Patrick Skinner
@SkinnerPm
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Made my way from odd stuff overseas to local cop in my home town. going to law school while still being murder police. I’m a truly terrible twitter follow
I’m where I’m supposed to be
Joined January 2013
Well. There’s this. Me in the New Yorker. Easily the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. But I wanted to highlight local policing done with a great group of colleagues. But yeah, this is terrifying.
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According to 40+% of Americans:.FEMA lies.DOJ lies.FBI lies.DOD lies.Juries lie.Judges lie.Every single reporter but nice ones lie .The Economy lies .All crime stats lie.Everybody lies. Except for Trump. He tells the truth. That is pathetic. And this will ruin us all.
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Read the below sentence out loud. Please. Out loud. “More children were shot dead in 2017 than on-duty police officers and active duty military combined.”. We are afraid of all the wrong things. I say this as a cop.
More children were shot dead in 2017 than on-duty police officers and active duty military combined, study says .
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No other profession excuses fatal mistakes like we cops do. Any criticism is an attack. We think policing is something we do TO a community & not FOR a community & certainly not WITH the community if that means actual input. We don’t get to tell them how we do our job; they do.
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An ugly shift did have a nice moment. 14 year old kid walks up to my patrol car in a parking lot as I’m trying to write reports. I ask how I can help. He says his phone died & he’s trying to get in touch with his grandmother to pick him up. .
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I’m breaking my years-long no TV rule tonight to speak with @chrislhayes at 8 and tell anyone who will listen that we cops are not warriors because we are not at war with our neighbors. I’m not gonna quit. I’m gonna change it all.
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As a local cop I’m very very aware of the threat of angry men with guns terrorizing & killing women. Forget ISIS; the greater threat day to day & over the long term isn’t foreign terrorism; it’s the violent husbands, boyfriends, exes, & stalkers of women right down the street.
Gunman kills 5 people including his wife in southern California
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To my fellow cops, we might not be to blame but we all are responsible for this. We are all bound by oath to serve our neighbors. All of our neighbors. We must reject this cancer of a war on our neighbors. This has to stop. We have to stop this.
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I never talk about arrests, of which I do a lot. Legally cuz duh. But I like non arrests. I’m pretty good at arrests. I build solid solid solid cases. But I very much like the cases trending towards drama where we find an off ramp. And then follow up and keep it going.
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I can not adequately state how criminally wrong these officers are acting.
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I’d rather a US President who mistakenly introduces another world leader as president Putin than a US President who actually works for president Putin.
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I’m not a sheep dog cuz my neighbors aren’t sheep. I’m not a warrior cuz I’m not at war with my neighbors. I’m not a Spartan logo t-shirt. I’m not a thin blue line. I’m a very lucky person with great colleagues & neighbors & we live & we work right here.
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I don’t know how I can continue to be a police officer in America. I do know I don’t want to right now. Law enforcement in America is the scattered good will of individual officers in a change-resistant structure with fundamental principles & philosophies that are utterly rotten.
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We don’t call it the ‘Nicole Simpson trial’ so stop calling it the Ahmed Arbery trial.
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I need to make clear that the kid is the ‘hero’ of this thread. I’m at best a well-intended tourist in his life, always at not good times. He bucked history & perhaps his own experience to see my open window & say ‘I’ll give it a chance’ That’s all i am. An open window. A chance.
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I’m a local cop. Not a solider. This senator was a soldier. Not a local cop. I’m not afraid of my neighbors. This senator is scared to death of his neighbors. Reject his calls for war.
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I drop him off in my old beat and say hi to his grandpa, great guy. And tell the kid ‘I’m so glad you trusted me to walk up and ask for help’. He said ‘just wanted to use your phone but this is way better.’ . Happy New Year’s indeed.
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We lost SweetDog today after 13 years of her being the best friend ever every day. She formed Skinnerville. And all of us here are lost without her.
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I repeat: If you say you’re a law enforcement but don’t put your name & your agency on your super tough guy military uniform—and won’t tell people your name & agency—then you are neither law enforcement nor tough. Somehow local cops manage to work everyday in real name. so scary.
Our personnel are clearly marked as federal LEOs & have unique identifiers. You will not see names on their uniforms b/c these same violent criminals use this information to target them & their families, putting both at risk. As Acting Commissioner, I will not let that happen!.
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I can’t express what I’m feeling as I watch the killing of Ahmaud Arbery a short drive from my city. As a cop I just witnessed an obvious crime; as a neighbor I just witnessed a senseless loss; as a person I just witnessed an utter outrage. We all just did.
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Creamsicle 1 is perfectly healthy!! Vet said he’s a good weight; of course, his siblings are all ginormous so he looks small. He didn’t even have any fleas cuz we had been treating him extra!! and now for the best part….
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Stop saying they should have ‘complied’ with that illegal order. There is no legal basis to order anyone to ‘go inside’ while they’re on their own property. Therefore there is no legal obligation to ‘go inside’. Therefore they didn’t refuse to comply with a lawful order. .
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One of the three soldiers killed this weekend in Jordan was Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett. She was from Savannah. Graduated from Windsor Forest High School in 2019. Was a drum major with the marching band. She was 23 years old. She was my neighbor.
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I swear to god, if we Americans are so stupid as to believe the anti-fact never-served mouth movers about a FBI ‘conspiracy’ where the gov ‘illegally’ obtains .gov emails, then we are the dumbest people on earth.
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Unless I'm mistaken, Comey didn't testify today via Skype from Moscow after working with Russian intel.
It seems the @FBI Director agrees: sometimes the only moral decision is to break the rules.
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I said I was going to speak out. I prefer a twitter feed of mean cats & sweet dogs but we need to change what it means to be ‘police’ in America. So I spoke out. Here is something personal I wrote. I appreciate the @washingtonpost giving me this chance .
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And so we answered the age old question: Do commas matter?.
Delta has banned the Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden for refusing to wear a mask
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shift ended w/ colleagues facing real bad calls. I mean bad. And my colleagues were awesome. Are awesome. But my takeaway is seeing that kid walk around the parking lot uncertain about talking to me. & me making sure my window was down & waving him over. The rest is noise.
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Just remember. One of the angry puppets who yell and yell how the ‘liberal elites’ look down on you was getting paid $400,000 A MONTH TO TELL YOU THAT.
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I’ll say this once loudly for those in the cheap seats: Russian interference is serious but wouldn’t work if we weren’t already so so stupid.
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I work in misery. As a homicide detective I deal with misery and anger and violence every day. And I’m telling you flat out that joy is more powerful. Live with joy. And beauty. And become unstoppable.
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There is real crime that police must address. Stuff hanging from a rear view mirror ain’t it. We need to stop treating regulation violations like violent crime. So we need to slow down, stop confusing compliance with success, and keep our guns in the holster. Start there.
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I’m a rookie cop and so I’ve only known body worn cameras. And I love them. They record my interactions with my neighbors. When my neighbors pull out phones and say they’re recording me I always say ‘you should’. Maybe don’t put stupid Instagram cat ears on me but whatever.
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Please stop framing this as a political or partisan issue. Police misconduct & the militarization of local police is a bi-partisan & very-much all-American disgrace. It’s generational & widespread. We must not be warriors cuz we are not at war with our neighbors. Change it all.
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Getting theatrically outraged over the notion of some magical oppressive document that shows your vaccination records before you travel is a loud way to say you’ve never really traveled.
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There is no excuse and no justification. The police are the ones violating the law here.
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End of chapter 29 of Stephen King The Stand goes like this: . “Tottering a little, he began to walk down the road.”. God I read this in 1980 when I was nine. Reading now when I am almost fifty feels the same. I’m tottering a little as I walk down the road. We all are.
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Fellow cops: if your first instinct upon even potentially being held more accountable to the communities you serve is to quit. well, then, you should really go ahead and quit. We work for our neighbors. They decide how we work. It’s their consent that empowers us.
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The time to stop the Omicron variant was getting the vaccine six months ago.
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Drunk Uncle Orangey was killed this morning crossing the road to get breakfast. For the last year we’ve fed him, got him fixed, & loved on him. He had a rough life but he was loved & I think he knew it. Our porch feels so empty. He was a great friend & we will miss him. Damn it
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Police in uniform should never speak at any political rally. Can’t overstate this. Because it’s so important. Again, police in uniform should never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never speak at any political rally.
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Twitter isn’t bad if you block instantly and never spare the trolls another thought. This isn’t a mandatory debate club. This isn’t your chance to show me how fake tough and real dumb you are. It’s my chance to connect with kind and smart and creative people. You’re not welcome.
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If a fire fighter offered thoughts & prayers instead of putting out the fire, if a dentist offered thoughts & prayers instead of fixing your teeth, you would demand change. So why do we re-elect politicians who only offer thoughts & prayers instead of addressing gun violence?.
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As a long time optimist and someone very experienced with the truth that most things are never as bad as they seem, this press conference by the US president is a literal national disaster. A national disaster.
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As a former intelligence officer, I'm gonna more than suggest there is no difference. And for the administration to say so is naive at best
Press Sec.: "Massive difference" between CIA WikiLeaks leak and Podesta email leak lauded by Trump during election.
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This is just so bad and so wrong and so bad and so wrong. There is very real drama in our jobs as police. We can not, we must not, bring the drama.
WATCH: A new lawsuit claims Windsor police officers drew guns, pepper-sprayed uniformed Army officer during traffic stop. More at 5 on #13NewsNow
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We have got to change what it means to be the police in America. We stress that cops are only human but then call our neighbors monsters. We excuse our own emotions and then demand our neighbors be robots of polite compliance. But its more than that.
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Mankind landed a damn rover within a mile target using a quad-copter after traveling 292 million miles. So accept the fact that most of our sufferings are the result of indifference or politics, not solutions. Accept that fact. AND THEN WORK TO CHANGE IT. Stop electing grifters.
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Remember when Woodward and Bernstein couldn’t publish articles about Watergate cuz the Washington Post @washingtonpost was scared of Nixon? Yeah, I don’t remember that either.
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‘If you don’t want to be shot then comply with the cops’ is just about the most pathetic most wrong belief system I can think of and I’m a cop. It’s the opposite of protect and serve. It’s cancer. It’s wrong. It’s systemic. The burden isn’t on our neighbors. It’s on us cops.
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Have had two neighbors today tell us that the ‘new cure’ for the coronavirus ‘that the president talked about’ will be ready this weekend. a cure hyped by POTUS will be ready this weekend. Two neighbors who aren’t connected or talking to each other. Holy god this is dangerous.
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I see we are at the ‘snarking about the president’s dead son’ stage of our shining city on the hill thingy.
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Police should not cover their name tags or badge numbers when engaging with their neighbors. We should not be so afraid of everyone and we should not be so ashamed of our actions that we have to hide who we are from them. We are all accountable. My name is Patrick Skinner.
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I’ve posted this before but it bears repeating. Years ago I was in the Four Seasons’ cigar bar in Doha. John Bolton walked in & I yelled, and I mean yelled, ‘NICE MUSTACHE!’ and he walked right back out. It was a small petty moment but I am a small petty man. It was glorious.
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Dead serious. This might be the most beautiful person on this planet.
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I think @AVindman is an honorable man who spoke out when everything and everyone around him said silence was the best path. Ukraine is stronger because of him but also America is stronger because of him. It’s no small thing. There are no small acts of courage.
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As a former CIA officer, I’d like to say: .One, who says ‘intelligence warriors’ and ‘bad guys?’ Stop it with your cartoonishly childish understanding. Two: torture, which the agency did and called enhanced interrogation, is wrong and we should say that.
I watched “The Report.” Fiction. To be clear: the bad guys are not our intelligence warriors. The bad guys are the terrorists. To my former colleagues and all of the patriots at @CIA who have kept us safe since 9/11: America supports you, defends you and has your back. So do I.
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Sorry but I’m gonna post a bunch of pictures of SweetDog. Mute away. Like this when she picked out her last and favorite bed (we used to let her roam PetSmart and try all the beds). She loved this one the most. Was in the dining room where she could see the bedroom and front door
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The culture wars were fought in the decaying Weimar in the late 1920’s EXACTLY as the grifters & bobble heads are doing today. Reading ‘The Coming of the Third Reich’ by Richard Evans is to read what’s happening right now. I’m not being dramatic or alarmist. It’s the same path.
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Just gonna point out to those saying it’s ok for cops to shoot someone in the back cuz in theory that person could run over & grab a knife in a car. hate to burst your compliance-at-all-cost bubble but that’s not a legal argument. ‘Should’ve complied’ isn’t what you think it is.
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Also we are insane with guns in this country. Argue amongst yourselves and call it a debate or whatever but we are insane. The amount of guns in the hands of young people is the forever war that America doesn’t even pretend to fight. I can’t stress enough how insane this all is.
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CREAMSICLE 1 HAS A WONDERFUL FOREVER HOME!! We’ve been working with a neighbor for the last few weeks on how she can adopt creamsicle 1. Everything has worked out splendidly. We all went to her house, and creamsicle 1 was walking around head butting us within minutes. He’s home!
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Spare me your ‘ohhh the Manhattan Project was soooo complicated” or “building a particle accelerator ain’t easy” or “Notre Dame is an architectural marvel.” Puh lease. I just built easily the greatest structure, the greatest project, ever undertaken by mankind. I present this.
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BAKEY IS CANCER FREE!!! His surgery and biopsy shows no cancer. YAY BAKED POTATO!!
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Weeks ago I said this pandemic was The Great Revealer. It has revealed this about us:. We are an armed GoFundMe campaign pretending to be a superpower. We substitute air shows for leadership & see shared sacrifice as individual injustice. We don’t have to be this way. But we are.
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I’m gonna guess that the people who are against the US Post Office are also against public libraries, and against public parks, public health, public art, and public education.
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I rarely speak about my old job. But I’ll say this: if you participated in torture, you can’t lead the agency in 2018 or ever. We aren’t talking punishment—we’ve decided on none as a nation—but promotions, really? I get the issue is larger than her. But everything is.
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He says he’s never been in the back of a cop car & we both agree that’s a good thing. I ask what he did at the mall and he had the greatest answer. He went to a movie. Aquaman. I ask how it was & he says ‘i didn’t want to see aquaman & didn’t pay attention. I went for a girl’.
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I hop out at a red light to say hi to a struggling neighbor & give him a tactical caring kit. I hop back in the car, look over, & he’s crying. I get back out & tell him it gets better. And now we are both crying, hoping it does indeed get better. We all matter or none of us do
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McCain has it right. Haspel is amazing. She really is. She just shouldn’t be Director CIA. At some point we as a nation must say enough with the ‘in the aftermath of 911 rules didn’t apply. ’. They did. And they do. They always did and do.
.@SenJohnMcCain weighs in, urging his Senate colleagues to reject Gina Haspel for @CIA Director. This is a quite a fight.
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That really wasn’t so bad a wait…Was accepted into one of the three law schools to which I applied. We shall see what the remaining 2 say/offer, but I’m extremely lucky. And I’m extremely going to start law school somewhere in August 2024. I do what I say I’m going to do.
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He speaks so softly but directly. ‘Don’t care about aquaman. I guess it was ok’. I ask about the girl and he says ‘oh she’s great.’ I say ‘you’re a wise kid.’ Only smile of the ride.
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I appreciate @chrislhayes having me on the show tonight. We need to not see the verdict as a conclusion of a trial but rather as the beginning of change. Also, how insanely cool is it that @ReverendWarnock was on the same show!! we went to high school together. Life is amazing.
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The childish vaccine ‘outrage’ is the inevitable result of several generations in which only handfuls of Americans were asked to do anything at all for the common good. Being a good neighbor requires doing good for your neighbors. Like muscle memory, you have to do something.
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I’ve not read today’s updates news about the Atlanta spree murders but let me guess: a sudden focus on mental health; a focus on the shooter and not those shot; a focus on what the victims must have represented to provoke the young lad; a focus on literally anything but guns.
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It can not be said enough. The most powerful predictor of future violence against women is, wait for it, a history of violence against women. Stop looking for imaginary monsters to worry about. Violence against women by misogynistic pathetic men is a national open wound.
Gunman in Tallahassee yoga studio shooting was reported for harassing young women, police say
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I let him use my phone. No answer. He calls his grandfather. He answers but can’t drive to get him. Kid lives in my old precinct IN MY OLD BEAT!! So I say ‘hop in, I’ll take you home.’ We talk. He goes to the same middle school I went to. Hates school. Hates a lot of stuff. .
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A sign that the militarization of local police is a national cancer is that people are understandably confusing police officers for National Guard forces. Think on that for a second. In my useless opinion, the militarization of local police has caused infinite grief & trouble.
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I have big news. Huge news, actually. Incredible news, if I wanted to be understated. Stupendous news, if I’m being accurate. The news? Oh, it’s just… … … A NEWLY-DISCOVERED PROBABLY-THE-FIRST-EVER PHOTOGRAPH OF MEANCAT, FROM AUGUST 2015.
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Yesterday MeanCat lost his only friend. And he just sat on the porch staring back at the door.
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This just gut punched me. No SweetDog bed where one has been for 13 years.
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I empathize that being in 8th grade sucked. No way around it. Gets kinda better around 10th grade but it’s worth it. He asks me about shootings. His biological dad was shot and paralyzed. He said ‘I don’t want to be paralyzed.’ I got nothing to say but ‘me either’. .
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We refuse to fund the teachers & students of schools but funding armed guards for schools is freedom at its finest isn’t just pathetic. It’s the self-inflicted death of our society. We don’t need more cops. We need to fund all the things that make cops less needed. And I’m a cop.
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Wait. There’s a candidate for US Senate who says he was shot in the arm in Afghanistan while deployed but never mentioned it cuz he didn’t want to expose ‘friendly fire’ then years later accidentally shoots himself, and says the fresh wound was from the ten year old bullet. What?.
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Meaningful police reform isn’t more coffee-with-cop photo ops. It’s not more attendance at the bi-monthly neighborhood watch meeting. It’s not school assemblies. It’s not. Reform is imagining the end of a war, this war on our neighbors. And then changing. Changing it all.
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I support ‘defund the police’ if it means finally funding all the social/health/economic challenges that drive most of the calls to the police. Can’t really cut the number of police until you reduce the number of calls for the police. Most of our calls are not close to crimes.
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@chrislhayes It is insane that we’ve never had an actual briefing from any relevant agencies on what is easily the greatest security failure and senior political-social incitement in memory. Nothing. Like we’re supposed to forget it happened and why.
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If only there were any options other than being in a silo or giving an unrepentant amoral anti-democratic twice-impeached former President a 75-minute infomercial. If only there were any other options, you know, like the many many many other options.
Cooper: You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again. But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away?
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We would like to thank all of you for your warm thoughts and words about losing SweetDog a few days ago. She was a wonderful friend and a deeply loved member of our family, and we are, quite simply, heartbroken. Thank you from all of us at Skinnerville
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So, The Baked Potato is having surgery this week to remove three (hopefully benign) growths from his belly and genital region. He would appreciate you telling him how handsome he looks in his body suit he will wear to keep him from getting to his stitches for a week.
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Because it’s an ecological catastrophe disguised as a money laundering scam?.
Can anyone explain why Kamala Harris didn't attend the crypto roundtable yesterday? I understand that she's on the campaign trail, but the meeting was virtual. All she needed was an Internet connection. Technical difficulties?.
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I talk about the problems in his neighborhood & he’s happy I know a smidgen of what he knows about the drama there. He talks about local rappers with rap sheets and says he doesn’t like violence. I say me neither. .
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My captain, who has been very supportive of our tactical caring kits, told me that she was driving today & was stopped at a light. Struggling neighbor knocked on her window & asked if she had ‘one of those kits, the NEIGHBOR kits’. In a totally different precinct!! That’s cool.
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I don't remember you at the Farm during training. You must have been in a separate training for brave pundits. Thank you for your service
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At work I’m a rookie cop and now rookie detective. I don’t talk about old jobs or twitter stuff or my writing etc stuff. I just try to do the job right. So it was surprising & uplifting to get a call from my Chief about the Post piece. who wanted to say how much he loved it. .
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