Possibly not in her case, based on her remarks. But I’ve known people like that. Largely due to peer pressure. I was kind of like that as a young punk. My friends were all like “fucking pigs,” so I was like “yeah, fucking pigs.” Then I got to know some and thought “Hey! These guys aren’t so bad after all.”
Voted “other” because how I feel about the police doesn’t quite fit the options given. On the positive side: The police do an absolutely necessary job, one that is frequently thankless, and on the whole they do it well and the majority of police seem to be motivated by dedication and compassion. On the negative side: people are people, and there are few things uglier than when pride, egotism and self-righteousness are backed by power. Yes, the police do represent legitimate authority, and doubtless they get sick of jerks mouthing off to them. But too frequently cops take the attitude that their badge makes them infallible and unquestionable. Their first instinct when in a confrontation with the public seems to be “Shut up and do what you’re told, you goddamn peasant”. Their second instinct, when accused of wrongdoing seems to be “Cover Our Ass”. A bad cop is just about the worst thing in the world.
Here in Minneapolis Minnesota there is the continuing repercussions of a now-defunct Gang Taskforce that used it authority to loot gang members- or anyone accused of being a gang member- and was recently revealed to have covered it’s collective ass by either never keeping or destroying records, and maintaining a wall of silence. Constant oversight is the only thing that keeps a police force from turning into the biggest and best armed gang in town.
On a purely personal level, I once had a cop verbally abuse me while he wrote me a ticket for jaywalking, and threatened me with arrest when I suggested that he was being abusive. I went home and broke down and cried. It was like being six years old and being at the mercy of the schoolyard bully again.
My dad was a cop, and I grew up with a positive view of them. But it has been whittled away bit by bit by various jerk cops.
I was ticketed for jaywalking, for crossing against a red light. But this was at an intersection where all the lights went red and all the walk signs lit at the same time. I went to court with a photograph of this, but the cop did not show and the judge dismissed it.
I was picked up because a car backfired. The cop car driving past said I had been throwing firecrackers - this in spite of the fact that I had no fireworks, lighter, matches or anything (I loathe the smell of sulfur and leave fireworks to professionals). This was all made clear, but not until I had been dragged ten miles away to a police station. No bus, no ride, and a shithead cop claiming that there was no way I could be taken back to where I had started for “insurance reasons”.
I called the cops on the “Church” of Scientology running their scam on Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza. When they showed up, the two cops seperated us, one talking to the scienos, one talking to me. The scienos, as L. Ron instructed them, lied and claimed I had been yelling and swearing - despite the fact that not one witness said so other than the two Scienos. The cops cuffed me, throwing me to the ground and giving me a black eye. I spent the night in the city jail.
The last was possibly the most ironic. A friend of mine owns the company that supplies the badges to the Kansas City Missouri Police Department. When he bought the company, he had an open house and invited the KCPD. He had a band, food, beer. For his trouble, a bunch of badges were stolen - specifically ones for another client town that looked a lot like the one the KCPD used. These badges are used by crooked cops so they can flash a badge that looks like their real one, but they can have a legal defense that they didn’t abuse their KCPD badge.
On the other hand, my few encounters with Chicago cops have all been positive.
I think the shitty treatment by KC cops has been due to the fact that I have long hair.
Back when the G20 summit was being hosted in Toronto, rioters were torching cop cars and smashing up windows, and public opinion–including mine–was more or less on the cops’ side.
Then this happened. My feelings are more mixed now, but on balance I still believe that 95% of our cops are out there to do the right thing.
I picked other since my opinion is sort of between 2 and 3. I have a lot of respect for them, and there are a lot of areas in which they’re heros, but OTOH they are only human and are not infallible, so yeah, there are some idiots out there as well. I don’t get the hatred for cops (or any other group for that matter).
There’s not a single profession, ethnicity, alternative lifestyle advocate, gender, religion or what have you that doesn’t have its bad apples and idiots.
In my area? The one I live in now? They’re cool, I guess. The one I grew up in? Fuck them. Fuck them hard.
Overall, not impressed (locally). I think the baseline is probably “just a job”, which negative outliers being “I have the power to screw you over” and the positive being “I will save the world”.
I’ve been given a few not deserved tickets. Which…
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Fine, if it’s an honest appraisal, I’ll take my lumps but…
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If it’s the product of quotas, etc., then bullshit. Cops should not be bothering themselves with harassing people to make quotas, or over bullshit laws that are meaningless. If there is a two lane highway that some fuckwad decided should be 45 mph for no good reason, they are retarded, and cops pulling over anyone for going less than 55 mph are also fuckwads. Especially in incorporated townships, where there tend to be extra patrol cars enforcing code, if you are just pulling people over to justify the existence of way more than needed patrol cars, then fuck you. Or if you are actually bothering to hassle people over consensual acts that are illegal due solely to antiquated busybodies, at the expense of investigating actual crimes, then also fuck you. And don’t get me started on those areas where code enforcement is just a money pit for local budgets…
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Praise be to you, cop who caught me on a technicality, but instead of giving me a ticket, pointed out that turning onto a secondary street without stopping first might endanger people on that block. I realized, hey you are right in principle, not just in legal technicality, and also, I’m grateful to just get a verbal warning instead of a ticket. So When coming to that corner in the future, I’ve been mindful of the fact that I should make a complete stop before turning at that corner and be mindful of kids on that street.
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Many curses upon you, cops and “judge?” involved in my subway case. As I was going through a subway entrance, my friend who was having trouble activating his card decided on a whim to push through behind me, despite it being super obvious that there was a group of three cops on the opposite platform, and also despite the fact that I would have just handed him my card. I did “the right thing” and stayed where I was while the friend ran off. So the cops brought me down for ‘aiding’ him. I told them that I wasn’t expecting him to do that, and that the video surveillance would clearly show that, but not only did they refuse to consult the video, (“we don’t have to do that”) but one of the cops actually gave me a hard time. Like, tried to guilt me. When I went to my hearing it was some tiny office with just some not-really a judge and me. She informed me that police testimony was assumed as a matter of law to be true, and that I had no right to access to the video surveillance. Total fucking bullshit.
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Was asked by my Aunt to check up on my grandma since I was geographically closest. No answer, so I called 911. Boy they took their time. Finally one random cop showed up. Didn’t know what to do. So he called for a unit with a battering device, which also took it’s time. Finally the second unit convinced the cop they should break in, and they discovered my Nana’s dead body. Now granted, she probably died late the previous evening or early in the morning. Still, the huge delay of emergency services, and lack of knowledge of procedure was very scary, had it been an actual matter of life or death.
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I’ve had friends and friend-of-family cops. And certainly there are ideal cops, or competent pragmatic police departments. And definitely cops in certain situations, or certain areas or department are forced to face horrible risk. But…
Generally, I’ve only encountered cops who are fairly lazy, just want to write some tickets to make a quota and then go hang out somewhere.
And in the media, cops seem to care more about making their quota or manifesting their power even if it’s not actual law and they aren’t demonstrating any knowledge of the law (stopping people taking photos for no legal reason). I’m sure police auctions aren’t helping anything.
We really need to get back to a model of policing that has as it’s core a basic principle of helping people rather than being adversarial. To do that, obviously, we need to have a legal system that supports that.
Great summary!
I’ve always been let go, even when I was clearly guilty of something. Maybe because I can pass for white (I’m actually part hispanic), or maybe because every cop I’ve come into contact with was lazy or incompetent. Maybe I’m just a damn good liar.
A cop walked onto my property once without identifying himself. I was a bit drunk and stoned at the time. I told him he was lucky I didn’t have a gun, because I would probably have shot him. I had been harassed by my junkie neighbors before, I told the cop this, but he became indignant and uncooperative. After a minute of haggling with him, another officer showed up and asked if I wanted to file a complaint. I told him of course not, and made them both a cup of coffee. We chatted for a little while. Those were good men. It could have ended badly for all of us, but they diffused the situation very professionally.
The big difference is that for most other groups, their assholery doesn’t involve the possibility of your getting arrested, beaten or shot; and the presumption that they’re in the right because forcibly confronting people is their duty.
In NYC nine out of ten people stopped and frisked by the police are minorities. That creates a whole different world for minorities that most white people don’t understand.
Talk to any criminal defense lawyer and they should tell you that the police pretty regularly abuse 4th amendment search and seizure laws. Anyone who looks like they can be a drug dealer will get searched without any reasonable suspicion of drug possession. Unfortunately that burden falls heavily on poor minorities.
Every once in a while some kid in the ghetto will get upset about being searched for no reason. He’ll get pissed at the cops. The cops will get pissed back and the kid will end up losing and hating cops forever.
I can’t really blame police officers for this. They have quotas to fill and jobs they want to keep. The easiest way to do this is, if you don’t know any better, is to randomly search poor minorities. The low salary for police officers pretty much ensures that it will be a blue collar job. Something done by people without a decent education. You give people who don’t know any better a job with so much responsibility and pressure and you’re pretty much guaranteed bad results.
That’s a remarkably odd and unfair thing to say about a poster who is admitting that they have trouble being objective because of their personal experiences, rather than because of some ideological reason. That’s kind of like chastising a poster who admits they are wary of all men, and therefore have trouble being unbiased about gender related debates, because they had once been raped, and telling them “how can you hate men? How do you think humans would reproduce without men?”
I’ve had my share of, if not horrible like some, certainly unfair and dickish experience with police. Now of course I realize that 1) police are people and for the most part probably exhibit the same range of behaviors as other groups and 2) unless you are calling the police, you will tend to encounter them when you catch their attention for some reason, which of course is going to make the encounter inherently adversarial.
Now, I try to be logical and reasonable, I certainly wouldn’t claim that my personal experiences are universal, and I’m not going to assume that every future encounter is going to be negative. But on an emotional level, it’s perfectly natural to be wary of situations that bear a resemblance to a past experience that was negative. And the OP is explicitly about personal experience and feelings, so it’s doubly relevant.
The difference is that an asshole plumber might ruin your day, an asshole cop will ruin your life.
I will agree with thus except to delete overwhelming. Which is my problem with the police, actually. Most of them – say at least 2/3rds – are fine folks. But there’s a sizable minority who are bastards, and it’s (a) difficult to know which are which until it’s too late, and (b) a poor reflection on the institution that the jackholes are tolerated.
I speak here only of the Memphis Police Department and Shelby County Sheriff’s Department.
I voted other.
I’ve only ever interacted with the police on a couple occasions, and each brief time they were professional and I was courteous. However, I know that as a citizen, any interaction with the police can give them an opportunity to place you under suspicion of committing a crime, whether they are on duty or not. So, I am extremely cautious about speaking with an officer, even though I have no reason to think they are personally bad people.
I voted other. There have been cops I liked and respected, and some I thought were assholes or outright despised. I think there are a lot of power-tripping douchebags involved in law enforcement, some of whom commit awful crimes -but also plenty of good guys who do the right thing.
It’s a job, like any other. I don’t know if I believe there is more corruption in this particular system - but there is more at stake. And I don’t think cops deserve special reverence for doing their job.
Suburban housewife here, and I’m a bit torn. A couple of cops in the family, and I dated one when young (and a more amoral, semi-psycho I’ve never run across since :eek:). My dealings with them have been few, but favorable (except for that one bastard whose car lurks in the shrubbery on a country road at the end of the month when he needs to have given out a certain amount of tickets to meet his quota). The thing is, at a time when money is so tight, the city police department had been sued a couple of years ago by a group of police women - their colleagues! - (and much needed) for severe sexual harrassment and discrimination on the job. The police department lost, and they now have to pay out millions for their dickish behavior. I guess every profession has its’ chest thumpers pissing all over their ‘territory’ and hate having to put up with women, but still! Grow the fuck UP! :mad: You look like fools, here in the 21st century, in a depression.
Nzinga is not a fanatic, though. She realizes her response is irrational, and presumably does not allow them to rule her.
I’d be satisfied if I never have to interact with a cop again. Like others, I’ve had good experiences with cops, and bad experiences with cops. Maybe I have a better memory for the bad, but I really believe the bad outweighs the good. By and large, they are comparable to snakes, IMHO. If they leave me alone, I don’t bother them.
I was sufficiently “naughty” one time in the past that I ended up in court, was convicted, and got a conditional discharge (sorry - I’m not comfortable even hinting about the details of my “naughtiness”).
The cops did what they had to do when they picked me up. They weren’t friendly but one wouldn’t expect them to be. They were firm but civil. Once I calmed down afterwards and thought about everything that happened for a while I decided that I really appreciated how I was treated by the police under the circumstances.
So, there are good cops and there are bad cops just as there are good and bad in any profession.
ETA Even at the time I knew I was a colossal idiot, so being treated as a plain idiot rather than a colossal one was a good thing. 