What is wrong with american police?

The BBQ Pit
41

I don’t deny I made a sweeping generalization. I’ve seen communities where the cops are riding high on lucrative speed traps that the county allows, and others where they were as a whole, working second jobs as armed security to make ends meet. It is intensely segmented depending on county/city/state/etc. The leverage issue remains the same in most areas though, where the unions wield their authority to demand additional protections rather than additional pay in most cases.

So in short, they trade money for power. And while I’m not talking about union busting (which is a point, but probably deserves another thread), it probably says something about the unions in question where near-immunity to discipline is more important than better tangible compensation.

A useful article (selected from NPR because I find it has less lean), points out that the problem is not just the unions, or the city councils, or even the courts, but all of that and more. Simple it isn’t - and the cost and consequences of fixing it are probably going to be piecemeal for a loooong time to come.

Honestly, I think the best thing that has happened in the last decade or so hasn’t come from any of the above - it’s cellphones. The fact that the cops can and will be recorded at any time (and their pushback against it sure shows bad things about their culture) has pushed the whole police brutality from a somebody-elses-problem category to front page news. And that has helped secure convictions that in the past would never have happened.

42

It’s not the issue of being armed, it’s the idea that force is used to ensure compliance. If someone gets pulled over in a traffic stop why use force to get compliance? If you don’t see a weapon or anything else imminently dangerous to the public just call in for help if he doesn’t cooperate and stay a safe distance away. If he runs try to follow him but don’t put yourself in danger. How the fuck hard is this? Cops should not feel it is necessary to put themselves in danger except in extreme circumstances, otherwise they ought to be protecting themselves.

43

Including with our NRA-driven gun laws.

[Talk about advocating against one’s self-interest. Wow.]

To the extent that law enforcement is a dangerous, challenging, and/or highly stressful job (at least a portion of the time), how much of this is a problem of our own making ?

Problems can’t ever be solved in the US. They have to be managed via for-profit ‘solutions’ (as always, see: perverse incentives). Crime and punishment, substance abuse, poverty, health and wellness, war and conflict, etc.

It all adds up to misery, and misery turns out to be quite profitable.

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

–Eric Hoffer

And to piggyback on that concept: the Prime Directive of every institution is to protect itself.

Put yet another way …

[This was 1968. Truer then or now ??]

Everything being about the GDP (“spreadsheets belie the humanity”), and how the money gets allocated – as I said – tends to be a highly significant driver in how almost everything works in this country (because money is speech and poor people have no lobbying power).

So … yeah … American LEOs are, themselves, victims of this fucked up values system, but it appears that they’re remarkably unaware.

44

You’re absolutely correct that this is a part of the problem. Cops shouldn’t try to escalate, and they shouldn’t be able to escalate, either. Better to have multiple ways of reducing risk.

45

It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a different person. I recently retired from a non-police law enforcement agency with armed officers. In 25 years, I only heard of three work-related incidents where officers shot someone. In two cases , the other person was shooting at them , and in the third the person who was shot was holding a knife to an officer’s throat. It’s not because it was some tiny agency with three officers. It was partly because of the culture - but the culture was that way in part because of the hiring requirements. You couldn’t get hired for my job as your first job out of high school - you needed at least 3 years of social work type experience after obtaining a bachelor’s degree ( and when I was hired, that degree had to be in a social science) . Which means two things - first, the population interested in my job was almost certainly different from the population interested in becoming a police officer and second (and probably more importantly) we all came in with experience at de-escalating situations. No police department is going to provide extended training in de-escalation but they could certainly change their hiring requirements.

46

True. I was just thinking along the lines of specialization. I’m not so sure expecting cops to be good at all the things they’re expected to do and adding extra ones is realistic; they’re already expected to be good at a bunch of somewhat disparate skills.

Maybe change it to be the Public Safety department, and have the police as one part of that along with the conflict resolution people, de-escalation people, social workers, and so forth. Maybe some would be uniformed differently, or not uniformed at all. That way they could all be part of the same department and take advantage of the economies of scale, etc… without necessarily presenting the same front to the public.

47

Why not?

48

Supposedly a large part of the training revolves around “officer safety.” Everything is about making sure the officer and his buddy will go home after a shift. But if that were true, it doesn’t explain why so many LEOs escalate situations. I think the real answer is that the LEO culture in the U.S. is very machoistic, full of cowboys, mavericks, and military wanabees. I also think a lot of them were bullied as children. To these people, physical altercations are exciting.

49

I was involved in a very minor way in a case a few years ago where my client was being sued for hurting a police officer. The officer broke his hand when he punched my client in the head. There was no video from the incident, but it was generally agreed by everyone that my client was drunk and acting like a fool. The officers knocked him to the ground and then when he didn’t immediately roll over they beat the ever loving shit out of him. Or in their words “they applied pain compliance techniques to ensure officer safety.” My client spent 2 weeks in the hospital, and then his insurance company paid out $100,000 to the officer. If the officer had spent 2 seconds talking to the guy once he was on the ground he would have found out that my client couldn’t roll over because his partner was standing on his leg. The entire event was nothing more than escalation from the first moment the police approached him.

50

Because it will take too long and cost too much. Most police academies in my area last around six months and the recruits are employees receiving pay and benefits during that time. They aren’t going to extend that for three or six additional months. It’s my understanding that in some places, people attend the academy on their own dime before being hired - those would be more willing to change.

51

The irony being, of course, that in a lot of European countries, part of the on-the-street “police” are actually military.

52

And then the officer retires early on “disability.”

53

I’m on of those knuckleheads who thinks the US should look to what many western democracies in Europe are doing as a model (for a lot of stuff, not just police). Federal police force, requiring bachelors degree, generally unarmed. Start there.

I’ll just jump on my unicorn and see myself out.

54

And after the six months in the academy, a young officer is paired with a veteran for additional “training,” which is unstructured and unsupervised.If they didn’t learn the “us vs. them” culture in the academy, they certainly have by the time they’re in their own squad car.

Derek Chauvin, with a record of eighteen formal complaints, was designated as such a trainer. In fact, at least one of the officers one the scene of the Floyd murder was a trainee.

55

I knew one of you would be along eventually. This is why we have the police we have a significant segment of America want police to brutalize blacks to keep them in line.

56

I have brought this up in numerous different contexts on the SD. More’s the pity.

If you don’t know about these two experiments, they’re both worth a quick read, and – perhaps – a viewing of one of the videos/documentaries:

LINK TO PAY YouTube MOVIE

I also often cite (and think it’s germane here) the Third Wave Experiment:

Free YouTube video of ‘The Wave–’ a movie based on the experiment

What I really wonder – directly related to the OP – is if the same experiment, conducted in another advanced economy nation, would yield similar results.

Or are US Americans just inherently more broken than so many others.

?

I don’t believe that a dysfunctional law enforcement community is, therefore, inevitable. Rather, I believe it may be some measure of default unless well thought-out strategies, mission, recruiting, hiring, initial and ongoing psychological evaluation, etc., etc., etc. are conceived and implemented.

So even if we can’t change the entire American culture, understanding the dynamics that power implies may help us modulate the worst of those impulses and reduce the frequency of tragic outcomes.

Y’know … maybe.

I wish criminals weren’t criminals, but – call me odd – I continue to expect much more from our highly trained, well equipped, well paid agents of the State than I do from people we blithely label as ‘criminals.’

57

Especially when that “criminal” just has an expired registration.

58

And if there’s also an air freshener hanging from your rear-view mirror, I think it’s automatically a capital crime.

59

One way to facilitate accountability and generally improve officer behavior is to end the urban mercenary ethos. Too many officers live in Shady Glen, commute 20 miles into Brickville to bust heads, then drive home at the end of the day to have dinner in a completely different community. They have no personal inerest in making Brickville a better place to live because that is not where they live. I believe a large fraction of the problem of unwarranted police violence could be addressed by requiring them to live in the communities in which they work, and a few cities are actually trying that.

Of course, the whole contemporary concept of “justice” is based on faulty dynamics and midaeval principles, and until we fix that, our problems will persist, and the police will continue to manifest as a symptom of them.

60

I was under the impression that there has been a lot of criticism about the Stanford prison experiment in regards to what Zimbardo found. Aside from the ethical concerns, there is evidence that Zimbardo or others coached the “guards” on how they should behave. i.e. Getting tough on them, putting bags over their heads, etc., etc.