PO Potatoes- The thoughts and musings of a crime fighting Potato

"A person who is not inwardly prepared for the use of violence against him is always weaker than the person committing the violence."  - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,  The Gulag Archipelago  chp 1, 'Arrest' If you've been paying attention to the news, the new buzz word around policing and the law enforcement profession is "police violence".  Even the United Nations is  getting in on the discussion  surrounding use of force in the US, with a heavy focus on the death of Keenan Anderson in Los Angeles, and murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. Notice the terms I used. Keenan Anderson was involved in a traffic crash, fled on foot, attempted to enter another vehicle, and was initially compliant with responding officers.  After a short while he suddenly gets up and runs off, and around this same time officers made the determination that he was at fault for the accident.  I watched the BWC footage and I could easily articulate the aspects of gross intoxication (body mov

If it isn't apparent lately everything has been about sound bytes, knee-jerk reactions, click-bait headlines, and edgy hashtags. I've seen hashtags like #defundthepolice, #abolishpolice, #policereform and so on. Our own mayor wants all sorts of changes done within 90 days.  She is going to force reform one way or another.  I've seen the new co-chair of the working group for the city say if she doesn't get her way, she has the ability to go over the mayor and superintendent and have a federal judge force the changes. Let us be honest, we all dislike change.  New schools, new grade, new house, new job, new significant other....everything comes packaged with an awkward and anxious-filled phase.  Learning the ropes, where things are, trying not to look lost, and so on.  But for whatever reason cops hate change even more. I don't have an exact answer why, my own personal opinion is I don't feel I've been doing anything wrong.  It took a while to learn the

I know what you are thinking... WHOA!  FULL STOP!  Did that cop say he would loot too?  Is he an anarchist?  A rabble rouser?  A criminal cop? I'm none of those, and nor would I loot. Now. Based on my life's circumstances and how my finances are in place I don't need to.  I can fully support my family, pay my bills, and have a few hobbies.  I can keep a roof over my head, food on the table, and clothes on everyone's back. Even as a kid growing up in a large family, my father worked and was our main source of income.  I got a paper route at a young age to start saving money with, and was able to buy myself toys and eventually a car when I was old enough.  My mother did some in home babysitting to shore up some more family finances, so I had plenty and was taken care of. But I still had the spaghetti dinners, the whatever-lunch-meat-on-sale sandwiches, we drove (very) old cars, I wore hand-me-downs from other families being the eldest in mine, my first bicycle was probabl

There are American flags with a blue line down the middle.  Or the flags of other nations modified to show the blue line. City flags with blue lines down the middle. T-shirts espousing that the blue line will be defended. Spartan helmets and the infamous Punisher skull with a blue line on them. When a cop is killed profile pictures change and a blue line runs across the photo. So what is the "Thin Blue Line"?  Is it a symbol of white supremacy and an alt-right movement?  A symbol of a code of silence where a cop can get away with everything under the sun and never have anything happen to them because no other cop will say anything? Or something more poetic.  Perhaps a recognition that police are the ones that figuratively, and at times literally, separate normal citizenry from the evil that lurks within their fellow man?  As the idea that George Orwell so plainly put forth: people sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men and women stand ready to do v

So there you are, minding your own business when you see a squad car pull over a car.  It looks random but innocuous. Suddenly the police are jumping out, guns pointed and another squad pulls up.  They all fan out around the car, one shouts about crossfire while 3 others go directly to a passenger door and immediately the occupant is pulled out.  You hear the occupant start screaming they didn't do anything and see them try to pull away.  There are 3 officers all struggling to keep his hands on the roof of the car and him from running. Suddenly an officer yells something, and the 3 officers move in closer.  They tell him to relax, stop resisting, stop moving.  Suddenly the crowd starts shouting to leave him alone, that this is harassment and illegal.  But then one of the officers turns around holding a gun they just pulled from the occupants waistband and then other 2 put him in cuffs.  You realize the occupant was armed.  You originally saw 3 officers pinning a person against t