Cops are cowards who tend to shoot random people when they feel threatened. They feel threatened by people who are armed . . . or apparently armed . . . or possibly armed . . . or unarmed. Now, if you are asking if I want these types of people sent to my current location, after they’ve been told there is imminent danger, then the answer is “no”. If you are nearly certain you WILL die if the cops don’t come and “save you”, then you have little to lose. They might not kill you. They might even help. But, only under such dire circumstances. And I wouldn’t expect much good to come of it. What’s the old saying? “When seconds count, the cops are there in minutes”.
They don’t limit themselves to people. A cop shot a chihuahua last year. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.
I checked that I felt fine in the poll above because I don’t feel personally threatened. Cops have helped me more than they’ve harmed me. That said, give enough guys guns and put them in sketchy situations 40+ hours/week and you have a recipe for Bad Things.
Non-American Doper, lived all over the place, visited the USA but never lived there. Voted on the basis of the non-American police I have known (feel OK).
Non-US: British, Japanese, German. Polish police. All OK, German police are actually very friendly and polite.
Been to France, no dealings with the police, but they have a reputation for quickly turning very mean.
US: two visits to the USA in the nineties. No issues or interaction.
BUT, on the basis of what I read, I would be wary of US cops now.
It is not quite the police, but one reason for not going back back is the TSA and the policing at the airports.
The entire white supremacist population is bad by the very definition of being a white supremacist. All murderers are bad. All racists are bad. All child molesters are bad. The entire population of violent rapists is bad. All abusive assholes are bad. People in these groups are bastards by definition. These, as well as your Nazi example, are ridiculous tautologies.
On the other hand, there is the police. These are members of an organization that is supposed to be protecting and serving the community. When they do this well we say that they are properly doing their job as police officers. It’s when they fail to execute their duties properly that we say they are bad cops. Police by definition are none of the things you accuse them of being. Some cops are racist, abusive assholes. But being a racist, abusive asshole is not part of the job description and is not the purpose or definition of a police officer. So, assuming that all police officers are scum or bastards simply because some of them are is no better than assuming all minorities are criminals.
There are police officers who aspired to work for internal affairs, going after corrupt and abusive police officers. Internal Affairs detectives are cops. By your logic, they are bastards? What about the detectives who had to put in their years on patrol so that they could finally start investigating rape or child abuse cases? These detectives are scum? They’re bastards? Or were they only these things while they were on patrol? See how such a thought process doesn’t make sense. A police department is not the SS.
Your analogy is horribly flawed; almost comically so. If someone is a white supremacist willing to commit torture, murder and genocide on behalf of his country in order to advance his cause, then he is the perfect example of what a Nazi is supposed to be. So being a good Nazi inherently makes someone a bad person by definition. Being a good cop, on the other hand, doesn’t make someone a bad person. A cop doing everything the way he’s supposed to do it is not scum. Assuming every cops is incapable of doing his job correctly, assuming every cop is a racist, assuming every cop is a power-hungry, abusive asshole… that’s ignorant.
But you fail to recognize the fact that not all cops support and protect those who do. There are plenty of police officers who are out to put an end to such evil within their organization and they take pride in doing so. Just doing a quick search on your three mentioned examples:
Shot a dog: Are all the police officers who investigated this cop, testified in front of the grand jury, and executing the arrest warrant all bastards as well?
Grenaded a babyThis incident went in front of a state grand jury which failed to produce an indictment. So federal agents conducted their own investigation and charged one of the deputies after finding she made false statements on the original arrest affidavit. Federal agents–sworn law enforcement officers–did their best to put this deputy away. They testified against her and, along with federal prosecutors, tried to convince a jury of non-cops, that this deputy committed a crime (three crimes actually). The jury acquitted her on all charges. Are all of the cops who tried to have her put in jail all bastards? Are they all scum? Is it their fault the jury did not find her guilty?
Murdered a black personThis officer was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Do you think all of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies involved in the arrest and investigation of this Palm Beach Gardens Police officer are all bastards as well?
Was there a group of Nazis who would arrest and convict fellow Nazis for gassing Jews? Of course not. Cops =/= Nazis. That shouldn’t have to be explained.
Wow, that was horrible. Fortunately, that officer was charged and an arrest warrant was issued. Hopefully he is convicted.
He has pled not guilty. I heard also that he is now working in law enforcement with another department, but was not able to verify this.
I am a honky-American.
I know a few people who have been victims of bad cops.
I know a lot of people who have been victims of criminals.
I have never been assaulted by a person in uniform.
On three different occasions, I have been assaulted by people in civilian clothes.
As a result, I tend to feel safer around strange cops, than around strangers in general.
Oh, not only you; a lot of non-Americans have no idea what the laws of their own countries say about owning and using weapons, or what yours say. They tend to not give a shit about the first part and to believe that “in the US, anybody can buy any gun anywhere at any time”. One of the proposals floated by the trolls which have formed Spain’s newest party, Vox, was precisely to copy the second amendment: people who are familiar with our regulations opined :rolleyes:, a few people worried that this would mean no more mental health checks, but in general the proposal had very little echo.
You guys felt the need to write that right down because you came from a legal system where “bearing weapons” was treated as a privilege. Spain never had such a concept: we look at weapons as something dangerous which like every dangerous thing needs to be regulated, but the right to have and use a weapon was never limited to “lords and those who have been issued weapons in the service of their lord”. Completely different history, completely different way of coming by our respective regulations, but the ultimate difference is in how we perceive weapons.
I’m a middle aged white American male, and I’m very law abiding and a very non-aggressive driver. I tend to be in the population that American police treat well. Those rare times I interact with police officers have mostly been positive experiences, though I have been mildly mistreated a couple of times. When I witness something seriously bad happening, I don’t hesitate to call them.
But I have too many friends who have been very seriously mistreated by the police. I don’t generally trust them as a result. And it bothers me that people who are black generally shouldn’t try calling the police for help, because I think safe law enforcement is something that should be available to everybody, and sometimes it’s needed.
A family friend years ago visiting Philadelphia from England was positively in love with the United States. He kept waxing poetic about what a wonderful place this was. Then the Philadelphia police grabbed him off the street one night, beat him up quite badly, took him to an unfamiliar part of the city, and dumped him in a dark alley. He was literally never the same.
A dear friend of mine who is Mexican would get pulled over and harassed again and again and again, especially when she was with her first spouse, who is also Mexican. Now that she is married to somebody white, this hasn’t happened in quite a while.
A close friend who is black was pulled over on the highway for no apparent reason and detained for something like an hour, made to stand beside the car, worried sick about what they would do to him.
Many of my friends who are not white tell me that this is what their life is like.
Too many people are brutally taught that this is not their country, these are not their police, and they are not first class citizens.
So, I have a bad feeling about police. Of course I don’t assume that they are all the same in any way. Feelings, and fear in particular, are not about blanket statements. They’re about self preservation, and in the case of this white man, caring about other people who are the focus of so much of the mistreatment.
I wish there were some other kind of authority force that was available to protect people of color from the police. Every time I see somebody black or Hispanic pulled over and being detained, especially by multiple police, I worry that I should be stopping and recording video to try to protect them – but for all I know that would escalate things and make it worse for them.
Middle aged suburban white guy: Any time I’ve interacted with the Blue Man Group it’s been copacetic. I know when I’ve been busted for speeding and am pulled over with my license out often before the cop has started to pull up behind me roadside. I’ve had to chat with them from time to time when the kids screwed up or when some crime or other happened in the neighborhood. I’m generally respectful, and they treat me like the guy who butters their bread and doesn’t give them any hassle. The last time I had a somewhat unpleasant encounter was over 30 years ago when I was a tad drunk and disorderly (and wayyyy underage)–but I didn’t get arrested or cited or anything, just a well-deserved talking to.
But here’s the thing. I know why I’m treated well, and not being a jackass is just a small part of it. And when they’re polite to ME it makes me feel like a scummy coward because I know how they treat my darker neighbors whose grasp of English isn’t great. Also, it’s not just the policemen themselves that get my hackles up, it’s their roles as recruiters for the prison industry that really gets me on edge. Even the best meaning cop becomes complicit as the entry point for a corrupt “justice” system. When I see a cop car parked in front of someone’s home I don’t think, “Oh good, something bad happened but it’s going to all work out.” I think, “Something bad happened, and now even more lives are about to get ruined.”
At best, they just don’t make anything better, and so are a parasitic institution.
Be careful. Some of the more paranoid cops will suspect that you were reaching for a weapon instead of your license. 
Which is why products like this are being developed;
I have been bashing the police a lot in this thread (or the southern USA ones at least.) I wanted to add that our house did get robbed once when I was in high school. I called the police. They didn’t send the beat cops, they sent detectives.
Detectives were professional and really good at their job. We had our stuff back (keep in mind, we were poor so its not like we had a set of jewels or something) within hours. They found the people that broke into our house and we were able to take our stuff out of their car on the side of the road after they took pictures of it. One of the beat cops that pulled over these people had them sitting in ant piles hand cuffed. My dad went over to one of the guys and started to pull him out of the ant pile. One of the cops grabbed at my dad, and he turned around and told the beat cop, “Hey asshole. You can take him to jail but don’t make these fire ants eat his dick off. What the fucks wrong with you?” One of the other beat cops started into kicking his hand cuffed accomplice in the back. The detectives grabbed that cop and took him off behind a Surburban and all I could hear was hollering.
I was talking with one of the detectives about how different they acted at the time and he said to me something I won’t ever forget:
“Good cops don’t stay beat cops very long. They make detective.”
Depends on the situation and on the individual police officer. I had one point a gun at my head for not using my turn signal in a known crime neighborhood, quite the asshole as I had no prior record and wasn’t acting in a threatening manner. On the other extreme a police officer came to my aid, saved my life andarrested the person who stabbed me. YMMV as well. The police are people just like any other group of people. Good ones, bad ones and the whole spectrum in between.
AFAIK, an officer having a hand ready on a holstered weapon is standard practice during initial approach to a vehicle they’ve just stopped. at that point the officer has no idea whether you intend to cooperate or shoot him in the face, so he has to be ready to respond quickly if a threat becomes apparent. This might not be necessary if there weren’t so many people who do shoot cops in the face during traffic stops. I’d probably be less happy about cops if standard practice during every traffic stop were to order people out of the car, prone them out at gunpoint and then cuff them for the duration of the stop. But simply being ready for action? That seems pretty reasonable to me; being ready to respond to a threat is not aggressive, it’s defensive.
This is true. The difference is that police have powers of legal detention and extreme latitude in using firearms. A relatively small percentage of over-reactors can do a whole lot of damage.
I’ve lived in England all my life and am used to unarmed, polite cops.
It may matter that I’m white, law-abiding and respectful.
I’ve had maybe 10 fairly brief encounters with police in my life. A few sobriety checkpoints, a few check-ins when stopped on the side of the road with car trouble, a few times getting pulled over for a minor traffic infraction, etc.
In 2 of those 10 encounters, the police were raging assholes. Given the amount of power they have, a 20% total asshole rate seems way too high. I’m a middle class white guy, so I can only imagine how shitty lots of black people have it.
I am uncomfortable around the police.
Being ready is one thing, but putting your hand on a deadly weapon when you’ve pulled someone over for an expired registration sticker is quite another.
There’s absolutely NO reason for them to put their hands on their weapons at traffic stops. I’d wager that it’s another case of flawed risk assessment fanned by this whole us vs. them attitude that has cops behaving like everyone not a cop is a criminal. I wouldn’t even know where to begin, but I’d guess that the number of traffic stop shootings vs. the number of traffic stops is on the order of plane crashes vs. flights. Vanishingly tiny. Enough to where putting hands on weapons is a paranoid and absurd response, and is certainly not justified by whatever fear the cop is experiencing. And if he’s that fearful, he’s in the wrong job!
And that’s my point- cops have collectively decided that the general public is a threat, and react accordingly. And more so when it’s people of color.
Not to put too fine a point on it, if traffic cops were unarmed, then the wicked evil-doer they are approaching will know the cop poses no more threat of arrest than a mailman or paramedic. Nothing to be gained from shooting any of those, no threat to neutralize.
Also, if cops were unarmed they might just pay a little more attention to de-escalation as opposed to outright situation dominance. Because combative, belligerent criminal types respond so well to being dominated.