So you’re comparing people that hold crackpot theories and transphobic opinions to an ethnic minority that is honest-to-God expressing fear for their lives from police?
Well, at least I know what I’m dealing with when I see your username now.
Fair enough, but I feel like some of you are treating the street as if it is a court room, which it isn’t, argue your case in a court of law. If you are about to be arrested, you aren’t talking a cop out of it. It’s not do this or get shot…it’s being a sworn law enforcement officer entrusted with the power of arrest.
You weren’t asking me, but I’ll answer “yes”, there are times where things get physical. However, such situations should be as transparent as possible, so that a solid case can be made to the public. In an era of social media, where information travels so quickly, how we handle these things must change. Police are the ones paid to do a job and if they want to avoid the criticism, they have to build better relationships. They have potential access to more organization, resources and influence to do so, than any single individual or even typical community of people (especially the less affluent ones).
That said, I’m more inclined to agree with the reasoning you began to touch on in post #93, as opposed to finding ways in which we can allow police to commit more violence. I’m actually on-board with you, 100% on the items you brought up, and I think it would more easily win the support of people.
You’re speaking in absolutes again, those things will never will 100 percent of the time. At some point you have to act.
I agree, I’d also like to add that the fact that some departments are still committed to using quotas for measuring job performance (which 100 percent exist) which creates a horrible atmosphere for dealing with the public. I’m a public servant, I never want to feel like I’m preying on members of the public. I’m there to help you guys. But this is the purview of police executives and elected officials. Put yourself in the shoes of a rookie cop, your boss (who is being hounded by his boss) is hounding you for contacts, tickets, or whatever euphemism they use for quotas, if you fail to perform, here comes some crappy assignments, bad job evaluations…and on and on…and eventually your job
Just as an example of what the OP is talking about*, I was once in a car accident, and I was responsible, because I crossed the yellow line. I was not impaired, except by tiredness, but the cop didn’t know that. My license and insurance card were in the glove box. I wanted to get them out, and the cop who had already approached my car (my window was opened) told me not to. He put his hand on his weapon. So I didn’t show proof of insurance at the scene of the accident, and later got a cite for it in the mail, $80. I had to spend time going to the BMV and showing proof that I’d been insured at the time of the accident, and get a form from them, and then show it to a judge-- I also had to get some paperwork to get a “legend drug” cite dismissed, because I had prescription drugs (bladder medication and an antibiotic) in unlabeled containers, also in the glove box. The cops tossed my car after it was towed, while I was at the hospital getting my forehead stitched, looking for serious drugs or liquor bottles. I had to prove that 1) what the drugs were; and 2) that I had prescriptions for them. The blood test they gave me in the hospital showed I wasn’t impaired.
Anyway, if I had gotten into the glove box without the cop giving me verbal permission to, he could have shot me on the assumption that I was going for a weapon.
I was woozy, and I think now I should have asked the cop to remove my license and registration himself. That didn’t occur to me at the time.
I had a huge hassle, but I did the right thing. Ultimately, it was all my fault for driving tired, something I learned not to do. The cop behaved like a jerk in several ways, nonetheless-- he could have offered to open the glove box, and he may have been thinking more of writing an $80 ticket than that I really had a weapon, but he was well within his rights and training to act on that assumption.
That said, I’m not sure PSAs wouldn’t backfire. The type of people who are likely to challenge cops are the type who are likely to have the “You can’t tell me what to do” attitude toward PSAs.
*FTR, I am aware that being black in the US puts you at greater risk of being shot or otherwise abused by the police, and that goes all the way down to being told the police have better things to do if you are black and asking for directions, something I’ve witnessed, and just to test, I went up to the same cops (in Manhattan), and found them friendly and willing to help me out.
And here again, I believe you. I work with three ex/retired officers, and they’ve quite literally said the same things you have said, here, especially with the quota point. I’ve been told that if there is a known area of activity, and the superior sends an officer out to spend the day there, they expect to see something for that time– the end result is some citizen, who on any other day may get a pass, is now going to have a run-in with an officer. If we follow that to its logical conclusion, we can see how over the longer term, such an approach results in tearing communities apart. Layer in some very real social and political factors/agendas and it creates a very bad situation.
So yeah, I get what you’re saying and I do believe most cops are good or attempt to do good. My one coworker says when he was tasked with traffic duties, he tried to avoid “shit tickets” and instead focused on enforcement which undeniably boosted safety (red light runners, for example). Unfortunately, while there are officers like him, there are others who either participate or are caught up in very real problems, where a lot of key players in higher roles of authority pull strings. Public outcry is there, but it only goes so far when its so unorganized, fractured, or distracted by the next big news event.
I have zero training in the fine Art of Copdom, but if a victim said that to me, the first thing I would be thinking is “Is there a booby-trap there? And what is he going to do while I am distracted and my hand is tied up?”
Well, since I tried to open it myself, since it would have taken some real planning to booby-trap my glove box on the off-chance I got into an accident that disabled my car, and since the cops did in fact get into the glove box as soon as I was gone (I assume it was some kind of “crime scene,” and they didn’t need my permission), I don’t think that occurred to the cop.
Well, there are old cops, and there are bold cops. But there are no old, bold cops.
Was never a cop but I was a soldier. Never open ANYTHING yourself always make the suspect open it.
True, but you’re dealing in absolutes too. I went five years and touched ONE person.
And you missed that I did act, when I needed to, HOW I needed to in order to resolve the situation without that ‘need to act’ (with violence, I presume).
Isn’t this the type of fantastic, worst case scenario thinking that attempts to justify cops overreacting? There is no reason that cop should have reacted that way given the information presented in the comment. What are the chances a guy who just got into an accident is reaching into a glove compartment to get a gun to kill a cop? Basically zero. What sense would that make? You might as well argue that he should have never approached the car because it could have been rigged with explosives.
Yes, cops face real life dangers, but they rarely compare to the dangers people in really dangerous jobs like logging and fishing face. It’s not a contest or anything, but we need to stop validating this idea that a cop who cannot see someone hands, or someone reaching into a glove compartment is putting a cop in mortal danger. Cops condition themselves to fear interacting with citizens when more of them are hurt or killed in traffic accidents. It makes no sense, and we should not give credence to irrational fears.
That’s pretty much it. Police Officer is not THE MOST DANGEROUS JOB IN THE WORLD where they face down death every single day. **Perhaps what we really need is to weed out the Nervous Nellys that are so afraid for their lives, yet at the same time don’t seem to have any qualms about taking the lives of their fellow citizens and their pets. **
Cops are not soldiers. Actually, I think part of the problem is the militarization of the police. Police refer to other people as “civilians,” but if you ask a soldier, police are civilians. Police are not in a war zone, and shouldn’t behave like they are, or act like soldiers on a mission.
No, the problem isn’t former military members as police officers-- I know ex-soldiers who joined police forces, and they knew the difference (for one thing, if there’s ever something about being a police officer you don’t like, you can quit, like any civilian). People who missed out on the military, or couldn’t get in for some reason, but managed to get onto a police force are as bad as pseudo-militia people playing soldier out in the woods.
I should add, I’ve known some really good cops who were never in the military. One of my oldest childhood friends is a detective lieutenant in Manhattan. He went to college and majored in Criminal Justice, did one year of law school and dropped out, aced the police academy exam, and has been on one track ever since. My mother is friends with his mother, which is how I still know him. He has never shot anyone. This must be his 26th year as NYPD.
I am not sure what the people in this thread who are arguing against the “comply with cops” approach are proposing.
If they want to argue that the cops are too nervous or too prone to use force, I can agree.
If they want to argue that cops shouldn’t be so militarized, I can see the point.
But if they are arguing against the idea that a comply-with-the-cops approach would give the apprehended person a greater chance of survival - well…what’s to disagree with that? Surely, from a statistical standpoint, it’s true? And surely fighting or resisting the cops is statistically/logically more likely to result in dangerous escalation of the situation?
Would they prefer that apprehended people *not *comply with the cops?
No ethnic group in this country has any logical reason to fear for their lives from police. To assert otherwise is a crackpot theory.
“Comply with cops” is to police encounter advice as “make a lot of money” is to financial advice. It is fundamentally sound, but easier said than done.
Doing so under the circumstances of these shootings and with the background and life experiences of the victims is not the same as doing so when you’re a white guy from a nice suburb who gets pulled over for speeding. If you don’t know why that is the case, you should consider trying to learn more about human behavior, history, trauma, and police practice.
Additionally, compliance is not relevant in all cases. There are bigger issues, so focusing on the behavior of the victims seems like an effort to blame them rather than solve the problem.
Oh goody, some good ol’ fashioned whitesplaining. Tell us more about how other ethnic groups should feel! Ooh ooh, do Indians now!
This attitude totally boggles the mind.
"We had to shoot the perp; negotiating might have cost an hour of our time. That’s $34 each plus benefits. Someone has to think of the taxpayers.
“Obviously once we decided to shoot, we emptied our magazines into the perp’s center of mass — that’s just protocol.”