This was great. My biggest hesitation with all these protests about domestic violence and spending a Billion dollars combating it was that I didn’t know what was possible to do about it. Other than de-normalising violence, I couldn’t see what the point was. You can’t exactly pass a law saying it’s illegal to assault and kill people - it’s already illegal.
So, I disagree with this guy on one point: We don’t all know what immediately needs to be done. I had no clue, at least.
I love that when he was challenged, he had a list of things that needed to happen. Now. And he seems to only just be getting started. I’m sold - we need to listen to the people in the trenches who are facing domestic violence. They’re the ones who know what needs to be done.
When it comes down to it, cops are the ones dealing with a lot of shit other people avoid. Like you’re saying, we should consider what they have to say about it.
Also, we should give them mental health support. It’s a stressful job with abundant opportunities for trauma. Even if we have no empathy for them, it’s in our best interest to provide tools and support to the people dealing with violent and mentally ill people. But that’s a whole other conversation.
Why on earth would we have no empathy for them? I cannot imagine what it takes to hold and comfort a 10 year old child dying in my arms who has been stabbed by their parent. With two kids around that age myself, I’d be a complete wreck! And he’s attended up to 20 domestic violence calls in a night! For years!
Nothing but respect for someone who can do that.
Here in Seattle the cops don’t fly an American flag outside their union headquarters, only the “thin blue line” flag. In their salary negotiations they sacrificed a week of back pay so their back pay could start on 1/6/2021 (the date of the Capitol insurrection) instead of the end of their last contract. Dozens of our police here in Washington participated in the insurrection. They were under a consent decree for civil rights violations for a decade. When a cop recently ran over a college student while going 74 mph in a 25, the vice president of the police union was caught on camera laughing with the police union president and saying “she was 26 anyway, she had limited value.” Police here have a dismal crime clearance rate, often don’t respond at all to property crimes, or take forever. During the protests in 2020, they were absolutely savage with protestors.
I have no empathy for the police, here in America at least. They are an occupying, militarized force that has zero accountability to the people. Maybe if they started treating citizens like human beings, and holding themselves to a higher standard, I would.
Lemmy is full of anti-police propaganda and pure hatred, it’s wild. So, I framed it as a hypothetical.
I do have empathy for them, and think any well-adjusted and intelligent person should.
Most of the vitriol I see is directed at US police. Being an Australian instance, we don’t get that so much.
There is a little, but it tends to be directed more at police misbehaviour/corruption when it pops up.
Worth a read, he’s probably right. I don’t think domestic violence is committed by evil men, no one is born evil. Something needs to be done about addressing the root problem
I think there is a lot of normalised domestic abuse.
There are also a lot of overaged boys who still believe that “boys will be boys” is acceptable societal behaviour.
He says critical frontline services — addressing the drug and alcohol abuse, gambling addiction and mental illness that underlie many domestic assaults — have been underfunded for decades.
If a male has a history of crimes of violence, of any form of domestic violence, coercion, physical, emotional, they should not have the presumption of bail," he said. “They should not get bail at all”
If offenders are released into the community while awaiting court appearances, Mr Hurley says they need [mental health] support too.
I’ve never understood how these violent criminals can be let out on bail, especially when they have a target already. Stab a stranger and you go to jail but stabbing your wife is apparently a less serious offence.
