Police departments blaming social media for declining recruitment rates

© unknown

Police departments around the country are beginning to complain that widespread criticism of the institution of law enforcement is making it harder for them to find people who want to work as police officers.

The recent events in Ferguson, they say, are partly to blame for the backlash against police.

But many of us know that Ferguson is only the tip of the iceberg - underneath the surface, there are thousands of other cases of beating, raping, and killing, all committed by an institution that is supposedly here to "protect" us.

The widespread exposure and criticism of this institution is becoming so popular that officers in the Seattle Metro area are complaining that it's hard for them to find new applicants.

And Cynthia Fajardo, the president of the Pierce County Deputy Sheriff's Guild, says that multiple police agencies are having the same problem.

Many departments report that this lack of applicants is due largely to the fact that growing numbers of Americans no longer respect the institution, and view it with deep distrust, due to stories of abuse being spread through social media.

"If you check with any of the agencies here in the Seattle metro area, every single agency is having a very difficult time getting people who want to be police officers anymore," said Fajardo, in an interview with local news affiliate K5.

Cops like Fajardo do understand that Americans have been skeptical of the institution of state policing for quite some time, that it didn't just start with Ferguson.

They believe that social media is what's causing the problem of skepticism toward police officers.

But they're wrong about that. Their own abusive actions are causing the problem.

This skepticism of police officers is a "problem" for the institution of law enforcement in the same sense that skepticism of, say, 19th century plantation overseers became a "problem" for the institution of slavery.

The reality is that police are individuals, and individuals are responsible for their actions.

Individuals who willingly agree to coerce, extort, and initiate violence upon peaceful people in order to maintain a monopolistic rule of corrupt politicians are naturally going to be distrusted.

They are responsible for what they do, not social media.

Social media is merely a new mechanism to display their actions in front of a larger audience.

As more Americans remove the scales from their eyes and see that the institution of law enforcement was created relatively recently (for most of human history we survived just fine without it) and only for the purpose of maintaining a corrupt political order, departments will have a harder time finding any applicants.

Few people want to be part of something like that.

Old institutions wither away as new generations create organic and more innovative alternatives.

The state-controlled monopolistic institution of policing is no exception.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://bit.ly/1xcsdoI.