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Yeah, I don't see the principle here.
I accept that the government has a monopoly on force under normal conditions. I prefer for this force to be used on bad guys. Bad guys tend to form organizational structures where it would not be uncommon for them to attack law enforcement in revenge. ERO/ICE deals a lot with Cartels and other bad international organizations that have the means and motive to kill in revenge. Apparently leftist/progressives have also turned themselves into an international organization that is motivated to harass and sometimes attempt to murder ERO/ICE.
It has also been very common for law enforcement in all levels of government to cover their faces in the United States of America. The DEA, Portland Police, and Florida police (and many more, this isn't intended to be an exhaustive list, just demonstrating enough that it is wide spread) all do this when they are performing a task with a high risk of retaliation.
I do not remember it ticking people off so much in the past. This isn't new behavior, but the outrage seems new to me. Perhaps I wasn't aware of it before.
As far as moving in your direction, yeah, though it's not a movement because I've already felt this way. Here is what I would like to have change:
How about this as an intuition pump: would it be good if all law-enforcement officers always wore masks?
At several points in this thread, I've tried to make it clear that I acknowledge there are situations where they are acceptable. Some tactical conditions justify them, like SWAT actions and drug raids: that covers the DEA and Florida links you provided. In those cases, the high risk of retaliation comes in the form of credible murder threats. The single failed attack on the Dallas facility notwithstanding, that's not what ICE officers face at the time I'm writing this, as far as I can tell.
I'm not even sure what's going on in the Portland photo: the caption says it's from 2020, so it's hard to tell whether the officers' faces are partially obscured to protect their anonymity or because of COVID. (As an aside, I also agree that gas masks are acceptable for riots.)
I mean that an authority outside Trump's chain of command should have access to information about exactly which agents were present at each operation. Practically speaking, that means it would have to be a Democratic-aligned official, since "non-partisan" isn't really a thing, so add serious penalties for leaks if necessary.
I gather from your final comment on sunsetting that you'd prefer not to interfere with the discretion of law enforcement. I'm sympathetic: for the most part, they know better than civilians when it's appropriate. But I'm not going to surrender my judgement entirely, or this just turns into the red tribe version of submitting to experts.
I think it would be a sad thing because it would indicate that society had broken down to such an extent that a simple traffic cop feared retaliation. But I wouldn't begrudge the officer the use of the mask.
There was also the attack on the Alvarado, Texas facility. And those are the attacks from US citizens on ICE within the past year.
I believe ICE has more reason to fear from Cartels, gangs, and other drug and human trafficking organizations. That they have so far mostly avoided dying by the droves shows that their tactics work. We know how vicious cartels can be. They're not letting ICE alone out of the kindness of their hearts when a few cartel members get deported.
See, the problem I have with this is making an executive who isn't in the executive branch. I have problems with creating positions that are not accountable to the American people in some way.
I don't see it as Red Tribe submitting to experts. It's more just... I'm related to five police officers, two of whom became captains, one of whom went on to a security gig after getting shot. I know there are bad ones, and even the good ones can do bad things. But I also see first hand how miserable the media treats police officers who are doing their best to treat people right and keep the vulnerable safe. I always give police the benefit of the doubt. You might see this as a flaw, but it's my own lived experience.
The largest human trafficking organization in the world has already threatened to prosecute each and every ICE agent for the crime of enforcing the law against human trafficking.
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