Today, it seems that every time you turn around, you see a news item about a cop shooting someone unnecessarily, tasering someone in a wheelchair, killing someone while driving drunk…and in all cases, getting very little or no punishment. (I’m not bothering to list a bunch of cases because I think everyone has seen these news stories reported on the Internet, if not your local daily newspaper, but if anyone really requires, I’ll dig up a list a citations.)
So…is this something new? Are cops getting more violent and less respectful of the laws they’re sworn to defend? Or is this simply a matter of more stories being reported now that everyone carries a camera in their cell phone?
My own feeling is that this is a new, unhealthy deterioration of attitude on the part of the police, perhaps as a response to the fears created by 9/11…but I say this as a W.A.S.P. (well, ex-P since I was about 8 years old) who grew up in a good neighborhood back in the '50s and '60s and who has always stayed out of trouble. In my own interactions with police, they’ve always been polite and professional.
I’m well aware that African-Americans will certainly have a different viewpoint on this but, if that clear example can be factored out, have the police gotten worse in the last decade or two?
Any insights?
(By the way, this OP is inspired by a similar discussion thread on Reddit. Reddit has its points…but it ain’t the Dope. )
I’ve been losing respect for the police as the number of incidences of brutality or writing bogus tickets, or whatever, seems to increase. Personally, although it gets reported a lot more, I think it’s been this way for a while.
Cops have pretty much always backed each other up when one does something wrong. Whether it’s not writing each other speeding tickets or creating “blue walls of silence” whenever they’re under investigation for wrongdoing.
Yes, there are plenty of good cops who do things by the book and serve their community well. But I personally think there is a problem with cops doing whatever the hell they want, and they suffer no consequences because either their fellow law enforcement officers look the other way, or they join in.
It may be a matter of reporting. These days, everybody has a camera on them via their cell phones. Minutes after a cop behaves like an ass, it can be filmed, posted to the web, and seen by thousands. In contrast, there is no video of the two nice, respectful police officers who responded at 2am one morning to deal with the car that drove through my fence – there was no reason to film it.
I think that they really are getting worse as a side effect of the near-worship of cops that has become so common. Along with people who have more admirable motives, it’s the nature of the job to attract people who basically want to be legalized thugs and petty tyrants. When people automatically assume that the cops are in the right and that the victim must have deserved it, brutal police will stay in the force instead of being thrown out and over time proliferate. I’m reminded of the Catholic Church and the results pf its behavior towards pedophile priests, actually.
Detroit has a settlement on the table right now for $2.5 million to a man who was shot in the back while crossing the street. The officer accused him of pulling a gun. Witness accounts show there was no gun on the victim. The gun the officer produced had no prints, notably not the man who was shot. It was, as they say, a “throw down.” These things are happening all the time and careful research reveals them. Most don’t gain headlines perhaps because they are too numerous in my venue.
They aren’t any worse, they are just more easily exposed. Even ten years ago there were no such things as youtube or camera phones, that something like the Rodney King beating even got caught on camera is nothing but pure luck. Now every time something news worthy happens you can see bystanders holding up their phones toward the action hoping to catch something good on video, nothing goes unseen.
I, for one, would love it if this thread included actual research and statistics instead of the “it seems”, “as the number of incidences of brutality or writing bogus tickets, or whatever, seems to increase”, “I think that they really are getting worse”, and “These things are happening all the time and careful research reveals them”
I don’t think it’s really increased but as has been pointed out, more exposed.
Look how the civil rights protesters were treated back in the '50s-dogs, fire hoses and beatings right out in the open. Everyone heard the stories of the suspects who “slipped and fell” while in custody.
I’ve found a decent article that talks about police officer’s decision to use their firearms (link). However it’s not so easy to find concrete numbers on how many people have been shot and killed by police, from one year to the next.
From my quick attempts using Google I’m guessing that information is out there but you will probably have to use a more professional academic article database to find them, those statistics aren’t part of the mainstream reports that the DOJ and FBI put out about crime statistics (at least that I can find.)
The article I linked about does mention that police officers shoot and kill about 350 people each year, but its citation for that doesn’t actually link to data that shows details on annual shooting incidents.
I’m not really sure how you’d measure “attitude” in a reasonable, subjective manner. I certainly know how you could fill a thread with hundreds of posts in which people anecdotally claim police are ruder or have worse attitudes these days, but given the venue and the tendencies here I doubt that would be very solid evidence.
Working from my understanding of history I would probably think that police are only getting more professional every year. The increased media scrutiny police are under will create a perception that there is a massive increase in incidents of police brutality, but what I think it is really showing is there was a lot of incidents we just didn’t know about that we’re only now learning. Given what I know about LEO hiring practices, LEO disciplinary procedures and et cetera I would imagine that if we had the same media presence in 1950 that we do in 2010 we’d be seeing a lot more stories about LEOs using force inappropriately or being otherwise corrupt in 1950 than we do in 2010.
In 1950 it was much easier to become a police officer, especially in lots of the South (where I was born and raised), it was very often the case that if someone in your family was on the force then you could get hire. If you had a friend on the force, you could get hired.
Now, even in relatively small rural towns and communities the hiring process is lengthy and it is very difficult to get a job as a police officer.
I grew up in a town where I couldn’t get arrested ------ and neither could you for that matter. If you did something wrong, the cops would usually tune you up behind the boro building and send you packing. It had to be a repeat thing to actually get arrested. Things changed and times changed and they started acting more normal and from all I can see, in that general area, (northeastern PA) cops are still pretty darn good on the job - whatever the current standards of that job are.
Off the job is another matter. Cops, when I was young, were model citizens - really. There weren’t even rumors of cops breaking the law in their civilian lives. No wife beating, no drug dealing - nothing. And the way our mothers like to gossip, you couldn’t hide stuff like that for long. Now if a cop isn’t doing something shady off the job its news. Perjury, road rage, shootings off duty, one cop using the local VFD firehall to bang his 14 year old girlfriend. Scandal is the first order of business.
So would I - but how? I got knocked around pretty good twice by the police but I know there isn’t a record of either event. It wasn’t unusual back then. You would have to extrapolate from some news footage or surveys and the resulting research wouldn’t be that much better.
Detroit Local News - Michigan News - Breaking News - detroitnews.com Detroit is broke and paid 39 million for suits against the police from 2006-9.
There are 50 suits now for violation of constitutional rights
two million in suits for wrongful death other than firearms
!.9 million in suits for assault and battery
The police department had to redo its lab because it was functioning so badly that evidence was tainted and tossed out of court. Decisions based on them had to be revisited at great expense.
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