Expecting the people who have to deal daily with the worst shit society can serve up (accidents/violence/cruelty/hate) to be angels is just plain stupid. Holding them to be governed by the same laws as the rest of society is still the right thing to do. But how is anybody surprised that cops can become too hard after the shit they have to deal with?
I view it as a job risk. Dealing with assholes all day long has the risk of turning one into another asshole.
I don’t hate cops, but as a group they do not impress me. The job selects for people who want to enforce rules on others and who are willing, at the very least, to use violence. These people then become part of a group that very much has an “us versus them” attitude towards the rest of the community. This fosters arrogance and bullying. On many forces there is institutionalized bigotry and/or corruption to add to the problems.
It isn’t surprising that some cops are assholes. It’s surprising that more aren’t.
Cops had kind of a Golden Age of Professionalism going from, maybe, the early 1980’s up to around the time the WoT started. The increasing militarization of police in the US has, if anything, made the job even more attractive to a certain bullying, thuggish personality type.
By and large, the police aren’t your friend.
The problem really is that I think the OP is white too. The OP is a rather unsophisticated, sophmorish, poorly thought out citeless rant belittling an entire profession.
I’m kind of new, but I don’t often see that kind of thing going well usually. If you had a thread about how unfairly minorities and the poor get treated by law enforcement or the justice system, I think you would get a different response.
I believe fully; there is zero doubt in my mind, that innocent black people and poor people have far different interactions with police officers than middle or upper class white people. We are given the benefit of the doubt much more often. In my experience, police tend to view anything out of the ordinary with suspicion and also tend to do a lot of lumping. When I was younger, I can think of a few times I had interactions with the cops that went fine for me. Basically until I was like 25, if I was out past a certain hour in the suburbs, the cops would stop me and ask annoying questions. For example, if I walked to 7-11 at 1:00 at night a cop might stop and ask what I was doing - noone walks to 7-11 at this time of night so that was “weird” to them. To me they were not rude or overly hostile and I wasn’t doing anything illegal and also had no fear of the police; to me they were just doing there job. I just told them I lived down the street and wanted a snack, and they said OK and everyone went on their merry way, but this might have gone worse if I was a poor minority, or used to having police be hostile and harassing to me.
I believe also that in a lot of areas it might be no different than with the school system - bad and inexperienced teachers are more heavily concentrated in the poorer districts and they probably have fewer resources as well.
So yeah, there is a tremendous amount of room for improvement and it would probably be hard for me to look at the situation objectively if I were not white, but that’s an entirely different line of discussion than what the OP is going on about.
I fully admit I was posting from the perspective of a not-unattractive middle class white girl. It’s true that I can have no real conception of what it’s like to be a young non-white male in that situation. But I still say that cops are people and some people are assholes.
It’s also true I think that some jobs appear to be full of arrogant jerks that one would think needed gentle and compassionate people - police, doctors, and lawyers come to mind. Unfortunately those jobs require a certain level of confidence and type-A personality to do them well. I don’t want a timid, second-guessing sort of person as my surgeon, and I want someone with a backbone to argue for me in court. Same deal with law enforcement. Finding good people with just enough balls to do the job well without succumbing to testosterone poisoning can’t be easy.
British people spell some words with “s” where USA people use “z”. Kind of like “colour” vs. “color.”
On topic:
Google “Constable Jason Nevill” for our city’s current open wound. Be sure to watch the video, it’s horrific. Someone commented once “It’s sad that when I see a cop now I feel paranoid rather than protected.”
But it’s assholes like this guy who get the media coverage. Decent cops generally don’t make headlines.
Like the time when I tied my dog up outside the Mexican restaurant while I waited for my nachos. Two cops came along and stood beside her. Then 3 more cops came along to talk to the first two. I got my nachos and walked out to untie her and said “<Dog’s Name>, are you out here causing trouble?” The cops asked if she was mine and I said yes. They said okay, they were just worried that some guy had tied her up alone while he was at the strip joint upstairs getting hammered. They even posed for a picture with her. Did those cops who were concerned about a dog’s safety make the news? Of course not.
Can we just put Smapti and the OP in a room and let them fight it out for the future of law enforcement? Smapti wins, we get Judge Dredd. common good wins, we get anarchy.
Not really helping your case there.
My only gripe with cops isn’t with the individual cops themselves- they’ve been unfailingly polite, courteous and professional, and even had senses of humor on occasion.
My complaint is with the upper echelon officers who decide the priorities. I have an issue when the cops think it’s a good idea on a sunny summer afternoon to stake out a 2 mile long flat, straight road with 2 places to turn off, and hide out in the bushes and radar people who are going 5 miles over the absurdly low speed limit (30 mph) on the road.
Or any number of other resource allocation questions that basically amount to harassing otherwise law abiding citizens for the purpose of raking in ticket revenue vs. actually preventing crimes and stopping criminals. If you’re in some white-bread suburb where the most criminal act is something like a teenager shoplifting, then sure, hang out and harass people for not using their blinkers. But if you’re in say… Houston or Dallas, it seems like a misuse of tax money to harass drivers when they could be patrolling high crime areas.
And yes, I know that drivers do break the law, but something like having an expired registration or coming to a rolling stop at a stop sign is an entire order of magnitude lesser of a crime than armed robbery, assault, etc…
Yes, probably, since I notice you don’t summarize your links or show why they support the original claim that “…there is news story after news story of innocent bystanders being shot, beaten and arrested by police.”
Let’s go through your links one by one, since some of them don’t support your thesis. Of course, as long as there are two stories, the claim “news story after news story” is technically true. but the phrase suggests a large number, and your links don’t.
In this story, police are summoned to an armed robbery. The victim of that robbery would later admit that the thieves were not armed; he claimed to have seen guns because he thought it would speed up police response time. Two Pasedena officers shot Kendrec McDade, who in fact was unarmed, but in fact had stolen the laptop. That’s certainly tragic, but it is absolutely unfair to call McDade an “innocent bystander,” under those facts.
In this story, deputies were summoned to the scene by the family of a mentally ill woman who was brandishing a knife that she refused to drop. Again, it’s tragic that the deputies either could not or would not resolve the situation without deadly force, but the woman charged at the deputy with the knife raised. She is by no means correctly called an “innocent bystander.”
In your third link, police were called by a woman who was threatned by man in her backyard holding garden shears. She told police the man tried to break into her house, threatened to kill her, attacked her dog, exposed his genitals to her and made sexually suggestive comments. When police arrived, the man ignored officers’ repeated instructions to drop the shears. After they tried the Taser, which misfired, and the man continued to refuse to drop the shears, officers fired. Again one can argue that they should have outwaited him, gotten another Taser, or continued to use sweet reason, but the man was clearly in no way an “innocent bystander.”
This case involved an accidental shooting – police entered the wrong apartment and the resident was shot. I agree this case is fairly described as an innocent bystander being shot.
This case involved a man accosted at a gas station by an officer, because the man matched the description of a suspect in a double homicide. The man was ordered by the officer to raise his hands. He did so, and then dropped one hand towards his pocket. The officer fired and wounded the man, who it turned out was trying to put his cellphone in his pocket. Tragic again, and I agree the man is innocent, and a bystander. But I think the man was foolish, because when the police have you at gunpoint and have ordered you to raise your hands, that’s what you should do. Still, this was an innocent bystander shot.
Your sixth link tells the story of Keivon Young. According to his own account, he was carrying two concealed knives when he was shot. According to the undercover officers, he threatened them with a knife. Even if we accept his version and discount the officers, his own admission has him violating California law with respect to the knives. He is not fairly described as an innocent bystander.
7. Eyewitness Records Santa Ana Officer Shoot, Kill Unarmed Homeless Man - CBS Los Angeles
This seventh link tells of Hans Kevin Arellano’s shooting by Santa Ana police following a confrontation in the parking lot of a juice bar. Police were called because Arellano was initiating confrontations with people in an adjacent McDonald’s parking lot. Arellano fled to the juice bar, and the officer followed him inside with Arellano continuing to refuse her order to stop. She fired after
Arellano left the juice bar and saying to her, “What are you gonna do, bitch?” This doesn’t seem to meet the standards for deadly force – but Arellano is certainly neither innocent or a bystander.
Your eighth and last link is about the North Carolina shooting death of Jonathan Ferrell by Charlotte police. Ferrell was shot after a homeowner reported that he repeatedly tried to enter her home. When the officers confronted him, according to them, he ran towards them and only after failing to stop him with a taser was he shot. This violated the department’s rules on the use of force, and an officer was charged with manslaughter. But his victim does not appear from this story to have been a bystander, and his innocence is unclear as well.
Ultimately, you posted eight link which you claimed supported your position, but failed to sumamrize them or explain why they did. If you had, readers could easily have seen that only two actually did.
Yeah, I recognize this crap. If there’s a shit load of stories that support your jack-ass opinion you come back and score some “You’ve sure got THAT right!!” points, but if it goes south you tuck tail and run to the next message board.
I look at it the other way. It’s a shitty difficult job so what is the motivation to become one. I concede there is a small percentage who where born into it and so it’s difficulties are seen as normal by a young impressionable child who then grows up and seeks parental approval. There may also be a few who truly want to do good in the world and want to be that guy who returns the stolen bike.
But on the whole I am convinced the motivation is almost always an inner bully or bullied who, once grown up, desires official power over others.
It’s a hard necessary job that is almost impossible to do correctly at all times, so I sympathize, and yet I wouldn’t want one as a neighbor and a police officer acquaintance would never go beyond that.
My experiances with cops have been good; YMMV.
My experiances with scumbags who cops keep in line have been bad, YMMV.
Cops are chosen for their low IQs. Degrees are not required. We give them guns and tell them we’ll cover up any shooting or fatal beating they commit. Then we tell them to target minorities and the poor because they’re “criminals.”
I’m a tiny little white girl who’s never been arrested and I fear the cops because I am a rational human being.
Do you happen to have cites for this? They are a wonderful accessory for any self-respecting diatribe.:dubious:
Cite required, 'cause there isn’t any evidence in your post.
Ah, you must be from across the pond (so to speak.)
Here in the land of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens and Pratchett, we use colourful language (and an occasional zed, but not in vandalised.) 
Thank you, Bricker, for taking the time to dissect this list of links.
There are bad and good, sure. The problem is you can’t choose which type to deal with.
This is officially the dumbest thing I’ve read today!
The day isn’t over just yet and LibrarySpy is still online.