You hate the police. What's your remedy?

Great Debates
61

My demeanor was what one would expect under the circumstances I called the police: Some level of disappointment or fear, in no way directed at the officer. You know, imagine sitting there glumly in the snow waiting for a cop to show up at an accident scene. Or how you’d feel if someome smashed a window of your car in and boosted a $1000 mountain bike minutes before you had time to return to your car to retrieve it. Or, perhaps, imagine how you might be feeling if there was a guy you saw every night in a park 30 seconds’ walk from your appartment, and after you get in a disagreement with him, he very seriously informs you he’s going to “make <you> a statistic, like in the obituaries”.

First example: I thanked the officer for his time, and asked if he’d help me fill out the accident report. He replied “I’m gonna write you up for speeding. Whattayah you’re doin’? It’s snowin’ out. Jeezis Christ, you people.”

Second example: You left your bike in the cah?? <burst of laughter> Well, kiss it goodbye, pal. What, you neah Tufts? Probably a student. No, you ain’t seein’ it evah again, I can guarantee you that, buddy. No, don’t bothah comin’ down heah, you ain’t gettin’ it back. Don’t leave yah things in yah cah. <click>"

Third example: “I don’t think the man threatened you. Well, ‘a statistic in the obituaries’ isn’t a death threat. No, it isn’t. Did he say he was going to kill you? What did you do? (I tell him the story) Well, what did you expect? You go looking for trouble like that, you’ll find it. (I ask him if “trouble” means he thinks I was threatened) The man did not threaten you. Good night, sir.”

62

I should clarify that, in example #3, I was routed to the police by 911.

63

As they say YMMV. Obviously I disagree but it was a bit unfair to bring up the KKK as a counterexample and for that I do apologize. Enough of me hijacking this thread.

Marc

64

Been there, done that. Doesn’t change my opinion one bit. E-Sabbath made a good point: When cops started driving cars, they stopped being “the neighborhood police officer” and started being “The Man.”

Somebody upthread also mentioned the “revenue-generating” aspect of police work. It’s an entirely different thread, but when police departments began confiscating anything associated with drugs, they became just another gang, IMO.

65

The SFPD was not entirely blameless in the '70s.

66

Today I like cops fine - I’m white, middle aged, with short hair and a small car. When I was in college, with long hair and a big car, I got stopped all the time. I never got a ticket. I was never was doing anything wrong. I was driving while long-haired.

Malcom Gladwell, at the end of Blink, talks about how when he grew his hair he started getting stopped. He also talks about getting stopped on 14th street in NY because he looked like a rape suspect. The actual suspect was taller and heavier than he was, but they both had long hair, which was enough for the cops to keep him for 20 minutes. (They had a picture, which he saw, which was why he knew there was no resemblance.)

But I feel for the police, since they seem to get paranoid. The father of one of my daughter’s friends is a cop, and he didn’t let her walk two blocks to elementary school in our neighborhood, which is not exactly high crime. I think they started letting her out of their sight at 15 or so, but it didn’t do a lot for her social life. Our town at the time was one of the safest cities of its size in the entire country, so I doubt he saw a lot of horrible things on the job.

67

OK, I read it. Seems clear to me a whole lotta’ people were looking for an ass-kicking and some of them got it.

Look, I’m all for professional policing, and I’ve made some bitter enemies among the ranks of the blue and brown for writing newspaper articles that didn’t whitewash police wrongdoing. They have the attitude that you’re either with 'em or against 'em, and I’m neither.

Having said that, when a mob of vandals is told by uniformed, helmeted, truncheon-carrying police officers to disperse and go home, refusing to do so is not a display of manhood, it’s a display of incredible stupidity. By the writer’s own admission, the rioters in San Francisco that night were looking for a fight. Well, they got one – and they got no right to bitch that they lost.

Sorry, but the head-thumpings administered by the SFPD are nothing compared to the savage beatings routinely issued to to blacks and “freedom riders” in the South and to the peaceniks in Chicago in '68.

68

C’mon, 'dude, it’s Boston fer chrissakes! Boston taught New York how to be rude. In fact, in New York, a cop would be suspended without pay for laughing at a guy who got his bike stolen. In Boston? Well, what WERE you doing with your bike in the car like that? It’s BOSTON!

Seriously, though, I get your point. You’re right, and I think I already referred to the Boston police in my previous post as being legendary for police misconduct. But the way you wrote it – well, you just nailed the whole accent and everything. Maybe I’m a sick twist, but you had me laughing out loud. I mean, SPEEDING! It’s just classic Boston PD!

69

Apparently, you didn’t read it very carefully. The police were certainly justified in breaking up the vandals at City Hall. No argument there. What was absolutely inexcusable was this part:

This wasn’t a legitimate police action. It was an act of revenge. It was brutal, shameful, and cost the city a small fortune in lawsuits and reparations.

So what? Because there are greater examples of police brutality, it excuses the lesser examples?

70

Yeah, it’s kind of funny now. At the time I felt powerless, humiliated, and quite unclear as to weather calling the police was ever worth the trouble.

71

How can you be dismissive and call assault on citizens head thumping. They do not have the right to beat citizens. I recently saw a movie taken by the police department in a demonstration. The police said start with the mace then clubs and then arrest the leaders. Make sure the camera men take pictures to identify as many protesters as possible… Take careful pictures of their clothes so we can identify them when they are dispersed and find out who they are.
Then they waded in the police gently applying “gentle head thumping and mace”. The police said someone threw a bottle. EVERY tv station reported it that way. But the films showed the attack was planned.Protesters defined as vandals shows how neutral you really are.

72

Or, because I don’t agree with you, how neutral you perceive me to not be.

Throughout history, when mobs mix it up with the police/troops/centurions, the mobs always lose. When an individual, reasoning human being takes to the streets and things start burning, it’s time for that human being to head for home. I just have no sympathy or empathy for people who attack armed police officers, people who play golf in thunderstorms, people who stroll across busy interstate highways or people who do other idiotic, self-destructive things.

Now, the biggest difference between the San Francisco riot and the clashes with civil rights workers in the South and the demonstrators in Chicago is that the clashes in Chicago, Birmingham and Selma started as peaceful demonstrations. The San Francisco riot did not start peacefully.

And, my original point was that the San Francisco cops didn’t deserve to be identified as corrupt, shiftless and power-hungry, as they were depicted in the “Dirty Harry” movies. I’m sure the SFPD had to learn the same lessons every other big city police department had to learn about confronting rioters. But they didn’t deserve the black eye Clint Eastwood’s movies gave them.

Now, Boston, on the other hand …

73

In any other city in America, I’d say yes. Well, except for Chicago. Maybe not Chicago. But for insurance purposes, yeah, you gotta’ have the paperwork in order.

See, this whole thread is one of the reasons I live in a town of 14,000 people more than two hours from the nearest metropolis. There are 23 police officers on the local PD and I know every single one of 'em by his/her first name. My sons went to high school with two of 'em. That’s just the way it is in small towns. We know each other.

74

Nope. That attitude in general started back in the late 60s. It was the most common attitude that we faced back when I was a cop in the 70s. We were “pigs”, we were “the man”, we were “the oppressor” and all that bullshit that mostly originated from groups like the Panthers and was picked up by the hippies and college kids.

Contrary to public opinion, there really isn’t that much “closing ranks” any more. When an officer screws up royally, it makes the whole department look bad and in most cases, the department will voluntarily crucify him. Sadly, though, it’s not all departments and the old attitude of the “blue wall of silence” still exists and until it is gone completely, it’s still a problem.

75

Not because I dont agree but because you name call. You use terminology to make a beating sound like a gentle game . You are clearly on the police side.
The shame is there is a police side. They should treat all people with respect. If they can not they should clerk in a 7-11 a real dangerous and low paying job.

76

A) As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had fewer encounters with law enforcement, and as I’ve learned to kiss their ass, the encounters haven’t been as bad. I’d like to be hopeful and think that the bad cops are the minority. The problem is that when cops go bad, it seems like they go really bad. I haven’t met any “marginally” bad cops. They’re mostly professional, but if they’re not, they’re monumental assholes. No amount of polite submission will appease them.

B) Various suggestions

– I’ll echo the idea about having video cameras and more video cameras, with better resolution and audio, too. I have no problem with the advent of the omni-present video in our day and age. I freely admit the majority of recordings exonerate the LEO. But the minority that do capture an evil LEO are very telling and instructive. I’ve got a string of them in my mind (yes, only the bad ones stand out, I’ll admit that) that should be put on a reel and shown to trainees.

– Higher salaries across the board combined with higher acceptance standards, more stringent screening, and training. Seems like a lot of us, especially from smaller towns, have at least one story about the local delinquent becoming police chief. Whatever the mechanism is that keeps said deliquent out of all other professions should be applied twice as much to the law enforcement profession. Higher salaries can only do so much to weed out sub-humans.

– A law which will impose mandatory minimum custodial sentences for cops who commit felonies. If you are sworn to uphold the law and then turn around and break it, you should be punished twice as hard as an ordinary citizen. If we’re willing to take discretion out of the judge’s hands for minor drug offenses, then we should do the same for LEOs who commit felonies. Don’t like it? Roll back the stupid drug laws first, and then we’ll talk about it.

– Mandatory registration for all firearms with severe consequences for possession of an unregistered gun. Tell that “only 5% of crimes involve a gun” statistic to a cop and see if they magically stop worrying about people putting their hands in their pockets, drivers reaching for their glove compartments, or suspects in dark alleys. Let’s just see how quickly their apprehension about encountering a gun on any given call disappears. They’re not going to stop worrying about guns, so why should we? Chris Rock says we should just make each bullet cost $10,000. I say if you’re caught with an unregistered firearm, it should be the same as though you’ve been caught today with a kilo of coke. If you’re caught with an unregistered automatic weapon, it should be the same as though you’ve been caught with a pipe bomb.

– Stop taking welfare away from poor people. Stop restricting funding of social programs. Destitution breeds crime. I don’t care whose fault it is; it doesn’t matter. When nobody’s watching the kids, they get into trouble, and that’s bad for everybody. When someone crosses the line into crime, there’s a high likelihood they won’t stop at petty theft, particularly if they have absolutely nothing else to count on. Then we ask the cops to clean it up for us…

D) I like order but I’ve got big problems with our laws. I think the war on vice should be stopped and that we should declare war on crimes involving victims. The money from the taxation of legal marijuana alone could revolutionize law enforcement. Cops shouldn’t have to be in the business of reforming social ills. If Congress has its way, each department will have a special flag-burning task force.

So the long and the short of it is, I don’t hate police; I hate the idiots running our government and the dim-witted electorate that put them there. The police have much room to improve, but as long as we keep asking them to enforce impractical laws, the profession will suffer from a pervasive sense of futility and erode from within.

E) St. Louis, MO; Chicago, IL; Atlanta, GA, and Charleston & Columbia, SC

77

You seem to be misunderstanding what happened that night. Protestors did riot at City Hall, where they caused significant damage, and met with only light police resistance. I’m not defending the rioters at City Hall, or castigating the police for their actions there. However, after the City Hall protest was broken up, the police showed up at Castro Street, where there was no riot or lawlessness occuring. People were out on the streets, in their own community, talking about the ruling when the cops showed up and, without warning, began breaking heads. There were two riots that night: the first by protestors at City Hall, the second by cops taking out their frustrations on innocent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Niether riot is excusable, but the actions of the police on Castro street were particularly shameful.

78

A) State why you dislike law enforcement personnel.

I don’t dislike cops, I dislike cops who break the law to serve themselves. There are plenty of good cops, just like there are plenty of bad.

B) State your method for fixing it.

Basicaly more oversight, and I don’t mean from the cops themselves. I think we should video tape as much police/civilian encounters as reasonably possible by a 3rd party, especially with the in-car cameras many police vehicles carry. I think we need laws to protect civilians who do attempt to record the activity of police officers so that they aren’t arresting them like the guy who was recently busted for having a video recorder running while being questioned about his kid outside his front door. I’d love to curb the all too common practice of simple disrespect that many cops have for anyone they might encounter. Even watching COPS on tv you see this…and they know they’re on national TV. Can’t they be curtious to someone who are themselves showing the cops respect?

C) If this involves removing the organisations altogether, suggest a method to maintain law and order.

No need to remove them, just watch them more closely.

D) If you don’t like law and order (;)), explain why.

N/A

E) Give your location (as general as you’d like), for statistics’ sake.

Just outside Philadelphia PA (USA)

79

Well, anything I’ve said on this thread about that particular incident is based on what I read in the one first-person account that was linked, and more than a quarter-century of practicing journalism in cities big and small has taught me that one person’s first-person account is does not a balanced report make. Honestly, I’d never heard of the San Francisco incident before this thread.

The fact that I was the guy on this thread who pointed out the damage cops did to themselves in Chicago, Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Neward and a dozen other cities has gone unnoticed; instead, I’m pilloried as being pro-cop (even if I were, how would that be bad?) because (1) I’m dubious about the first-person account of the San Francisco incident and (2) I don’t hate cops. Interestingly, I get an opposite reaction from police officers, including the ones I know on a first-name basis – because I don’t approve blindly of everything they do, I’m labeled as a cop-hater.

The only way one can be perceived by others as being truly neutral is to have no opinion at all. If I had no opinion, I wouldn’t pay $15 a year to play with you guys. I do have an opinion. It’s different from yours.

Just to recap, I suggested an objective observation of the history of police-public relations, based on many, many years of news reporting in a number of markets around the country, and the blame that needs to be placed on the shoulders of police and the media, especially the Hollywood media. I dared to suggest the SFPD didn’t deserve the reputation it got from a specific series of movies. I still say it didn’t. In fact, the department’s leadership rose above it quite well and, despite the weaknesses of some of the human beings who comprise the SFPD, the department today is considered one of the best-managed and cleanest large city police departments in the country. (I mean, really, Fajitagate?)

80

It’s common, but it’s crap. I hit a patch of ice on the way to school one morning, swerved off the freeway and rolled my van over, and got nailed with a $300+ “too fast for conditions” ticket, despite the fact that I was driving the same speed as everyone else, which was about 20 MPH below the speed limit. Luckily, the prosecutor had some sense and threw it out.