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REGIONAL NEWS & INVESTIGATIONS
PO BOX 161702, Duluth MN 55816
Email contact@duluthmonitor.com
Phone (218) 391 - 8791
- All rights reserved.
Bravo, John Ramos. Let’s not forget that Public Safety (Police, Fire and other safety regulation) sucks up nearly 50% of the City’s budget. And the City, while experiencing a $25 million dollar deficit, has established a more costly schedule for police even though calls for service are down significantly. And, while other bargaining units in the City have taken 10% pay cuts during this pandemic, the Public Safety unions have not given up one red cent to help out the financial situation.
Lest we not forget that being a cop is very dangerous and are humans that make errors: According to the FBI, which publishes the data in the Uniform Crime Reports, from 1980–2018, an average of 85 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed per year. Those killed in accidents in the line of duty are not included in that number.
Indeed. As noted in the article, a police officer is the 16th most dangerous job in the United States. The only jobs more dangerous are mechanics, construction helpers, agricultural workers, grounds maintenance workers, power line installers, landscapers, structural iron workers, farmers, truck drivers, garbage collectors, roofers, pilots, fishers, and loggers.
Another important article. Thanks.
I support the police. I have family who are police, but don’t have any who are felons. It’s important to remember that felons very rarely become that way because they are caught in their first crime.
True–just as police who are caught abusing their power have very likely done it before. My point is that the system protects bad police.
What does “supporting the police” even mean? That you’ll cut them a lot of slack? Overlook abuses? Not believe people who accuse them of wrongdoing? Your blanket support for all of law enforcement proves my point. With people like you on the jury, what chance will any citizen have of prevailing against a lying cop?
The system is stacked to favor cops, and cops know it. To think that no cops ever take advantage of the situation is childishly naive.
Let’s just say that if a felon, person committing a crime, or person with an arrest warrant against them ends up getting shot by police during their arrest, my instinct is to accept that police were acting correctly.
Do you automatically assume gainfully employed people are embezzling from their employers? Much more likely a career criminal is continuing to be a criminal.
Convince me otherwise.
You’re talking all around my main point: The system protects cops. All cops. Within the cops, there are going to be bad people, because bad people exist in every group of humans. Thus, the system works to protect those people.
I’m not saying all cops are bad—but some are, and the system protects them. Much more common than bad cops, however, are regular cops who bend the rules in small ways, for smaller reasons—usually to get out of trouble. I have proof of a cop lying 13 times for virtually no reason—he just wanted to portray himself as more professional than he was. In the process, he smeared me, to make me look worse than I was.
It was a trivial matter for me, but many people face more serious consequences when cops lie. Every time a cop falsely accuses someone of resisting, that person gets arrested or fined. Another notation is added to their felonious record, so they get even less sympathy from the public than they may have gotten before. And the next time the cops run into that person—even if it’s a harmless matter—they will not treat him kindly, because they will look him up and find out that he resisted them before.
Except he didn’t.
One thing that puzzles me is why so many people respond to me, as you did, by saying they have family or friends in law enforcement. I have friends in landscaping who are some of the finest people I have ever met, but that doesn’t mean I think all landscapers are fine people. You can’t let a bad cop off the hook just because you have a relative who’s a good person. It makes no sense.
Yeah, I’m not a big fan of landscapers either. As if plants could really be that interesting. Something shifty going on.
being shot at intentionally and killed as a police officer is totally different than being killed by an accident as a logger.
Loggers are cutting down trees and know that a tree may not fall correctly and crush the logger. police officers are dealing with the public at large, attempting to protect the public at large. Every logger knows that a tree may fall wrong and kill him. Should police officers assume every stop may develop into a situation where the person stopped may shoot and kill the police officer?
Police officers are trained to assume exactly that. As they should be.
What a bias piece of junk reporting. U should be ashamed to be called a journalist. I am a mechanic and never have I been shot at while at work. U r full of crap to suggest landscapers or mechanics are the same as cops. My dad is retired law enforcement. Are u saying my dad is bad? I guess using ur logic all protesters are bad because there are a few that commit crimes. Just like all cops are bad because a few commit crimes. Again u are a disgrace to ur profession.
You may have never been shot at while working as a mechanic, but the fact is that you are more likely to be injured on the job than a police officer is. Statistically speaking, your job is more dangerous.
Am I saying your dad is bad? I don’t know. I’ve never met him. I’m saying that if your dad WAS bad, the system would protect him.
Protesters and cops are not equivalent. Cops are different from other groups of people, because cops are given the right to use force on citizens, where other groups are not. Therefore, we must hold cops to a higher standard–which means we don’t blindly support them, but view their actions with skepticism, and require them to prove that they are acting in the public interest.
Um… before your horse gets too high…
It’s just semantics to say pleading not guilty to an offense you were clearly guilty of committing is not ethically equivalent to perjury due to not being under oath. You knew what you were doing.
So, you lied, the cop lied. Where does the finger-pointing stop?
Pleading not guilty when one is guilty is a legal stratagem. When I was ticketed after getting beat up at Campus Park, in a pretrial hearing the judge actually explained this. A not guilty plea may give a person bargaining power down the line. In any case, I didn’t plead not guilty to the traffic ticket because I was trying to get out of it. I knew I would be found guilty. But I wanted an inside tour of the justice system–a decision which is benefiting me greatly as I make my arguments today.
Let’s get to the real scandal: The cop lied under oath. I told the truth. That’s more than just semantics. I was held to account for my actions. The cop was not.
Another legal strategem is writing a legal loophole into a binding contract in order to avoid paying a contractor due to perceived or subjective dissatisfaction with the work.
I consider that cheating. Mr. Trump sometimes used it.
There are loads of legal strategems out there to game the system to one’s benefit. We are answerable only for our own actions. There is no, ‘yes, I did, but he/she did worse…’
If you wish to draw a false equivalency between an insincere not-guilty plea and a police officer lying repeatedly under oath to smear the reputation of a decent, hard-working, handsome, well-dressed, intelligent citizen, that is certainly your right. I will merely note your questionable sense of ethics and say that my plea, however insincere, was legal. The officer’s perjury was not. There’s a big difference between legal and illegal. What he did was definitely worse.
Good piece, John. I do wonder why you engage with folks that hardly take the time to reflect on what you’re trying to say or even use their real name. This is a very emotional issue for many. I appreciate alternate points of view, but I will not accept alternative facts.
“Most dangerous” does not mean injured or killed by a gun, simple, maybe. Add emotion and it’s all messed up.
Good argumentative reasoning is based upon engaging with others that hold differing or totally opposite views. The strength of one’s own position can only be tested by addressing negative input. If all that was published here was concurring thought, it would be very boring. The First Amendment was passed to allow all thought, no matter how objectionable and kooky, to be aired via a public forum. John should be applauded for allowing it. The thought police are certainly engaged with stifling differing opinion at the main newspaper in town.
Great article. A big secret among cops is the fact that they are also torturing citizens with a newer class of unconstitutional weapons known as directed energy weapons. Duluth PD is a great abuser of these weapons, which is driving a lot of the crazy behavior we see happening. There are many versions but the U.N. is focusing on high powered “pulsed microwaves” and “sonic weapons” easily deployed from cell towers at targets with no trace of evidence. These weapons are being abused regularly by dirty cops at the top of Duluth’s department.