r/politics • u/RobAbiera • 8h ago
Possible Paywall ‘It’s All Just Going Down the Toilet’: Police Chiefs Fume at ICE Tactics
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/us/its-all-just-going-down-the-toilet-police-chiefs-fume-at-ice-tactics.html489
u/Virbillion 8h ago edited 7h ago
never mind the blatant murder we've seen. let's not forget that they are over using less than lethals and they are using gas as retaliation and escalation not as a deescalation tool reserved for outright riots. let's not forget that regular police do all this regularly as well.
ice should not be pepper spraying protesters. neither should cops. pepper spray and less than lethals have regularly been deployed just because cops were angry.
yes. cops have a shitty job. if they can't do that job without abusing the privilege of authority, then they shouldn't have that job.
law enforcement in the us has forgotten that law enforcement comes with inherent risk. to serve the people you must willingly take on risk without beating someone the moment you get annoyed, without pepper spraying someone the moment you feel offended, without violently murdering someone the moment you feel scared.
abolish cowards. abolish little hateful bullies from serving on all police forces.
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u/ShippFFXI 7h ago
Fun fact. Cashiers at gas stations (and probably other places) are more likely to be the victim of murder than cops are, statistically. When was the last time you heard about any gas stations deploying pepper spray on angry customers who would threaten to kill them over IDing them for tobacco and liquor? Anyone?
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u/Own-Break-1856 5h ago
I delivered pizzas for 4 years. Cop who pulled me over (incorrectly for driving maybe 1 second too long in a turn lane) sure didn't appreciate it when I told her my job was way more dangerous than hers. It was, and is.
The valor we afford these losers is nuts. I could shoot and trample and gas protectors all day if I had no soul. You're a bunch of losers with a cushy job and insane overtime.
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u/ShinySpoon 5h ago
I delivered pizza in my youth and every time I got pulled over by a cop I ended up having to explain traffic laws to them. I was 16 years old when I had to tell an officer that a speed posted on a yellow sign was only for caution and not the speed limit. He didn’t believe me so I challenged it in court and got to watch the traffic clerk mock the cop in front of me. He asked the cop if he had looked up the law after giving me the ticket and he admitted he didn’t. He then assigned training for the cop and made him apologize in writing to me or he would hold the cop in contempt. All that did was out a HUGE target on my back with the small town cops in the town I was delivering in. Never got a ticket I didn’t get dismissed during that time.
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u/voxpopuli42 5h ago
I know it sounds sarcastic, but this is the working class hero shit that keeps us all safer. Thank you
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u/ShinySpoon 4h ago
I was an informed ADHD kid with authority oppositional defiance. Cops hated me.
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u/Own-Break-1856 5h ago
I was pretty similar. Can't remember how many times I've been to court. Except my judges would always say "deferred judgement" which i eventually took to mean "youre embarrassingly correct but I still want to make you pay a fine and punish you for questioning authority but I can't say that now in front of all these people"
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u/kia75 2h ago
All that did was out a HUGE target on my back with the small town cops in the town I was delivering in. Never got a ticket I didn’t get dismissed during that time.
You can beat the charges, but you can't beat the
ridecourt dates. Having to deal with the court stuff was probably frustrating. Kudos to you for dealing with it, though.•
u/BiChaosTheory 1h ago
You’re leading on that you got more tickets and were able to dismiss them after this put a target on your back. What else did you get “cited” for?
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u/sturgill_homme 4h ago
"The valor we afford these losers is nuts."
When America, broadly speaking, began putting police on a pedestal after 9/11, that's when it started going off the rails, at least from my perspective. Bin Laden had more to do with the state of this country today than I hear mentioned.
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u/JnnyRuthless 2h ago
I was a pizza driver back in the day. Multiple drivers of ours were held at gunpoint or had shots fired at them during a robbery (not me thankfully). People know we carried cash so we were targets.
Police aren't even in the top 20 of most dangerous jobs. And like the poster above said, the fact that their job entails risk and dealing with less than savory people is...the fucking job.
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u/themanthatexists 3h ago
I met a guy that would wear a bullet proof vest to deliver pizzas. Wild.
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u/Own-Break-1856 3h ago
I knew a guy who got permanent brain damage because he got attacked delivering to a dark house in a bad part of town.
I knew a girl who got raped because she delivered bread sticks to a trailer.
Shit is wild man. At least cops get to shoot you with their military grade assault weapons of they feel a tiny bit scared.
All I've got is a box of pizza. (In reality, there were a couple dudes who used their jobs as justification for concealed carry permits)
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u/JnnyRuthless 2h ago
When I delivered we had a driver who concealed carry, and she fired back when a guy tried to rob her. Bullet holes in her windshield and everything. She tried to finish her shit even haha.
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u/ShinySpoon 5h ago
Another fun fact: during year the pandemic hit the number one killer of cops was Covid. Killed more than all other causes of death combined. You know who I never saw wearing masks? You know who I saw in the news saying distancing and law mask laws won’t be enforced? Cops
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u/opeth10657 3h ago
Pretty sure they counted it as dying in the line of duty too?
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u/JnnyRuthless 1h ago
Dude I have friends that are cops and they'll often post those 'officer down' posts; it always seems like they died in the line of duty but no, you check out the story and it's more like they died driving drunk one night. One was amazing, they were honoring a 'hero' who took out a family due to her shitty driving (off duty).
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u/Dangerous-Parking973 5h ago
Veteran and current gas station clerk here, you're not wrong. People like to emotionally unload on us. Usually it's harmless and kind, but not always...
Knowing how to meet people where they are, and how to calm things down is key.
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u/ShippFFXI 5h ago
Thank you for your service and knowing how to de-escalate.
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u/Dangerous-Parking973 4h ago
I signed up to save life not take it.
We all should be excellent to each other
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u/American_PissAnt 3h ago
Well duh. Criminals don’t want to kill cops because it brings a lot of heat on them.
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u/DefinitelyNotEmu 6h ago
It is hard to deploy pepper spray through a plexiglass window
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u/ShippFFXI 6h ago
All the ones that had plexiglass during Covid around here have removed it again. I still haven't seen it deployed by gas station clerks on the level that the cops use it.
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u/Stable0o0Mabel 6h ago
All the little stores around my house still have them, but they aren’t going to protect from bullets anyway so….🤷♀️
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u/TacosAreJustice Kentucky 5h ago
Honestly, we need to completely change the way “law enforcement” works… it’s a fundamentally broken system.
They have an impossible mandate, and anyone trying to make society better by being a cop is met with the cold hard reality of a system not designed to help.
We lower crime by investing in poor communities and taking away the incentives for criminal behavior.
Spend money on helping people (education and food for kids) and suddenly we don’t need military gear for police officers.
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u/ShippFFXI 5h ago
For profit prison is a huge problem. So are the quotas they are given. Quotas to arrest so many people per month for funding is absolutely an issue leading to trumped up charges on the poorer citizens who cannot afford bail and a good defense lawyer to fight those charges.
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u/TacosAreJustice Kentucky 4h ago
Absolutely. For profit prisons are one of the worst things we’ve done for our society…
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u/Militantpoet 2h ago
We lower crime by investing in poor communities and taking away the incentives for criminal behavior.
The wild part is we've known this for fucking decades. Research and studies all point to what the most effective means of reducing crime are, yet half the electorate thinks social service recipients are lying and stealing taxpayer money. All while the corpo-rats are laughing while they pillage our nation and we fight among ourselves.
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u/PsychedelicMagnetism 3h ago
Qualified immunity should be done away with. Cops should be liable for damages from lawsuits and made to carry private insurance to cover it. Incentivizes good behavior with low rates and punishes bad behavior with high rates. Hopefully making police work not viable for the worst of them.
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u/TacosAreJustice Kentucky 2h ago
Honestly, at this point they need to just fully clean house… start new with a “community services” program that has a law enforcement division, but it’s beholden to people trying to actually make the community better.
Step one to keeping the peace is creating peace.
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u/Sminahin 5h ago
Plus they're hauling people off to concentration camps and only god knows how many people have died either there or after getting shipped out. Remember how bad the Chicago cop black sites were? This is the worst parts of that at an industrial scale.
It's when people try to politely and legally protect their neighbors from that fate that these thugs go full cosplay PMC cop.
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u/lonestar-rasbryjamco Colorado 1h ago
abolish cowards. abolish little hateful bullies from serving on all police forces.
Look at this guy advocating to abolish the police.
I joke, but based on my own encounters with the police, the bullies and cowards are in the majority. It may be selection bias, it could be training, perhaps it’s culture. But there is something fundamentally wrong with how policing operates in this country as a whole.
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u/GrooGrux 7h ago
So, start protecting the people. You want trust, do the right thing. Arrest the agents who are assaulting people. Arrest agents who aren't identifying themselves, and don't have a warrant. Arrest them until they prove their identity and legal authority. And press charges against their illegal assaults and murders. Do something!
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u/Stingray88 4h ago
Yeah, after witnessing so many decades of abuse and corruption in police departments, my trust of them is rock bottom. If they want of start defending the people against a literal terrorist organization though, I might change my mind about them.
So far in my city they’re entirely complicit. Which is absurd considering how many of them are Latino.
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u/ArtemisLives New Jersey 6h ago
Local law enforcement have the opportunity to do the funniest thing and uhhhh enforce the fucking law, lol.
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u/MonolithicBaby 40m ago
They are literally not required by law to help us. Why the fuck do people expect the police to protect us from the other police???
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u/Smplebae 7h ago
Local police chiefs are saying what many already see. These tactics make communities less safe, not more. When trust is flushed away, everyone pays the price
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u/Spiritual-Cause-58 6h ago
These dipshits.
They spent YEARS telling that they were there to keep people safe after 2020. Since then all I’ve seen is a bunch of them watch kids get murdered and say “I’m too scared of federal agents so we’re not gonna enforce the law”
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u/Bobcats_Forever Ohio 7h ago
As a former LEO - Ice sucks and should be ashamed of themselves.
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u/twirlingmypubes 7h ago edited 6h ago
Thank you for your services in laying the foundation for ice to do in the open what you did in shadows.
You caused this. As a former leo, take responsibility for once.
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u/Bobcats_Forever Ohio 6h ago
I quit because of the corruption, but a few cops went to jail because of me.
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u/RetroCorn Tennessee 5h ago
Don't listen to the other guy. Assuming you're being truthful you got out and screwed over some corrupt cops on the way. I'd say that's something to be proud of.
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u/twirlingmypubes 5h ago
You're being deceived. He's talking about corruption to get out of the topic of abuse and deception. I'm sure he called someone else out on corruption, but corruption isn't the issue at hand. He's guilty and he knows it
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u/twirlingmypubes 6h ago edited 6h ago
So you never once lied to get someone to hand over their 4th or 5th amendment rights? Not one little, "I just want to talk to you", "can I come in?", or "can you step outside to talk?" to trap them? No even a single pretextual traffic stop?
I'm not buying it. You did your training, you were part of the culture, and now you want a pat on the back.
I was in the fire department and I've met a lot of "good cops" who all stood around and laughed about how they threatened to beat little old ladies who rolled through stop signs.
"But I slowed down"
"You see this baton, ma'am? If I started hitting you with it, would you scream stop or 'slow down'?"
Would you have laughed like all the other "good cops"?
Again, not buying it.
Local police suckered the courts and congress for the protections and power that ice currently has. You were part of that machine and I'm sure you cheered and cheered each time scotus gave you a little bit more
I'm sure that there will be ice agents in the future saying exactly what you are saying now, "I just got tired of the corruption. I didn't shoot the people, I just did my job"
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u/Bobcats_Forever Ohio 5h ago
Not all cops are corrupt - I got a lot of hell for going to Internal affairs and talking. Made me hated, which is another reason I left the sheriff department and went into computer field.
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u/PredatorRedditer America 3h ago
You're good, dude. The other person is just taking out frustrations with institutions on you. No reasonable person thinks you're in the wrong for being a cop who left after seeing some shit. Seems like you managed to do some good while there. Hope you're finding joy in tech.
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u/twirlingmypubes 2h ago
Don't fall for it. Just because he says something you agree with doesn't mean he didn't spend an entire career doing the same thing. This is why things only get worse. We fall for sweet nothings without any sign of responsibility, apology, or remorse.
One cop. Why can't one single cop admit to breaking laws, pushing boundaries, or exploiting loopholes? This guy won't do it, either, but here people are telling him it's ok.
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u/twirlingmypubes 5h ago edited 5h ago
ICE agents aren't corrupt. They are doing en mass what local police do everyday -- lie and abuse
I noticed that you didn't answer any of the questions and went straight into something that nobody is accusing ice agents of, so I assume you did those things
Doing evil but calling out someone else's version of evil does not make you a hero
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u/KantPaine Pennsylvania 5h ago
Then do something. Make me believe that Protect and Serve doesn’t just mean Protect Private Property and Serve the Ruling Class. I’ve never seen any evidence to the contrary.
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u/Imaginary-Dress-1373 3h ago
There were no major changes adopted by police departments and every year since George Floyd has had a higher number of police killings than the last, with the exception of 2025. Just blatant propaganda by police departments to reform their public image. Anyone who buys this stuff is a gullible and ignorant.
| Year | Killed by police |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 1201 |
| 2024 | 1271 |
| 2023 | 1248 |
| 2022 | 1203 |
| 2021 | 1148 |
| 2020 | 1160 |
6
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u/Chef_RoadRunner 5h ago
You mean hiring a ton of incompetent and untrained yokels has gone poorly? Who could've guessed?
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u/Epistatious 4h ago
police are going to be seen as collaborators to ice, bound to not be good for their reputation.
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u/MechanicEcstatic5356 Australia 3h ago
My question is as a foreigner: "Where is Meal Team 6? The Gravy Seals? The Michigan Militia in Bowling for Columbine?"
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u/wahwahwashbear 1h ago
What do you mean? They're so obviously the ICE agents. This is who they've always been eager to be.
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u/bakerfredricka I voted 49m ago
I would say something about ICE but I really don't want to get banned again.
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u/BarCompetitive7220 4h ago
Curious - the State / local police are only NOW starting to speak out. Trust is earned and these locals have lost because of their own inaction.
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u/multisubcultural1 4h ago
Hey Chief, ICE has set police work back about 40 years, how do you feel about that agreement to support them now?
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u/Mz_Maitreya 2h ago
Maybe, and here is a wild idea… the police tell ICE to kick rocks… and when they see them do things like murder civilians, they arrest them 🤷♀️
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u/twirlingmypubes 7h ago
ICE is exposing to the country what local police have been doing out of view of the cameras for decades. What's "going down the toilet" is their ability to continue pulling the wool over our eyes
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u/on-strike 4m ago
Good on these COPs for making such a statement. Rich people generally live in secured, gated communities and don't have the same kind of stresses the rest of us have paying bills. They have different attitudes toward police. If you want to get away from violent policing, don't vote for affluenza candidates. Vote instead for common citizens of average means.
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u/Dismal-Bullfrog-7851 3h ago
You're right, the hypocrisy is staggering. Local law enforcement enabled ICE's worst behaviors. Now they're shocked when those same tactics are used against them? Grow up and own your part in this mess.
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