Quote:
Originally Posted by Chief X_Phackter
It's not close. It's the First Amendment. It's everyone's right to do what ever they want during the National Anthem. The President's insensitive and divisive comments were, in my mind, a patriotic view rather than a political one. It was stupid, but far from Hitleresque. I personally am not a fan of using the National Anthem as a venue to bring attention to social injustice, but it is bringing attention. Hopefully we can soon get past HOW or WHEN people are protesting, and focus on WHY, and start actually doing something about the reasons...
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CXP, I have respect for you, your service and your opinions, but I think what they are doing is extremely effective, especially given the attention from Trump. You know, if he hadn't said anything, there's a 50/50 shot that whole thing disappears into the wind when players realize it isn't making a difference. Instead, they got the largest polarizing voice in the world to draw attention to it, and now it's apparently spread like a virus. For the time being at least, it's going to get its' 15 minutes of fame. And that's a big win for the crowd.
Me personally, I don't feel like it's effective, but it is a fairly easy and non-violent way for the players to get their voices heard. Are we going to see a difference in the way police are trained as a result of this? Probably not. It's kinda insane to me that the military ROE are much stricter than police, given that police have to interact with communities every day and are on the front lines of gov't interaction with citizens. Right now they're taught to use force if they feel even slightly threatened, which I don't feel is working out given the continuous cycle of high profile incidents that keep drawing protests (whether right or wrong). If the military has to wait until fired upon to engage (with certain exceptions obviously) why does a cop have to wait until he/she feels even mildly threatened?
This problem is also compounded by how easily accessible video taping is nowadays. I'm sure these things still happened in the 80's/90's/etc. but back then it came down to an officer's word, nowadays a cop knows every action of theirs is likely to be scrutinized by their bodycam, or a bystander's camera. While that's a good thing for the public, it also increases the pressure on cops to act responsibly at all times. I personally just think some aren't trained enough to remain calm under pressure, which is admittedly tough to do. But that has to be one of the requirements for the job. In order to uphold the law effectively, they have to be held to a higher standard than a citizen. That includes justifying use of force. It should always be a last resort. Ultimately, I don't think there's an easy answer for this. But there is definitely room for improvement from my perspective.