Cleveland cops have the law laid down for them.

For most of us the law is pretty clear: hurt someone else and you will pay for it.  For cops, however, hurting people comes with the job.  It's the extent of hurt that is in question.  The cops have interpreted it as "I do whatever I want" and the people have responded with "sure, until now you got away with that bullshit, but that's over".

Today's proof point comes in the form of a story where the Cleveland police have accepted a "settlement" regarding their use of force on the job.  You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the this wind blew but for those who have not been reading my blog for very long, the answer is "Less force and more oversight".

Trust me when I tell you that all parties involved have known bad things were happening for a very long time now.  The only thing that is new is that the people have been self-organizing against these abuses instead of letting the cops continue picking off individuals one at a time.  The people have begun showing the establishment that enough is enough and the establishment is reacting in a public way in order to try to calm the herd down.  It is the right thing to do but who knows if it will be too little, too token of a gesture, too late.

Cops in Cleveland and elsewhere, listen up.  In case you haven't figured it out, what is really going on here is that your bosses are in the process of throwing you all under the bus in order to save their own skins.  They really don't care how many people you hurt or kill but they worry that the people might drag them into the street and kill them and so you get the new rules and the new oversight.  Worse yet (for you at least), they will be itching to show the people that the new rules have teeth.  They will be looking for scapegoats to make public examples of.  They might even use it internally in the department as a political weapon to get rid of cops that they don't really like.  So boys in blue, you either figure this out and give them nothing to bust you for or you are going down hard.  There is nothing good in this new direction for dirty cops with bad tempers and no respect for human life.  If that describes you, time to leave the police before you slip up and find yourself in jail.

This is just the tip of the iceberg IMO.