The end game is not for the citizens to lose respect for the LEO's the end game is for the LEO's to lose all respect for the citizens.
If they can accomplish that anything will fly, gun confiscation included. Once we lose their respect the relationship is broken and the police will become a tool of the state to be used against the public.
This former Baltimore policeman paints a different picture in the respect department.
"When I was a police officer in Baltimore, I would drive around and put out one brush fire after another. It would have been easy to be overwhelmed by the lives broken by repeated bad choices, by the mentally ill, the children who grow up without hope, another murder victim, the literal stink of society's least wanted and the sheer magnitude of human idiocy.
As to police danger, it shouldn't be overstated (police officers are paranoid enough as is), but the danger isn't just in the small though real risk of being attacked and killed. What screws with your head is the constant occupational demand of hyper alertness -- of having to engage with and confront danger, and always on danger's terms.
When I cleared a drug corner, sometimes I couldn't help but wonder why the dealers didn't just jump me. Effective compliance is as much earned as ordered, but I don't think they obeyed me because they liked me (at least I hope not). Bluster aside, my job and safety depended on respect and deference to my authority"
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now its certainly possible that once the thin blue line is torn apart that the police would serve in a different capacity but I can't imagine them being very effective in that environment.
