Re: Find the Logical Fallacy

Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Tue, 28 Sep 1999 00:55:42 -0400

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> > A police officer is roughly defined as an individual hired by a given city
> > to provide general protection services and to maintain the jurisdictional
> > laws. The Chief of Police in Washington, D.C., proposes placing more
> > police officers on the night shift, so as to provide a greater presence of
> > police officers at the time the criminals are more active. The police
> > union strongly opposes this new strategy, and Thursday morning our police
> > officers plan to march on police headquarters to register their strong
> > disapproval.
> >
> > Is this:
> > a. circular logic?
> > b. false causality? or
> > c. a serious semantic disconnect?
>
> Sounds to me like rational people pursuing their self-interest, exactly
> as we should expect them to do. The only fallacy is committed by those
> who expect public officers to act in the public's interest just because
> some piece of paper says they should.

Ah, but they swear to 'protect and serve', don't they? If they are our servants they should do what we dam# well tell them to do. They get those nice pensions, benefits, etc that a private police officer could only hope for. Heck, even old Cal Coolidge, probably the most libertarian president of the century, said,"nobody has a right to strike against the publics safety" when he broke the Bostom Police Strike back when he was in local politics...

Mike Lorrey