I agree with Lissa that it is wrong to say all cops are assholes. Every cop I have encountered has been perfectly nice and reasonable. I realize that cops are different in different areas of the country; it certainly sounds like they’re corrupt in Baltimore. But most people I’ve known who say “all cops are assholes” have only said so because they despise their authority and can’t back it up with any experience.
I’ve been pulled over for speeding three times. The first two times the cop graciously let me off with a warning. The third time the cop gave me a ticket, but I was almost 20 mph over the speed limit, so I don’t blame him. The court let me get away with a fine and taking a class instead of putting points of my license.
When I was twenty, my friends and I were driving to Taco Bell when we were pulled over. The driver had had a few drinks. The cop gave him a sobriety test, which he failed. She then searched his car and found many marijuana accessories, including a pipe, grinder, joint papers, and shake all over the car, but no considerable amount of weed. She could easily have arrested him for DUI, and maybe drug charges. She could have searched us all, and if she had she would have found a quarter of weed in my pocket and more in the possession of my other friends.
I think she realized we were otherwise smart college-age kids whose lives would be ruined if she went through with the charges. Instead of booking us, she confiscated my friend’s drug paraphrenelia and let me drive everyone home after I passed the sobriety test. She gave us a passionate speech about the stupidity of drunk driving which, along with the whole frightening experience, ensured that I would never drive drunk again or let anyone else do so.
I can’t express how much love and appreciation I felt, and still feel, for that woman. I would probably be in a much worse situation right now if it weren’t for her. Before that night I thought all cops were stupid assholes too. She convinced me that they genuinely feel a duty to protect and serve, to do the right thing for our society, not to just arrest people indiscriminately.
In my opinion, yes. There are a hundred factors which can contribute to an unpleasant encounter. Secondly, you may interract with cops all the time and not even know it-- when they’re off duty and out of uniform, they’re just like everyone else. Thirdly, encounters with, say, five or six individuals does not give one an accurate overview of the group as a whole, especially when the situation is not neutral.
If I go to Chinatown and five or six Chinese people bump into me or are curt during intrerractions, is it fair for me to then say that all Chinese people are rude? My husband’s car was stolen by two black teenagers while he lived in Philadelphia and later, he was robbed at knifepoint by another young black man. He now works in a prison where he sees a lot of criminal people who are black. Should he assume that all black people are criminals from these encounters?
Last month, I went to the DMV. The lady behind the counter looked very harried, and she was a little snarky with me. The same thing happened a few months prior when I went to get a dog license. Should I now tell everyone that state employees are rude?
There are thousands of cops out there. People only hear stories about a few of them, and it’s usually the bad guys, unless they happened to rescue a kitten from a tree on a slow news day.
All cops in the immdiate area? Perhaps. All cops everywhere? No. Not even close.
SmartAleq would have it that a world without cops at all would be a better one. She would have it that in general, cops create more harm than they prevent.
In the first place I said, and I quote: “I really can’t stand cops, they just piss me off.” I never said “all cops are bad”–that would be your fallacy. I then went on to give some FIRST HAND examples, which are just a few out of many, many, encounters I’ve had with cops to explain why I, PERSONALLY, don’t like them. I, too, prefer to work from first hand experience rather than going by someone else’s opinion. This would include your tidy, neat little category which appears to be labelled “Cops automatically good, anyone who doesn’t like cops is either misinformed or only saying this because they are criminals and deserve the treatment they get from law enforcement.”
And where, exactly, did you get the retarded idea that I think all cops are bad people? I stated that in the course of doing their jobs they are encouraged and rewarded by their peers for automatically assuming that all others who are NOT cops are bad people and treating citizens disrespectfully while using their authority to browbeat and bully. This is not what we pay public SERVANTS to do. I have a reasonable expectation that I will be treated with courtesy and respect by any employee with his lips on the government tit, and cops aren’t exempt from this requirement.
Oh, and kindly refrain from assuming that you know what I think or enjoy. I might speculate that you enjoy fellating leprous wombats, but having no more direct evidence than you do that I “enjoy hating” means that it would be irresponsible of me to state my belief in a public forum.
As for your “black person = criminal + anecdote” analogy–nobody chooses to be black, but being a cop is always a conscious choice. The kind of people who CHOOSE to be cops overwhelmingly tend to be the ones who prefer wielding the gun and nightstick as opposed to us live and let live types who don’t get a stiffy from shoving other people around. It’s not a question of “good cops vs. bad cops” as much as you’d like to have it that simple and kindergartenish. It’s a matter of “law enforcement attracts bullying, power positive personalities and then the environment they create encourages them to go to ridiculous lengths in order to exercise that power while placing no meaningful limits on their behavior.” This is why average citizens dislike and fear cops–not because of your postulated oh-so-infrequent “rogue cop,” but because every goddamned cop they interact with tends to be standoffish, condescending, rude, dismissive, inflexible and a bully. You know, the kind of asshole who’ll mace a two year old child in the face because her mother is participating in a peaceful demonstration. Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to muddy the waters with yet more first hand anecdotery.
When come back, bring “Reading For Comprehension.”
I don’t think it’s out of line to say that America would be better off without American-style cops around. I’ve been to many other countries and never have I seen the kind of blind bastardry that our law enforcement officers tend to be prone to. Our cops kill and hurt people way more often than they do in any other country, and where I live it tends to be shooting people 20 or 30 times because they got freaked out and didn’t move fast enough for the goddamned police. There isn’t enough civilian oversight of police activities and for damned sure not enough accountability placed on the police when they step out of line. The whole industry needs to be rethought and a fundamental change in attitude is in order.
Quis custodies ipsos custodiet or something reasonably similar…
SmartAleq’s posts about cops remind me of tha that bit that Ron White does where he talks about being on an army base with 44,000 guys, and a drunk lady yells out “Every one of them is a bad fuck!”
He stops for a second and asks, “What is the common denominator in this equation of love? You would think after 20 or 30 thousand you say, well maybe it’s me”
:dubious:
You know, it would be nice if I could just chalk it up to me being an asshole, but the problem here is that I’m a polite person naturally and I’m also not nearly stupid enough to fuck about with a bully who has a gun and can get away with killing me. Go back to my really long post and ask yourself how you can justify the behavior of the cop who berated me for my “inappropriate” (and wholly first amendment protected) refrigerator message as he was telling me how he had decided the guy who beat me in front of my children didn’t need to be arrested. Can you really justify the monumental arrogance of that? If you heard a cop talk like that to your daughter in a similar circumstance would you be able to explain to her what she did to deserve being treated that way by the guy with “to serve and protect” written on the side of his car?
Why don’t we go ahead and restrict that to the countries you’ve been to. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t trade your unpleasant experiences for those one might experience at the hands of the police in Iran, Syria, Turkey, North Korea, Somalia, Columbia, Mexico…
Oh, pardon me! How could I ever have imagined you were talking about all cops from the way you said that?
Now, who’s putting words in others’ mouths? I said, (repeatedly, I might add) that there are bad cops out there, but they are the minority.
I guess it was somewhere between:
And,
“Good people” aren’t people who want to do these things even in the course of their jobs. I have a hard time believing that someone can be an asshole for only a brief period each day. Assholes are assholes all the time.
Please don’t try to backpedal. You clearly used language which indicated that you believe that most, if not all, cops are petty dictators who bully and threaten people all the time.
Why is it that my husband has never been “encouraged and rewarded” for bullying anyone? Why is it that in seven years, he hasn’t witnessed the kind of behavior you’re repeatedly asserting is a universal part of cop culture? Why hasn’t he seen officers “trowing their weight around” and forcing people to “kowtow” to them?
How is it that you know so much about what it’s like to be a cop, anyway? You make statements like you have deep-rooted experience with the training and sub-culture of police officers (though it’s nothing like what the cops I know experience.) Where did you come by this information?
“Lips on the public tit”? Christ Jesus, could you be any more disdainful? What a nasty thing to say! How many government employees do you know? I happen to know a lot of them. Just like in any profession, there are people who don’t do their jobs well, but the vast majority of them are hard-working people, many of whom went into public service because they wanted to make a* difference*.
shrug What else am I to assume? You make sweeping, hateful statements and won’t listen to reason. People do that with their cherished beliefs.
No, it IS the same thing. You’re taking a group and painting them all with the same brush based on limited, negative experience with a few members. If you don’t like the notion of skin color, we can go ahead and switch it to a profession. “All lawyers are crooks,” or “All state employees are lazy and rude”. It’s a very flexible concept. You can even extend it to hobbies: “All bikers are drunks” or “All NASCAR fans are hicks who beat their wives.”
Any way you slice it, it’s prejudice.
There you go again. You can’t make statements like this and expect not to be challenged. Well, I guess there are some places you could-- there are plenty of cop-hating boards out there where you can say whatever you like about cops and get only a chorus of “yeah teh cops sux!!!1!one” but this isn’t one of them.
Why is it that in seven years of being around cops, I’ve never heard them laugh about bullying a supect, or tell a “funny story” in which they weilded their nightstick against a suspect? In their most unguarded moments, why have none of them ever expressed a wish to hurt people?
No limits? Police work is one of the most monitored professions there out there. They’re scrutinized by the media and by independant citizen’s boards. They have to justify every action to their superiors, who in turn have to justify it to their superiors. They are not immune from personal lawsuits if they violated policy, so they could lose everything they have if they were sued by people they abused.
I have called the police a few times in my life. I’ve also had to give witness statements and I’ve gotten traffic tickets. Only* once *have I had a cop treat me in the manner that you’re describing.
You keep using words like “every”. I now put the ball in your court. You have made a statement. Prove it. Prove that I am lying and that every cop I know (and my husband, who is not a cop but sometimes works with them in that capacity) is a bullying asshole.
You’re not muddying the waters, but as is frequently pointed out here, the plural of anecdote is not “data.”
I have said that there are bad cops out there. You’re the one making wild-ass statements about “every” cop. I think I can easily prove that there are good cops. You’ve got a hell of a burden of proof to provide.
Debate Tip 134: When you can’t defend your assertions, turn to personal insults.
Yes it is. I hope he receives full compensation as well as compensation for the trouble he went through. Furthermore, I hope that those who acted improperly are disciplined and if they acted outside the rules of the system, then they should personally have to pay for the damages. If they worked within the rules, then the system that allowed this to happen needs a good hard look.
There have been problems with forfeiture laws ever since they became a popular law enforcement tool. There are far too many stories of the forfeiture system leading to acts of injustice. IMHO, if they are linked to a criminal act, then they should be held to the same standard as the criminal act and not dealt with civilly as currently they are. But that is a different topic altogether.
Why is it that you dismiss everyone else’s anecdotal experience with law enforcement as being irrelevant or peripheral to the broader, structural issues, but then offer your own anecdotal experience as if it actually proves something?
And what do you mean by " most unguarded moments"? Are you sleeping with these guys? Are you their psychologist?
As for your question, i’ve said before and i’ll say again that you’re dreaming if you think that cops, even ones you know personally and consider your friends, are going to let you in on everything that goes on while they’re at work. Cops, both good and bad, know that members of the public are likely to react negatively to officers who admit breaking the rules. Just because you’re their friend doesn’t mean that you get let into the secrets of everything that happens on the job.
I’ll bet that every cop ever convicted of taking bribes or violating a suspect’s civil rights had friends and family members who couldn’t believe what happened because “He was such a good guy.”
I agree with you that painting all cops with the same brush is pointless and counterproductive, and i think there are plenty of honest, hardworking, and committed law enforcement officers out there doing a tough job, and doing it to the best of their ability. But i also wonder exactly how many stories like the OP, and like the other ones that we’ve discussed on these board, you would have to see before you could actually bring yourself to admit that there are problems with law enforcement that extend beyond a few bad apples, and are structural or institutional or cultural in nature?
I dismissed nothing. I said, repeatedly, that there are bad cops out there. However, I disagree vehemently that the majority of cops are bad-- quite the opposite.
No, I’m not sleeping with them but I have seen them very, very drunk.
My Hubby is one of those fellows to whom everyone pours out their woes. He sometimes knows more about these guys than their wives probably do, so in a way, you could call him their non-professional psychologist. So, it’s not like a casual see-them-around-the-office thing. He spends long hours on stakeouts with them when there’s nothing to do to pass the time but talk. You can’t help but get to know someone pretty well in these circumstances.
Point taken. My experience with them in social situations proves very little.
But my Hubby has been on the job with them. There have been times where he has been working on a case for months with the same officers. He goes on stakeouts, raids, busts . . . He’s been there during violent altercations and very stressful times in which if abuse was gonna happen, now’d be the time.
If these cops can hide their corruption so well that neither a close friendship nor thousands of hours of observing their on-the-job conduct reveals it, then I am most certainly impressed. An asshole generally wants everybody to know they’re an asshole. They may be able to behave for short periods of time, but familiarity breeds comfort.
Sure-- everybody says that. Go to the funeral of a guy you personally know was a nasty character and you’ll be surpised at what a saint he’s made out to be.
First of all, I would have to know all the details of the incidents. Large chunks of information are often left out of media stories because the whole truth robs the story of its sensationalism. Secondly, people sometimes lie or fail to mention their own conduct. So, I tend to give less weight to anecdotal tales.
I would have to see data which proves a wide-spread systemic pattern of abuse from a majority of officers, not just a small percentage.
REALLY? I formed the impression from the OP that it was the topic. I thought the “everybody is either a cop lover who thinks cops never do anything wrong or a cop hater who thinks cops never do anything right” back-and-forth was the hijack.
I just wanted to sat that this story is a lot more like Gogol than Kafka.
Also, I once had a cop feel my junk for 30 seconds while I was wearing Dolphin Shorts. He was wearing his badge so, unlike whatever black guy might have robbed a car, he was representing all cops, not just himself.
Forfieture laws were not put in place by the cops. They’re just doing what they’re told to do.
And, frankly, I don’t understand “everybody is either a cop lover who thinks cops never do anything wrong or a cop hater who thinks cops never do anything right.” That’s not even close to what I’ve been saying. How many times have I said that, yes, there *are *bad cops out there? How many times do I have to say it before people stop claiming that I’m saying all cops are good?
All the interactions I’ve ever had with cops have been polite and professional. I’ve somehow never encountered a “bad cop”. Of course, I’m a mild-mannered white technology worker who rarely drinks and doesn’t enjoy loud noises.
But that’s one more anecdote to add to the pile.
I’m sure some of those cops who were polite and helpful to me acted like assholes when interacting with other people.
You’re not saying that at all. That’s just the tenor that the thread has taken, IMHO. I think it’s kind of a silly, non-nuanced argument to have, myself. I re-introduced the plight of the subject of the OP to try to bring it away from that argument, and back to the issue of the system that screwed him over.
First of all, no one is blaming victims. You were a victim of domestic abuse. How you were victimized by the police is less than clear.
Secondly, like it or not, police are in positions of authority over every one of us. It would never cross my mind to use profanity when dealing with an authority figure, let alone direct it at said person. If that authority figure begins to care a little less about you at that point, then, well, you reap what you sow. Not that it’s ‘right,’ but jeez, if someone’s there to help you, and has some degree of power over your situation, then you suck it up when s/he says something minor that pisses you off.
It seems like authority chafes at you, and giving the defference/respect that you should (should because, well, that’s how to get along well with people in positions of authority, as a general rule) is next to impossible. I predict that most if not all of your interactions with police will be negative, because you make them that way.
The cop had every ‘right’ to be snarky about your refrigerator magnet. You had every ‘right’ to have it there. You also had every ‘right’ to be a jerk back. That doesn’t mean you did what would have been best in that situation. “Get the hell out of my house,” to the officer who is responding to your call for help is a monumentally stupid and jerkish thing to say.
The story is not clear on the timeline of the vehicle disposal except to say that it was sold two months before Spence’s court date. Most if not all states have some form of an “abandoned vehicle” law which might have been at work in this case. In essence, the impounding entity is to attempt to make contact with the titled owner as listed with the DMV. Once that initial correspondence has been sent, the clock starts ticking and, after a specified period has elapsed, the impounding entity can file for titled ownership of the car and then dispose of it.
My guess is that the car was impounded, a contact letter was sent to the titled owner of the car, the time period elapsed, and the tow yard assumed ownership of the abandoned vehicle.
Abandoned? Could be. Spence bought the car with a tax refund so it’s possible he acquired it around April/May. In the photograph where he’s holding up the title the “Issue Date” on the title looks like June 11, 2006. If the incident happened before that date, then the previous owner would have received the notice and would likely not have responded. Not their car, you know? Spence had a case pending so the cops are not likely to have released the car to him while he awaited trial. Red tape lost him his car, basically.
