Police officers deserve our respect
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, I discuss the growing anti-police sentiment in North America, and how this can have a real-world impact on the way police are treated by the public and politicians. I also talk about the growing number of officers who are leaving the NYPD, and the reasons why they are leaving.
Transcript
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We're seeing more and more of a pushback of this anti-police narrative that's taking place
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all across North America. It was interesting to see that the city of Toronto, after councillors
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put forward a proposal to defund the police, it was only by 10%, that actually was nixed.
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Two-thirds of council did not support that proposal, so that's interesting to see. We've
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also seen a former deputy commissioner of the RCMP write an open letter denouncing Prime
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Minister Justin Trudeau for taking a knee at that protest, saying it was humiliating, and
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he pointed out, hey, we were actually protecting you since you were a baby, because of course
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Justin Trudeau, he was born in 24 Sussex Drive when Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau
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were living there, and the cops say, the Mounties say, we've been protecting you your entire
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life, and you want to say that there's some serious problems with us? We don't take too
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kindly to that. But here's some interesting facts coming out of New York right now that
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suggest this is not just about a conversation being had on social media, this is having real
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world impacts. NYPD has had to stop receiving applications for retirement after a 400% surge
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in retirement applications just in the other week. Yes, way more NYPD officers are saying,
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you know what, why do this job? Let's get out while we still can. One of the top reasons
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they cited for getting out of there, lack of respect. Basically, the job has become one where
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you don't get respected by really anybody out there, by the public, and not by the politicians
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and the people on the police services board. And I guess that's the thing that's frustrating them
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so much. If they go out and they do their job, pretty much willing to risk their lives every day,
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they're still going to get incredible criticism from politicians out there in ways that they think
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are unfair. Look, I'm an advocate for holding police to accountability. I'm a supporter of the
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boys in blue. But at the same time, they're still public servants. They answer to us. We pay their
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salaries. We pay the bills for all the police. So I never liked the idea that we just sort of have to
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do what the police say, give them endless amounts of money and so forth. Big fan of people holding them
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to account. And by all means, if there's an incident of police brutality, and we've seen a number of
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them, let's crack down on that. And a lot of police say we want those things to be cracked down on as
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well, because we know that those incidents do not speak for the vast majority of us. But if you make
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statements, if you do activism, that does besmirch all of them, the vast majority of them, the entire
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organization, you shouldn't be surprised when you see some of them saying, all right, we're done with
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this. And what message does that also send in terms of our ability to get good people to join police
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forces all across North America? We should be attracting good people right now and sending the signal
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that this is a job that politicians and the community will respect and that they will get the
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respect that is deserved for doing the good job. Right now, I guess they feel like they're damned if
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they do, damned if they don't. And that's why so many of them are bailing out.