys house under suspicion of having pot and some other junk. He was 30. They found no pot, or ANYTHING, but arrested him anyway. The whole raid seized thousands of dollars in LEGALLY obtained money.

Has anyone here ever been helped by law enforcement? Maybe some anecdotal evidence for the other side that isn't just "these guys are bad asses so they deserve respect" would convince me. But I know a lot of people with big brass balls who are just bullies.

Why do they call it "medical marijuana"? There is no such thing. Pot is pot. Just fucking call it marijuana... I just saw a thing on tv about a guy in some California city may face up to 100 years in jail for having a business where he gave out marijuana to people with horrible migraines and headaches. He business was legal and recognized by the city in which he lived/had his business out of, but the state of California didn't.

Drug dealers don't only deal in drugs, they also deal in other things, weapons, prostitution and other illegal shit. You have a problem with the laws of the state, I understand that concern, but hey, why do you bring the police into it? They're just doing their job. Yes I do feel safer with the police there. I don't know if you've ever been in a really bad neighborhood, but I worked with the D.A. for a summer. I somewhat have an idea how these drug dealers work and how they spread their wings and stuff. They freaking get teenagers to do their dirty job and the guns they illegally sell are the one's that the mugger points at your head.

I do understand that yes, there are some crooks out there, but hey what profession does not have crooks? Just because there are SOME bad police officers, doesn't mean you lose respect for all of them.

Those teenagers are going to be able to feed their families now. Those monsters. I lived at Temple for a while, and while it's safe there it's not the surrounded by the nicest places. The only time I've ever seen police in philly respond quickly to shots fired was when one of them was the one getting shot at.

Sanctioned thugs that act under orders are still thugs. And they don't have to answer for what they do. COME ON! You don't see a problem with that?

Every teenager that carries a gun and does/deals in drugs does not have a family to feed. Sometimes they do it because they're just simply retarded and thing they're Gangsters. ROFL. I mean, you really believe that everyone that deals in drugs does it because of the necessity of the situation?

Why are they thugs? Because they tell you to follow the law? Because they carry a gun and enforce the law? Technically I guess Deans in schools are sanctioned thugs, your parents are sanctioned thugs (hey, atleast mine don't have guns, only bamboo sticks and such). Anyone who enforces anything would be considered a sanctioned thug then.

ahem. I understand that yes, there are some crooks out there, but hey what profession does not have crooks? Just because there are SOME wannabe gangsters doesn't mean you treat them all like the scum of the earth.

No I don't believe that everyone that deals does it because they have to.

They are thugs because they do all the things thugs do. But go ahead and simplify it to telling me to follow the law and enforcing the law. Because everybody knows that all laws in all history are just. And everybody knows there are no abuses of power in our world.

Your oversimplification of authority is astounding. I guess you're always a good little boy who does exactly as he's told.

Actually, I don't really think they're all treated like the scum of the earth. Shit you know how many deals are given to them by the D.A. for information that leads to arrest higher in the drug chain. They are actually cut a lot of slack, you'd be surprised just for some information. Because the D.A. knows that these people are just like pawns in the chess game, despensible for the higher players.

The officers treat everyone the same because they don't know the background on these men. They don't know how innocent or guilty these people are. And I don't really think they treat them badly. Tell me what you would want them to treat them? How?

I understand that in history power has been abused, but what you fail to recognize is the fact that a lot of the time power has also been used properly, just the fact is that kind of power never gets recognized because it's not sensational and isn't interesting.

And no, I'm not a good little boy all the time, I Jay-walk all the time. I'm living on the edge. But what I do do is, not break the law so that it affects the people around me in a negative way, I don't harm someone else's life for my purposes.

Snitches get stitches. But you're welcome to think that the D.A. is doing them a favor by giving them the option of going to jail for 10 years of getting shot tomorrow. And the police have better things to do than investigate the murder of some punk drug dealer.

You'd be surprised how many Snitch and no one finds out! Most of them do.