# How do you feel about police?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [June 30, 2019, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309 "2019-06-30T18:56:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 7
### Author:  [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2019, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/121 "2019-07-09T23:58:25Z")
I find disarming them usually helps.
You know, you say something like “Officer, I SWEAR he was dead when I got there!”.
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### Author:  [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/122 "2019-07-10T12:05:35Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#):
>
> What utter horseshit.
No kidding! Why the news is absolutely STUFFED with accounts of police being detained in cells while awaiting trial when they put someone down under murky circumstances. Like most recently that case in, um, wait no. Well there was…no, that was “paid administrative leave” as well. Hmmm. Oh wait! You’re still right! Because vacation time is something you accrue and have to save & spend with some discretion. Paid administrative leave is totally free vacation. Saying their time out of service is “vacation” IS utter horseshit–the situation is even cushier than that.
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### Author:  [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/123 "2019-07-10T13:08:59Z")
I have friends who are sheriff’s deputies and police sergeants. I believe _these_ particular individuals are good people. But I do not believe the “vast majority of LEOs are good, honest people” (as is often stated). Based on some run-ins I had when I was younger, along with many stories from friends and family, I believe many LEOs are bullies, and most have an “us against them” mentality.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/124 "2019-07-10T13:26:24Z")
I’m a middle-class white dude who interacts a fair amount with black students and co-workers and bosses.
My own experiences with police have been generally positive. Okay, there was that time when I was a teenager when a cop joked about how I was going to be raped by a criminal, that dude was a shitheel, but that was the exception to my experiences.
However, I have students whose [uncle have been beat up by local cops](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/03/599245934/asheville-videos-show-police-beating-and-choking-a-man-stopped-for-jaywalking). I have a co-worker who’s pulled over by a cop who “entered her license plate into the system wrong” (raising the question of why a prominent local activist was having her license plate entered into the system in the first place). I have students who have legitimate reasons to mistrust the police in their neighborhoods.
And we have an SRO who comes to our school who is, as near as I can tell, a deeply kind and compassionate human being who emphasizes warmth and de-escalation in his encounters with students even when they’re flipping out.
I find most hot takes on police relations glib.
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### Author:  [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/125 "2019-07-10T14:33:47Z")
“other answer”
I don’t feel good or bad around cops, but I’d rather not be around them. I don’t have a friend who’s a cop and I don’t want one. Cops are not trust-worthy, IMO.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/126 "2019-07-10T15:53:05Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#):
>
> Cite on those odds? I bet that 150,000 of the 300 million people in America don’t die of being hit by an asteroid or comet each year.
>
> I have to imagine there’s some kind of crazy long-tail event included in that (like, every few million years a comet obliterates a continent), which is not a useful comparison to the fact that some cops get killed every year because that’s not how real people do risk analysis.
[Table 14.1.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/meteor)
My point is that it’s a vanishingly tiny chance of actually getting killed at a traffic stop. Certainly not enough of one that requires cops to put their hands by their guns when they’re pulling someone over for an expired registration, or busted tail light.
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### Author:  [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/127 "2019-07-10T19:11:52Z")
I’m Canadian. In Canada, I feel fine around police, and have never had a bad experience with police. In the USA I feel uncomfortable around police, and have had a bad experience with police.
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### Author:  [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/128 "2019-07-10T22:54:06Z")
49 year old white guy. I have had my share of traffic tickets and a couple unpleasant encounters but nothing I would consider unprofessional, abusive or corrupt.
As an EMT, I worked around alot of cops on scenes. They tend to have very different attitudes towards those who they feel are the victims vs those doing the victimizing. Police have alot more opportunity to abuse their power at the same time, properly wielded, they can make a HUGE positive difference in situations where needed.
I as an EMT could bandage up the battered wife, but I cant do anything about tomorrow. A police officer can arrest, detain, pursue charges, assist with RO’s, etc that can stop it from happening again for at least days, possibly years.
In the grand scheme of things they have a job that all too often lives in moral and legal grey areas and they are judged harshly by the public when they get it wrong and rarely get credit when they do some of their best work.
In my experience, as far as jerkishness and general douchebaggery, I knew way more amoral asshole firefighters than cops.
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### Author:  [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/129 "2019-07-10T23:02:05Z")
> [@drachillix](#):
>
> In the grand scheme of things they have a job that all too often lives in moral and legal grey areas and they are judged harshly by the public when they get it wrong **and rarely get credit when they do some of their best work**.
You know why? [Because that’s what they’re supposed to do](https://youtu.be/B0B_ekSrsEk?t=4). What do they want; a cookie?
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### Author:  [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2019, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/130 "2019-07-10T23:54:42Z")
I know a 125 pound woman who had a psychotic break and was running her mouth, like you would expect from someone having a manic episode. She was handcuffed, in the car, being taken to the psych ward. As soon as they were out of her husband’s sight they stopped and took her back out of the car. Three stood in a line while the fourth punched her and broke her jaw. Being white wasn’t enough for someone suffering from mental illness. If she had been a person of color, I realize, she may not have survived it.
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### Author:  [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/131 "2019-07-11T01:23:35Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#):
>
> I have friends who are sheriff’s deputies and police sergeants. I believe _these_ particular individuals are good people.
Do you have any links where these “good people” condemn the other police that punch people in handcuffs or shoot unarmed people?
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/132 "2019-07-11T12:10:58Z")
One more thing I’ll add: the Thin Blue Line, as a concept, is 100% horrifying, and any police officer who gives it any credence is a terrible person.
Cops who actively commit violence may be as rare as teachers who commit violence. But if a teacher at my school were molesting students, you can goddamned bet I’d be doing everything I can to get that teacher arrested and away from students. There’s no “us against them” mentality.
There seems to be a very different culture among US police, and it resembles the culture among the Catholic priesthood: a bad cop gets protected by their brethren instead of expelled from the group. And this attitude results in people dying.
I may be wrong on this, and I welcome correction by the cops we have on the board. But that’s my impression.
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### Author:  [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/133 "2019-07-11T13:56:29Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> …My point is that it’s a vanishingly tiny chance of actually getting killed at a traffic stop. Certainly not enough of one that requires cops to put their hands by their guns when they’re pulling someone over for an expired registration, or busted tail light.
Police in the U.S. seem to extend this aggressive approach to virtually every interaction they have with the public.
We had a local case where a mentally ill person off of his meds had a knife in his hand while standing in the middle of a field. He refused to drop the knife. The cops had him surrounded, but nobody was within 20-30 feet of him. He posed absolutely no danger to anyone other than himself. After a few minutes of this, the police opened fire on the man and killed him. ☹
I read about cases like this all the time. Police kill a person who poses little or no threat to them or anyone else. The police almost seem to be looking for a reason to use their guns to kill people, and the reason often simply boils down to their authority being questioned (even if it’s because the person is drunk, disturbed, mentally incapacitated, deaf, etc.).
In most interactions with the public, the police seem to have elevated their own personal safety above all other considerations. And for many police officers, if there is any threat, or even a potential threat, or even a theoretical threat, or maybe simply if they decide their instruction aren’t being followed, they deal with the threat the same way: with deadly force.
And they wonder why people fear and distrust them? :dubious:
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### Author:  [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/134 "2019-07-11T13:59:42Z")
> [@robby](#):
>
> And they wonder why people fear and distrust them? :dubious:
Do they? Departments from all over the country seem not to think too deeply about it.
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### Author:  [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/135 "2019-07-11T14:26:01Z")
I don’t trust them at all. Generally my interactions with them go smoothly, but I’m a white guy who appears ‘normal’, and even then I could end up hurt or killed if the cop happens to have a bad day, with him just getting a paid vacation as ‘punishment’. My friends with darker skin or less gender-conforming appearance have all had really horrible experiences with law enforcement, and certainly are under no illusions about the extreme risk they take in an interaction. If you’re a minority in a small town, you know very well that if a local threatens to kill you, you should get away ASAP, and that calling the cops is more likely to result in the threat actually being carried out than the perpetrator being arrested.
> [@Bear\_Nenno](#):
>
> Just so that I understand: It’s _not_ okay to hate all of a particular group just because there are some bad members of that group, unless we’re talking about police. Is that it? If it’s police, then it’s okay to hate ALL of them just because there are so many examples of shitty ones.
The problem is the ‘blue wall’ - when a cop commits a crime, other cops don’t do their job and arrest him as a criminal, they cover up for him. They will see another cop commit a crime and turn the other way, watch him planting evidence and ignore it, lie in their testimony to protect him, destroy evidence, stand together with their union to make sure he doesn’t suffer more than a paid vacation, and in general do things that make them at best derelict in their duty and at worst accomplices in the crime. When the allegedly good members of a group cover up, enable, and otherwise assist the bad members of the group in being bad, they’re now part of the ‘bad’ population.
Just look at message boards - when there’s a discussion of a story about a cop shooting a family dog while checking out a minor incident, you never see any of the ‘good cops’ turn up and say ‘yeah, shooting that dog was terrible, they shouldn’t do that,’ they consistently say something about ‘officer safety’ or some other excuse and endorse it, or at least don’t condemn it. In all of the threads where there’s a cut and dried case of a cop straight up murdering a (usually black) person, have you ever seen one of the ‘good cops’ post that they wish they could arrest the guy themselves and see him in jail?
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### Author:  [@Translucent\_Daydream](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Translucent_Daydream)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/136 "2019-07-11T15:02:46Z")
> [@Pantastic](#):
>
> The problem is the ‘blue wall’ - when a cop commits a crime, other cops don’t do their job and arrest him as a criminal, they cover up for him. They will see another cop commit a crime and turn the other way, watch him planting evidence and ignore it, lie in their testimony to protect him, destroy evidence, stand together with their union to make sure he doesn’t suffer more than a paid vacation, and in general do things that make them at best derelict in their duty and at worst accomplices in the crime. When the allegedly good members of a group cover up, enable, and otherwise assist the bad members of the group in being bad, they’re now part of the ‘bad’ population.
>
> Just look at message boards - when there’s a discussion of a story about a cop shooting a family dog while checking out a minor incident, you never see any of the ‘good cops’ turn up and say ‘yeah, shooting that dog was terrible, they shouldn’t do that,’ they consistently say something about ‘officer safety’ or some other excuse and endorse it, or at least don’t condemn it. In all of the threads where there’s a cut and dried case of a cop straight up murdering a (usually black) person, have you ever seen one of the ‘good cops’ post that they wish they could arrest the guy themselves and see him in jail?
I agree its the “Thin Blue Line”. If there was a culture of rooting out bad cops, I think that people would fear them far less.
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### Author:  [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/137 "2019-07-11T15:18:39Z")
In today’s news, the actions of another member of “America’s Finest”:
[A Florida cop planted meth on random drivers, police say. One lost custody of his daughter.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/11/florida-cop-meth-drugs-arrests-scandal/?utm_term=.fd36b0e1969b) ☹
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### Author:  [@Translucent\_Daydream](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Translucent_Daydream)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/138 "2019-07-11T15:28:52Z")
> [@robby](#):
>
> In today’s news, the actions of another member of “America’s Finest”:
>
> [A Florida cop planted meth on random drivers, police say. One lost custody of his daughter.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/11/florida-cop-meth-drugs-arrests-scandal/?utm_term=.fd36b0e1969b) ☹
Man that sounds a whole lot like this one in Baltimore [where the did the same thing.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/another-baltimore-police-body-cam-video-shows-officers-plant-drugs-n789396)
[Its been going on for years in Texas.](https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/snow-job/) I have a few lawyer friends and they say “NEVER CONSENT TO A SEARCH!!!”
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/139 "2019-07-11T15:32:33Z")
> [@robby](#):
>
> We had a local case where a mentally ill person off of his meds had a knife in his hand while standing in the middle of a field. He refused to drop the knife. The cops had him surrounded, but nobody was within 20-30 feet of him. He posed absolutely no danger to anyone other than himself. After a few minutes of this, the police opened fire on the man and killed him. ☹
>
> I read about cases like this all the time.
I hear about cases like this all the time. It’s funny, though, how often details emerge that work against the narrative of “poor beleaguered schizophrenic just standing there with a knife he refuses to drop, not threatening anyone, and the cops just stood around for a few minutes and then shot him”.
Not that I doubt you. It’s just that I am not quite willing to say “that’s so typical” unless I know that it happened as described first.
> [@](#):
>
> The police almost seem to be looking for a reason to use their guns to kill people, and the reason often simply boils down to their authority being questioned (even if it’s because the person is drunk, disturbed, mentally incapacitated, deaf, etc.).
And yet police shootings are quite rare - I wonder how that is.
> [@](#):
>
> And they wonder why people fear and distrust them?
I don’t. Police give out tickets, arrest people, and once in a great while shoot them, and most people don’t like being arrested, ticketed, or shot. Even if it is justified.
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2019, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-police/836309/140 "2019-07-11T16:14:25Z")
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> I hear about cases like this all the time. It’s funny, though, how often details emerge that work against the narrative of “poor beleaguered schizophrenic just standing there with a knife he refuses to drop, not threatening anyone, and the cops just stood around for a few minutes and then shot him”.
>
> Not that I doubt you. It’s just that I am not quite willing to say “that’s so typical” unless I know that it happened as described first.
I tried to find an article online giving details of the incident in question, but doing a Google search with keywords “Connecticut man knife killed police” literally turns up so many pages of more recent incidents that I haven’t been able to find it yet. I remember it very clearly, though…my wife was severely disturbed by the incident. It changed her whole outlook on the police.
In my searching, I did find these two interesting articles on the subject, though:
[_BBC_: Are US police too quick to shoot knife-wielding suspects?](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41314562)
[_Chicago Tribune_: When cops encounter knives, shooting is not the only option](https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/steve-chapman/ct-police-knives-guns-shooting-chapman-perspec-0406-md-20170405-column.html)
> [@Chicago Tribune](#):
>
> …People with knives are a topic of particular importance, as University of California at Berkeley criminologist Franklin Zimring documented in his recent book, “When Police Kill.” Police in America face a far higher risk of being killed on duty than police in Europe — because criminals here are far likelier to have guns. That difference accounts for the far higher rate of fatal shootings of police and by police in this country.
>
> The risk an officer faces of being killed with a knife, however, is the same on both sides of the Atlantic. In a typical year, the number of cops killed with knives in the United States matches the number killed in England and Wales: zero. Criminals kill more police with their hands and feet than with knives.
>
> But people armed with nothing but knives get killed by cops all the time in the United States — as many as 165 times per year, or more than three per week. In England and Wales — where sharp cutting instruments are no less available to criminals than they are here — there were only three fatal shootings of any kind by police between 2011 and 2015.
>
> Police in those places don’t kill people bearing knives — and they don’t get killed by people bearing knives. They rely on tactics that minimize their use of deadly force without putting their lives in peril. And that is where American law enforcement agencies have room for humane changes.
>
> In this country, a formula known as “the 21-foot rule” has shaped police responses. A 1983 article by a Salt Lake City police instructor said an attacker with a knife could close that distance before an officer could shoot. But the rule has little basis in actual experience. In six years of data, Zimring found no instance in which an assailant with a knife charged an officer and inflicted mortal wounds.
>
> Body armor has made a big difference. But as the Camden episode shows, cops can also protect themselves by staying back, with guns or Tasers in hand, while imploring the person to surrender. A training guide published last year by the Police Executive Research Forum noted that with methods of this kind, police can buy time to build rapport with the subject and get other officers and equipment to the scene to effect a bloodless resolution.
>
> The guide notes that officers sometimes ask how long they should let such encounters go on. The answer: “As long as it takes.”
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> …And yet police shootings are quite rare - I wonder how that is.
[More than 1,000 people per year were killed by police in 2015 and 2016.](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/05/the-57375-years-of-life-lost-to-police-violence/559835/) That doesn’t sound all that rare. Of those, 165 killings a year were of people armed only with knives, if the statistics from the _Chicago Tribune_ article are correct.
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