Cop Problem Is Bi-partisan
Madison, Wisconsin — Teryl Franklin in the Wisconsin State Journal notes some Madison-area restaurants have shuttered their doors in a continuing feature.
Restaurants are tricky and each restaurant closing has its own story.
Ignored in metro coverage is the role municipal police have in shooing away small business.
We used to live in a state where traffic and OWI citations meant it was likely the driver did something wrong.
Those days are gone. With liberal buy-in, now-a-days a trip for dinner and a glass of wine is risking one's future.
Cops will harass and cite anyone for anything, they are emboldened, racist and deceitful. Evangelicals and whites with a bad attitude are filling the ranks of the police, and not just in Fitchburg and Stoughton.
Cops possess unlimited discretion to inflict anything onto people, and liberal mayors such as Paul Soglin will applaud.
So draconian are the fines and so dishonest and malicious are Wisconsin cops, they will target for harassment or citation any critic, any driver with the wrong bumper sticker and in the worst-case scenario the wrong color skin.
Wisconsin journalists should ask around. Know someone with the Wisconsin Restaurant Association or the Tavern League? How about the ACLU?
Why go to a restaurant for relaxation and socializing with the stakes so high?
It's not just Republicans and cops.
There remains a liberal lust for the police state.
Take Kathleen Falk, a former Madison pol with an authoritarian streak, who after assuming office as Dane County Exec (1997-2010) determined the problem in Dane County is not dirty, overzealous cops, rather the desperate need for police roadblocks, more police everywhere and a government-run propaganda effort to change the "culture," (Mal Contends).
Whom did Falk think would get hurt the worst in a police state?
It's the black and brown folks, and when policy gives already emboldened cops more power, the results to vulnerable members of the citizenry are predictable and apparently acceptable.
In 2009, there was a brief statutory flirtation with the idea that cops had to indicate race/ethnicity of the person they pulled over. Cops hated the idea. So did Republicans who quickly repealed the statute upon assuming office in 2011.
Until Wisconsin solves its cop problem, our state will remain the worst place for a black person to live, as 1,000s of white municipalities turn to police-state tactics evolving into 1,000s of little Milwaukees.
Its where we are heading, and restaurants are just a collateral damage of Wisconsin's cop problem.
“There remains a liberal lust for the police state.”
ReplyDeleteAny other examples besides Falk? I can say that in Milwaukee the lust is from the right. However , progressives are less than forceful in pushing back. They seem to be afraid of confronting our occupied police state.
Soglin in Madison. Many others in myriad branches. The problem is finding an exception, not a list of examples.
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