Many FBI agents based in cities with a high cost of living are struggling to make ends meet, forcing them to make hours-long commutes or double up in apartments, according to bureau and Justice Department officials.
Natalie Bara, president of the FBI Agents Association, said she’s heard from two or three agents sharing an apartment near New York City, and others who commute four hours each day, back and forth to their field offices. Some circumstances are even more extreme, she added.
“They’re having to juggle being able to afford rent and/or utilities versus being able to actually buy groceries, so it’s getting to a level where it’s becoming very, very difficult to not only recruit agents into these high cost of living areas, but also retain them in those areas,” said Bara, who is a second-generation FBI agent.
I just… I don’t… do I feel bad for cops when they can’t afford houses either?
This one is a hard one, but I kind of fall on the side of empathy here…
Everyone should deserve a home. Maybe that home should be a cell if you’re a racist power tripping murderer, but if you out here genuinely trying to protect your community/country, you deserve a home.
And full healthcare, especially for rural volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians, many of them are volunteers. They deserve to be protected and treated fully by the services they put their lives on the line to provide for.
Some even have to pay for their training and their equipment. I get needing barriers for entry to dangerous positions but that feels like an economic barrier for an essential service.
Apparently this has to be explained since many people are making this mistake: FBI agents are not cops. They are investigators. They investigate crimes. They don’t sit around eating donuts or drive around a local “beat”.
They are the main organization investigating hate crimes and all those Jan 6 nuts. They didn’t arrest your friend for a joint back in 2015.
Can they arrest people accused of committing crimes? Yes. They’re cops. They’re just not city cops.
I might not feel as bad for them, they certainly made their choice of career to be cops, but at the end of the day its the institutions under capitalsim that hurt us the most, the individuals are just tools of the system, if Billy-bob McOfficer quits being a cop, Randall DiCopper will be there to replace them and the system continues.
And even though they are cops, they are also human beings too, also caught up in an abusive and exploitative system.
They were subject to the same propaganda we all were and no one is immune, so yes, feeling empathy is OK.
Also there is a huge potential problem when you give a group lots of power and then under pay them. They are a lot easier to bribe.
Makes them easier to bribe.