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Cambridge Police looking at whether one of their own was busy posting racist crap applauding attacks on protesters
By adamg on Sat, 09/12/2020 - 11:52am
Cambridge Day reports that Cambridge Police are looking into the posts and retweets of a Twitter account that may have been run by one of its lieutenants. With examples of some of the tweets.
The investigation comes only a few months after the department announced it would take unspecified action against a superintendent who posted rants about Joe Kennedy and Ed Markey on the official department Twitter feed.
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Comments
Another bigoted CPD tweeter?
Strange how that keeps happening.
To quote a great protest sign
"Not all cops are racists but, as the saying goes, 'they fit the description'".
Time to change the excuse
from "just a few bad apples" to "ok look, if you really dig around in there, I think there's a couple near the bottom that aren't too bad if you eat around the rotten bits".
The full saying is a few bad
The full saying is a few bad apples spoils the bunch. In other words, if you don't remove them you end up with only bad apples. People seem to miss that part and use this to mean its not a system wide problem but just a few bad cops. They rarely remove the bad cops, so the good cops either leave, get pushed out for speaking up or look the other way making them also bad apples.
"Non-racist cop found!"
Now, that would be news.
I see cops in Central Square
I see cops in Central Square doing a great job every day. I can’t believe the patience and professionalism they display.
It must be hard for them to
It must be hard for them to do social work without proper training or resources for the job.
Headquarters is in Central Square
Most folks try a little harder when they know their bosses might be watching them.
Police are no longer part of the larger society. The thin blue line has evolved into a nation of police versus the larger society. They are no longer accountable to anyone but themselves. In Boston and New York they are no longer acceptable to the people who run government.
Mayor's and city councilors, etc. are no longer independent enough from the political dominances of police. Kudos to police for being so well organized. But being able to organize does not that healthy for the city as a whole.
The fact that so many police forces have so many "bad apples" across the nation, or that a city supposedly as liberal as Cambridge, still employees bigots as a policeman, makes clear that there are a lot of police who believe they are exempt from all but their own laws.
Assuming that most police do want to be part of society, the ones who believe they are superior still makes the entire police look bad.
Police like to present a solid front. But when that solid front shows a lot of decay, arrogance, corruption, bigotry, then that pristine blue front takes on a dark, violent color.
CPD HQ left Central Square
CPD HQ left Central Square over a decade ago...
Headquarters is NOT in
Headquarters is NOT in Central Square. It’s on 6th Street now.
Cops being separate from
Cops being separate from general society is nothing new.
For example, in the 1800s they were required to live in police housing. That’s why it’s called a barracks.
What exactly was racist about
What exactly was racist about the tweets? They're anti-liberal and pro-cop and use memes confusingly, but I don't see anything racist.
Code of Silence
Deranged.
Cheerleading civilians speeding cars into protesters, shooting citizens in the back 7 times, and cops needlessly and negligently assaulting and cracking the skull of a septuagenarian are “pro cop” tweets?
What a deranged take. And, if that is indeed what passes as “pro cop” now, why on earth would anyone be surprised at calls to defund such a brutal gang of qualified immunity-protected thugs and criminals?
Of course the memes are
Of course the memes are inflammatory and snooty, but again, are they "racist"? I don't see it. That label gets carelessly and smugly thrown around at people the past few years while everyone is so riled up.
It's important, because Cambridge's pretense for looking into the account owner's possible identity as someone in CPD is that CPD people can be disciplined for "statements that are inflammatory, discriminatory and/or disrespectful to any individuals, races or ethnicities that are linked in any way to an officer’s employment as a Cambridge police officer". Those are the department's words.
Which means expressing scorn against BLM, a few individuals in Wisconsin, or protesters in Portland is protected, while making sweeping statements about black people is not protected. It looks to me like the tweets toed that line without crossing that line.
You said the tweets were “pro cop”
Anyone who considers that material “pro-cop” has an unhealthy-if-not-psychotic view of good policing in America.
very few things are “racist”
...when you zoom in that close. in fact, if you remove all context nothing means anything at all.
i don’t know, affixing a laughing gif to a tweet about jacob blake seems pretty fuckin racist to me. but i guess if you don’t think race had anything to do with that incident i get where you’re coming from.
Cop cheering cop shooting Black man
It’s not worth explaining to anyone who doesn’t already get it in September of 2020, after the long summer of unrest America has faced, that a white cop cheering on another white cop unloading 7 rounds into the back of an unarmed Black man is so obviously racist. The person is either willfully ignorant or acting in bad faith.
Even if the laughably bad “but it’s not actually racist!!!” argument held water, wanting to defend those tweets as simply “expressing scorn against BLM [and] a few individuals” exposes Refugee’s distorted and dishonest interpretation of the tweets. Imagine these unhinged tweets are the actions you want to defend and the examples you hold up as being “pro cop”?
Two errors. First, the
Two errors. First, the tweet related to Jacob Blake was sarcastic Seinfeld, not "cheering". The meme was directed at de Blasio, the white mayor of NYC, not at Jacob Blake.
Second error: the tweets from @CPD496 shown in the article aren't focused on the various cop incidents themselves, but on the political activity surrounding those cop incidents. He throws shade at de Blasio, Pressley, and BLM protesters. A reasonable person can believe that the various police incidents should as procedure be investigated and reviewed, while also believing that the politics attracted to those incidents is bad. Among liberals, even that view gets called "racist". If you're not pumping your fist in outrage, blocking traffic, and calling people racists, then you're racist yourselves. It's McCarthyism all over again, this time coming from the left.
One odd thing about @cpd496 is his/her comment about Ayanna Pressley's tweeted photo as "ugly, which comes from the inside". That really sounds like someone deliberately not crossing a line. If they weren't trying to be careful, they'd just say "ugly".
argumentum ad absurdum
the only two choices are to 1) block traffic 2) post jerry seinfeld memes
Sure Jan.gif
Your mental gymnastics are astounding.
Keep defending this scumbag. Good look.
If you like the quotes
grow a pair and use your real name.
big brain take
no n word so no racism detected
teach me more
And it's still OK if you
And it's still OK if you spell it with an "a" instead of "er".
CDP has had a bad rep for decades
I moved to the area in the 1970s and CPD already had a bad reputation in terms of how they treated everyone, even when race wasn't an issue. Yes, there were some good police but the general reputation has been bad compared to neighboring communities for a long time.
Yep
My dissertation advisor's son went for a run and locked himself out. When he went looking for the spare key CPD decided that a black kid "didn't belong" in that neighborhood and arrested him and held him incommunicado because he didn't have ID.
Never mind that he could have showed them ID when he used the hidden key to get in HIS OWN HOUSE.
Cambridge quietly settled the lawsuit as his father was a lawyer affiliated with MIT.
Beer Summit
I mean, if they'll arrest Skip Gates on his own porch for being too uppity, no Black person is safe, but I don't think Cambridge police are very unique in that respect.
Since you use his nickname, I
Since you use his nickname, I'll assume you're a close personal friend. Skip ended up arrested like a lot of other people do when they refuse to identify themselves and cooperate with law enforcement.
Sure Buddy
Lots of white people get arrested in their own house. How's that boot taste?
Gates was arrested because he is Black.
Quit your bullsh*t.
??
it’s not like his nickname is a secret. anyone within any proximity of greater boston area academia knows it
Around that same time ...
They started arresting people who didn't show ID on demand. It was their policy to hold such people without allowing them to contact anyone.
You aren't required to carry ID unless you are driving and asked to produce your license. You have to ID yourself, but you don't have to show ID.
They got smacked down hard in the courts for that shit. I don't know who thought that was a good idea, but that sort of arrogant idiocy is systemic.
My friends who grew up in
My friends who grew up in Cambridge always used to quote Joe Strummer when describing Cambridge cops.
I believe in this, and it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns, will later join the church
Public servant or Public Master?
CPD496 is a public servant. Meaning that person is held to a high standard of behavior - in private and public. The Facebook account is public. It is a form of speaking from soap box in the public square.
The person is not protected by the First Amendment when spouting ideas that support violence. Being a public servant, with the particular privilege of carrying a badge, a gun and authorized to use the raw power of arrest, this individual's political rights are less than the average private industry employee.
This is accepted by courts across the nation. Certain jobs come with certain limits where involvement in the political process, or what is promoted and shouted in public square is concerned.
It is his personal business to praise a man who calls dead soldiers losers. But as a cop he automatically sacrifices part of his personal business. He is not a cop 8 hours a day. He is a cop 24 hours a day. He is welcome to quit the police force, join Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh or even David Duke as as a personal body guard. CPD496 can claim that Jews control the world and that they are controlled by Martians if that floats his boats.
But while he is a cop he does not have a right to spread bigotry.