I have a friend who is constantly railing against police injustice. I get into it with him from time to time, my stance generally being that A) police have a ridiculously hard job, and B) for the most part they seem to do it reasonably well. As such, he comes at me with every instance that comes to light. After a while I have to admit, I am seeing way more shady (or downright illegal) police behavior than I am comfortable with.
Go to a site like http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/ and you see a cited list a mile long of all sorts police infractions. Even if you think most of these are sensationalized and/or justified, if even a fraction of them are valid I do have to wonder just what the hell is going on here.
So, is the system broken? If yes, what can be done to fix it. If not, how do you explain all of this?
I think a lot of cops see themselves as somewhat above the law. It’s OK if they break infractions or misdemeanors; Not ticketing other cops for speeding for example.
If cops are involved in a scandal other cops will protect them. Blue code of silence
For the past three or so years I’ve seen articles and videos of cops beating down helpless suspects, and in my personal opinion, this sort of thing has been going on more often than we think, and I’m grateful for cellphone and other types of video cameras that are now capturing it and making the public more aware. At least now it’s not always just word of the suspect against the arresting officer(s).
I’m not saying all cops are bad, and I don’t know the statistics of cops that completely follow the law vs cops who break it in one way or another, but from everything I’ve heard about I personally believe there are problems with the attitudes of a lot of law enforcement officers and I think this should be addressed.
Edit: As for how to fix it, this is difficult. I think some police departments need a lot more over-site. I think video taping the police is good thing. I think if we have camera’s that take snapshots of police speeding it’s probably better than another cop letting him or her off of the hook. I think police training should really enforce that police are not above the law and shouldn’t act like they are. I think there need to be very stiff penalties for police who beat on somebody who’s handcuffed or otherwise subdued and poses no danger to the officer.
It’s not just the “blue” code. The local prosecutors and legal system don’t seem to be much help either. See the story ofOtto Zehm. He made the mistake of going to an ATM and then into a convenience store to get food and pop. Some girls didn’t like his looks and called police who rushed into the store and beat and hogtied him resulting in his death a couple of days later without so much as a “Good evening, sir, what have you been up to?” He had done absolutely nothing wrong. Luckily, the convenience store had video cameras.
The Feds had to come in and try the policeman by moving to another venue to get outside the local wall of protection.
Take this incident. 50 years ago, the guy would have taken a few punches, got arrested, and nobody would have heard boo about. I mean nobody but his immediate friends and family. If he didn’t have friends in high places, it’s his word against the cop’s, and all the cop has to say is “resisting arrest”.
Today, people from all over the world get to see this cop’s behavior. You’re seeing it more often because it’s 1000x easier to see it than it was decades ago. Ubiquitous cell phones with video cameras mean that a huge amount of police activity is getting taped and can be put up on a public server, called YouTube.
I think we’re actually at a point where this will improve, rather than get worse because it’s more likely to be visible and documented.
Things like the Blue Code definitely point toward a culture of unethical behavior. That thread in the Pit about the NYPD officers protesting shows the culture pretty clearly. If it were a major corporation, and not the police, wouldn’t you think that company was completely broken? So, yes, I do think the police system has major problems and no, I do not think they will ever be fixed. The culture is too deeply ingrained into what the police are.
But not surprising to see members of this board jump all on the evil police bandwagon.
There are over 800,000 police officers in the United States, from local to state to federal. According to injusticeeverywhere.com, in 2010 there were 6,613 individual police officers involved in alleged misconduct. That is about .8% of the total police force. I’m not certain, but I think that number even includes reports which were proven to be false.
I don’t think a system where less than 1% of 800,000 individuals may be corrupt is flawed and evil.
Throw on top of it the fact that most likely, ALL of the reports of misconduct are seriously investigated. The fact that there are checks and balances within and outside of the system to address issues of misconduct is a huge factor not to be overlooked.
Police brutality, ticket fixing, and other misconduct has been going on for decades, and nothing has been done about a lot of it until recently now that cops can get caught in the act.
I can’t remember what city it was, but there a thread a bout a small town where cops would give traffic tickets to people not speeding. Sometimes they’d give tickets in their driveways. The local judge was in on it. It’s the one where the fire chief got shot in the back while fighting a speeding ticket. Nothing was done until the police department and judge’s wrongdoings were made public.
Anyway yes, in theory there are checks and balances, but for things like cops roughing up suspects then lying about it in their reports, or trumping up charges, or looking the other way for infractions, or as shown in this pit thread even more serious actions, plenty of police have been getting away with it for far too long because they believe they’re above the law, or they should be able to get away with shit because of “professional courtesy”.
Not all cops are bad, but enough cops are bad that something should be done.
Edit: Oh, and that .8%. Those are just the ones getting suspected or getting caught. No cite, but I personally believe the problem is a lot bigger than that.
To be clear, when I say the police system is broken, I am talking specifically about the Blue Code stuff, where they feel the need to cover for each other. Stuff like brutality happens, but I don’t think it’s out of control in a general sense. I do think the police culture breeds a “look out for our own” type of attitude, though, that can easily lead to a sense of being above the law.
The police didn’t respond because two girls didn’t like his looks. The girls falsely reported that they had been robbed at the ATM. The police thought they had found a violent robbery suspect, when they had really only found a harmless schizophrenic weirdo. It’s pretty easy to see how that misunderstanding (and deliberate false reporting) could lead to the police getting spooked and escalating the situation further than it should have gone.
Obviously, that doesn’t excuse the extreme overreaction and negligence shown by the police. I’m just pointing out that the reality of this case was not necessarily equal to the picture you’re trying to paint. It was a very stressful situation in which a police officer made a too-hasty decision about a strange and potentially violent situation, and drew the wrong conclusion based on false information. In my opinion, the two girls who falsely reported the robbery share at least some of the blame for his death.
I agree with the subsequent trial of the officer involved, the conviction, and the sentence range. Justice was done here for the officer, although probably not for the wolf-criers.
Think about the millions of decisions you make at work, and how some of them are inevitably wrong. Think of the times you’ve overreacted, or had an emotional response to a situation at work based on a simple misunderstanding. People are human. They fuck up. When cops fuck up, it’s occasionally in a life or death situation.
The real problem with police is the tough-guy culture fostered among police officers; the never-show-fear, always confident and assertive type A personality demanded from them. We expect police to be superhuman, but they’re not. A regular person can be terrified of the stranger walking behind them in the parking lot, and run away even if it was just a misunderstanding and the stranger just happened to be parked next to them. The cop can’t run away. The “flight” option in the fight or flight response is taken from them, and then they are constantly pushed into situations which stimulate that response. Of course this will eventually create people who are reckless and quick to resort to violence, who make bad judgment calls with too much haste. That’s what we demand from them! Do you think there are enough people psychologically capable of doing that job competently in the world to satisfy the staffing requirements of the various police departments? Almost certainly not.
Anyway, I don’t know what the correct solution is for the problem with police behavior, but I think we should start by being honest about what the problem actually is. The police culture itself is what’s fucked up, and the catalyst for all the really bad incidents we’re seeing.
Anytime people are put in a position of power there is a chance of abusing said power, unfortunately it’s part of the human condition.
Also put yourself in their place, they have to deal with the dregs of society on a daily basis, no wonder they sometimes go too far. I’m not excusing it but I can understand it.
I don’t think anyone is really excusing it. I think most people understand it. What I think we need is a way to prevent it. Sure things get posted to youtube, but thats all post-facto. If you happen to have a video, than you can do it, but if not you are SOL. That’s why I am thinking just post video of everything every cop does. Other than bandwidth issues which I think are solvable, I don’t see why this would be a bad idea.
Apparently recording cops has been tried, and is rather expensive. It makes sense, hosting all that video would be expensive. That’s why I think just streaming it, with a 5 minute buffer that you could download, might be a more cost-effective solution.
The US police system is not broken – because it doesn’t exist. It’s really as simple as that. There are thousands of police systems in the US. Some are broken, some are not.
As to the the “Blue Code”, or “Blue Wall”, or whatever, it is not unique to police by any means. It is a very common phenomenon among people within a profession, or an institution. I would suggest to you that the current Penn State state fiasco is a very good example of this.
This is a matter of human psychology, people seeing a form of “kinship” with others in similar circumstances, which sometimes results in conflicting loyalties and breaches of professional obligations.
But how many of us cover for our coworkers at our jobs? The stakes are just higher with cops. How many of us would like to have our every move taped while we work and then have it reviewed in public?
A lot if people cover for their co-workers, though perhaps not to the level of committing crimes to do it. And the higher up the food chain, IMO, the more likely the coverup is. I worked at a hospital where, over the course of several years, they caught two people embezzling. One was a secretary, and management called the cops and had her arrested. One was a senior manager, and they decided it would be bad for the hospital’s image to prosecute her, so she was allowed to retire on her own terms. And apparently with good references, as I saw a story a few months later in the newspaper that she got another high profile job in some other health care business.
You are completely missing the point. The problem isn’t that a lot of cops are evil or crooked, the problem is that those bad apples will be protected and defended by all the good ones.
Does your job give you the potential to falsely put me in jail or beat me? If it doesn’t I’m not too concerned with watching your every move at work. If it does, yeah, I think it’s reasonable to closely watch you.
This way the judicial branch of government can be an effective check on abuses by the executive branch.
And, in the process, making them also the bad ones. Covering for one of your own is highly unethical, and is something people should have grown out of in junior high. And if any cop doesn’t have someone’s back because of it, then prosecute them for murder. Because that’s what it is.
Transparency, methods of accountability that are independent (independent prosecutors, independent investigators, independent media recordings of the police) of the police, and de-militarization of the police would all help.
I ‘think’ that is the direction the police have been slowly going in over the last few decades.