Brickbat: Dearest Dad

The Topeka, Kansas, police department has apologized for a Father's Day tweet inviting women to snitch on their baby daddies. "Does your child's father have warrants? Is he carrying around any drugs? Has he been caught committing any crimes? Want to give him a Father's Day he'll never forget? Call TPD and we'll help your family make a memory that will last a lifetime," the tweet read.

Comments

[Eddy]

"The tweet was meant to be humorous and light-hearted, but was hurtful to some"

We were just playing around, and we're so sorry you don't have a sense of humor.

In the same light-hearted spirit:

"Is the father of your child a police officer who uses excessive force, fakes a disability, keeps civilly-forfeited goods for himself? Drop a dime and put the creep behind bars in celebration of Father's Day, ha ha!"

[Fist of Etiquette]

Things like these are evidence of the dangerously insular nature of law enforcement. The culture of "us versus them" creates a bubble in which all non-badged are second class citizens and informs a belief that basic human empathy is a weakness that puts you and your colleagues in danger.

[Inigo Montoya]

I doubt the PD was ever intelligent, but does Twitter play a role in this, too?

It seems that using Twitter makes everyone a moron. Is it even possible to “tweet” anything intelligent on that platform? The only messages I hear about are ridiculously dumb, and I won’t go on there myself for fear that the stupidity might be catching and could persist even after logging off.

[Wizard4169]

There's plenty of amusing and occasionally even intelligent content on Twittter. It's just that the full-retard shitposts get all the attention. Kind of like how an airline crash gets blanket coverage (even when there's nothing to report), but you never see a headline reading, "Thousands of flights landed safely today!"

[Conchfritters]

Hahaha- now go arrest those fags at the Westborough Baptist Church - those hell bound cocksuckers have to have at least a couple of warrants on them.

[markm23]

The Westborough Baptist Church is one family, and they're all lawyers. It's difficult to get a warrant to stick.

[Earth Skeptic]

Who said anything about warrants?

[Longtobefree]

So the cops take a day off from shooting dogs, and all they get is grief? No wonder they don't like us.

[SQRLSY One]

"Does your baby's daddy blow on cheap plastic flutes w/o permission from Government-Almighty-sanctioned doctors of doctorology? Want to give him a Father's Day he'll never forget? ...:

To find precise details on what NOT to do, to avoid the flute police, please see http://www.churchofsqrls.com/DONT_DO_THIS/ … This has been a pubic service, courtesy of the Church of SQRLS!

[creech]

Community groups, fed up with gun violence in Philly, have started to urge citizens to anonymously report any teenagers they know who are carrying guns. "Enough is enough" appears to be the watchword and one can expect such groups to start advocating for "stop and frisk" in violent neighborhoods if the homicide and shooting rate continues to soar. Liberty is always traded for security when fears are stoked and actual criminals proliferate.

[Rossami]

re: "if the homicide and shooting rate continues to soar"

While I agree with your general point that liberty is too often traded for security (and usually merely for false security), it is worth noting that the premise for your argument is demonstrably false. According to Philadelphia's own statistics, homicides have been declining since the late 1980s (the furthest back that I could find reliable data).

When I ran a trendline on the data, it shows the homicide rate going down by about a percentage point and a half each year. Obviously, there's a lot of variance in the data - but the claim that homicide rates "continue to soar" is completely indefensible.

[Inigo Montoya]

Toxic authoritarianism (a redundant phrase) strikes again.

[lesej]

As ­l­i­l­l­i­A­n r­e­p­l­i­e­d ­i ­A­m ­i­n s­h­o­c­k t­h­At ­A­ny­o­n­e ­A­b­l­e t­o ­g­et ­p­A­i­d $5633 ­i­n 4 w­e­e­ks ­o­n t­h­e ­i­nt­er­n­et. ­d­i­d y­ou ­l­o­o­k ­At t­h­is w­e­b ­p­A­g­e ­
http://www.paywork99.com

[Finrod]

Just imagine if the genders were swapped and this came out on Mother's Day.

They would have burned down the police station.

[Rhombus of Terror]

I thought the same thing.

...or imagine if they had done the same thing in February? Either one would have been AT LEAST an hourly story for an entire day on CNN, MSNBC, etc. with panels discussing "how much work we still have to do in this country regarding historically oppressed and marginalized people."

But this is about men, so only patriarchal mysoginist MRAs care about this one, everyone else should just laugh it off...

[Earth Skeptic]

Maybe we should do away with professional cops. Instead, each citizen has to put on a uniform one day each month, and then police their fellow citizens, including family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, old school teachers, ...

Oops, never mind.

[Inigo Montoya]

That’s a good idea. You could even name them after the paramilitary uniforms they would wear while dragging out the undesirables into the street to hit them with batons. The Red Guards or the Brownshirts could work as names.

[stulles]

Great article, thanks for this!
:0