I’m a boring middle-aged, middle-class white guy so I don’t feel particularly fearful or nervous around cops. I certainly believe that we need real reforms and perhaps a strong rethinking in how we view the entire system but, in my day to day, cops are just what keeps me from exceeding 10 over the speed limit.
I can’t speak for others, but I wouldn’t say that I feel a ritualized respect for authority, so much as an acknowledgement that my encounters with the police tend to have better outcomes when I don’t compromise their sense of safety. If I’m ever asked to consent to a vehicle/home search or provide info that could incriminate me, I will have no problem refusing.
‘I read it somewhere a long time ago’ doesn’t strike me as a very good cite.
Plus which a particular personality trait can, in many cases, be used for either good purposes or bad ones. Stubbornness, for example, can be very useful or very harmful, depending on what it’s applied to. So can a desire for rules to be adhered to, or protectiveness, or quite a lot of other traits.
There are certainly good cops as well as bad ones; and for that matter good police departments as well as bad ones.
As an older, middle-class white guy I have no problems around cops, in fact, I used to sit on lots of interview panels with very senior cops. However, around where I work the local cops seem to spend an inordinate amount of time harassing people for being young and/or foreign looking. So I think if I were young I would have a very leery regard for them.
No real issues with cops. Had some problems as a teen that drew their attention, but that was deserved. I volunteered as an auxiliary cop for a couple of years, so got to see just what kind of shit they put up with at times, and how generally boring the job can be. It was educational. As with most any profession, there are assholes wearing police uniforms. Even at the small department where I volunteered, there was the stereotypical alpha male bully, as well as the Barney Fife who could barely operate his cuffs. But most of them were professionals.
You may want to read a couple of articles on the use of deadly force by US police before you reach a final conclusion on this point.
For example:
American police shoot and kill far more people than their peers in other countries
And, the people killed by the police tend to be disproportionately black people:
There are huge racial disparities in how US police use force
None of that is unnecessary. The dumb polyester uniforms that make you look like a businessman with no fashion sense are totally impractical. Fine for office work but anytime you walked in the woods so many thread pulls that you have to buy a new uniform. Every time you have to put hands on someone, tears, new uniform. I don’t know what you mean by “fatigues.” We have uniforms that are cut in the style of BDUs but they are Navy blue and have a bright yellow strip down the side of the pants. They can never be confused with an Army uniform. They are more comfortable, easier to maintain and much more suited to the work we are expected to do.
MRAPs are not tanks. Armored vehicles aren’t very useful day to day. Until that one day when they are the difference between life and death. I don’t particularly like MRAPs for police work. They are oversized and too heavy for many situations. The free price tag does not take into account the cost to maintain which can be very high. A Bearcat is a much better vehicle for police since it’s designed for that. The price tag up front may be too high for many budgets.
Yeah that’s total bullshit. I’ve worked with a very wide range of personalities and backgrounds my entire career. There may be effective facades needed to use in certain situations but doesn’t require all one type of person.
Thanks for the responses everyone.
As a tangent: How do you teach your kids/students/grandkids/younger generation to regard cops? Do you teach them to be trusting of them, or to be wary and on their guard around them? (no right/wrong answers)
I’m yet another middle-aged white guy who has never been harassed by the police and has no particular reason to fear law enforcement.
With that said, I don’t have a particularly high opinion of the police. This is because of recent events in the news, and also because it matches my own experience. For one, virtually every police officer I have ever had any interaction with is completely hypocritical with respect to enforcing the law. Take speeding – the cars traveling fastest on the highway are invariably police cars traveling 20-30 mph over the speed limit, and they never have their lights and sirens on.
My other main interaction with police is using them for traffic control for road construction projects. The cops mandate that they be used instead of traffic flaggers, whether it is warranted or not, and routinely pad their bills. For example, they get paid for a minimum of 8 hours, even if they leave early, and if a job goes longer than 8 hours (perhaps because of a lunch break), they get paid for 12 hours. They refuse to correct errors on their bills. The vast majority of them don’t even direct traffic, but sit in their cars all day. It’s a complete racket. :dubious:
You’re kidding, right? I’m a veteran, and it gets tiring having people “thanking me for my service,” (even though it’s well-intentioned). It’s much the same with law enforcement.
As for a specific example, there was a Connecticut state trooper who was killed on duty last year when he rear-ended a slow-moving tractor trailer in the right lane of the highway. While there were some other factors that contributed to his death, like the danger of tractor trailer underride and the fact that the rig was traveling very slowly up a hill, the fact remains that the trooper was traveling at an excessive rate of speed (83 mph) without lights and sirens, nor was he wearing a seatbelt, while working an all-night double-shift and appearing to be exhausted, according to the accident report. If it had been anyone other than a cop, he would have been blamed for the accident. Instead they put the blame on the truck driver, and proceeded to do this over-the-top hero worship of the trooper who was killed, including a 30-mile funeral procession and lining the highways with police and firefighters paying their respects. I’m sorry that the trooper was killed, but again, if it had been a civilian driver who had rear-ended a tractor trailer at 80+ mph, you know they would have been blamed for the accident.
Seldom? Based on quality surveys I suppose? I’ve experienced both respect and disrespect as a teacher in the US, but I’m not drawing any conclusions from that.
And police are disliked by lots of people in other countries too, but other than authoritarian regimes I know of none where there are such a large number of people who glorify them to the extent you do in the US.
No, I don’t agree with that. And this is not the place for a discussion of why I disagree and why I think you’re putting forth a false dichotomy.
It really depends on where you are in the USA as to how the police were.
When I lived in Texas, I had 9 (nine, yes fucking 9) different departments patrolling the outside of my house. They would arrest anyone brown, and, one off duty even manged to kill the valedictorian of the high school by stomping his head against a curb. I had 9 bogus tickets when I was in high school alone, all thrown out of court (except for the 60 dollar fee, which is why they wrote bogus tickets to begin with according to the judge throwing out the tickets.) I have been pulled over at gun point only to have my head shoved into fire ant piles and then let go without even a warning. I have had tickets written to me, while walking down the sidewalk toting a minifridge to move in a girl into her apartment, for driving past a stop sign that didn’t exist on an intersection that doesn’t exist between two roads that run parallel to each other. These police forces used to make the evening news. Illegal stops, busting Mexicans with drywall dust as “cocaine” and extorting high school kids for blow jobs instead of “calling their parents.” I had two friends pass the police academy just to quit on their first day of being a cop because it was so crooked. Brown people would have to take a white person to them to court because they felt too nervous going in alone. I had quite a few times sitting with people on the college football team while they were getting their court date done with the tickets they got written.
When I lived in Oregon, they were nice, smart, cool headed, and funny. Totally competent. They just oozed “calm down” with the people that they interacted with. I lived right next to a school that had a guy on a nex tdoor roof aiming a gun at it. They did what they could before having to take him out. The cops didn’t feel like heroes for taking him out, they were upset that they had to use their guns on someone.
In Colorado, there seems to be a mix of Texas bullshit and Oregon coolness. I don’t have an opinion.
I can say though, as a guy that grew up poor white trash, for those people that don’t worry about the police because they are white:
When there aren’t any minorities to fuck with, they will come for the poor. We were routinely singled out because our cars were registered to the “poor white trash zip code.”
I marked other, but the poll doesn’t show the results. When I try to reload the thread, it says “I already voted, press the back button for the results.” I don’t get the results.
I used to feel bad for the good cops that get the bad vibes from people that have dealt with bad cops before. I don’t anymore, its their fucking job to report bad behavior instead of being a pussy about it. Its literally their job.
The post immediately before this one has a woman saying she thanks every policeman she sees for his service. I think that’s the sort of thing being talked about.
My experience with the police on the UK is that they are completely useless. When i report a come they do nothing about it. Once they phoned me up too see if I’d solved it myself.
When my kids were little I initially taught them “Mr Policeman is your friend”, because that was what you did back then. When my kids were in grade-school I put the brakes on that and taught them to never talk to the police without first consulting with a parent/lawyer. A friend who is a cop wore his uniform and helped “role-play” how to respond to police questions.
I don’t have kids, but if I did, I’d teach them that when it comes to traffic stops, this page has good advice on how to handle yourself. It’s motorcyclist-specific, but the same basic rules apply to car drivers: above all, do your best to make the officer feel like you don’t represent a threat to his safety. Be courteous, keep your hands parked in the open, and when reaching for requested documents, do so gently, and/or ask for permission beforehand (e.g. “wallet’s in my back pocket, do you mind if I reach for it?”).
An officer who is detaining you (during a traffic stop or any other encounter) is not your friend, and if all goes well, you will never see him again when the encounter is over. Antagonizing a cop is a bad idea, but you should not cede your rights in a misguided effort to make him like you. If he asks you if there are guns or drugs in the car, you can and should decline to answer (if you unequivocally say no, but your passenger has quietly stashed his meth/9mm in your center console, you might have a big problem). If he asks you why you won’t answer, just say you value your privacy. If he asks for your permission to search your car, you can and should decline to answer (if asked why, again, you value your privacy); if he claims to have reasonable articulable suspicion, do not try to physically intervene in the ensuing search, but do not verbally consent. If he asks you for information that could/would incriminate you, it is your constitutional right to refuse to answer. If he sounds irritated or angry, and tells you that not answering his questions and not allowing a vehicle search makes you look suspicious/guilty to him, that’s fine; again, you should remain courteous, but he’s not your friend and you do not have to make him like you.
Under no circumstances should you flee from the police, whether in a vehicle or on foot. No matter what you have or haven’t done, this will just make the situation worse. If they tell you there’s a warrant for your arrest, but you don’t think there is, do not try to wrestle while they’re putting cuffs on you; it will just make the situation worse. Sort it out in court later; it’ll be a pain in the ass, but it’s better than getting slammed to the pavement/tazed/dog-bit/OC’d so that they can get the cuffs on you, and then still having to sort it out in in court later.
You may occasionally encounter a cop who behaves in an unprofessional manner. He may be condescending, vulgar, or even physically abusive. It’s a shitty deal when this happens, but you will not make the situation better by lowering your own standard of behavior. Continue to be courteous and cooperative, but maintain your rights: do not consent to a vehicle search, and do not incriminate yourself with your words.
Involved in a car crash? Witnessed, or been victim of a crime? Call the cops. If you are ever hesitant to do so because you might expose yourself to arrest, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate your life choices.
I’m totally in the demographic of ‘non-threatening’. My encounters with police have been mainly benign, except one dick head traffic cop who wrote me a ticket for, literally, driving very slowly about thirty feet past a detour sign to ask him a question instead of parking and walking there. The sign was tiny and behind a bush and he was writing lots of tickets.
Other encounters include the traffic cop who flagged me down for answering my cell phone but let me off because I promised to never do it again (I haven’t). The cop on lunch break who opened the door for me into a cafe and when I thanked him said, with a straight face, “just doing my job, ma’am.” His partner snickered. The local chief of police (actually he may be the entire force) of the minuscule town I now live in who drives up to the top of our gravel dead-end road to check on my old widowed neighbor every few days, and admire the view from up here.
I’m not black or hispanic. I don’t live in a city. That makes a hell of a difference, here in the US anyway.
I’ve noticed that there seems to be a very much “us vs. them” type of mentality among a lot of police- stuff like talking about ‘civilians’ (hint: they’re civilians too. The dichotomy is civilians vs. military, not civilians/LEO), and that leads to a certain way that they approach the general public that puts people really on edge and feel uncomfortable.
Dumb-ass stuff like putting their hand on their gun when they’re walking up to a middle-aged white guy to give him a ticket for having an expired inspection sticker, for example. How am I supposed to interpret that? That’s a pretty aggressive move on the cop’s part- it makes me (a middle-aged, law abiding, white guy) feel extremely on edge and jittery. Which probably feeds back to the cop, and makes him wonder why I’m so jittery.
The onus shouldn’t be on the citizen to make the cop feel comfortable and non-threatened, and that’s where the problem seems to lie in my opinion. I feel like the current cop attitude is not one of being part of the community, but rather set apart from it, and they view everyone as potential criminals, especially minorities and/or teenagers. And since cops have a lot of immediate power in terms of arresting you, detaining you, using violence, etc… people will be on edge if they perceive that the cop feels threatened by them by their very presence, as opposed to feeling threatened for a legitimate reason.
That said, the LEOs that I’ve known in non-work situations have been great people. In particular, the FBI agent I hung out with one time was a really cool, fun guy.
I’d still say it’s a ridiculous statement if that’s meant as a typical example of US attitudes toward police. I’ve never heard of anyone doing that. In a 300+ million person country there are exceptions to every rule but that’s certainly not standard.
The idea that the US is a highly conformist society with ‘ritualized respect for authority’ is completely ludicrous as a general statement.
I answered ‘I feel good or OK around them’. My free form answer would be ‘mainly I don’t care much about the police as far as my own interactions with them’ but I think that goes more under ‘OK’ than ‘I feel bad around them’. I don’t welcome the sight of a police car by the side of the highway, for one thing it makes a lot of idiots who aren’t really speeding (enough for there to be any likelihood the cops pulls out after them) slam on the brakes and that’s not safe. Also I like to drive a little aggressively on less traveled winding roads and I’d rather there not be police around to worry about. Seeing police when I’m on foot walking around where I live I have a 99% neutral feeling. It’s a low crime area, and the pretty diverse police force around here has a reasonable reputation for not giving people in the very diverse population a hard time in a discriminatory way. So they are just people doing their job, like anyone else.
I also don’t in general take on other people’s subjective grievances as if my own. Where abuse by the police is documented I want the officers responsible disciplined, fired or sent to prison as the circumstances warrant, and the whole force overhauled where that’s appropriate. But if say you found someone, and you undoubtedly could, in my area who says ‘oh no the police hassled me because of my color etc. don’t listen to that guy saying it’s not common around here’ then that’s their opinion. And problems can be real but also get overblown, overblown doesn’t mean imaginary. But there’s a perceived value now in a large part of US society in claiming superior socio-political virtue (which is now extremely important to some people’s self image) if you are, inter alia, extremely critical of the police even if it’s not stuff you actually objectively know and have quantified accurately. Which again to me makes a statement implying that the main single thing to say about US society is it has a ‘ritualized respect for authority’ ridiculous. The most extreme benefit of the doubt you could give that statement IMO is that it’s a half truth.
Am British: white, male, middle-class, law-abiding, 70 years old. Have never personally experienced bad treatment by any police officer in my own country – a few tense situations (I’ve done, when younger, some non-criminal but strange things), but in those, police behaved with, in my view, total correctness. I don’t feel uncomfortable around police personnel. That said: I have heard at second-hand, of a considerable amount of bad stuff experienced, undeservedly, by people at the hands of British police – and I perceive that things can thus vary, according to what part of society one is identified with. It would seem pretty well self-evident that police work is, by its nature, one of those occupations which attract more than their fair share of bullies.
I’ve never been to the US; but have heard / read in various places, of a good deal of pretty horrifying stuff done by US police. Met a couple of years ago, an American guy who struck me as intelligent and perceptive: he opined that the majority of US police officers are excellent people who truly wish to “serve and protect”, and act accordingly. There is, though, a disconcertingly large minority who would seem to have things wrong with them, causing them to behave badly toward the public or various sections thereof – to do, maybe, with their being corrupt, and / or with their just wishing to behave evilly to people, with a “licence” to do a lot of same without being called to account.
I’ve had no personal issues with the police, so I’m not ‘bothered’ by police presence in general.
I’m a 51 year old, middle-class, white, hetero male of Western European descent…which just may possibly play into my experience…
Seeing police annoys me. I take yearly trips overseas, and one of the first things I notice when I get back to America is the police. They scare me. They can literally arrest me for no reason and hold me in jail for an amount of time. They can say “I thought he had a gun” when I am reaching for my cell phone and shoot me. And I’m a white male. I can’t possibly imagine how it feels to be a minority here 