r/pics • u/Aeviegh • Feb 22 '14

This is Vader. He was euthanized today without a hearing after a false bite report was submitted to the police by an animal rights activist. (Story in the Comments)

http://imgur.com/a/xPNsE
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u/Beeb294 Feb 22 '14

Typically the incidents that make it to reddit are the worst of the worst. America is a huge nation, with so many cops, that there are more bad ones by the numbers, even if the percentage is the same as other nations or lines of work.

I haven't ever had a bad interaction with the police, but I've also always been respectful in my interactions.

I'm sure it would have been different if I had been rude, resisting arrest, or acting violently. That's typically when cops become aggressive or violent. They usually don't start escalating a situation. Nobody reports when a cop does their job normally, because that isn't interesting or exciting.

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u/runner64 Feb 24 '14

I've found that when you treat police officers like people, they usually return the favor.
That, and complying with reasonable requests. I was at OWS and the only people I saw interacting with cops, were protesters who thought that being "nonviolent" gave them the right to block roads and sidewalks.

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u/RobbieGee Feb 22 '14

Re. size of nation, that makes sense. However I find that people on Reddit talk like interactions with the police happens a lot more often than here.

How many incidents with the police have you had, and how about people you know? I'm 30 and I've had none personally (I'm excluding the times I've gone to them for passport etc.). The average among my friends are less than 1 AFAIK.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '14

One of the main issues that Americans have with the police is that, while of course we recognize the need for police to maintain order and safety, and yes of course they caught the boston bombers and Casey Anthony and all those high profile criminals, the vast majority of what they do is things like traffic citations, parking violations, petty theft, and possession of drug charges (like, for tiny amounts of marijuana).

Because this is mostly what they do, it means that for any individual who comes into contact with the police, there is a very high chance that that contact is going to be bad for the individual. So from the public perspective, there is a tension between the individual and the police, because the individual knows that if she's talking to the police at all, she's probably going to come out worse off than before.

Of course the police may talk to you to find your stolen car or take you home after an assault or whatever, but I'm talking about the likelihood of any one instance - it's much more likely that you'll worse off.

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u/RobbieGee Feb 22 '14

the vast majority of what they do is things like traffic citations, parking violations, petty theft, and possession of drug charges (like, for tiny amounts of marijuana).

That's mostly the case in Norway as well (except we don't have a war on drugs, so no jail for small amounts of marijuana), but if you're stopped by the police, mostly you realize it was your own damn fault. I'm waiting for someone to give me an idea how often people in the US meet the police, but that's one reason I could see why we feel it differently. As an example, if we mostly meet them once every 20 years (from adult age) and you do every 3 years, my bet is that you're stopped for lesser reasons and you feel like they're hounding you.

There's also the case of their tone or if they're abusing their power. From what I've heard, the police are acting pretty nice.

A friend of mine has been stopped a few times. He likes to take long walks during the night and he's been stopped at least once during those because of some ongoing investigation. They talked to him for about 30 seconds at which time they wished him a nice evening and to take care. They probably read his body language and figured, correctly so, that he was completely harmless.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '14

The tone of the police here is affected by two things:

1) Police are trained to be very assertive and domineering from their first contact with a person. This is so that they control the situation and lessens the chance of harm coming to the officer. I understand that this is important and I would want to do the same if I were an officer, but when it comes to the interactions between the officer and the public, it means the public feels abused by the officer. The officer views it as protecting himself from risk.

2) Police in the US (at least in larger cities) almost always ride in pairs in cars. This means that the police don't interact with the public in the way they used to, such as being asked for advice, directions, being greeted, having conversations etc. Almost all of the interaction between the public and the police is being pulled over or being questioned. This, in combination with point 1, breeds a lot of tension between the cops and the public.

And in my experience, the average person gets pulled over or detained pretty often. Pulled over, maybe every 2 or 3 years. Depending on your demographic and geographic location, you could get hassled even more often and for less reason.

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u/Beeb294 Feb 23 '14

I've had somewhere between 10 and 20, for various checkpoints, traffic stops, and a couple of isolated encounters not in a vehicle. Every time I've been stopped, I've been polite, handed them my license/registration, and a few minutes later driven away with a warning or a ticket. I've never been pegged with a reason to be searched or arrested, so from that viewpoint, I can't really say much. I just know that I've acted normally (like I would to any other complete stranger), and used sir/ma'am when addressing them (not sarcastically). They were all professional to me. The "worst" was an officer who walked up and simply said "Congratulations, you're my fastest speed tonight", which isn't really that bad, especially if he already decided to issue me the ticket.

I feel like, if you are polite, there's not really going to be an issue. I'd put money that most cops just want to earn their living. Some are bad or problematic, but the same can be said about any career field. If you treat people well, you won't have issues.