I was going to make a similar observation. Texas State Troopers, for example, get 45K a year during training, 50K during their 12 month probationary period, and then 60K a year after that first year, with steady raises thereafter, and not counting over time (which can also be substantial). They make more money than legal aid attorneys.
Fair observation @wolfpup, @ASL_v2.0 - I shouldn’t overgeneralize. My comment was based on talking to an ex-cop (who ended up leaving the force due to domestic violence, so, complicated chap) advising that per hour, he was paid less than minimum wage and was much happier as a private security guard.
This was around 20 years ago in Albuquerque, NM, and the following website
https://www.zippia.com/advice/police-officer-salary-by-state/
Shows that NM average police wages rank 35th in the 50 states. So yeah, it’s going to be highly variable depending on where you live. Still, the bottom 10 states run an annual salary (at the lowest, not the average) of 23k to 29k. For the hours and risk, I’d still consider it damn low.
I would also suggest that people get used to being on camera. It could be a similar phenomenon to how people who record their lives for YouTube or Twitch get far more comfortable over time. They don’t necessarily forget the camera is there. It just no longer has the same restrictive power.
Then throw all the other stuff everyone else has said on top of that.
And don’t forget “surveillance” cameras are much more prevalent. Security cam at the gas station or the door cam across the street ALSO captured the incident unbeknownst to the person that cough cough don’t know how their bodycam was not workingcough cough.
Cops are trained to dominate; they are instructed to do so, or risk getting injured themselves. There’s a fine line between merely being forceful and beating the shit out of someone that you are afraid of.
This is a much more shut and close case of murder than George Floyd. All officers involved should be charged. I also believe that the current Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis should be fired. She is the one that created the Scorpion squad and the resulting culture that existed within the Memphis police force that resulted in these actions. Leaders should be held accountable.
For the Memphis 5, they don’t have a mindset. By that time, they’re working on pure rage and adrenaline. They’re not aware of the camera hooked to the stoplight; they don’t see the bystanders with their cell phones out. Hell, they’ve forgotten that they and their fellow officers are wearing cameras. They are working on pure rage. “Respect mah authoritah!” Public opinion? No one’s opinion matters but mine!
I’m not sure which is scarier - the Memphis 5 and their mindless violence, or George Floyd’s murder’s calmness as he choked the life out of him against the curb. Their mindset was “we’re subduing someone who didn’t RESPECT MAH ATHORATAH, and no one’s going to touch us!” Yeah, well you were wrong. When they’re calm, cool, and collected, they think that what they’re doing is warranted and they are in the right.
In 2021, a police officer killed 16 year old Ma’Khia Bryant as she was attempting to stab a person. And there were protest, not just immediately afterward but even after footage was released showing the officer was justified in his use of deadly force. I think plenty of people would howl and protest even if a perpetrator was shot or violently subdued even if he shot at police officers.
Yeah, that’s because she was the victim who was defending herself against an attacker. Her house; she called 911. There was someone there trying to defuse the situation, and a cop shows up and shoots someone within 2 seconds. Yeah, I’m OK with the outrage. The officer involved was NOT justified in his use of deadly force.
ETA: if I’m remembering the correct case.
Yeah, that makes we wonder if widespread excessive use of deadly force is an American thing. IIRC some other highly advanced countries’ police forces generally aren’t even armed, and are better trained to defuse situations rather than use force. Is that true?
There seems to be a two-part situation going on here.
One part is that law enforcement officers, as a collective group, have cultivated a culture of viewing themselves as the “thin blue line” between civil society and some sort of Mad-Max style chaos and violence. Along with this, they’ve cultivated an attitude that they are personally, immediately, and constantly threatened by those they view as enemies to civil society. They seem to be convinced that they’re always a hair’s breadth from being shot by a random person at a traffic stop, or that anyone could be threatening them personally. The two of these tend to incentivize overreaction with respect to people who either aren’t in the groups they perceive as “law abiding” and/or who they perceive as not complying with their orders.
Basically when they run into someone who doesn’t just do exactly what they say, they view it as more than just someone refusing/balking at doing what they ask; it’s suddenly resistance to lawful orders and then it moves into being a direct and personal threat.
The second part is that there’s a large chunk of the population that’s just perpetually terrified of crime and criminals because they view those as transgressions/incursions of that chaos, and therefore they’re both very supportive of cops no matter what, and they also demand very forceful responses to those sort of transgressions, or else chaos is going to take over, etc…
So you get cops who more or less look at what they’re doing as a job to be more of a holy crusade of sorts, and you get people who are on board with that interpretation, and condone and even encourage the sort of overreaction that this engenders.
I didn’t realize the OP refers strictly to police body cams. Hell, if people didn’t beat the crap out/shoot/stab/run over/set on fire someone while they were on camera then half of the sub Reddits would be empty.
This issue came up in a thread several years ago. A police officer in New York identified a guy as an escaped murder convict and shot him when he started to run. Escaped convict survived, and question was whether NY state use-of-force doctrine allowed the officer to use deadly force. Answer seemed to be that yes, it was allowed under NY law. Escaped convict had killed before, and therefore it was reasonable to use deadly force to stop him.
Out of curiousity, I asked a Crown prosecutor here in Canada if Canadian use-of-force doctrine would allow an officer to shoot in the same circumstances. His off-the-cuff answer was no, it wouldn’t, for at least three reasons: there was no evidence that the convict was posing immediate harm to anyone; there was no evidence that the convict was armed; and the officer didn’t have personal knowledge of the accused, and was just relying on a picture for id.
See @Loach 's comment at post 11 in that thread, and my comment right at the end.
The thread is over here:
That stuff isn’t even 1% of Reddit.
Well then, it’s half of many Reddits: Crazy Fucking Videos, Interesting as Fuck, Perfectly Cut Screams, Fuck You in Particular, One Second Before Disaster, etc.
And it’s all of a few subreddits but it’s none of effectively all of the biggest subreddits and also none of 99.9%+ of the rest of them.