09:25 – It was 41F (5C) when I took Colin out at 0715 this morning, cloudy and with a stiff breeze. We have cooler weather forecast for the next couple of days, with highs in the 40’s and 50’s (~ 8C to 15C) and lows just above freezing, rain, and winds gusting to 40+ MPH (64 KPH). Nice days to stay inside.
Barbara is cleaning house today and I’ll probably do a load of sheets. Otherwise, we’ll be making up chemicals, filling and labeling bottles, and so on.
I’ve read several disturbing articles recently about how cops are withdrawing from proactive policing. In the wake of Ferguson and the follow-on violence, many departments as well as individual cops are taking a hands-off approach to serious crime. They’re just standing by while they watch crimes happening because they don’t want to end up being villified on the news, charged with unnecesary force, and so on. In other words, they’re just letting the bad guys act as they want without any fear of apprehension or punishment. This is a harbinger of civilization on its way out.
Back in the olden days, cops–all cops, black, white, or orange with purple stripes–divided the world into three classes: cops, civilians, and scumbags. Cops were all part of a fraternity, and it was still largely a fraternity; no women to speak of. Civilians were the people who paid their salaries, and were to be protected and treated with respect at all times. Scumbags deserved no respect, and were treated with whatever ferocity was needed to keep them in their place, up to and including shooting the SOBs. And everyone just accepted this as the normal course of things.
No more. Now cops divide the world into just two classes: cops and everyone else. And who can blame them? They’re second-guessed every time they need to draw their weapons, and often face charges or dismissal. The federal government is their enemy, and even their local government will drop them like a hot potato to avoid even embarrassment. Middle-class people, who used to support the police unquestioningly, now treat them with suspicion. The days of Officer Friendly are gone, on both sides. So much for that thin blue line that used to stand between us normals and the underclass scumbags.
And the worst part is that with the cops increasingly not protecting normal people from the underclass, normal people are eventually going to start doing it themselves. If things continue on the current trajectory, it may not be much longer before we start seeing armed neighborhood vigilante groups protecting their neighborhoods from anyone they don’t like the looks of. Where the government fails, the free market eventually steps in.