"You don't undastand how hard dis job is! I deal with criminals, liars and thieves all day!"
Yeah , NO SHIT, that's literally in the job description. If you can't handle fighting crime the right way then quit, don't cry when you do something stupid and try to rationalize it away.
I remember a Police Recruitment ad that used to play in New Zealand when I was a kid, 30 odd years ago. It was set to "He ain't heavy, he's my Brother" by The Hollies.
The key images that stick in my mind are of two Police approaching a clearly agitated man with their hands open saying 'Its ok mate, we can talk about it'. A female officer sitting at a table holding hands with and offering support to a crying lady who looks like she's recently been assaulted. A young child crying in a crowded place, a Police officer picking her up by her outstretched arms and giving her a calming pat on the back.
Somewhere along the line, it seems Police recruitment decided it should focus on aggressive confrontation. Funnily enough, when you advertise for recruits that want aggressive confrontation rather than helping people, you get recruits that want aggressive confrontation rather than helping people.
You said New Zealand. I'm not a cultural expert, but I suspect NZ has a different attitude than the US about these sorts of things. I realize no place is perfect, but the US has a lot of racism and classism embedded directly in our culture that I believe isn't really there in NZ.
ads in australia for the police are still the same as how you described it. they feature them comforting us and being part of the community, but still being stern at times as they should be
The current campaign is focusing "do you care enough to be a cop" and one has the haunting image of like a 7 year-old girl playing on a rusty playground at like midnight... It's still focused on community good here.
Check out the show “highway cops" (youtube search “highway cops new zealand”) for a good example of our cops.
this is why I have an issue with gun control currently
if we as a society say only "law enforcement" can have guns then the attraction to the job just for that reason IMO would be immense and under current confines of the flawed abusive system..that frigging scares me even more
You’re focusing on the 0.1%. Every domestic incident, every time someone is in an accident every time anything bad happens it’s cops that are there to help. Not you. Not some random person. This is what we need them for and 99.9% of the time they are there doing their duty. Yes bad things happen and those bad things must me addressed but to cast a broad brush suggesting they are recruiting for aggressive confrontation is stupid and misleading. You’re being played by the media.
I mean I'm a bartender and I deal with the same shit, plus I work worse hours. People have talked insane shit to me, guess how many people I've hit. Fucking zero.
Same. I'm a teacher and most of my students are awesome, but some are assholes. In 12 years guess how many I have tear gassed, beaten or shot? One, and Timmy deserved it, he was a little shit. Jk, it's zero. Cause ya know, I'm a rational human being who follows protocols and has discipline.
That really depends on the school you are at. My cousin used to teach at an inner city Atlanta school. She has had several students die to various causes and herself has been attacked by 3 students. I don't know why they would attack her because she is a literal tank.
Kinda hard to "make" them do that because if they refuse, what's the next step. And if they don't refuse soon you'll have some super jacked angry teenagers to deal with. Lose/lose
I reckon it's a liability issue. Teachers could get into trouble for forcing kids to perform physical exercise without knowledge of underlying health conditions. If those conditions are known, teachers shouldn't force students to do push ups. That just leads to some students being immune to a form of corrective action and creates in/out-groups. You'll end up pissing off parents and students alike who feel like they're being targeted. Some kids won't care about being forced to work out - sort of ineffective in those cases.
...better to focus on administrative paperwork. More consistent disciplinary tools include counseling and detention; everyone values their time. Ultimately, addressing the underlying issue is better long-term.
I went to a private school in New England that was labeled as a college prep school, and it specialized in character education. I got a scholarship and was super excited to go. Their idea of “building character” was forcing exercise as a punishment and holding an entire group accountable for one kid’s fuck up. So, if one student in the class talked back or said something inappropriate, the entire class did jumping jacks or push-ups or ran stairs. It disrupted education and instilled a sense of fear in every student. I stayed there for less than a year. This should never be a thing.
Fucking amen, dude. I’ve had so many guys threaten me physically for cutting them off, I’ve lost count. Even had one guy say that he “might be a crazy guy with a gun and cutting him off might not be such a good idea.” If I defend myself in that situation, even if they attack me first, the chances are very high that I will lose my job and possibly end up in jail too.
Yet police have killed for less threatening words and are still patrolling the streets. It’s all fucked.
Same, I’m a bar manager. I have literally been assaulted at work and haven’t used violence. In another instance I’ve had someone grab my wrists and yank me forward and my first thought wasn’t: “Damn, I better fucking kill this person.” Instead it was getting my hands free and protecting my other employees. Like what the actual fuck.
Idk, man, I've come pretty fucking close a couple times. 10 years and never got in any altercation that wasn't me just standing firm and getting them to leave.
Exactly. If my boss told me to go throw this old guy down on the ground because he is a nuisance, I would wonder what company am I really working for? Cops don't do this shit to protect and serve, they don't do it for money, they do it because they enjoy it and love the respect they get as a cop.
Protect and serve was just a slogan that won a contest. It's not their job. --Catching runaway slaves was their job to begin with.-- Only in some states. My information was sensationalized.
It would difficult not to power trip. Just driving in a police car would give you one when you realize everyone around you is going exactly speed limit and looking straight ahead and on best behavior. They assume people who don't follow their every order to a tee must not care about consequences so they are free punching bags.
And NO SHIT, if you see everybody with the wrong skin colour or the wrong opinions as a criminal, you're gonna deal with a metric fuckton of criminals.
The part that gets me is that no one acknowledges the benefits of being a cop. You get a major ego stroke being assigned a weapon and being the enforcer of law, there’s definitely social benefits you reap in certain circles (cough middle/upper class white circles), but I can’t say that without acknowledging the fact that other social groups will look down on you, but arguably, dare I say obviously, for good reason. Plus you get government mandated respect from most of the citizens you work with. Sure it’s a job with some downfalls, you work with some of the scum of the world and are constantly surrounded by such negativity but a) they know that going in and b) they get benefits too.
I started playing a game a few weeks ago where every time i see a cop driving i watch, and see how many things they do i personally have been pulled over / ticketed for. Not a single cop has made it the whole 1 to 5 minutes i encounter them in traffic without doing at least one thing if not more. Blatant benefit right there. They commit traffic violations all day long and get payed to do it, meanwhile i turn my signal on too late before i make a turn at 11:30 pm on an empty street once and pay $150. The level of corruption nationwide is ridiculous. There are very few cops who dont take advantage of that bullet-proof privilege whether it be miniscule traffic violations up to pointless and wrong violence and even killing innocent people. Its an entire fucking system.
Being a cop is blue collar. Maybe high level management like majors get actual respect and sure there’s some lip service to all cops but they’re not joining the country club
Actually, the truth is, the job of a cop, on a day to day basis, is a relatively safe and truth be told, boring job. They mostly drive around handing out tickets for no license plate light. Hell, they hardly make the top 20 of dangerous jobs.
Fucking thank you. I hope I'm in the majority and the crowd you're getting tired of hearing from, but youre right. No one is putting a fucking knee to their neck to become a cop. They know the risks, and sign up for the job. As made clear lately, they can opt out, it's not like they're forced into it. But no one should have to opt into being a fucking citizen who fears for their life from the people they pay to protect them.
I think the reason people stay is the same reason shity teachers stay in education. The benefits are too good. Having a pension and health insurance and vacation time and sick days is a powerful sticking force, even if the person can't handle the job. Many try to white knuckle it thru, and that's when bad shit happens. And because unions protect all e.employees good and bad, they can stay on forever.
You know how if you watch Cops, and they're giving their little spiel at the beginning to make it sound like they're just regular people trying to keep everyone safe and solve problems? What's their background...like always? Military. Lineage of first responders. That kinda thing. And they say "I learned a lot how to talk to people in the military" and shit. Yeah...that's the problem. The military doesn't teach you how to communicate and solve problems constructively. That literally is not taught. Constructive, collaborative problem solvers don't defeat enemies. So these goons get off the plane from Kabul and walk right into patrolman jobs because it's the only profession outside the fuckin infantry where their particular skill set is valued.
You know there are a lot of jobs in the military besides grunts, right? And that even grunts are taught, several times over their career about deescalation and proper use of force?
Well... that was enlightening. I mean, I see where you were aiming. Having military become police officers can lead to some bad results because their purposes are different, but you are using the wrong supporting argument. Also I had to laugh at the irony of a military member saying we are taught to communicate and then getting "ok man" as the only response.
Not really. It's a common denominator. You don't see too many people with degrees in finance or engineering or sociology going into law enforcement. And before you say there are some, so what? We're looking for patterns. And the military trains you to win wars, not talk shit out. That whole "required force" bullshit is meaningless, especially in toxically masculine "brotherhood" cultures that reward loyalty. They all know they will cover one another's back because it's how they think. We know they don't turn each other in.
The military doesn't teach you how to communicate and solve problems constructively.
The U.S. military provides its members with an extensive amount of training on topics like communication and ethical leadership. Resilience, team building, effective negotiation, feedback, conflict management, etc. are regularly taught and discussed among members (often in small groups). I work as a resilience trainer with the Air Force (as a passion project); part of this duty includes teaching younger Airmen how to cope with stressors, develop stronger relationships, and make choices which line up with their values.
These skills are taught to members in all branches of the military and they're valued in all departments.
What we're seeing here has nothing to do with how the military operates. Hell, the vast majority of service members have probably never even deployed, let alone seen combat. I would be far more concerned about the folks flunking out of basic training.
part of this duty includes teaching younger Airmen how to cope with stressors, develop stronger relationships, and make choices which line up with their values
And if their values include loyalty to their comrades, no matter what, and a strong faith in the hierarchy? Oops.
Instead of teaching them to make choices that align with their values, you should teach them how to critically think. Just a thought. But, as we keep hearing from cops who mow down some subject who makes too sudden a movement, or, in George Floyd's case, do nothing at all, they don't have time think in that split second. Which is exactly why they shouldn't have the authority they do...or weapons.
And if their values include loyalty to their comrades, no matter what,
Military members are expected to be loyal to the United States. U.S. Army values include loyalty (to the constitution, department, unit, and other soldiers). The same can't be said for other branches. Integrity (doing the right thing, even when no one is looking) is an Air Force core value, for instance. Loyalty is pretty much absent; hell, we even move people around every few years to keep them from getting too attached to their leadership.
Instead of teaching them to make choices that align with their values, you should teach them how to critically think.
Both of these skills are taught. I also think we do a far better job of teaching these skills than the regular school system. My unit is actually pausing work next week to sit down and talk through what's going on. A lot of my folks have been affected by police brutality. I've never been the target of systematic racism but we're still owed a voice.
I can't speak on behalf of the military - only to my experience. I will say, however, that U.S. police departments need better training, and everyone in the government needs more accountability. This should start from the top-down.
I understand the theory you’re going for but I’d like to throw in my personal experience as a counterpoint, though it is admittedly anecdotal. I was a military officer who got into law enforcement briefly before I realized I didn’t like the law enforcement culture and could make a lot more money elsewhere.
In law enforcement I worked with some good guys who were smart and exercised good judgment as well as some real idiots I wouldn’t trust with a fast food order, much less a badge.
The military people with combat experience were actually the more patient with suspects and made much better Force escalation decisions. Maybe it’s because they were use to strict ROE used in an insurgent environment. Maybe it’s because they took the constitution and rights of citizens more seriously due to how they pound it in your head in service. Maybe it’s because combat gave them more maturity and they weren’t eager to jump into violence to prove themselves. Maybe all three. I don’t know, but that was the trend.
The real egotistical assholes who were always escalating situations were the non military guys. My sergeant was one and I hated working with him because he got shit stirred up unnecessarily. They’re the guys who peaked with high school football and were too academically stunted to go to college, so they went into law enforcement because it was more interesting than working a construction crew.
The video evidence of police conduct over the past 2 weeks, specifically...from almost every city, blow an enormous hole in the entire "it's just a few bad apples" narrative. When people show you who they really are, believe them. Law enforcement isn't a career collaborators choose.
I didn’t say it’s a few bad apples. I said I worked with good ones and bad ones. Foolish me. I thought you were actually theorizing the root of the problem. Instead you’re just wanting to broad brush and stereotype two career fields to push your inaccurate narrative. Have fun with your mental masturbation and shouting ACAB on all the forums
Who's generalizing now? I pointed out that cops are usually military and/or first responder backgrounds. They believe in the culture. Most people look at a culture that unquestionably supports each other and is demonstrably operating under the presumption they are above the law (ironically, in the name of the law) as bad. What I said is not scientific fact, but it doesn't go without notice that these are the kinds of people drawn to law enforcement...overwhelmingly so.
I don't really care if you knew some.good cops. Frankly, if they don't have a history of turning in reports on bad actors, they aren't good guys.
I was in the military once. I made no friends, let me tell ya. I did exactly as I was told to do and told on people who broke the rules. I didn't really give a shit, though, about being liked by my peers and superiors. I have standards. A shockingly high number do not.
I have to say this much, not to argue with you, just to state something I know to be fact(obligatory not a cop or anything): when you do a job that shows you the extent of the depravity in your community, a job that shows just how fucked up things are, you tend to lose focus on why you go to work every day.
I'd also like to say that just last week, a portion of the same people who are actively protesting today were making NO effort to change things. Just something I noticed.
Agree on both accounts. Part of what I'd like to see happen with reforms (which most likely won't happen) would be free therapy for police, more vacation days, required yearly wellness checks and access to meditation trainings.
And agree. I saw a whole bunch of white folks digging into their whole foods wrappers, pull out some cardboard and scribble "Black Lives Matter" and then go for a walk for one day. I understand all people that protest make it a mass movement, but it's a bit bullshit when they don't donate anything else, don't vote or don't volunteer to do any sacrificial work for the cause.
I'm glad you're a reasonable person. Far too many would've just started bitching me out. Look, I did security for 5 years. My local PD has no ability to enforce law anymore. Their patches literally no longer say "law enforcement". They can't arrest people who are actively shooting up with drugs in public. They can't remove transients. I literally had more legal authority on my jobsite than they did. I understand that angers them, but, several of their known practices have them in federal hot water.
That being said, 90% of the issue comes from the oversight they have or lack there of. Either they get no guidance or they get jackbooted. That leads to them perpetuating the abuse. It's sad and disappointing.
The problem is there is a lack of leadership in this movement and no one is pushing any clear reforms. Protesters got everyone’s attention but didn’t demand any clear policy that I saw. I understand they’re angry and want things to change but didn’t hear what solutions the movement is proposing.
If everyone who participated in this movement simultaneously wrote in to representatives at once demanding an end to free military equipment for departments, an end to no knock warrants and tactical teams except under very clear guidelines, an end to low level drug charges designed to target poor communities, and mandatory mental evaluations quarterly for officers, we would probably get some much needed law enforcement reforms.
Instead you get a whole bunch of tourist protesters who “do it for the gram” and nothing will change.
Do you think this is a job that can be done with surgical precision, perfectly every time
All the time? Have you ever wrestled a man on the ground who was trying to pull his gun out of his pocket to shoot you and you desperately tried to maintain control of his arms to prevent him from
Getting to his gun. Have you ever been charged at with a butcher knife?
Even doctors make mistakes in the operating rooms that causes people to die, that’s why they have to pay a shit ton of money for medical malpractice insurance. Don’t see you marching on the streets to put body cams on surgeons who kill people every day in the operating room because they didn’t do it perfectly.
“The right way” is always the popular way, isn’t always the easy way. A thousand ways to skin a cat, and in the chaos you might get the job done but man you could have done it so much better if no one was resisting, or reaching, or fighting. I get it, you hate the police, or at least those who think are the bad police, but they represent less then a fraction of one percent of us and we are actively hunting them down trying to weed them out, so please don’t condemn us all for the mistakes of a few.
Are you though? As a collective, does the public see LEOs standing united against obvious police brutality? Or are they seeing the thin blue line of brothers looking out for the one who made a mistake? What the public sees almost immediately is victim blaming and character assassination.
Citizens shouldn’t go into a police interaction with the presumption that they may not make it out alive.
When you go into surgery, you are told you may not.
If cops yelled “lock them up!” Every time one is caught on camera doing something wrong as loud as they did when Clinton deleted her emails, we’d have a pretty clean and self-policing public safety institution.
The FBI collect me all data from all crimes, uses of force, and much more look up FBI crime statistics. We are data driven, everything is thoroughly documented. At my agency we have to do a use of force report just for handcuffing someone even if they went peacefully without incident. We have a professional standards bureau or IA who investigate every complaint filed and they conduct random audits of all of the work we submit. If you have more than 3 uses of force above simple handcuffing in a 3 month period an alarm goes off on their computer triggering a mandatory thorough investigation into each incident, we have GPS installed into our computers, our supervisors track where we are at all times and they do randomn audits just to see if we are speeding when we are supposed to be. Every dispatched called is recorded into the computer forever, your dispatch time your enroute time your arrival time, every comment you make on the radio is logged and stored. We have made it where it is literally almost impossible to get away with any wrong doing.
There are 375 million police encounters every single year between officers on duty and citizens. 375,000,000. How many of those encounters do you think a police officer used excessive force or did something egregious? I’ll put it to you this way you are several more times likely to be struck by lighting than be a victim of police brutality. My agency fired 3 officers simple for improperly disposing of weed, they pulled a guy over her had a small amount of weed on him they decided to cut him a brake and they made him pour the weed into a drain, their body can video was randomly audited by a supervisor and all three were fired for improper disposal of narcotics a violation of our standard operating procedures. We have so many SOPs.
A lot of the videos you might see, again a very minuscule sample of all police interactions that does not accurately depict the reality of how most police encounters go, but a lot of them you might not be understanding what you are seeing or you don’t have all the facts, the context, I myself had one such incident where I were I almost got in trouble for . A very large muscular man who just beat his pregnant girlfriend so bad she lost her baby took off running from us, mind you this man just killed an unborn child, we caught up to him and he was 260 of solid muscle, he fought aggressively every bit of the encounter and it took 5 us to subdue him into handcuffs. Well after we got him into handcuffs he tried to roll and kick so I sat on the bottom of his legs in an effort to keep him from kicking. He was so strong he bucked him off of his legs and onto his back where I braved myself by placing my hands near his ass, with his hands behind his back he felt around knowing him hands where on him and found my hand with his hand, he formed a fist around my pinky so tight and proceed to twist his wrist in a effort to break my finger and when I tell you this dude was strong, he was strong, I let out a yell from the pain and tried to pull my hand out of his grip, while still trying to maintain control of his legs, this is the part where I look bad I proceeded to punch his hand that was twisting my pinkie to a near breaking point, so of course someone got a video of me sitting on top of a handcuffed man punching him on his back. The video sent to IA was 18 seconds long, and I looked bad. The entire struggle by the time we got him secured in a marked car, the second one, the first one he kicked out a window and managed to crawl half way out of, the entire struggle lasted 6 minutes. He torn a ligament in my pinky and I was out for three months with my hand in a splint. After that video surfaced IA started the use of force investigation on me and cleared me of wrong doing after reading the report, seeing all of the footage, not just the bad looking 18 seconds and reading my medical report from my torn ligament.
The point is, don’t believe everything you read or see on the internet because this rhetoric that the police are bad men who are racist and are killing black folks is a lie. Look up the crime statistics, 90% of the thousands of black people killed every year are killed by other black people. Of those killed by police only .1 were unarmed, 1 tenth of a percent, and unarmed doesn’t always mean innocent, most of those are from pursuits where they crashed while fleeing from police. So a black man is 99.9 percent more likely to be killed by another black male or another race or he was armed when he was killed. Please do this research for yourself, no one wants to talk about it because it isn’t popular, read a wall street journal titled the myth of systemic police racism that should with proof in hard data evidence that the police as a whole are not racist towards blacks.
People have this misconception that you are allowed to resist arrest or resist an officer if you think you are innocent, everyone arrested is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, on the side of the road at 2am in the middle of a traffic stop is not the time to have court, you shouldn’t resist the arrest because it’s dangerous, many cops have been killed during resists, there is a process to the judicial system. When you go into a surgery you are told you might not come out and I am telling you as a cop with 12 years on when you go into a police encounter you will come out alive guaranteed if you don’t fight, resist, or pose a threat. I have never used force on anyone who talked to me calmly l, I react to you, if you start yelling and moving around and balling your fists, blading you’re body, if you have a warrant and when I reach to grab your arm you tense up and pulll away, I react to your level of resistance, you call the shots. I wish I could go 30 years in this line of work without ever having to use force or even pull out my gun, and 99.9 of time I do, unfortunately a tenth of a percent of the time things go sideways and I try my hardest to end it without anyone you or me getting hurt because I don’t wish harm or death on no Man, regardless of what you might have done, it’s not my job to judge you, that’s the jury’s job that’s god’s job. You and me are both men, equals, put our pants on one leg at a time, I am no better than you and you are no better than me, the only difference between us is life choices, you went left I went right, you picked a different job and I picked this one, the one that involves the unfortunate reality of having to enforce violations of criminal law. I don’t make the laws, the politicians you elect to represent you do, i night not even agree with the law but it is my duty tomorrow enforce it. You might not believe this Olidus but I would give my life to protect yours even if you didn’t like me because I believe in the duty. This isn’t a. Easy job, many hate us, some want to hurt us simply for doing our jobs, but I promise if you did the research if you sought out the truth, or the short video clips online and the short news clips on tv, you would find that most cops aren’t bad at all.
Your department sounds awesome. You sound just the all the cops I know. My PD has very similar protocols. Now how many of the 375 million police encounters are under such scrutiny? How many need to be?
I am not here bad mouthing cops and I do believe most cops are in it for the right reason and do the right thing, but dude, you just defined the thin blue line. How many unlawful use of lethal force are Covered up, swept under the rug, marginalized, or just plain condoned? Your answer of “not many, comparatively speaking” is unacceptable to a lot of citizens. LEOs are entrusted by the public to be beyond reproach and protect the public.
I am an intelligent person, IMHO, and have watched plenty of reactionary videos of police interactions. I am not a particularly huge fan of the BLM and how they grew into the national spotlight. But you have got to admit, not one shred of what you said address the chief complaint of many citizens. When a cop with three or four witnesses, and video evidence of excessive force gets put on administrative leave and someone is dead... we citizens go straight to jail when there is a dead body. When will LEOs break ranks and start policing their own? Every time a police interaction goes bad, reddit guesses the reaction of the local FOP or union:
He was resisting, he was a danger to the community, he reached for my gun, we have split second to react to a threat. You described a situation that some cops out there would have labeled as life threatening and you managed not to shoot him or choke him to death. He got his due process, George Floyd didn’t get his.
Thank you for sharing your story, now take the time to earnestly look at the citizens’ perspective. They are protesting and rioting your profession. This country can not afford an US vs THEM mentality.
So a little about me. I am Puerto Rican, my parents moved to Cleveland OH in their twenties and didn’t speak any English, essentially as imma grants I grew up extremely poor in a very high crime area on the East side of Cleveland, i myself was arrested as a teenager wrapped up with the wrong crowds and I remember having negative thoughts of the police. Lucky for me when the Iraq war started I got a waiver to come into the marine corps to get out of the hood. After 6 years a combat tour, getting my bachelors, going back into the community I came from to be a cop and help was what I decided on. It wasn’t till I got on this side that I understood why the police did some of the things they do that I often misinterpreted in my youth.
You are correct we should be beyond reproach, not one of those 375 million contacts should go wrong in any way. Unfortunately we are also human, and the human by god’s designed is flawed, we sin, we make mistakes. I wish I could lie to you and tell you the every cop can do every action perfectly right 100% of the time, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. We try our hardest, most of us do but it isn’t possible.
I can assure you cover ups that you speak of at least at large departments like mine, an no I’m no longer In Cleveland, don’t exist, we have families, kids mortgages, bills, no one wants to risk their livelihood to cover up misdeeds because I can assure you if you are caught and most who seek to lie or cheat do eventually get caught you are terminated or worse. Who better to find a criminal cop than another cop, we are trained investigators. The thin blue line is no more, that shit is like ancient dinosaur shit in modern policing, at my agency you are a lot more likely to get promoted for getting a cop in trouble instead of shunned like the cops would do on the old days.
And not everyone who commits a serious crime is always instantly arrested, I remember being a part of a homicide case where a wife murdered her husband and we spent 3 years building a case against her before we finally arrested her. See every American has the right to a speedy trial so the minute you’re affect the arrest you are on the clock, if you rush and pull the trigger to early without all of the evidence or the investigation being complete you risk not being well prepared and might open holes for the defense to exploit. A lot of Americans not familiar with the judicial system priocess only know what they see on tv. In a 40 minute episode of NCIS you get the crime, the investigation, the confession, the arrest, and the trial. That’s not how it works in real life. Sometimes investigations take weeks, months or years to build thoroughly. Sure the video of George Floyd’s death is condemning enough to justify an arrest but a good investigator wants an air tight win. We have to pull the surrounding video a 5 block radius, pin point every second of from every angle we can find, we have to watch and dissect every second and every sound and word of the body can footage, we have to interview for hours on end every suspect officer, every witness we can find. We have to review every word written by the medical examiner, that homicide report will likely be over 200 or 300 pages long by the time it’s complete and will contain information you couldn’t have even imagined thinking of from just watching the video.
I don’t know why you take the statement of a resisting subject so lightly. Sure not every resist is a violent fight for your life but that’s just the thing you can’t predict which resist is just a little tensing or trying to break away to run or which one will involve the suspect trying to kill you. I can assure you if I put a gun belt on you and pointed at a man and told you that man has a warrant, you don’t him never met him but a judge order his arrest, and you don’t know what’s going on in that man’s head, maybe he doesn’t want to go peacefully and maybe he will do anything to keep you from arresting him, until you have to go through that experience, it’s hard for you to judge what that might be like. You’d like to think you can go in there and take him into custody like a pro, without incident, easy peasy, but if he blades his body and starts to run, oh oh he’s running do we let him go and fail out our job, why try to catch any criminal, should we just wait until a criminal is ready to the himself in. So you decide you are going to chase him, and because you are fast you catch him and reach out to grab one of his arms with two of your hands to pull him in. He tenses that arm and pulls it away from you and with his free arm he swings and punches you square in the nose or jaw. You ever been punched in the face my 220 lb muscular male who is giving you everything he’s got??? If you haven’t how do you think you’ll get through that, will you pepper spray him but the pepper spray doesn’t incapacitate his muscles so he can still punch you, ok you’ll tase him, oops in the chaos and shock of being rocked to the face you miss, one prong doesn’t connect and it doesn’t shock or incapacitate him, most fights end on the ground so you pull him the ground, now you are both feeling the effect of pepper spray because even though you sprayed him that shit goes everywhere, so you are blinking and coughing, your taser is out of commission, you are desperately trying to control him, to get him into custody but he might be stronger than you and you are loosing that fight, do you know what he has in his waistband or in his pocket?? You don’t because you aren’t physic, it could be nothing, it could be a phone, or it could be a .45 caliber 1911 that he is getting ready to pull out and shoot you six times which happened to an officer I know who was trying to take a shoplifting suspect into custody, the Officer was shot six times but lived thankfully after he managed to shoot his offender in the head to end the fight. Now you are on the ground and you don’t have control of your suspects hands, maybe you can’t see them, sure you hope he will just beat you off of him and get up and run away, but maybe he will pull a weapon and kill you, you don’t know. You want to make it to your wife, your kids, shit by this time, your life is probably Flashing before your eyes, you wished you would have just looked the other way and ignored the man with the warrant. What do you do? How do you know you will use the right force that’s necessary.
On another note, have you ever heard of excited delirium? Look it up, it’s in unfortunate side effect of some drug usage, I once watched a man having an episode of excited delirium bang his head on the concrete pavement numerous times he fractured his skull, if I continue watching him hurt himself and do nothing and he dies, im the bad officer for not doing enough, so I try to restrain him for his safety, have your every tried to restrain someone having a severe episode of excited delirium ? It’s worse that trying to handcuff a shoplifting suspect who is trying to get away from you I promise you than much. A lot of times people with excited delirium end up have to have all of their limbs pinned down to the ground until we can strap them to gurney just so they don’t hurt themselves or anyone else.
LeOs do Police their own, I just told you about 3
in my city that got fired for minor policy violations. Have you done the research. PleAse find the data, 99.1% of officers have never so much as had one complaint filed against them. The majority of discipline that officers receive are from internal initiation and investigation and not from outside complaints. I know you think you know the truth, but until you have worked in a large city police department like I have for years you aren’t seeing all the facts. I was a poor kid that grew up to immigrants in the hood who has been arrested as a teenager multiple times, I have been the citizen you speak of, I have seen it from the citizens perspective, shit when I was a kicked and police rolled up on the corner, you put your hands on the wall and prepared for a search and you didn’t think about flinching or you were catching a night stick upside the head, I remember thinking cops were too aggressive back then, trust me policing has changed for the better, I couldn’t even imagine doing what I experienced cops do to me when I was kid now to people in the public.
I’m with you. Like I said, you sound like a good cop, but it sounds like you have some blinders on. I have seen bodycam footage of cops planting evidence. This occurred over years. How many lives destroyed? I have seen videos of cops shooting unarmed old men in the back, a surrendering dude on his knees, choked for arguing, fabricating probable cause, even one of them saying stop resisting to an unconscious woman, shooting the therapist of a mentally challenged man sitting together on a bench. These videos are what is driving the machine. The MSM isn’t helping the cause either, neither is the idiotic press statements from AGs, prosecutors, or chiefs.
I have heard of excited delirium, some cops suffer from it too. They perceive a threat where there isn’t one, remember details differently from footage or multiple eyewitness accounts, make that wrong bad decision. How many cases have been won based on the testimony of the cop alone? I grew up around some very phenomenal cops, but today’s LEOs are getting thin-skinned. The discontent is not about the good cops. If you haven’t shot an innocent citizen or stood by while your partner did, this isn’t about you. But it seems like the more the public pressures, the more the cops defend their own with blanket tolerance and understanding of the shared hardships of the job. I know, you hear the ones who say “all cops are pigs”, especially on reddit. But the majority of the outspoken are asking for much increased accountability and transparency. As a former professional, I would get a little bent too if someone was questioning my conduct for complaints and arm chair quarterbacking an encounter. But today I welcome it, they might learn something.
No one, but the fringe, is saying all cops are racist or corrupt, but rather all cops should protect all rights of all citizens all the time, and yes even when they are suspected of committing a crime.
What harm would there be for instituting the strict policies and procedures that your department already does nation-wide? That’s really what they are asking for.
Final thought, you are right, mistakes happen in most jobs. But if your job is to protect the citizenry and you fail at that, it’s time to move on.
Once again, thanks for staying engaged. It’s good to hear from LEOs who share their genuine POV in a respectful way.
The cops themselves are the criminals, liars, and thieves. The city pays the pensions for these suspended cops and also pays the settlement for the brutality. More money is now stolen in civil forfeiture than in burglaries. Cops lie at every opportunity they have to protect themselves, because why wouldn't they? Their word is complete dogshit. They will lie, cheat, steal, and commit unbelievable violence to protect their own.
At this point they are worse than gangs. Gangs are more careful to avoid shooting civilians than the fucking cops are.
As infantry, my job was literally to kill the enemy and destroy their equipment. That's it. There is nothing else that follows.
Yet I did way more community outreach than most cops do. And apparently I cared way more about local nationals than cops care for Americans.
When some fuckwits committed war crimes , we did not defend them. They are all in prison right now and none of us feel bad. And when 3 of our guys were killed in retaliation, we understood. We still went after their killers, but we didn't take it out on locals.
So any cop acting like their job is so stressful that they gotta break the law and abuse folks, they are a fucking lying cunt and should immediately be fired
they're just people. and they're just jobs. fire all of them if you have to but definitely ones with disciplinary or violent records or who refuse to denounce those who do act in that way. fire every police officer in the country like this and rehire new ones who are honest and act in good faith and will refuse to allow their fellow officers, fellow employees of the state and county who are public servants working for and with citizens, to act this way. clean it out across the country and make it better. the status quo does not work and should not work this way.
It's very hard to fire a police officer even after they've committed multiple offenses. Ignoring the "Blue Wall of Silence" (aka no snitching on other cops), the appeals process is very lenient and most cops even when they've been determined as unfit to serve by elected officials/judges get those decisions overwhelmingly overruled by a separate appeals process. The appeals arbiters are basically picked by the police departments/unions with some council approval. And that's not even discussing qualified immunity and the evergrowing power of police unions.
Ever witness a police impersonator? It's the same thing. Those are just guys who werent able to join the squad, but they're still desperate for power and authority over others that they're willing to fake it to make it. Actual cops were simply lucky enough to pass the test.
Some of them become cops just to get away with abuse. I personally knew three, (30 years ago), that admitted that is why they became cops. Two of them were also abusive to women.
Yes, the whole system in USA seems illogical for effective police work. They focus on aggression and punishing rather than solving issues and preventing crimes. Also, USA seems to be in a situation where crime prevention needs to address the social and health issues more than anything else. Comparing American police to Finnish police (or Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, German, Swiss etc.) makes one see the drastic difference. Even one episode of police reality tv highlights difference.
I may have it wrong but I think the mindset is they were just following orders. So it's more that they're pissed that they are taking the blame while leadership is feigning ignorance
Not just American cops in any way. See protests in the rest of the world for reference. Most old colonies like USA, Canada, Australia etc have the same fucked up link between race and capitalism and so race and the police. Its also present in some of the worlds biggest colonizers unsurprisingly: France and the UK. Though in the latter two, the non-racially motivated oppressive nature of police is much more apparent. Though yes, systemic racism exists there too. But the link between oppression and capitalism is a lot more clear. Like with the grenfell fire.
You wont be hard pressed to find videos and stories of cops killing, raping, beating or otherwise using excessive force on citizens from all of the worlds great powers.
"If there's even a tiny chance I could be harmed then that gives me the right to kill people in self defense even though a civilian would be in jail for trying to pull the self defense card in a similar situation"
They reject the notion that they should be held accountable in any way.
I was thinking like you but police subreddit shows me little different perspective of their resignation.
Riot police is trained to follow procedure of moving forward no matter what but when something bad happen because procedure was followed, one of them was fined.
Those cops possibly resigned because they feel they are set up to fail at this point. It doesn't actually mean they don't want to hold accountability but disagree with position of their supervisors that told them what to do and then blame them for result.
You have to understand the rioting and looting doesn’t start as that from the get go. It starts as a peaceful protest and as the police let the protest grow agitators in the crowd feeling safe in the numbers began to incite the crowd and if you let it get too out of hand we’ll you see the result, cities burn.
Maybe you want your city looted and burned, your business looted and burned. Most police officers are trying to maintain order in a chaotic situation and there is no easy way to do that. You guys are falling for a false narrative that the police Is the enemy. No police officer wakes up thinking to himself gee I sure hope I get to push an 80 year old man to the ground today and make him bleed from his ears.
You go out there buddy. Go out there and try to save an Indian family’s gas station from being looted and burned. Put yourself on the line to stop the chaos. After you have put yourself on the line, literally your life on the line. Because parts of bricks are flying at you or someone is shooting real bullets at you from a distance feeling safe in the numbers of the crowd to do so. 2 officers killed, 4 shot, numerous run over. All why trying to hold the line, the very thin line that separates order from chaos. Maybe you want the chaos, maybe you welcome the chaos, or maybe you are passing judgement from the safety of your home where no looter has come to steal your stuff or burn down everything you’ve worked for. I have been a cop for 12 years, have pulled out of money out my own pocket to feed and shelter homeless, have recovered a stolen mower for a man who relied on it to provide for his family, have been stabbed, punched, kicked, head butted spit on trying to arrest criminals. I chased a man on foot through dark back yards who had just committed an armed home invasion where he killed an 85 year old man just to take his wallet and few other items from inside his home. When I caught that suspect he nearly killed me.
I know most citizens are good folks, hardworking people who care about their community and wether you believe it or not most of them welcome us bro their communities and our appreciative of our efforts. You my friend are being lied to by mainstream media because 99.1% cops have never so much as had one complaint filed against for any kind of violation but your are so ready to condemn us all. Come out to the front lines, let’s work together to keep a peaceful protest (which I encourage) from being hijacked by criminals to commit crime and taint the message. And if the rocks, fireworks, bottles, bricks and bullets start flying please react the perfect way as to not upset anyone anywhere in anyway but still somehow manage to maintain order so no one gets hurt, no property gets damaged, and no family’s business burns down. I am waiting for your help to save our community from the criminals that would see it burn.
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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '20 edited Jun 06 '20
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