It's not all cops are bad or even a "few bad apples." It's the fact that it is nearly impossible to hold a bad officer accountable if they violate your rights.
Story time, about 4 years ago, I lived in an upstairs apartment, and my friend who had children came to visit. Her 5 year old son had light up shoes and thought it was fun to run around in them. However, he quickly settled down and was playing video games with the other children. This was the first and last time she ever visited me.
About 2 or 3 in the afternoon, my neighbors called the police because of the noise and reported that there was domestic abuse happening upstairs.
The officers violated our rights and arrested my husband. They kicked open our door, they had no warrent or probable cause so this was illegal.
They separated me and my friend from our children. Then they interrogated the children 5M, 7M, &7F with no social worker or parents present. (Which is Illegal). To this day, I do not know what he said or did to our children because they are traumatized by the experience.
They pulled their gun on us and interrogated me and my friend, refused to let us leave, or call a lawyer. Accused us of unspeakable things, searched my home with no warrent.
Eventually, they found nothing, so they arrested my husband for domestic violence (because of the neighbors' accusation) and let the rest of us go. It took 3 days and nearly a thousand dollars to bail him out of jail.
The charges were eventual dropped, but he lost his job. I could not recope the bail money. I tried to make a formal complaint against the officer since my rights were violated and I was threatened that my pursue of this would end bably for me and was basically told it was not possible because the charges were dropped.
I still have panic attacks when people knock on my front door. I know my story is nothing compared to the innocent people who lose their lives to police in the US every day.
I'm so sorry. This is ridiculous that they're allowed to get away with this shit. I hope he hasn't had issues finding a job since, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did :(. Your neighbors also should have seen some consequences for filing a false report, truth be told. That's so messed up you just have to deal with other people's fucked actions.
If you're in California, the cops are [legally required to arrest someone](https://johndrogerslaw.com/are-the-police-mandated-to-arrest-someone-after-receiving-a-domestic-violence-call/) whenever there is a domestic violence call.
I am so,sorry :( I’m in Tx too. North Texas I’m very lucky to live in a neighborhood where we all watch out and take care of each other. It’s safer that way because of situations like what you went through.
North Texas , beaten and arrested while my back was turned. They handed my kid over to the non custodial parent who was on heroin and meth and popped with a bunch of other stuff too. He left my infant alone while he went to work. ( Before you judge me, he hid it well and poked holes in the condom expecting me to not want the kid and he would get child support , abortion was not an option because government sucks) it took a month and drug tests to get my kid back. Cops are like flipping a penny , it just depends on what they feel like. My ex had been up their earlier telling lie after lie. He disappeared as soon as the judge ordered child support payments. It's been over a decade and I've yet to receive a dime. Bad cop no donut. Oh and I was charged with assault. I couldn't fight it. The cameras didn't work. And he parked in front of them anyways. .it's bogus.
Bro, literally read the article that you linked. They are legally required to arrest only if there is probable cause (evidence) that DV occurred. It's not like they just arrest every time there is a call for DV but no evidence.
Probable cause can be something as small as the cop saying “I thought I saw a red mark on the woman” or “it looked like she had a bruise. Must have been a trick of the light.”
Source:Happened to me. There was no bruise.
> I was threatened that my pursue of this would end bably for me and was basically told it was not possible because the charges were dropped.
Fucking *what?*
That shit makes zero sense. Fuck the police.
One thing I've learned is to just not answer the door with police. As long as you don't open it they can't do shit but AS SOON AS YOU DO it's basically an invitation for them to walk right in and do whatever the fuck they want.
Over in LA, the sheriff's department is harassing and searching the homes of local lawmakers who have been trying to hold the department to account.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-23/sheriff-alex-villanueva-secret-police
This is also on the heels of investigative reporting about how officers in the sheriff's department are in literal gangs
https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history/
Policing is run locally in the US so certainly not all departments are like this. But this kind of crap happens way too often.
something funny to point out is that the LAPD police department keeps trying to edit out the section on Wikipedia where they have a laundry list of controversies against them
Man, I totally get it. Go to an ATM machine, put in your PIN number, withdraw $5 dollars and buy yourself a snack or something at a coffee shop cafe, maybe you'll feel better.
If it’s of any addition to this comment, I was held at gunpoint by the LACSD and asked why I was driving around looking like a school shooter. I was driving home from work and was pulled over for a “busted taillight”.
Then I was detained for suspicion of drug and weapons trafficking. I asked for their names and badge numbers and was told, “It wasn’t needed”. It wasn’t until they tore my car apart looking for things and couldn’t find anything that they pulled me out of the back of the cruiser and said to go home.
I called the department and asked for the footage to take to lawyer for destruction of property and harassment, and they told me there was no record or footage of the stop. Had the stop gone any other way, I don’t think I would be alive to say anything.
Edited. Misspelled word.
God.. really one of the most corrupt if not the most corrupt police forces.. can't fathom why all the guns people have, to defeat "tyranny", just let this happen..
LAPD is terrible, but they were talking about the LACSD, the Los Angeles County Sherriff's Department, which is a separate entity than the LAPD and - arguably- even worse.
Remember that shit with Christopher Dorner? It might make me a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but I think there was a good deal more to that story than what we heard. And the response by the LAPD, all the civilians they injured and nearly killed with zero consequences to themselves in their blind rage.
And to the people who don't like Chris Dorner, there's also the story of [Adrian Schoolcraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft).
The tl;dr for me about policing in the US is that we make up 5% of the world's population and incarcerate 25% of its prisoners. This is mostly due to the War on Drugs, [famously established by Richard Nixon to crush the peace and civil rights movements](https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html) and expanded many many times over by administrations of both mainstream political parties in the US (most predominantly by the "I'm a tough on crime Dem!" Bill Clinton).
The irony of the Christopher Dorner story is that A) he did indeed go insane so who knows what led him to that. and B) ultimately, regardless of his sanity, he got proved right because the LASD ended up shooting some people who were in a car like his, over... nothing. And then faced zero consequences.
My experience as a black teenaged extremely impoverished youth in America.
There’s many good cops out here but the amount of bad apples completely ruin it. I had to go to court 4 times to fight a false ticket where this cop tried to say I ran two stop signs but I never did and they were just looking to pull me over cause I pulled off my block and they immediately busted a uturn and started following me it was a really bad area so I and the people who lived around me were constantly targeted. Oh twice I remember my mom lied and had me arrested. Another time I was rightfully pulled over for going like 9 over, then I was hit and thrown against the police car and they tried to force information about my friend from me(he didn’t do anything he was literally a passenger no tickets no warrants nothing he was 17 at the time I was 18, along with my white friend(who looks Hispanic) but the white girl in the car with us was treated good and like a victim. Out of all those situations the only time a police officer had helped me was the third time my mom tried to get me arrested where I begged and begged for help and told her to look into my moms false police reports and she’d believe me and I was taken to a hospital instead. Hard to trust a group of people with power of you when they have your life in their hands. I’ve never been one to fear anything I came up from the dirt so I had to be strong but ask most any person (especially minorities) they will tell you they are atleast weary of the people who can give you 100 conflicting commands and then shoot and kill you when you can’t complete an impossible task or just do it and claim something and have no repercussions.
Safe to say being abused by the police, targeted by the police when they couldn’t prove anything, and the police being used as a weapon against me. I guess you could say it put a lot of distrust of 99 percent of cops for me because In America you simply never know if one is having a bad day and gonna take your life or ruin it for the next 20 years.
Don’t get me wrong Ive met some amazing police officers like the one who helped me I still keep her card in my wallet but just having the bad apples takes away from the good the others can do when you put a permanent fear in your population which is hard to be regained, this shit happened 1-2 years ago some a few months ago and it’s shit I’ll never forget. I’m only 19
Chris Rock's bit about bad apples is so on point with what you said.
In some jobs you just can't have bad apples. Like if American Airlines said "most our pilots like to land. We just have a few bad apples"
Sorry to hear that my friend. That shits not right.
I like this! Jim Gaffigan was talking about his wife’s brain surgery and he said, know what happens to the bad brain surgeons? They don’t let them become brain surgeons! (I know that’s not exactly how it works, but same idea - why would we tolerate bad apples among any professionals who hold people’s lives in their hands?)
Yeah but a brain surgeon won't have a bad day and get all pissy and purposely kill a person, I mean they might, but that would be pretty fucked off if they did.
Not in the state of Texas
https://www.propublica.org/article/dr-death-christopher-duntsch-a-surgeon-so-bad-it-was-criminal/
https://www.kxan.com/investigations/5-years-after-dr-death-doctors-still-come-to-texas-to-leave-pasts-behind/
The saying does go "One bad apple spoils the whole bunch". Its literally 7 words, but people can only seem to remember the first 3.
Come to think of it, this selective memory seems to happen a lot. "Give us your huddled masses who can stand on their own two feet" and "I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be taught critical race theory."
OK, I'm done. Sorry for misquoting MLK! Please don't cancel me!
That's "blood of the covenant" but it likely applies equally to a witch's coven.
It's kind of an old fashioned word but a covenant is basically the people you choose to take care of and are faithful to - your dearest friends and *chosen* family.
Also "Bleeding-heart" is a catch-all term for any liberal who cares about other people... that originally described *Jesus* because conservatives who beat people with Bibles have found a way to describe "Someone who is like Christ" as a bad thing.
Ugh. I thought this went away! I thought Redditors finally learned that this was not the original phrase, and yet your comment is up-voted. Just Google it....
What if all the pilots who liked to land were in a union with the pilots who didn't like to land and just kept saying they did like to land and people who had a problem with it just didn't understand how hard it is to land a plane. I'll tell you, those pilots would be bad also.
All cops are either rotten or enabling. They are all bad.
Problem is when your have 1 cop doing bad and 4 other cops standing there doing nothing about it you have 5 bad cops. Until cops are truly held accountable for the bad shit they do it will stay the same.
So many cops arrest people and then judge throws it out next day cause it was over something stupid, probably cause cops ego hurt so he arrested the person, there needs to be some punishment for the cops after too many dumb arrest.
Also cops need to be taught the law. You know the thing they are supposed to uphold.
Yeah, my dad was wrongfully arrested and sued the city and won against them, partly because the cop didn't show up to court that day (and because the city's case had zero evidence, and the "evidence" they claimed to have was ridiculously bad). We were told by our lawyer to *never* go back to that city again because they would most likely be out for revenge.
And speaking of "bad apples" the stories about the revenge inflicted upon cops who try to blow the whistle on their fellow officers are horrific. You cant have *any* good cops when the ones who try to do the right thing are either pushed out of the job or killed by other officers. In answer to OP's question: yes. Yes it's that bad here.
>Gonna take your life or ruin it
That’s the chief problem IMO. These “people” have an outrageous amount of control over every single one of us. For no reason at all they can nonchalantly destroy someone’s life and face **no repercussions** even if they’re wrong.
That’s not acceptable, and absolutely not acceptable to not be far more selective when hiring.
I’m not rolling those fucking dice and hoping that the cop I get will be one of the good ones, whatever percentage that might be. 1% of cops being as bad as described is too much.
To add to a great comment, look up "killology". It's the literal name of what the cops have been taught for years. Also, they are *taught to escalate* until they feel in control of the scene.
The expectation of hero worship is infuriating. Heroes put themselves at risk to help others. These cowards want it both ways.
You're in a room with 50 snakes. 3 of them are venomous and could kill you. All of the snakes look the same.
Why are you so afraid of snakes? What's wrong with you? This is clearly your upbringing and culture.
Lol I was once arrested for criminal domestic violence against my husband (who called the police). I'm 5' tall and 95 lbs. My ex-husband is 6'1" and about 200 lbs at the time. Cops come...2 male officers I get the older one. I had 2 black eyes, a busted nose, and fingerprint bruises around my throat. He had scratches on his forearms. The police officer asked if I scratched him, and I said yes. So he tells me he's going to arrest me and by that time I had just had enough so I straight up asked him if he was fucking stupid. He throws me down to the ground, cuffs me, lifts me up by the cuffs, and slams me into the porch railing a couple of times and asks me if I'm going to behave. I just laughed at him and told him he was going to have to beat me a little harder if he thought that hurt more than what my husband did. So he did it some more until the younger cop made him stop. When I was being booked, the black lady booking me into jail (by that time the bruises were even more visible) asked what I was being booked for and I said cdv. She said what does he look like? I'm like oh he has some scratches from when he tried he tried to strangle me and she went OFF. Like who was the cop that arrested you? She went and found the young cop and yelled at him. He was scared and was like I didn't arrest her , the other guy did. She looked at the paperwork and got even madder. Just imagine an older black woman trying to do her job, just yelling about I'm sick of these motherfuckers bringing in these little beat up girls half naked for bullshit. She didn't want to book me, she wanted me to go to the hospital. Hell I wasn't even worried about going to trial cuz my mugshot was proof enough that I was fighting for my literal life. I go to my arraignment next day and the judge said he wasn't legally allowed to give me a PR (personal recognizance) bond but he said that it looked like I had a rough time and did I need to go to a hospital. I just plead not guilty cuz by that time my throat had swollen almost shut. My husband let me sit in jail for 2 weeks before bonding me out, dropping the charges, and paid to have that mugshot scrubbed from everywhere. He regularly would do the same for his mugshots too. Point is, it was obvious that my husband had beat the fuck out of me, but that older police officer probably beat his wife too. He was really good at hurting people where it wouldn't show. I guess I got lucky that the younger cop made him stop slamming my ribs into that fucking railing. Everyone, the lady at booking, the judge, and even the prosecutor had it gone to trial knew my husband beat me. He had had many, many cdv arrests that mysteriously never went to trial, or were dismissed throughout his whole life. Obviously I didn't know that when I married him. But that one fucking cop....he fucking knew too and *approved*. I finally was able to leave with my son for good, but I'll never forget the glee that cop had in his eyes whilst slamming a handcuffed, 95 lb girl into a railing and the absolute rage when I laughed at him. So yeah, cops are shit.
Holy shit, I'm so fucking sorry you had to go through *any* of that, and I hope the vast, *vast* majority of your days since then have been peaceful, and full of love and laughter. It's beyond upsetting that there are such fucking cowardly sadists out there, and I so hope the two you met both run afoul of similarly-minded folks down the line...
BTW you're a good writer, and though it was harrowing, that was a story well-told imho.
I’m generally considered to be white, and I grew up in a lower middle class suburban neighborhood, yet I’ve had many of the same experiences. From being followed and pulled over for made-up reasons, to being searched for the same bullshit and treated with contempt and disrespect. It all subsided when I got into my late twenties and started driving nicer cars (not the beaters I had always driven).
Most police officers I’ve encountered otherwise have been fair and respectful, but like in this comment, the few bad apples ruin it. Combine it with a culture where the good ones are expected to look the other way when the bad ones do what they do, lest they want to be retaliated against, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Personally, I don’t believe that police are widespread racists. Of course some are, as you’re likely to find racists in all professions, of all colors. I do believe that police target those who are most likely to be doing something illegal and readily apparent; such as those who appear to be impoverished, and in this country, black and brown people represent a disproportionate amount of impoverished people.
Edit: I also want to add that I believe poorer people are less likely to have access to resources (lawyers, etc) to seek justice against police harassment, and thus is another reason why they are more likely to be mistreated and illegally stopped and searched.
I think you are definitely right that socioeconomic status obviously has all those effects in police interactions, and I would add that even if the proportion of police who are racist is the same as any other profession, police have power. A racist cop can permanently mess up someone's life or even kill them. There aren't many other professions where one racist has that much power. So we should all be extra vigilant about racist cops. Basically, I think that police as an institution will act more racist than the sum of its parts because of the power they wield. The structure of the power they have is such that if 1% of cops are racist, they will be able to do much more damage than the same number of racists in another profession.
It's also worth noting that the power of cops is well known to potential cops. So if someone was particularly racist and wanted to purposefully inflict pain on minority groups, choosing to be a cop is a great way to accomplish that goal. To me, this suggests that cops might be more racist than other professions (at least a little) because they might draw in racists, where other professions (with less power over individuals) will probably end up with the same amount of racists as everyone else. Of course, statistical data one way or the other would help answer that question, but I just wanted to say that there is at least some reason to suspect that cops might be more racist than average. And of course, even if they aren't, the racists in the institution can (and do) perpetuate an outsized amount of racist violence
I like to put the racist cop example like this.
A racist literally thinks black people (for example) are subhuman. They think they are vicious animals like a pit bull that can snap at any moment and kill a toddler.
They also think modern white people are too stupid to understand this, and thus too stupid to protect themselves from said animals.
Therefore somebody has to protect the people too stupid to protect themselves.
If you are a racist, why wouldn’t you want to become a cop to protect the people.
You’re not a bad person, your a martyr, a silent hero etc etc.
I would say that a position like police officer actually attracts racists more than other jobs, as a racist cop can use his employment as copium for his being socially ostracized.
That's a good way to think about it. And even if the other cops know there's a racist asshole in their department, they've been trained to believe that American cops are under siege by armed gangs and unfriendly politicians, so the racist becomes a rough guy on "their side".
>Most police officers I’ve encountered otherwise have been fair and respectful, but like in this comment, the few bad apples ruin it.
"Good" cops who turn a blind eye to the actions of bad cops are bad cops themselves.
The prosecutors, judges, and politicians that keep protecting bad cops are just as bad, if not worse than the badged thugs that commit violence on their behalf. The entire American legal system is rotten to the core.
Not in the US, but basically for me, this is the issue. There are good cops and bad cops the world over..
The real issue is that like any community, you get away with more once youre on the inside, because they know you, because "oh he does that, but he isnt THAT bad a person". Add to this in the US, how police are taught to escalate (argue as much as you want, I've seen too many videos where theyve gone straight for their gun...) and this is the sad reality, anywhere where criminals can shoot back at you, you get escaltion because both sides essentially decide to protect themselves first.. (i mean.. wouldnt you in that position!?).
Its not that there aren't good cops out there, its that when push comes to shove a police officer is expected to know the law and be an upstanding citizen so they get free passes that the public don't get, and when you couple this with the bad cops who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the uniform, you get systemic problems because they have no one to stop them from doing what they do.. and like most criminals, they'll find ways to hide the bits good cops will find morally reprehensible.
I normally don't like saying that the ignorant are just as guilty, especially where law is concerned and criminals DO game the system.. but no accountability, or accountability with no consequence is a huge problem.. not just in the US
A few years ago I heard a 20 year officer say that 1/3 oh the police officers were bullies when they were younger; 1/3 were the ones bullied and wanted the authority and 1/3 just wanted to help people and do their job enforcing the law. So the problem in policing needs to have better recruiting and better training. The police are taught to control encounters,to be assertive and unfortunately they need to be
Yeah, it's mostly race and class targeting, but it does happen outside of those groups occasionally. I remember back when my sister was in middle school, a loose friend of hers didn't show up to school, so the cops were called. Anyone who could be identified as a friend of that student was called into the office and questioned without any staff or parents present, nobody but two adult male police officers trying to intimidate info out of a bunch of 12 year old girls one by one. I remember my dad got down there and was not only assaulted by the officer (pushed into him when walking past), but was also told "no sir, we didn't question your daughter, we just asked her a few questions".
The police in my town are corrupt as shit. A couple years ago they outed a then-minor victim of a sexual abuse crime to help the mayor win re-election, and just a month or two ago an officer was arrested out of state *in* a city police car with multiple firearms (not all of which were his) for driving drunk down the freeway.
As a civil lawyer (i do housing) and a white middle aged guy- my view of police
I know just about every bailiff in the county i practice in. All of them are retired cops (i think a few may have been retired deputies or correctional officers, but same general field). I talk with them all of the time, and there is about 20-30 of them. Out of that group, virtually all of them are great people whom treat everyone in the courthouse with respect and do their job extremely well. There is exactly 1 that i have seen live on the line of overstepping his role. HE just gives off the "abuse of power" vibe.
The reality is that police have so much power that you do not need most of them to be bad. 1 in 20 doing shady stuff is enough. The fact that they have a union (and unions in general are good) that protects them (and the union should) means those bad ones are not drummed out like they should.
Mhm girl treated me like a human. Sad that her doing the bare minimum is my best interaction I’ve had with the police but I will always remember her helping me
Last year I got a little too drunk with my gf at a bar. Not wasted falling down, not even stumbling but enough for a good time. Long story short I get kicked out, okay I start to leave and it’s not fast enough for the bouncers so they jump us, they call the cops who show up and join in the beating. Then they take my girl to jail and me to the drunk tank. I have the feeling our mixed race relationship might have had something to do with all of it.
I don't want to blame you for everthing that happened that night, but the "long story short I got kicked out" is weird to me if you weren't even stumbling. This inconsistency in your story makes me think you aren't a reliable narrator in the sense that maybe something happened you aren't aware of or aren't sharing. Chill, paying customers who will order more drinks don't just get ejected.
I don't think that redditor was suggesting they deserved a beat down....but it does raise the question. What are these details of a calm tipsy dude being dragged out a bar and then beat down by bouncers and police? Sounds sus.
As a bartender it sounds like he was drunk and asked to leave. Then didn’t. Then resisted as he was ejected. Forcibly ejecting drunk assholes who won’t leave is literally the whole job of the bouncer. If you’re fighting bouncers while drunk the cops will absolutely assume you’re a drunk asshole who needs his ass kicked.
Everyone is the hero in their own story. It’s hard for drunk and belligerent people to accurately remember their own actions afterwards.
In 18 years in the industry I’ve never seen someone getting their ass kicked by a bouncer who didn’t deserve it. Most of the dicks who deserve it walk out unscathed. It’s only the really stupid ones who don’t leave when they’re told it’s time to go.
I think the thing that people most often forget in this discussion about good apples and bad apples is that the phrase goes bad apple spoils the whole bunch. If the good apples are protecting the bad apples… Then there are no good apples
Yes and no. Not all cops are bad, and the bad ones aren't bad all the time or to the same degree. But there is an underlying issue with the culture, training, and attitude of cops. It's bad enough that if you pay attention it actually shows up in the police shows meant to make cops on the job look good.
There are good people in the police. But if the system itself is on the rotten side, it's only a matter of time before the good ones leave or go rotten themselves.
There was a really interesting thread about police on Ask Reddit a few years ago. There were a bunch of former police and former want-to-be-police who chimed in with stories of being pushed out because they wouldn't go along with rotten behaviors. Something I thought was really interesting is that lots of people abandon the police to become firefighters because they want jobs in which they could help people and their communities and firefighting lets them do that without all of the nasty stuff that happens in police departments.
I'm a special education teacher and the best behavior therapist I've ever had in my classroom was a former police officer. He was a black man who didn't feel comfortable staying on the force as the black lives matter movement really took off. He was phenomenonal with my students. It was a self contained room for students with behavior disorders and he could de-escalate a student with no physical restraints almost as good as I could. He's exactly the type of police officer I would want to see respond to calls involving students, particularly those with disabilities. But those aren't the type of police officers that cities and counties want employed. So they get pushed out. It's so sad.
You and that behavior therapist should write a book together on de-escalating behaviors in the classroom.
De-escalation training is highly needed in schools and law enforcement yet teachers and staff alike aren't getting the proper training they really need to help students.
Yea that's the thing people don't get when they pull out the "not all cops are bad" card. The one that try to do something against the bad stuff get pushed out and/or silenced, and if you don't try something you're part of the problem. It's impossible to stay ethical and on the police force.
Saw a case recently where a rookie cop was straight up murdered during a "training exercise" because he was cooperating with an internal investigation into some other cops who'd committed a gang rape.
Your average small-town police officer who pulls you over for speeding is probably not going to be like this, but it's a real systemic problem, especially in big cities and notably worse in cities that are more segregated by race. People assume that the worst cops & worst crime rates are naturally in the biggest cities, but NYC is relatively safe while St Louis is both the murder capital of the USA and No. 1 in police killings.
This is important, it really depends on where you are. I have been the cause of the arrest of one bad cop, assisted with the arrest of another, and was the cause of the firing of a bad cop who we caught before they actually committed a crime but were intending to. I was told recently that I'm considered the best cop at my mid sized department and have never faced any negative repercussions besides one of those guys buddies being pissy with me. Where I'm from that stuff isn't tolerated. It gets pervasive in larger organizations depending on the culture of the place. I saw a lot of that kind of stuff when I was in the Army. When you move between battalions there are huge differences in culture and it's hard to paint the entire Army (or police) with one large brush.
>rookie cop was straight up murdered during a "training exercise" because he was cooperating with an internal investigation into some other cops who'd committed a gang rape.
Can you link the case or an article or something? That sounds like something out of a movie.
The aphorism about a few bad apples is widely misunderstood.
A few bad apples aren’t just isolated rogues that are uncommon and unrepresentative of the whole barrel.
The whole barrel IS rotten and it only takes a few rotten apples to do it.
The amazing poet Kyle ‘Guante’ Tran Myhre wrote in his poem, ‘How to explain white supremacy to white supremacist’
“how long do we keep pointing out the bad apples, ignoring the fact that the orchard was planted on a mass grave? …and that we planted it there?”
https://youtu.be/DbwcXDunxA8
The saying dates back at least to Chaucer, and like "the customer is always right", it's been cut in half to serve absolutely the worst impulses in society. ("The customer IS always right...in matters of taste." In other words, if they want to buy an ugly af hat, you let them do it. It does NOT mean you have to put up with abuse.)
I think “the customer is always right” has a corollary for owners and managers in that if customers don’t want to buy your product or service it’s not because the customer is wrong: it’s because your product or service is inferior and/or overpriced.
My least favorite?
“Jack of all trades; master of none.”
The complete aphorism has a second half: “is better than master of one.”
It is not an indictment of generalism but rather of specialization.
Or my personal least favorite "blood is thicker than water" has been cut in half so as to say that "family is more important than everything else".
But the actual aphorism is "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb", which means that the family you choose for yourself is to be trusted more than blood relatives.
My family uses the former to justify literal child abuse, so it hits pretty close to home for me
The thing is, you can source your supposed "shortened" version to [at least the 1700's](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/blood-is-thicker-than-water.html) Good luck finding "blood of the covenant..." Prior to the internet. Not that I disagree with the sentiment. I'm definitely in favor of chosen family. But your version *is* the modern version, not the original
Right, which tells me that the majority of cops aren't doing something to push out the bad ones. The unions aren't doing something to push out the bad ones. If the good cops are getting pushed out, that means they aren't in the majority. And that's a problem.
carpenter zephyr society hunt enjoy school shelter political fall direful
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
One thing I heard that stuck with me is : "not all cops are bad, but ALL police unions are bad."
There are many parts of the world where the law enforcement is more chaotic. What makes American cops so fucking scary is their organization. They enforce the laws they make, and are basically untouchable. Even if you manage to get one fired, they can just go to a different department and get rehired.
Having spent many years hanging out in the dive (cop) bars on the north side of Chicago, I have drank with many cops and many wives of cops. Some are cool and some are assholes. Most are entitled. They expect to pay less at grocery stores, park wherever they want, get free coffee and donuts at Starbucks, and they don't expect to have to wait in line. Also even the cool ones generally use "how difficult their job is" to justify spouting some absolutely racist shit like: "if you had to deal with these monkeys, you'd understand."
The problem with the police, and at least half of American society is complicit with this, is that they expect to be treated different and special because they are police. Everyone's jobs suck. Everyone. And until we get into a culture that the police can't treat everyday people like shit because they think their job makes them different and better, they will continue to act entitled, whether it be cheaper milk and eggs, or shooting someone.
The police in this country are built into a militant system. It’s an efficient method of managing armed individuals but comes with a serious flaw. The grunts in this system are the populace, and they weren’t even properly drafted or trained on it. So now you have someone whom is working from an authoritative position expecting you and I to understand and conform to that system. Now add in racism, classism, and the fact many of society’s problems are thrown at their feet without them ever getting training in it and you get a dozen ways the whole thing breaks.
A lot of people can hear racist shit like calling Black people monkies but not understand that said cops treat people described this way drastically differently.
You gotta pay attention to the smallest things, too. Like how they twist people’s arms behind their backs when they’re arresting them, even if they are being 100% compliant. The only reason to do it that way is to try and get them to be non compliant, willingly or not.
I saw one where a cop walked up to a woman who was walking down the sidewalk near where something happened. She was not involved and had done nothing illegal. He called for backup right next to her. She put her hands up and said she was scared. He criticized her by saying they’d never met before, so why should she be scared? But the instant she put her hand in her jacket pocket to get her phone, all of a sudden he got real nervous. Cops kill more unarmed people in this country than people kill cops. Somebody had a right to be nervous and scared and it wasn’t the cop.
The absolute worst part about TV shows is that they always make the internal affairs department out to be a bunch of backstabbing liars and traitors. It's awful propaganda.
> Not all cops are bad
True fact. A cop saved my life once. His partner was beating the shit out of me with his nightstick and the cop said, "Whoa, he's had enough."
Saved my life, forever grateful!
Yeah that's the problem with the culture. To use a medical analogy it's like having an infected wound. If left untreated no matter how removed from the infection eventually the whole body suffers and starts to rot. That's the underlying issue with police, it doesn't matter where they are or how good they are as a person. If they are in the system long enough they either leave or they adapt to working in the system which makes them part of the problem.
If you have an interaction with the police odds are it will be straightforward. What terrifies me, though, is that if it does go wrong it will go wrong 100% against me with no recourse. I will end up beaten or dead, or charged with a crime backed by a lie, and there’s nothing I can do.
I’ve caught a couple of ride-a-long podcasts and what cops have to deal with… good god.
We need to retool policing. If police lived in the neighborhood they policed… if the people knew the person doing the policing - like community members with roots who grew up in the neighborhood.
If the reports of abuse by NYPD cops are representative, about 5% of cops are responsible for almost all the problems... except that the rest of them cover up for the "bad apples" for a host of reasons, not the least being the culture of the so-called "thin blue line."
Interestingly I've seen a similar number as the percentage of all men who are rapists. Maybe about 5% of people are just irredeemable sadistic assholes.
That wouldn't be shocking to me at all. If the 1 in 6 number is right it would mean each rapist, on average, only has to rape 3-4 people in their life to get to that number. On the other hand, I also wouldn't be surprised if the number was lower because you have people like Cosby who have had close to 60 people come forward and accuse him of rape and he's probably nowhere near the top.
Not to be dark about it, but I imagine it's probably the latter, much like video game profits coming from about 10% of the community known as "whales".
I've never committed a crime but the police always treat you like you have. I used to draw blood for donations and we'd go to police precincts. The amount of times an officer questioned me like I was a criminal while we waited is too many to count. The couple times I actually needed an officer in my life, they did not help and didn't seem like they wanted to. I'm sure they're not all bad, but a lot of them are
I worked at a social service organization that served people with HIV/AIDS in the 90s. We received a bomb threat and the cop who showed up was literally eating and ice cream cone the whole time he was there, made me fill out the report because his hands were sticky and when I told him we were an AIDS service organization, he asked me "well, what do you expect'?
I was also hit on by a cop who responded to a DV situation I was in and he asked if he could take me out since my current situation was clearly breaking up.
Exact same. Law abiding citizen, yet every single interaction I’ve had with a cop has been negative. And I’m a petite white girl, not even the demographic that is targeted by the police.
Same. I’m a white middle aged teacher and look it. I have had very few positive interactions with cops. It’s a group of people that I have very little trust nor respect for, and I am always uncomfortable around them even in situations where I’ve had to be the one to call them.
Once me and my older sister were home alone for the night, (mom did night shifts, we were probably about 10 and 15, maybe 11 and 16) someone called the home phone and I answered assuming it was a telemarketer that I’d just hang up on. Nope, I answer and hear “I see you, I’m in your house.” I hung up and we called the cops. Despite living over twice as far as the police station was, her boyfriend showed up first and we sat in his car until the police got there. When the cops did get there, they did the slowest wander through my house, didn’t bother to open interior doors or check the backyard, looked at the phone, said “unplug it.” And left. We had already unplugged it. I have never called the cops again, literally useless.
Australian here and it's the same.
I am a 5'4" white-appearing woman. Not even the sort of person they usually go out of their way to pick on. I have no criminal record. And I do my best to avoid all interactions with police. I am terrified of them. On the rare occasions I've needed their help, they've either done nothing, or actively harmed me. My ex savagely beat me, and I was visibly injured, but all he had to do was lie and say that I had started it, and I got arrested. In the end - even though my story was true and his was false, and I was injured and he wasn't - they just let us both go and didn't even give me a protection order. He kept on intimidating me for months by showing up places he knew I'd be in our small town.
Since that happened I've discovered it's a pattern. I've seen so many victims get arrested abd sometimes even charged because the cops lack even the basic training and intelligence to know what DV looks like. They see the affable, calm, smirking guy claiming that the crying, bleeding, barely coherent woman who called the police is the *real* problem here, and they go, "hey seems legit".
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where cops have actually helped. My childhood home (in the wealthy suburbs) was robbed and the cops did nothing. I had my bag stolen that had my laptop and passport in it. The cops wrote a report so I could get a new passport. I don’t think they investigated the crime at all.
I also had the cops serve a search warrant to my apartment at 5am once. I had committed no crimes, but the upstairs neighbor has child sex abuse images and they decided to search all the apartments that could possibly connect to his open network. I wish I had been more awake so I would have thought to actually read the warrant before I let them in. Of course, that’s probably why they scheduled it at 5am. Luckily, I already had that day off so I didn’t need to call off work. They didn’t let anyone back into their apartments until like noon.
I'll echo what others have said, that they're not all bad and the bad ones just get the most attention (you never see a news story of "white cop pulls over black man, gives warning, and releases him with no violence or threats")
However, let me just point out that a couple family members of mine were mistaken for someone else, arrested, and then had the absolute shit beat out of them while cuffed. One of them was thrown by an officer, at another officer, and then charged with breaking his leg because he landed on him, while cuffed. Their dad went down there to see what happened, and was arrested for waiting for the crosswalk after being told to leave. 2 were white, 2 were white-passing Hispanic, so nothing to do with racism, just fucking ridiculous power tripping. The bad ones are pretty freaking bad.
On top of that, in my experience, the ones who aren't on a ridiculous power trip, are just fucking lazy. I've called the police upwards of 10 times for domestic violence, in 3 different towns, before I was able to leave my ex, and the most they ever did was make me & my kids pack up and stay with relatives for the night. Including when I had visible injuries and handprints on me, because they didn't feel like arresting the drunk guy and the paperwork that goes with it, even when I had audio recorded the whole encounter. They more or less said it was my fault for "instigating" because I tried to reach past him to take his bottle of vodka.
Sorry you had to go through that. Cops are lazy as hell. My ex got the hell beat out of her by a boyfriend at the time. He then stole her keys and said he was going to come back later so she better not leave. The cops told her, that the hole in the wall, coincidentally shaped like her head, and the grip marks all over her arms was, "a lesson learned" and that she shouldn't have been drinking with him.
Yeah. I was stunned. Their apathy for her pain and complete unwillingness to put in effort was disgusting. Added another level of trauma for her for sure.
I’m curious why you start your statement with “they aren’t all bad”? You’ve had horrific experiences with them. I think we are conditioned to hope that they will protect us and of course not ALL of them are bad, but they are generally really, really bad.
There are extreme systematic issues that encourage bad policing:
Bad training models that instill an Us Versus Them mentality.
Metrics that rely on number of arrests.
"Broken Window" theory.
Limited to no education on the actual laws being enforced, or on individual rights.
Qualified Immunity.
Those are off the top of my head, there may be other problems. In any case, major systematic reform is needed.
This is what I mean when I say ACAB. Not that every single cop is a cartoonish neo nazi who can’t wait to kill minorities, but that the whole system is fundamentally broken and the officers willingly participate in it, even if they have good intentions.
There are plenty of decent people who are cops, but no matter what they do they can’t change a broken system because it will always protect and encourage the worst people and do nothing to hold them accountable.
Annually, US police kill 28.54 people per 10 million.
To put that in perspective, Canada’s police kill 9.7. Australia, 6.5.
The only countries that are comparable to the rate at which US law enforcement kill are countries like Columbia and Mexico. Two counties in active wars against drug cartels. And up until 2021, US police killed at a higher rate than Mexican police did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_rates_and_counts_for_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers
Australian here. Does this count only people shot by police, or also all the (mostly Aboriginal) people they kill in custody by means such as transporting them for 10 hours in a 45 Celsius van with no water?
I come from a kinda small town in NC, and i got harassed a lot as a teenager, in the 1990s. Full stop and searches every weekend, especially on my way home at night, anytime from 10 pm to 1 am. I was poor and white so i know this wasnt limited to my black friends, who got it worse. My car was decorated in equality stickers and some extremely non-conservative, fairly insane quotes from jesus. City cops, university cops, and county cops would pull me over, search my whole car for an hour, ask me tons of questions, and generally harass me and my friends if they were with me. I never carried drugs anywhere and didn't let others carry drugs in my car and they mostly respected that. One time, i got detained for 4 hours while the cops searched the car, called for 3 more cop cars (with 2 cops each car) and a canine unit. They found nothing and had no suspicion. 8 cops, one dog, and 4 hours for nothing. Complete waste of resources. I even hung out with some cops when i was older amd got into conversations with them about the harassment and they literally shrugged and said, "eh, what're you gonna do? Kids suck." I never met a cop with any amount of decency or even a modicum of respect for anyone. I am certain they are out there, but not in Greensboro, NC.
I have been in law enforcement for 23 years. I have seen the best and worst life has to offer. There were some amazing cops who were patient, kind, and compassionate and others who were quick to fight and really got people riled up. You learned who were the ones to lose their cool or more likely to get into fights.
Also after being on the job a while a lot of cops get burned out and jaded. Dealing with deaths, beatings, child abuse, really wears on the mental health. It’s hard to go to a fatal crash where a child died then an hour later you are arguing with a drunk at a bar fight. I can remember every child that died in my arms to this day. Something I will take to the grave. We don’t talk about or push mental health like we should.
Officers get jaded, burned out and start treating everyone poorly. Also I think prior military made better police officers. They were use to stress and pressure. Generally speaking they were calm, more collected, and performed better under pressure. I never worked with racists. We had a couple bad coworkers but I had a great Chief who got rid of them pretty quick. It’s a liability and nobody wants to work with them.
And lastly I think many police officers forget about respect. When I stop someone or have an interaction with someone I have to earn their respect. It’s a two way street. I treat you with respect to earn it and I expect you to reciprocate. It’s about building trust with the community and constituents you work for. I always explain what I am doing with people. Don’t leave them in fear. If I stop you I explain why. If you are in custody explain what will happen. Don’t leave people in fear because they then act irrational. (Unless they are high out of their mind then all bets are off!)
I am Federal now so I am not out on a beat but the same principles apply.
I think this is one of the most underrated responses on this thread. The solution is two pronged. We need to prosecute bad cops by getting body cams on all officers and making it harder for other police to protect them. AND we need to address how overworked and strained they are with mandatory counseling and time off. I can't imagine dealing with the worst people in your community most of the day every single day. Interacting with people who are mostly angry, terrified, or drugged out. As a stripper I interacted with men all day, but not average men, the worst men. Desperate men, gross men, grabby chauvinist men, men who had to pay just to get someone to talk to them. It makes a lot of girls in the industry gay. I can see how being a cop would have a similar effect.
I would say I’ve gotten a hell of a lot of leeway because of my skin color but I’m still uncomfortable as hell when I have interacted with them or in the rare occasions that I’ve had to call them. They only need the smallest excuse to flip the tables and arrest you, search you etc if they decide they want to fuck up your life. I try to avoid them like the fucking plague. When I went to ireland they were friendly as hell and would chat with you. In the states they stand stiff and scan the area for a reason to fuck someone up. I have met a few friendly ones, but that was few and far between.
I’m a little late to the game, but after reading the top voted response I wanted to give the OP an alternative view.
I’m a white, middle aged male, who has lived in several areas all in rural or semi-rural US. I have a bit of a heavy foot, and I get pulled over every couple years. Always treated with respect, and I always treat with respect back, if for no other reason than I’m smart enough to know not to give them a reason to make my life difficult. The only “profiling” I’ve experienced has been when leaving a place with lots of teenagers around, like a high school basketball game. You can tell the cop thinks he caught a teenager until you roll down the window.
I say all this not to say cops are great or anything. I say all this so you have a frame of reference for my next comments. …
I’ve had the opportunity to hang out with cops from time to time. Except for 1 family member, it was always a friend of a friend at some social gathering and it was always one at a time. In total, I’d say I’ve had bullshit-around-the-BBQ conversations with 6 or 7 cops. Every single one of them were lazy, entitled, arrogant assholes who felt their badge made them better than you. None had any college education and all but one came from the military. They reveled in guns and violence, a couple bragging openly of the fun they had killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan. The “best” (i.e least dangerous) one was one that said they just park their car on the side of the highway and sleep because just the sight of a cop car will keep speeders down.
I see news reports about good cops interacting in their neighborhoods and stuff, but for my personal white male non-felon experience, I have yet to meet a cop that I didn’t think had serious sociopathic tendencies.
It’s worse in small communities because police are often the only source newspapers or tv stations can get that meet standards for verification, and if the cops get pissed about coverage they stop communicating. A lot of times you see those PR events because the news outlet is trying to maintain a working relationship with an organization that throws fits when they don’t like coverage. So they’ll throw them a bone and run the story about the cop pulling over someone to buy them new tires, despite how traumatizing that false stop actually is, and hope that when their cops shoot someone the PR will actually talk to them. Of course you only ever get their narrative, which is often used to cause further harm if they think a victim is also a criminal. But you can’t call them liars until you have the proof, which they control.
Every police department, no matter how small the agency is, has someone dedicated to dealing media coverage. Then you have the unions on top of that.
For all the shit cops do that goes viral theres plenty of horrific stuff I'll read once and never see again. If that's the stuff they get caught doing imagine what they get away with.
People who try to become cops to do better get stopped from becoming cops, people who score too high on IQ tests get stopped from becoming cops. They know what they are and don't want anything to stop them.
Edit: takes about 2 seconds to Google this shit and find the news articles
>theres plenty of horrific stuff I'll read once and never see again
Some departments don't need to report basically anything, especially when they kill or hospitalize people, discharge weapons, etc. All of our statistics are lacking because we have so many different police systems with so many different rules... and imagining what the ones who don't have reporting rules do knowing that is chilling.
It reminds me of what judges would use against citizens.
I forget the exact number but they called it a rule of three or five.
The idea was that for every time you got caught you had gotten away with it at least three or five times, again whatever the number was.
So they would treat you "accordingly".
Same logic should be applied to them whether it be theft, abuse of power, etc.
"people who score too high on IQ tests get stopped from becoming cops."
So true. Back when I joined the Air Force and was talking with the career counselors I told them I wanted to do Law Enforcement, their reply was "you'll never get that, your ASVAB scores are way too high" . Ended up as Electronic Switching System Technician working on the SACDIN Communications System and other systems that processed Intel from the U2.
Honestly, worse in my opinion. Because the obvious huge problems are very much there... Racial profiling, framing, excessive force, all that stuff. But then there's a lot of other stuff that isn't so dramatic or as bad so you won't see it as much but it's still bad.
American cops pull a lot of "gotcha!" crap whether it's stuff that should probably be considered entrapment or just a matter of focusing on traffic stops to catch people in spots they know will be easy tickets rather than focusing on actual safety issues. They'll lie to you like crazy to make you think you're screwed and going to be better off confessing, whether you're actually guilty or not. They use interrogation techniques that they know lead to false confessions.
Prosecution in the US is terrible as well, they're all about high conviction rates and chasing a conviction rather than chasing the truth. You'll often see people defend that because lawyers will try to get guilty defendants off, but the defendant generally isn't a lawyer who's capable of defending themselves. A lawyer owes them representation to the best of their ability, but the state should be seeking the truth rather than pushing for a conviction to the best of the prosecutor's ability.
I first wrote this a few months ago in response to some dickhead, but I've been kinda spreading it around since. Apologies for the confrontational tone. Like I said, it's original recipient was some dickhead.
Here is an incomplete list of evidence-based studies about alternatives to our current policing methods.
* Lead remediation. [Lead and Crime: A Review of the Evidence and the Path Forward ](https://www.manhattan-institute.org/verbruggen-lead-and-crime-review-evidence)
* Access to mental health care. [How better access to mental health care can reduce crime](https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/how-better-access-mental-health-care-can-reduce-crime)
* Drug decriminalization and addiction services. [It’s Time for the U.S. to Decriminalize Drug Use and Possession](https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/documents/Drug_Policy_Alliance_Time_to_Decriminalize_Report_July_2017.pdf)
* Sex work decriminalization. [Is Sex Work Decriminalization The Answer? What The Research Tells Us](https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/aclu_sex_work_decrim_research_brief_new.pdf)
* Increased funding to social programs. [Crime Prevention through Social Development: An Overview with Sources](https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/103113NCJRS.pdf)
* A focus on Rehabilitative Justice rather than Punitive. [Rehabilitative Justice: What the US can learn from the Norwegian Model](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ee2f78f834c6612de4e6260/t/5fd30dbc8df3fe463c7b99ba/1607667132730/Rehabilitative+Justice_+What+the+US+Can+Learn+from+the+Norwegian+Model.pdf)
* Prison reentry programs. [A better path forward for criminal justice: Prisoner reentry](https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-better-path-forward-for-criminal-justice-prisoner-reentry/)
* Prison education programs. [Evaluating the Effectiveness
of Correctional Education](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR266/RAND_RR266.pdf)
* Housing assistance. [Housing First Reduces Re-offending among Formerly Homeless Adults with Mental Disorders: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0072946&type=printable)
* Community based crime reduction projects. [Evaluation of the Innovations in
Community-Based Crime Reduction (CBCR)
Program: Executive Summary and Final
Report](https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/254623.pdf)
* Access to general healthcare. [Neighborhood crime and access to health-enabling resources in Chicago](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5840856/pdf/main.pdf)
* Universal basic income [The Impact of an Experimental Guaranteed
Income on Crime and Violence](https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~dcalnits/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Calnitsky-Gonalons-Pons-SP-manuscript-2020.pdf)
* [And here's a general list of what policing tactics do or don't work.](https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/)
Here's a different list, one of facts about current American policing.
* In 2021, over 1,000 people were fatally shot by police. This is an increase from 2020, whose number was also above 1,000. ([Number of people shot to death by the police in the United States from 2017 to 2022, by race](https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/)) This does not include other forms of killing, such as George Floyd, who was strangled to death by Officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck for over 9 minutes.
* America ranks number 3 for police funding, spending over 400,000,000,000. This is 2% of GDP. It is the most by volume that any country spends on its police, and by percentage, only second to Russia and Costa Rica, the latter of which does not have a standing military. ([Which Country Spends the Most on Police?](https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-984701cbc1c340e9))
* America has the highest number of people incarcerated by volume at 2,068,800^1. It also has the highest per-capita rate at 629 per 100,000. In second place is Rwanda at 580, whose numbers are inflated by the genocide of 1994. Turkmenistan is third at 576, and has notably been rated as a 7 (Not free), the worst possible score, by the Freedom of the World survey. ([Incarceration rates by country 2022](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country))
* The annual cost of mass incarceration in the United States (including costs of things like lawyers and bail) is 182,000,000,000 dollars. ([Mass Incarceration Costs $182 Billion Every Year, Without Adding Much to Public Safety](https://eji.org/news/mass-incarceration-costs-182-billion-annually/)) Much of this goes to Private prisons, which have been shown to falsely advertise their cost reduction abilities, and whose financial incentives include increased prison population and high recidivism. ([Impacts of Private Prison Contracting
on Inmate Time Served and Recidivism](https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=137098066007090115076116004109017089032018023086008028101070094065073083098024102121048045116005042126027028096120122074001122049004063019046064085005119070122065064070058046008103064118005089071096020111001117006081097002067087010115027002068110115087&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE))
* The Southern institution of Slave Patrols had a large influence on the development of policing in America and modern police culture. ([How You Start is How You Finish? The Slave Patrol and Jim Crow Origins of Policing](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/how-you-start-is-how-you-finish/))
^1. ^It's ^important ^to ^note ^that ^China's ^data ^is ^incomplete. ^If ^people ^being ^detained ^before ^trial ^and ^Uyghurs ^being ^kept ^in ^concentration ^camps ^in ^Xinjiang ^were ^counted, ^it ^would ^likely ^be ^in ^the ^3 ^or ^4 ^millions.
Something that comes up a lot when radical new ideas such as defunding the police are mentioned is that we don't know if such things will work. This obviously implies that we should just keep doing what we're currently doing. But we know that what we're currently doing doesn't work. Our economic incentives have caused global warming and prevented it from being meaningfully addressed. Our political incentives have created a fossilized class of ancient, out of touch lifers who refuse to change and refuse to die. And our legal incentives have created a state where we have more police spending and more people jailed than anywhere else in the world.
In conclusion, here's a meme.
https://64.media.tumblr.com/9805a3c85d4210af684dccdc0e7f7341/17da57c42e8f8509-d5/s1280x1920/33f528d037f7968d9687f6db6df97da76f461cfd.jpg
Oh, also, the SCOTUS has repeatedly upheld the idea that the police are not actually obliged to protect or serve. https://prospect.org/justice/police-have-no-duty-to-protect-the-public/
The problem with police in the US has nothing to do with good cops vs bad cops. It has everything to do with the attitude and types of people who gravitate towards being a cop in the US. Think hyper-aggressive, machismo, toxic, "I don't want to think or use my words and feelings" types.
The cops in the US are militarized. In fact, promotion is often limited by whether or not you have military experience. Having a mindset of always being on a battlefield tends to make them overreactive and to treat everything and everyone as a threat. Except they do not have "rules of engagement" or the training that the military does. So even something simple like a stop for speeding has them "at the ready" and in hyper "control" mode - because of the extremely rare chance someone tries something stupid.
As to the original question. I will answer with a few questions.
Can you imagine what cops were like before cell phone cameras,street cameras? Can you even start to imagine what thousands upon thousands of cops got away with?
Their body cameras that mysteriously shutoff from time to time? The dash cameras? What they still get away with?
The wild,Wild West when I grew up. They did what they wanted,banded together,and got away with everything. Sadistic.
I’m not saying their job is easy. Far from it. But they are so far from being innocent.
Real eye opener. Go to a party where there’s tons of cops. Talk about dregs of society. Bunch of hypocrites.
I'm gonna say yes. White female. Yes. They're usually douche canoes that have been given too much power and think they're above everything. Everything.
It's that one bad apple spoils the bunch.
If there is one cop who is a criminal, and no cops arrest him, that means every cop in that department is a criminal.
It doesn't matter what else they do. They are criminals.
Agreed. Even if it’s just “a few bad apples,” that’s unacceptable when these bad apples have a license to kill. Imagine if we put up with that in other life-and-death professions.
“Yeah, the surgeons here are pretty good, but there’s a few racists ones that kill most of their black patients. Just gotta roll the dice and hope you get a good one.”
“This parachute manufacturer is great save for a few bad chutes they put out in every batch. We only have 3 deaths per 100 jumps. Pretty good ratio!”
Yes. Likely even worse. Think about the time before cellphones and social media. They literally did and still do get away with murder. They’re supported by the government & other members of law enforcement and are damn near untouchable
They're *way* worse.
You are no doubt aware of the countless abuses that are discovered (and there are many more that don't get widely publicized -- for instance, look up Darren Rainey, a mentally ill prisoner who was locked in the shower and scalded to death by prison guards...they literally boiled him alive).
But the media never questions that, despite these abuses, the police are nevertheless effective at protecting against crime.
In reality, US police are *hilariously* ineffective.
For evidence of this, look up Case Clearance statistics in the US. Case Clearance is basically when the police solve a crime that has been reported to them -- it can involve arresting the person responsible, but there are other ways it can happen as well (for instance, if the perpetrator is known but dies before they can arrest them). And the case clearance rate is the percentage of reported crimes the police solve.
The only crimes for which the police have a clearance rate of over 50% are murder (61% clearance rate in 2017, which was a good year) and aggravated assault (53% clearance rate). Which means in 39% of murders and 47% of assaults, the police don't accomplish anything.
For other crimes, the clearance rates are truly pathetic -- 34% clearance rate for rape, 29% clearance rate for robbery, and only 13% for motor vehicle theft.
These are averages across the US -- some jurisdictions are better, and some are *much* worse. But regardless, this shows something the media rarely asks: the police don't actually do much good in society. Like, they are incredibly ineffective at their jobs.
It would be one thing if the cops sometimes broke the rules but nevertheless got results. But in reality, the cops kill lots of innocent people, trample over peoples' civil rights, oppress people...and that's it.
The police are corrupt and abusive *and* incompetent/ineffective. And this is entirely absent from media portrayals.
The news doesn't review all the crimes that the police fail to solve. And cop shows pretty much *never* show the police failing to solve a crime (and when they do, it's a notable exception to the norm). If 40% of murder investigation cop show episodes ended with the police saying "whelp, I got nothing", it would seem like the police are kind of irrelevant in terms of stopping murders...and that would actually be accurate.
The reason the crime rate is so low isn't because police and keeping it low -- it's because most people don't want to hurt each other and will voluntarily live in peace. And armed guys constantly hassling people makes society *less* peaceful, not moreso. We live in peace *despite* cops, not *because* of them.
Also note that crime rates tend to be much worse in areas with worse police brutality. People will claim this is because the cops are reacting to the stress of policing in a high crime area, but what if it's the other way around? What if it's that brutal policing is especially ineffective and leads to higher crime rates?
>But the media never questions that, despite these abuses, the police are nevertheless effective at protecting against crime.
Finally, a real answer to OP's question. The media generally cuts police an *enormous* amount of slack on this issue.
> The media generally cuts police an enormous amount of slack on this issue.
We should also look beyond just news media. The news media is giving tons of slack to cops and mostly just repeats what they say with zero fact checking. However most media about cops is not the news but rather things like CSI and Law & Order that are nothing but pure copaganda.
> In reality, US police are hilariously ineffective.
Not surprising given the fact that the requirement to become a police is so low in so many states.
Basically, for many places, you need to graduate high school. That's it.
The bar is so low, it's horrifying.
The media reports actual stories. They are just nipping at the bud because there are more out there.
Some go in with good intentions. They either join in, turn a blind eye, or get out of the profession.
>They either join in, turn a blind eye, or get out of the profession.
My brother tried to be a jail guard, which in our county is a prerequisite to joining the sheriff's department. His first day he's told to immediately hit inmates who step off of the line while walking them. Not warn them verbally or even wave the baton threateningly, just go straight to violence on the first infraction to "establish authority and discipline". He was also given a baton and given permission to use it but was given essentially zero guidelines on when it was appropriate to use one. He basically had carte blanche to break that thing out whenever he wanted.
He was out within two weeks. He wasn't comfortable with their "violence by default" policy. It's not like our country is really violent, it has a fairly low crime rate. It's just the attitude all law enforcement has in this country, that we're under some kind of military occupation or something.
Historically, the cops that go in with the best of intentions and refuse to join in on the toxic criminal culture within PDs, get harassed/threatened/hazed until they’re forced out of the department. There was a story that broke out about a LA sheriffs deputy who reported the existence of law enforcement gangs and how they tried to recruit him in and he refused and tried to be a whistle blower. He also tried blowing the whistle on a gang assault by those very deputies that were part of the police gang called “jump out boys” and when he did, his call was basically intercepted by another dirty cop and nothing came out of that. He was harassed and had death threats. He was also a marine veteran and that’s how much this country “loves” our veterans
Cops aren't there to protect you, only to enforce the law. They are not legally obligated to act to help civilians and are allowed in most states to lie to people to get "confessions." They're also shielded heavily from personal accountability, even in cases of clear fault.
There are some good cops but the system makes them practically invulnerable. It's only natural that it both corrupts and draws in the corrupted.
It's not all cops are bad or even a "few bad apples." It's the fact that it is nearly impossible to hold a bad officer accountable if they violate your rights. Story time, about 4 years ago, I lived in an upstairs apartment, and my friend who had children came to visit. Her 5 year old son had light up shoes and thought it was fun to run around in them. However, he quickly settled down and was playing video games with the other children. This was the first and last time she ever visited me. About 2 or 3 in the afternoon, my neighbors called the police because of the noise and reported that there was domestic abuse happening upstairs. The officers violated our rights and arrested my husband. They kicked open our door, they had no warrent or probable cause so this was illegal. They separated me and my friend from our children. Then they interrogated the children 5M, 7M, &7F with no social worker or parents present. (Which is Illegal). To this day, I do not know what he said or did to our children because they are traumatized by the experience. They pulled their gun on us and interrogated me and my friend, refused to let us leave, or call a lawyer. Accused us of unspeakable things, searched my home with no warrent. Eventually, they found nothing, so they arrested my husband for domestic violence (because of the neighbors' accusation) and let the rest of us go. It took 3 days and nearly a thousand dollars to bail him out of jail. The charges were eventual dropped, but he lost his job. I could not recope the bail money. I tried to make a formal complaint against the officer since my rights were violated and I was threatened that my pursue of this would end bably for me and was basically told it was not possible because the charges were dropped. I still have panic attacks when people knock on my front door. I know my story is nothing compared to the innocent people who lose their lives to police in the US every day.
This is fucked
America is fucked
I'm so sorry. This is ridiculous that they're allowed to get away with this shit. I hope he hasn't had issues finding a job since, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did :(. Your neighbors also should have seen some consequences for filing a false report, truth be told. That's so messed up you just have to deal with other people's fucked actions.
If you're in California, the cops are [legally required to arrest someone](https://johndrogerslaw.com/are-the-police-mandated-to-arrest-someone-after-receiving-a-domestic-violence-call/) whenever there is a domestic violence call.
Texas
I am so,sorry :( I’m in Tx too. North Texas I’m very lucky to live in a neighborhood where we all watch out and take care of each other. It’s safer that way because of situations like what you went through.
North Texas , beaten and arrested while my back was turned. They handed my kid over to the non custodial parent who was on heroin and meth and popped with a bunch of other stuff too. He left my infant alone while he went to work. ( Before you judge me, he hid it well and poked holes in the condom expecting me to not want the kid and he would get child support , abortion was not an option because government sucks) it took a month and drug tests to get my kid back. Cops are like flipping a penny , it just depends on what they feel like. My ex had been up their earlier telling lie after lie. He disappeared as soon as the judge ordered child support payments. It's been over a decade and I've yet to receive a dime. Bad cop no donut. Oh and I was charged with assault. I couldn't fight it. The cameras didn't work. And he parked in front of them anyways. .it's bogus.
Bro, literally read the article that you linked. They are legally required to arrest only if there is probable cause (evidence) that DV occurred. It's not like they just arrest every time there is a call for DV but no evidence.
Probable cause can be something as small as the cop saying “I thought I saw a red mark on the woman” or “it looked like she had a bruise. Must have been a trick of the light.” Source:Happened to me. There was no bruise.
> I was threatened that my pursue of this would end bably for me and was basically told it was not possible because the charges were dropped. Fucking *what?* That shit makes zero sense. Fuck the police.
One thing I've learned is to just not answer the door with police. As long as you don't open it they can't do shit but AS SOON AS YOU DO it's basically an invitation for them to walk right in and do whatever the fuck they want.
They kicked open their door
> They kicked open our door, they had no warrent (sic) or probable cause so this was illegal.
Over in LA, the sheriff's department is harassing and searching the homes of local lawmakers who have been trying to hold the department to account. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-23/sheriff-alex-villanueva-secret-police This is also on the heels of investigative reporting about how officers in the sheriff's department are in literal gangs https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history/ Policing is run locally in the US so certainly not all departments are like this. But this kind of crap happens way too often.
something funny to point out is that the LAPD police department keeps trying to edit out the section on Wikipedia where they have a laundry list of controversies against them
Los Angeles Police Department police department
look I've had a long day cut me a break brother lmao
RIP in peace man.
Man, I totally get it. Go to an ATM machine, put in your PIN number, withdraw $5 dollars and buy yourself a snack or something at a coffee shop cafe, maybe you'll feel better.
I'm going to go head down to the gas station and get something, thank you for that.
#wholesome
Always check the “discussions” on pages like these, very illuminating.
If it’s of any addition to this comment, I was held at gunpoint by the LACSD and asked why I was driving around looking like a school shooter. I was driving home from work and was pulled over for a “busted taillight”. Then I was detained for suspicion of drug and weapons trafficking. I asked for their names and badge numbers and was told, “It wasn’t needed”. It wasn’t until they tore my car apart looking for things and couldn’t find anything that they pulled me out of the back of the cruiser and said to go home. I called the department and asked for the footage to take to lawyer for destruction of property and harassment, and they told me there was no record or footage of the stop. Had the stop gone any other way, I don’t think I would be alive to say anything. Edited. Misspelled word.
God.. really one of the most corrupt if not the most corrupt police forces.. can't fathom why all the guns people have, to defeat "tyranny", just let this happen..
Honestly LAPD just sounds fucking terrible, like I hear stuff about NYPD but LAPD really sounds terrible.
LAPD is terrible, but they were talking about the LACSD, the Los Angeles County Sherriff's Department, which is a separate entity than the LAPD and - arguably- even worse.
Remember that shit with Christopher Dorner? It might make me a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but I think there was a good deal more to that story than what we heard. And the response by the LAPD, all the civilians they injured and nearly killed with zero consequences to themselves in their blind rage.
And to the people who don't like Chris Dorner, there's also the story of [Adrian Schoolcraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft). The tl;dr for me about policing in the US is that we make up 5% of the world's population and incarcerate 25% of its prisoners. This is mostly due to the War on Drugs, [famously established by Richard Nixon to crush the peace and civil rights movements](https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html) and expanded many many times over by administrations of both mainstream political parties in the US (most predominantly by the "I'm a tough on crime Dem!" Bill Clinton).
The irony of the Christopher Dorner story is that A) he did indeed go insane so who knows what led him to that. and B) ultimately, regardless of his sanity, he got proved right because the LASD ended up shooting some people who were in a car like his, over... nothing. And then faced zero consequences.
On Reddit yesterday someone recommended the limited podcast A Tradition of Violence about the gangs in the LASD. It's very well done and shocking.
My experience as a black teenaged extremely impoverished youth in America. There’s many good cops out here but the amount of bad apples completely ruin it. I had to go to court 4 times to fight a false ticket where this cop tried to say I ran two stop signs but I never did and they were just looking to pull me over cause I pulled off my block and they immediately busted a uturn and started following me it was a really bad area so I and the people who lived around me were constantly targeted. Oh twice I remember my mom lied and had me arrested. Another time I was rightfully pulled over for going like 9 over, then I was hit and thrown against the police car and they tried to force information about my friend from me(he didn’t do anything he was literally a passenger no tickets no warrants nothing he was 17 at the time I was 18, along with my white friend(who looks Hispanic) but the white girl in the car with us was treated good and like a victim. Out of all those situations the only time a police officer had helped me was the third time my mom tried to get me arrested where I begged and begged for help and told her to look into my moms false police reports and she’d believe me and I was taken to a hospital instead. Hard to trust a group of people with power of you when they have your life in their hands. I’ve never been one to fear anything I came up from the dirt so I had to be strong but ask most any person (especially minorities) they will tell you they are atleast weary of the people who can give you 100 conflicting commands and then shoot and kill you when you can’t complete an impossible task or just do it and claim something and have no repercussions. Safe to say being abused by the police, targeted by the police when they couldn’t prove anything, and the police being used as a weapon against me. I guess you could say it put a lot of distrust of 99 percent of cops for me because In America you simply never know if one is having a bad day and gonna take your life or ruin it for the next 20 years. Don’t get me wrong Ive met some amazing police officers like the one who helped me I still keep her card in my wallet but just having the bad apples takes away from the good the others can do when you put a permanent fear in your population which is hard to be regained, this shit happened 1-2 years ago some a few months ago and it’s shit I’ll never forget. I’m only 19
Chris Rock's bit about bad apples is so on point with what you said. In some jobs you just can't have bad apples. Like if American Airlines said "most our pilots like to land. We just have a few bad apples" Sorry to hear that my friend. That shits not right.
I like this! Jim Gaffigan was talking about his wife’s brain surgery and he said, know what happens to the bad brain surgeons? They don’t let them become brain surgeons! (I know that’s not exactly how it works, but same idea - why would we tolerate bad apples among any professionals who hold people’s lives in their hands?)
Yeah but a brain surgeon won't have a bad day and get all pissy and purposely kill a person, I mean they might, but that would be pretty fucked off if they did.
And the state board of ethics would seriously question that shit, probably bar him from practice.
Not in the state of Texas https://www.propublica.org/article/dr-death-christopher-duntsch-a-surgeon-so-bad-it-was-criminal/ https://www.kxan.com/investigations/5-years-after-dr-death-doctors-still-come-to-texas-to-leave-pasts-behind/
The saying does go "One bad apple spoils the whole bunch". Its literally 7 words, but people can only seem to remember the first 3. Come to think of it, this selective memory seems to happen a lot. "Give us your huddled masses who can stand on their own two feet" and "I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be taught critical race theory." OK, I'm done. Sorry for misquoting MLK! Please don't cancel me!
They also seem to forget "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" is literally impossible.
And the blood of the coven is thicker than the water of the womb! (You get to decide who is important in your life)
That's "blood of the covenant" but it likely applies equally to a witch's coven. It's kind of an old fashioned word but a covenant is basically the people you choose to take care of and are faithful to - your dearest friends and *chosen* family.
Now that's just embarrassing, on a comment about how people misquote things . . . I think I got the meaning right though
Hey now, remember: To err is a human.
To really screw things up requires a computer.
Also "Bleeding-heart" is a catch-all term for any liberal who cares about other people... that originally described *Jesus* because conservatives who beat people with Bibles have found a way to describe "Someone who is like Christ" as a bad thing.
That one is a more modern phrase. Better than "blood is thicker than water", but it isn't the original.
Maple Syrup is thicker
Ugh. I thought this went away! I thought Redditors finally learned that this was not the original phrase, and yet your comment is up-voted. Just Google it....
The main issue is that you also have a bad vegetable seller that refuses to remove the bad apples in time.
What if all the pilots who liked to land were in a union with the pilots who didn't like to land and just kept saying they did like to land and people who had a problem with it just didn't understand how hard it is to land a plane. I'll tell you, those pilots would be bad also. All cops are either rotten or enabling. They are all bad.
[well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525?wprov=sfla1)
Problem is when your have 1 cop doing bad and 4 other cops standing there doing nothing about it you have 5 bad cops. Until cops are truly held accountable for the bad shit they do it will stay the same. So many cops arrest people and then judge throws it out next day cause it was over something stupid, probably cause cops ego hurt so he arrested the person, there needs to be some punishment for the cops after too many dumb arrest. Also cops need to be taught the law. You know the thing they are supposed to uphold.
Yeah, my dad was wrongfully arrested and sued the city and won against them, partly because the cop didn't show up to court that day (and because the city's case had zero evidence, and the "evidence" they claimed to have was ridiculously bad). We were told by our lawyer to *never* go back to that city again because they would most likely be out for revenge. And speaking of "bad apples" the stories about the revenge inflicted upon cops who try to blow the whistle on their fellow officers are horrific. You cant have *any* good cops when the ones who try to do the right thing are either pushed out of the job or killed by other officers. In answer to OP's question: yes. Yes it's that bad here.
I mean, all you have to do is read about the Christopher dorner story to get all you need to about the LAPD whistleblower issue.
And that's just one instance in the LAPD shenanigans. The LAPD basically had its own gang in the CRASH unit.
LAPD is so insane and corrupt and always has been it is incredible. Whenever you listen to true crime, buckle up when LAPD enters the story.
"What do you call a table of 12 where one is a known NAZI? 12 NAZIs."
My experience with cops, it's more like 4 out of 5 are doing bad, one doesn't care. I feel like my ratio is generous
>Gonna take your life or ruin it That’s the chief problem IMO. These “people” have an outrageous amount of control over every single one of us. For no reason at all they can nonchalantly destroy someone’s life and face **no repercussions** even if they’re wrong. That’s not acceptable, and absolutely not acceptable to not be far more selective when hiring. I’m not rolling those fucking dice and hoping that the cop I get will be one of the good ones, whatever percentage that might be. 1% of cops being as bad as described is too much.
Watched a close friend get put on a sex offenders list for pissing on a wall at 2am. Absolutely ruined his life for no reason.
[удалено]
To add to a great comment, look up "killology". It's the literal name of what the cops have been taught for years. Also, they are *taught to escalate* until they feel in control of the scene. The expectation of hero worship is infuriating. Heroes put themselves at risk to help others. These cowards want it both ways.
You're in a room with 50 snakes. 3 of them are venomous and could kill you. All of the snakes look the same. Why are you so afraid of snakes? What's wrong with you? This is clearly your upbringing and culture.
You mean like at least 40% of snakes, right? Or whatever the abuse statistic was (because no way do those limit their abuse to just their home).
Lol I was once arrested for criminal domestic violence against my husband (who called the police). I'm 5' tall and 95 lbs. My ex-husband is 6'1" and about 200 lbs at the time. Cops come...2 male officers I get the older one. I had 2 black eyes, a busted nose, and fingerprint bruises around my throat. He had scratches on his forearms. The police officer asked if I scratched him, and I said yes. So he tells me he's going to arrest me and by that time I had just had enough so I straight up asked him if he was fucking stupid. He throws me down to the ground, cuffs me, lifts me up by the cuffs, and slams me into the porch railing a couple of times and asks me if I'm going to behave. I just laughed at him and told him he was going to have to beat me a little harder if he thought that hurt more than what my husband did. So he did it some more until the younger cop made him stop. When I was being booked, the black lady booking me into jail (by that time the bruises were even more visible) asked what I was being booked for and I said cdv. She said what does he look like? I'm like oh he has some scratches from when he tried he tried to strangle me and she went OFF. Like who was the cop that arrested you? She went and found the young cop and yelled at him. He was scared and was like I didn't arrest her , the other guy did. She looked at the paperwork and got even madder. Just imagine an older black woman trying to do her job, just yelling about I'm sick of these motherfuckers bringing in these little beat up girls half naked for bullshit. She didn't want to book me, she wanted me to go to the hospital. Hell I wasn't even worried about going to trial cuz my mugshot was proof enough that I was fighting for my literal life. I go to my arraignment next day and the judge said he wasn't legally allowed to give me a PR (personal recognizance) bond but he said that it looked like I had a rough time and did I need to go to a hospital. I just plead not guilty cuz by that time my throat had swollen almost shut. My husband let me sit in jail for 2 weeks before bonding me out, dropping the charges, and paid to have that mugshot scrubbed from everywhere. He regularly would do the same for his mugshots too. Point is, it was obvious that my husband had beat the fuck out of me, but that older police officer probably beat his wife too. He was really good at hurting people where it wouldn't show. I guess I got lucky that the younger cop made him stop slamming my ribs into that fucking railing. Everyone, the lady at booking, the judge, and even the prosecutor had it gone to trial knew my husband beat me. He had had many, many cdv arrests that mysteriously never went to trial, or were dismissed throughout his whole life. Obviously I didn't know that when I married him. But that one fucking cop....he fucking knew too and *approved*. I finally was able to leave with my son for good, but I'll never forget the glee that cop had in his eyes whilst slamming a handcuffed, 95 lb girl into a railing and the absolute rage when I laughed at him. So yeah, cops are shit.
Holy shit, I'm so fucking sorry you had to go through *any* of that, and I hope the vast, *vast* majority of your days since then have been peaceful, and full of love and laughter. It's beyond upsetting that there are such fucking cowardly sadists out there, and I so hope the two you met both run afoul of similarly-minded folks down the line... BTW you're a good writer, and though it was harrowing, that was a story well-told imho.
I’m generally considered to be white, and I grew up in a lower middle class suburban neighborhood, yet I’ve had many of the same experiences. From being followed and pulled over for made-up reasons, to being searched for the same bullshit and treated with contempt and disrespect. It all subsided when I got into my late twenties and started driving nicer cars (not the beaters I had always driven). Most police officers I’ve encountered otherwise have been fair and respectful, but like in this comment, the few bad apples ruin it. Combine it with a culture where the good ones are expected to look the other way when the bad ones do what they do, lest they want to be retaliated against, and you have a recipe for disaster. Personally, I don’t believe that police are widespread racists. Of course some are, as you’re likely to find racists in all professions, of all colors. I do believe that police target those who are most likely to be doing something illegal and readily apparent; such as those who appear to be impoverished, and in this country, black and brown people represent a disproportionate amount of impoverished people. Edit: I also want to add that I believe poorer people are less likely to have access to resources (lawyers, etc) to seek justice against police harassment, and thus is another reason why they are more likely to be mistreated and illegally stopped and searched.
I think you are definitely right that socioeconomic status obviously has all those effects in police interactions, and I would add that even if the proportion of police who are racist is the same as any other profession, police have power. A racist cop can permanently mess up someone's life or even kill them. There aren't many other professions where one racist has that much power. So we should all be extra vigilant about racist cops. Basically, I think that police as an institution will act more racist than the sum of its parts because of the power they wield. The structure of the power they have is such that if 1% of cops are racist, they will be able to do much more damage than the same number of racists in another profession. It's also worth noting that the power of cops is well known to potential cops. So if someone was particularly racist and wanted to purposefully inflict pain on minority groups, choosing to be a cop is a great way to accomplish that goal. To me, this suggests that cops might be more racist than other professions (at least a little) because they might draw in racists, where other professions (with less power over individuals) will probably end up with the same amount of racists as everyone else. Of course, statistical data one way or the other would help answer that question, but I just wanted to say that there is at least some reason to suspect that cops might be more racist than average. And of course, even if they aren't, the racists in the institution can (and do) perpetuate an outsized amount of racist violence
I like to put the racist cop example like this. A racist literally thinks black people (for example) are subhuman. They think they are vicious animals like a pit bull that can snap at any moment and kill a toddler. They also think modern white people are too stupid to understand this, and thus too stupid to protect themselves from said animals. Therefore somebody has to protect the people too stupid to protect themselves. If you are a racist, why wouldn’t you want to become a cop to protect the people. You’re not a bad person, your a martyr, a silent hero etc etc. I would say that a position like police officer actually attracts racists more than other jobs, as a racist cop can use his employment as copium for his being socially ostracized.
That's a good way to think about it. And even if the other cops know there's a racist asshole in their department, they've been trained to believe that American cops are under siege by armed gangs and unfriendly politicians, so the racist becomes a rough guy on "their side".
>Most police officers I’ve encountered otherwise have been fair and respectful, but like in this comment, the few bad apples ruin it. "Good" cops who turn a blind eye to the actions of bad cops are bad cops themselves.
The prosecutors, judges, and politicians that keep protecting bad cops are just as bad, if not worse than the badged thugs that commit violence on their behalf. The entire American legal system is rotten to the core.
Not in the US, but basically for me, this is the issue. There are good cops and bad cops the world over.. The real issue is that like any community, you get away with more once youre on the inside, because they know you, because "oh he does that, but he isnt THAT bad a person". Add to this in the US, how police are taught to escalate (argue as much as you want, I've seen too many videos where theyve gone straight for their gun...) and this is the sad reality, anywhere where criminals can shoot back at you, you get escaltion because both sides essentially decide to protect themselves first.. (i mean.. wouldnt you in that position!?). Its not that there aren't good cops out there, its that when push comes to shove a police officer is expected to know the law and be an upstanding citizen so they get free passes that the public don't get, and when you couple this with the bad cops who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the uniform, you get systemic problems because they have no one to stop them from doing what they do.. and like most criminals, they'll find ways to hide the bits good cops will find morally reprehensible. I normally don't like saying that the ignorant are just as guilty, especially where law is concerned and criminals DO game the system.. but no accountability, or accountability with no consequence is a huge problem.. not just in the US
A few years ago I heard a 20 year officer say that 1/3 oh the police officers were bullies when they were younger; 1/3 were the ones bullied and wanted the authority and 1/3 just wanted to help people and do their job enforcing the law. So the problem in policing needs to have better recruiting and better training. The police are taught to control encounters,to be assertive and unfortunately they need to be
Pretty literally too. It's literally their job to catch criminals and turn them in, but they allow criminal behavior from cops
Yeah, it's mostly race and class targeting, but it does happen outside of those groups occasionally. I remember back when my sister was in middle school, a loose friend of hers didn't show up to school, so the cops were called. Anyone who could be identified as a friend of that student was called into the office and questioned without any staff or parents present, nobody but two adult male police officers trying to intimidate info out of a bunch of 12 year old girls one by one. I remember my dad got down there and was not only assaulted by the officer (pushed into him when walking past), but was also told "no sir, we didn't question your daughter, we just asked her a few questions". The police in my town are corrupt as shit. A couple years ago they outed a then-minor victim of a sexual abuse crime to help the mayor win re-election, and just a month or two ago an officer was arrested out of state *in* a city police car with multiple firearms (not all of which were his) for driving drunk down the freeway.
I've definitely noticed the longer I keep a car the more I get stopped by the police.
As a civil lawyer (i do housing) and a white middle aged guy- my view of police I know just about every bailiff in the county i practice in. All of them are retired cops (i think a few may have been retired deputies or correctional officers, but same general field). I talk with them all of the time, and there is about 20-30 of them. Out of that group, virtually all of them are great people whom treat everyone in the courthouse with respect and do their job extremely well. There is exactly 1 that i have seen live on the line of overstepping his role. HE just gives off the "abuse of power" vibe. The reality is that police have so much power that you do not need most of them to be bad. 1 in 20 doing shady stuff is enough. The fact that they have a union (and unions in general are good) that protects them (and the union should) means those bad ones are not drummed out like they should.
The fact that that event causes the emotional reaction to keep that card in your wallet is so sad and fucked up
Mhm girl treated me like a human. Sad that her doing the bare minimum is my best interaction I’ve had with the police but I will always remember her helping me
Last year I got a little too drunk with my gf at a bar. Not wasted falling down, not even stumbling but enough for a good time. Long story short I get kicked out, okay I start to leave and it’s not fast enough for the bouncers so they jump us, they call the cops who show up and join in the beating. Then they take my girl to jail and me to the drunk tank. I have the feeling our mixed race relationship might have had something to do with all of it.
I don't want to blame you for everthing that happened that night, but the "long story short I got kicked out" is weird to me if you weren't even stumbling. This inconsistency in your story makes me think you aren't a reliable narrator in the sense that maybe something happened you aren't aware of or aren't sharing. Chill, paying customers who will order more drinks don't just get ejected.
Even if he was acting crazy I don’t think that should give the police the right to jump him
I don't think that redditor was suggesting they deserved a beat down....but it does raise the question. What are these details of a calm tipsy dude being dragged out a bar and then beat down by bouncers and police? Sounds sus.
As a bartender it sounds like he was drunk and asked to leave. Then didn’t. Then resisted as he was ejected. Forcibly ejecting drunk assholes who won’t leave is literally the whole job of the bouncer. If you’re fighting bouncers while drunk the cops will absolutely assume you’re a drunk asshole who needs his ass kicked. Everyone is the hero in their own story. It’s hard for drunk and belligerent people to accurately remember their own actions afterwards. In 18 years in the industry I’ve never seen someone getting their ass kicked by a bouncer who didn’t deserve it. Most of the dicks who deserve it walk out unscathed. It’s only the really stupid ones who don’t leave when they’re told it’s time to go.
>Oh twice I remember my mom lied and had me arrested Bro what the fuck
My moms very mentally ill
I think the thing that people most often forget in this discussion about good apples and bad apples is that the phrase goes bad apple spoils the whole bunch. If the good apples are protecting the bad apples… Then there are no good apples
Yes and no. Not all cops are bad, and the bad ones aren't bad all the time or to the same degree. But there is an underlying issue with the culture, training, and attitude of cops. It's bad enough that if you pay attention it actually shows up in the police shows meant to make cops on the job look good. There are good people in the police. But if the system itself is on the rotten side, it's only a matter of time before the good ones leave or go rotten themselves.
There was a really interesting thread about police on Ask Reddit a few years ago. There were a bunch of former police and former want-to-be-police who chimed in with stories of being pushed out because they wouldn't go along with rotten behaviors. Something I thought was really interesting is that lots of people abandon the police to become firefighters because they want jobs in which they could help people and their communities and firefighting lets them do that without all of the nasty stuff that happens in police departments.
I'm a special education teacher and the best behavior therapist I've ever had in my classroom was a former police officer. He was a black man who didn't feel comfortable staying on the force as the black lives matter movement really took off. He was phenomenonal with my students. It was a self contained room for students with behavior disorders and he could de-escalate a student with no physical restraints almost as good as I could. He's exactly the type of police officer I would want to see respond to calls involving students, particularly those with disabilities. But those aren't the type of police officers that cities and counties want employed. So they get pushed out. It's so sad.
You and that behavior therapist should write a book together on de-escalating behaviors in the classroom. De-escalation training is highly needed in schools and law enforcement yet teachers and staff alike aren't getting the proper training they really need to help students.
There’s already a good book for that, it’s called verbal judo. I use it when I teach kids martial arts. It’s super helpful for all ages over like 5
Yea that's the thing people don't get when they pull out the "not all cops are bad" card. The one that try to do something against the bad stuff get pushed out and/or silenced, and if you don't try something you're part of the problem. It's impossible to stay ethical and on the police force.
Saw a case recently where a rookie cop was straight up murdered during a "training exercise" because he was cooperating with an internal investigation into some other cops who'd committed a gang rape. Your average small-town police officer who pulls you over for speeding is probably not going to be like this, but it's a real systemic problem, especially in big cities and notably worse in cities that are more segregated by race. People assume that the worst cops & worst crime rates are naturally in the biggest cities, but NYC is relatively safe while St Louis is both the murder capital of the USA and No. 1 in police killings.
This is important, it really depends on where you are. I have been the cause of the arrest of one bad cop, assisted with the arrest of another, and was the cause of the firing of a bad cop who we caught before they actually committed a crime but were intending to. I was told recently that I'm considered the best cop at my mid sized department and have never faced any negative repercussions besides one of those guys buddies being pissy with me. Where I'm from that stuff isn't tolerated. It gets pervasive in larger organizations depending on the culture of the place. I saw a lot of that kind of stuff when I was in the Army. When you move between battalions there are huge differences in culture and it's hard to paint the entire Army (or police) with one large brush.
>rookie cop was straight up murdered during a "training exercise" because he was cooperating with an internal investigation into some other cops who'd committed a gang rape. Can you link the case or an article or something? That sounds like something out of a movie.
fuck /u/spez
The aphorism about a few bad apples is widely misunderstood. A few bad apples aren’t just isolated rogues that are uncommon and unrepresentative of the whole barrel. The whole barrel IS rotten and it only takes a few rotten apples to do it.
If you have a barrel of wine and you add a cup of toxic sludge to it, you have a barrel of sludge.
The amazing poet Kyle ‘Guante’ Tran Myhre wrote in his poem, ‘How to explain white supremacy to white supremacist’ “how long do we keep pointing out the bad apples, ignoring the fact that the orchard was planted on a mass grave? …and that we planted it there?” https://youtu.be/DbwcXDunxA8
The saying dates back at least to Chaucer, and like "the customer is always right", it's been cut in half to serve absolutely the worst impulses in society. ("The customer IS always right...in matters of taste." In other words, if they want to buy an ugly af hat, you let them do it. It does NOT mean you have to put up with abuse.)
I think “the customer is always right” has a corollary for owners and managers in that if customers don’t want to buy your product or service it’s not because the customer is wrong: it’s because your product or service is inferior and/or overpriced. My least favorite? “Jack of all trades; master of none.” The complete aphorism has a second half: “is better than master of one.” It is not an indictment of generalism but rather of specialization.
Or my personal least favorite "blood is thicker than water" has been cut in half so as to say that "family is more important than everything else". But the actual aphorism is "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb", which means that the family you choose for yourself is to be trusted more than blood relatives. My family uses the former to justify literal child abuse, so it hits pretty close to home for me
The thing is, you can source your supposed "shortened" version to [at least the 1700's](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/blood-is-thicker-than-water.html) Good luck finding "blood of the covenant..." Prior to the internet. Not that I disagree with the sentiment. I'm definitely in favor of chosen family. But your version *is* the modern version, not the original
Right, which tells me that the majority of cops aren't doing something to push out the bad ones. The unions aren't doing something to push out the bad ones. If the good cops are getting pushed out, that means they aren't in the majority. And that's a problem.
And this is why we say ACAB. Sure, not all cops are bad, but the "good ones" and allowing the bad ones to continue their shitty behavior.
carpenter zephyr society hunt enjoy school shelter political fall direful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If you look away or cover up for another cop, guess what that makes you? A bad fucking cop
It’s like treating all guns like they’re loaded, right?
Ain't no song called Fuck the Fire Department
One thing I heard that stuck with me is : "not all cops are bad, but ALL police unions are bad." There are many parts of the world where the law enforcement is more chaotic. What makes American cops so fucking scary is their organization. They enforce the laws they make, and are basically untouchable. Even if you manage to get one fired, they can just go to a different department and get rehired.
Having spent many years hanging out in the dive (cop) bars on the north side of Chicago, I have drank with many cops and many wives of cops. Some are cool and some are assholes. Most are entitled. They expect to pay less at grocery stores, park wherever they want, get free coffee and donuts at Starbucks, and they don't expect to have to wait in line. Also even the cool ones generally use "how difficult their job is" to justify spouting some absolutely racist shit like: "if you had to deal with these monkeys, you'd understand." The problem with the police, and at least half of American society is complicit with this, is that they expect to be treated different and special because they are police. Everyone's jobs suck. Everyone. And until we get into a culture that the police can't treat everyday people like shit because they think their job makes them different and better, they will continue to act entitled, whether it be cheaper milk and eggs, or shooting someone.
The police in this country are built into a militant system. It’s an efficient method of managing armed individuals but comes with a serious flaw. The grunts in this system are the populace, and they weren’t even properly drafted or trained on it. So now you have someone whom is working from an authoritative position expecting you and I to understand and conform to that system. Now add in racism, classism, and the fact many of society’s problems are thrown at their feet without them ever getting training in it and you get a dozen ways the whole thing breaks.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
A lot of people can hear racist shit like calling Black people monkies but not understand that said cops treat people described this way drastically differently.
“Of course I’m dangerous. I’m police. I could do terrible things to people... with impunity.”
You gotta pay attention to the smallest things, too. Like how they twist people’s arms behind their backs when they’re arresting them, even if they are being 100% compliant. The only reason to do it that way is to try and get them to be non compliant, willingly or not. I saw one where a cop walked up to a woman who was walking down the sidewalk near where something happened. She was not involved and had done nothing illegal. He called for backup right next to her. She put her hands up and said she was scared. He criticized her by saying they’d never met before, so why should she be scared? But the instant she put her hand in her jacket pocket to get her phone, all of a sudden he got real nervous. Cops kill more unarmed people in this country than people kill cops. Somebody had a right to be nervous and scared and it wasn’t the cop.
The absolute worst part about TV shows is that they always make the internal affairs department out to be a bunch of backstabbing liars and traitors. It's awful propaganda.
They put all the good apples into a rotten barrel.
> Not all cops are bad True fact. A cop saved my life once. His partner was beating the shit out of me with his nightstick and the cop said, "Whoa, he's had enough." Saved my life, forever grateful!
/u/spez can gargle on my nuts
Yeah that's the problem with the culture. To use a medical analogy it's like having an infected wound. If left untreated no matter how removed from the infection eventually the whole body suffers and starts to rot. That's the underlying issue with police, it doesn't matter where they are or how good they are as a person. If they are in the system long enough they either leave or they adapt to working in the system which makes them part of the problem.
Or it's kinda like the surgeon that drinks on the job and nothing changes until someone decides to risk it all and report him.
If you have an interaction with the police odds are it will be straightforward. What terrifies me, though, is that if it does go wrong it will go wrong 100% against me with no recourse. I will end up beaten or dead, or charged with a crime backed by a lie, and there’s nothing I can do.
I’ve caught a couple of ride-a-long podcasts and what cops have to deal with… good god. We need to retool policing. If police lived in the neighborhood they policed… if the people knew the person doing the policing - like community members with roots who grew up in the neighborhood.
If the reports of abuse by NYPD cops are representative, about 5% of cops are responsible for almost all the problems... except that the rest of them cover up for the "bad apples" for a host of reasons, not the least being the culture of the so-called "thin blue line."
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Things did get a lot better when our director retired. Unfortunately the mess he made became our problem to clean up.
You see it with dictators too.
People always forget the full phrase is "a few bad apples spoil the bunch."
Covering up makes you part of the problem IMO.
Interestingly I've seen a similar number as the percentage of all men who are rapists. Maybe about 5% of people are just irredeemable sadistic assholes.
That wouldn't be shocking to me at all. If the 1 in 6 number is right it would mean each rapist, on average, only has to rape 3-4 people in their life to get to that number. On the other hand, I also wouldn't be surprised if the number was lower because you have people like Cosby who have had close to 60 people come forward and accuse him of rape and he's probably nowhere near the top.
Not to be dark about it, but I imagine it's probably the latter, much like video game profits coming from about 10% of the community known as "whales".
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I've never committed a crime but the police always treat you like you have. I used to draw blood for donations and we'd go to police precincts. The amount of times an officer questioned me like I was a criminal while we waited is too many to count. The couple times I actually needed an officer in my life, they did not help and didn't seem like they wanted to. I'm sure they're not all bad, but a lot of them are
I worked at a social service organization that served people with HIV/AIDS in the 90s. We received a bomb threat and the cop who showed up was literally eating and ice cream cone the whole time he was there, made me fill out the report because his hands were sticky and when I told him we were an AIDS service organization, he asked me "well, what do you expect'? I was also hit on by a cop who responded to a DV situation I was in and he asked if he could take me out since my current situation was clearly breaking up.
Jesus Christ... I'm really sorry. That first one is par for the course for police, but being hit on after that, that's next level sick.
Exact same. Law abiding citizen, yet every single interaction I’ve had with a cop has been negative. And I’m a petite white girl, not even the demographic that is targeted by the police.
Same. I’m a white middle aged teacher and look it. I have had very few positive interactions with cops. It’s a group of people that I have very little trust nor respect for, and I am always uncomfortable around them even in situations where I’ve had to be the one to call them.
Once me and my older sister were home alone for the night, (mom did night shifts, we were probably about 10 and 15, maybe 11 and 16) someone called the home phone and I answered assuming it was a telemarketer that I’d just hang up on. Nope, I answer and hear “I see you, I’m in your house.” I hung up and we called the cops. Despite living over twice as far as the police station was, her boyfriend showed up first and we sat in his car until the police got there. When the cops did get there, they did the slowest wander through my house, didn’t bother to open interior doors or check the backyard, looked at the phone, said “unplug it.” And left. We had already unplugged it. I have never called the cops again, literally useless.
Well that's fucking terrifying. I can certainly see why you wouldn't call the cops again. Unfortunately, your experience seems to be way too common.
Australian here and it's the same. I am a 5'4" white-appearing woman. Not even the sort of person they usually go out of their way to pick on. I have no criminal record. And I do my best to avoid all interactions with police. I am terrified of them. On the rare occasions I've needed their help, they've either done nothing, or actively harmed me. My ex savagely beat me, and I was visibly injured, but all he had to do was lie and say that I had started it, and I got arrested. In the end - even though my story was true and his was false, and I was injured and he wasn't - they just let us both go and didn't even give me a protection order. He kept on intimidating me for months by showing up places he knew I'd be in our small town. Since that happened I've discovered it's a pattern. I've seen so many victims get arrested abd sometimes even charged because the cops lack even the basic training and intelligence to know what DV looks like. They see the affable, calm, smirking guy claiming that the crying, bleeding, barely coherent woman who called the police is the *real* problem here, and they go, "hey seems legit".
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where cops have actually helped. My childhood home (in the wealthy suburbs) was robbed and the cops did nothing. I had my bag stolen that had my laptop and passport in it. The cops wrote a report so I could get a new passport. I don’t think they investigated the crime at all. I also had the cops serve a search warrant to my apartment at 5am once. I had committed no crimes, but the upstairs neighbor has child sex abuse images and they decided to search all the apartments that could possibly connect to his open network. I wish I had been more awake so I would have thought to actually read the warrant before I let them in. Of course, that’s probably why they scheduled it at 5am. Luckily, I already had that day off so I didn’t need to call off work. They didn’t let anyone back into their apartments until like noon.
I'll echo what others have said, that they're not all bad and the bad ones just get the most attention (you never see a news story of "white cop pulls over black man, gives warning, and releases him with no violence or threats") However, let me just point out that a couple family members of mine were mistaken for someone else, arrested, and then had the absolute shit beat out of them while cuffed. One of them was thrown by an officer, at another officer, and then charged with breaking his leg because he landed on him, while cuffed. Their dad went down there to see what happened, and was arrested for waiting for the crosswalk after being told to leave. 2 were white, 2 were white-passing Hispanic, so nothing to do with racism, just fucking ridiculous power tripping. The bad ones are pretty freaking bad. On top of that, in my experience, the ones who aren't on a ridiculous power trip, are just fucking lazy. I've called the police upwards of 10 times for domestic violence, in 3 different towns, before I was able to leave my ex, and the most they ever did was make me & my kids pack up and stay with relatives for the night. Including when I had visible injuries and handprints on me, because they didn't feel like arresting the drunk guy and the paperwork that goes with it, even when I had audio recorded the whole encounter. They more or less said it was my fault for "instigating" because I tried to reach past him to take his bottle of vodka.
Sorry you had to go through that. Cops are lazy as hell. My ex got the hell beat out of her by a boyfriend at the time. He then stole her keys and said he was going to come back later so she better not leave. The cops told her, that the hole in the wall, coincidentally shaped like her head, and the grip marks all over her arms was, "a lesson learned" and that she shouldn't have been drinking with him.
Wtf?!
Yeah. I was stunned. Their apathy for her pain and complete unwillingness to put in effort was disgusting. Added another level of trauma for her for sure.
I’m curious why you start your statement with “they aren’t all bad”? You’ve had horrific experiences with them. I think we are conditioned to hope that they will protect us and of course not ALL of them are bad, but they are generally really, really bad.
There are extreme systematic issues that encourage bad policing: Bad training models that instill an Us Versus Them mentality. Metrics that rely on number of arrests. "Broken Window" theory. Limited to no education on the actual laws being enforced, or on individual rights. Qualified Immunity. Those are off the top of my head, there may be other problems. In any case, major systematic reform is needed.
This is what I mean when I say ACAB. Not that every single cop is a cartoonish neo nazi who can’t wait to kill minorities, but that the whole system is fundamentally broken and the officers willingly participate in it, even if they have good intentions. There are plenty of decent people who are cops, but no matter what they do they can’t change a broken system because it will always protect and encourage the worst people and do nothing to hold them accountable.
Annually, US police kill 28.54 people per 10 million. To put that in perspective, Canada’s police kill 9.7. Australia, 6.5. The only countries that are comparable to the rate at which US law enforcement kill are countries like Columbia and Mexico. Two counties in active wars against drug cartels. And up until 2021, US police killed at a higher rate than Mexican police did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_rates_and_counts_for_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers
Australian here. Does this count only people shot by police, or also all the (mostly Aboriginal) people they kill in custody by means such as transporting them for 10 hours in a 45 Celsius van with no water?
Now why would they count deaths by... "natural causes"? /s
I'd imagine it's counted the same way as the Native deaths in Canada/USA doing the same things aka: probably not
That’s like the opposite of ‘Starlight Tours’ in Canada
You love to see the commonwealth colonies come together to kill natives while accounting for the nuances in climate. 🤗
I come from a kinda small town in NC, and i got harassed a lot as a teenager, in the 1990s. Full stop and searches every weekend, especially on my way home at night, anytime from 10 pm to 1 am. I was poor and white so i know this wasnt limited to my black friends, who got it worse. My car was decorated in equality stickers and some extremely non-conservative, fairly insane quotes from jesus. City cops, university cops, and county cops would pull me over, search my whole car for an hour, ask me tons of questions, and generally harass me and my friends if they were with me. I never carried drugs anywhere and didn't let others carry drugs in my car and they mostly respected that. One time, i got detained for 4 hours while the cops searched the car, called for 3 more cop cars (with 2 cops each car) and a canine unit. They found nothing and had no suspicion. 8 cops, one dog, and 4 hours for nothing. Complete waste of resources. I even hung out with some cops when i was older amd got into conversations with them about the harassment and they literally shrugged and said, "eh, what're you gonna do? Kids suck." I never met a cop with any amount of decency or even a modicum of respect for anyone. I am certain they are out there, but not in Greensboro, NC.
> 8 cops, one dog, and 4 hours for nothing Lots of easy overtime
I have been in law enforcement for 23 years. I have seen the best and worst life has to offer. There were some amazing cops who were patient, kind, and compassionate and others who were quick to fight and really got people riled up. You learned who were the ones to lose their cool or more likely to get into fights. Also after being on the job a while a lot of cops get burned out and jaded. Dealing with deaths, beatings, child abuse, really wears on the mental health. It’s hard to go to a fatal crash where a child died then an hour later you are arguing with a drunk at a bar fight. I can remember every child that died in my arms to this day. Something I will take to the grave. We don’t talk about or push mental health like we should. Officers get jaded, burned out and start treating everyone poorly. Also I think prior military made better police officers. They were use to stress and pressure. Generally speaking they were calm, more collected, and performed better under pressure. I never worked with racists. We had a couple bad coworkers but I had a great Chief who got rid of them pretty quick. It’s a liability and nobody wants to work with them. And lastly I think many police officers forget about respect. When I stop someone or have an interaction with someone I have to earn their respect. It’s a two way street. I treat you with respect to earn it and I expect you to reciprocate. It’s about building trust with the community and constituents you work for. I always explain what I am doing with people. Don’t leave them in fear. If I stop you I explain why. If you are in custody explain what will happen. Don’t leave people in fear because they then act irrational. (Unless they are high out of their mind then all bets are off!) I am Federal now so I am not out on a beat but the same principles apply.
I think this is one of the most underrated responses on this thread. The solution is two pronged. We need to prosecute bad cops by getting body cams on all officers and making it harder for other police to protect them. AND we need to address how overworked and strained they are with mandatory counseling and time off. I can't imagine dealing with the worst people in your community most of the day every single day. Interacting with people who are mostly angry, terrified, or drugged out. As a stripper I interacted with men all day, but not average men, the worst men. Desperate men, gross men, grabby chauvinist men, men who had to pay just to get someone to talk to them. It makes a lot of girls in the industry gay. I can see how being a cop would have a similar effect.
I would say I’ve gotten a hell of a lot of leeway because of my skin color but I’m still uncomfortable as hell when I have interacted with them or in the rare occasions that I’ve had to call them. They only need the smallest excuse to flip the tables and arrest you, search you etc if they decide they want to fuck up your life. I try to avoid them like the fucking plague. When I went to ireland they were friendly as hell and would chat with you. In the states they stand stiff and scan the area for a reason to fuck someone up. I have met a few friendly ones, but that was few and far between.
I’m a little late to the game, but after reading the top voted response I wanted to give the OP an alternative view. I’m a white, middle aged male, who has lived in several areas all in rural or semi-rural US. I have a bit of a heavy foot, and I get pulled over every couple years. Always treated with respect, and I always treat with respect back, if for no other reason than I’m smart enough to know not to give them a reason to make my life difficult. The only “profiling” I’ve experienced has been when leaving a place with lots of teenagers around, like a high school basketball game. You can tell the cop thinks he caught a teenager until you roll down the window. I say all this not to say cops are great or anything. I say all this so you have a frame of reference for my next comments. … I’ve had the opportunity to hang out with cops from time to time. Except for 1 family member, it was always a friend of a friend at some social gathering and it was always one at a time. In total, I’d say I’ve had bullshit-around-the-BBQ conversations with 6 or 7 cops. Every single one of them were lazy, entitled, arrogant assholes who felt their badge made them better than you. None had any college education and all but one came from the military. They reveled in guns and violence, a couple bragging openly of the fun they had killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan. The “best” (i.e least dangerous) one was one that said they just park their car on the side of the highway and sleep because just the sight of a cop car will keep speeders down. I see news reports about good cops interacting in their neighborhoods and stuff, but for my personal white male non-felon experience, I have yet to meet a cop that I didn’t think had serious sociopathic tendencies.
It’s worse in small communities because police are often the only source newspapers or tv stations can get that meet standards for verification, and if the cops get pissed about coverage they stop communicating. A lot of times you see those PR events because the news outlet is trying to maintain a working relationship with an organization that throws fits when they don’t like coverage. So they’ll throw them a bone and run the story about the cop pulling over someone to buy them new tires, despite how traumatizing that false stop actually is, and hope that when their cops shoot someone the PR will actually talk to them. Of course you only ever get their narrative, which is often used to cause further harm if they think a victim is also a criminal. But you can’t call them liars until you have the proof, which they control. Every police department, no matter how small the agency is, has someone dedicated to dealing media coverage. Then you have the unions on top of that.
For all the shit cops do that goes viral theres plenty of horrific stuff I'll read once and never see again. If that's the stuff they get caught doing imagine what they get away with. People who try to become cops to do better get stopped from becoming cops, people who score too high on IQ tests get stopped from becoming cops. They know what they are and don't want anything to stop them. Edit: takes about 2 seconds to Google this shit and find the news articles
>theres plenty of horrific stuff I'll read once and never see again Some departments don't need to report basically anything, especially when they kill or hospitalize people, discharge weapons, etc. All of our statistics are lacking because we have so many different police systems with so many different rules... and imagining what the ones who don't have reporting rules do knowing that is chilling.
It reminds me of what judges would use against citizens. I forget the exact number but they called it a rule of three or five. The idea was that for every time you got caught you had gotten away with it at least three or five times, again whatever the number was. So they would treat you "accordingly". Same logic should be applied to them whether it be theft, abuse of power, etc.
"people who score too high on IQ tests get stopped from becoming cops." So true. Back when I joined the Air Force and was talking with the career counselors I told them I wanted to do Law Enforcement, their reply was "you'll never get that, your ASVAB scores are way too high" . Ended up as Electronic Switching System Technician working on the SACDIN Communications System and other systems that processed Intel from the U2.
Yep, when I was a child my father took the test to become a cop. He scored too high and was rejected. I'm very happy he never joined that gang.
Honestly, worse in my opinion. Because the obvious huge problems are very much there... Racial profiling, framing, excessive force, all that stuff. But then there's a lot of other stuff that isn't so dramatic or as bad so you won't see it as much but it's still bad. American cops pull a lot of "gotcha!" crap whether it's stuff that should probably be considered entrapment or just a matter of focusing on traffic stops to catch people in spots they know will be easy tickets rather than focusing on actual safety issues. They'll lie to you like crazy to make you think you're screwed and going to be better off confessing, whether you're actually guilty or not. They use interrogation techniques that they know lead to false confessions. Prosecution in the US is terrible as well, they're all about high conviction rates and chasing a conviction rather than chasing the truth. You'll often see people defend that because lawyers will try to get guilty defendants off, but the defendant generally isn't a lawyer who's capable of defending themselves. A lawyer owes them representation to the best of their ability, but the state should be seeking the truth rather than pushing for a conviction to the best of the prosecutor's ability.
I first wrote this a few months ago in response to some dickhead, but I've been kinda spreading it around since. Apologies for the confrontational tone. Like I said, it's original recipient was some dickhead. Here is an incomplete list of evidence-based studies about alternatives to our current policing methods. * Lead remediation. [Lead and Crime: A Review of the Evidence and the Path Forward ](https://www.manhattan-institute.org/verbruggen-lead-and-crime-review-evidence) * Access to mental health care. [How better access to mental health care can reduce crime](https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/how-better-access-mental-health-care-can-reduce-crime) * Drug decriminalization and addiction services. [It’s Time for the U.S. to Decriminalize Drug Use and Possession](https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/documents/Drug_Policy_Alliance_Time_to_Decriminalize_Report_July_2017.pdf) * Sex work decriminalization. [Is Sex Work Decriminalization The Answer? What The Research Tells Us](https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/aclu_sex_work_decrim_research_brief_new.pdf) * Increased funding to social programs. [Crime Prevention through Social Development: An Overview with Sources](https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/103113NCJRS.pdf) * A focus on Rehabilitative Justice rather than Punitive. [Rehabilitative Justice: What the US can learn from the Norwegian Model](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ee2f78f834c6612de4e6260/t/5fd30dbc8df3fe463c7b99ba/1607667132730/Rehabilitative+Justice_+What+the+US+Can+Learn+from+the+Norwegian+Model.pdf) * Prison reentry programs. [A better path forward for criminal justice: Prisoner reentry](https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-better-path-forward-for-criminal-justice-prisoner-reentry/) * Prison education programs. [Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR200/RR266/RAND_RR266.pdf) * Housing assistance. [Housing First Reduces Re-offending among Formerly Homeless Adults with Mental Disorders: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0072946&type=printable) * Community based crime reduction projects. [Evaluation of the Innovations in Community-Based Crime Reduction (CBCR) Program: Executive Summary and Final Report](https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/254623.pdf) * Access to general healthcare. [Neighborhood crime and access to health-enabling resources in Chicago](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5840856/pdf/main.pdf) * Universal basic income [The Impact of an Experimental Guaranteed Income on Crime and Violence](https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~dcalnits/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Calnitsky-Gonalons-Pons-SP-manuscript-2020.pdf) * [And here's a general list of what policing tactics do or don't work.](https://cebcp.org/evidence-based-policing/what-works-in-policing/research-evidence-review/) Here's a different list, one of facts about current American policing. * In 2021, over 1,000 people were fatally shot by police. This is an increase from 2020, whose number was also above 1,000. ([Number of people shot to death by the police in the United States from 2017 to 2022, by race](https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/)) This does not include other forms of killing, such as George Floyd, who was strangled to death by Officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck for over 9 minutes. * America ranks number 3 for police funding, spending over 400,000,000,000. This is 2% of GDP. It is the most by volume that any country spends on its police, and by percentage, only second to Russia and Costa Rica, the latter of which does not have a standing military. ([Which Country Spends the Most on Police?](https://www.workandmoney.com/s/police-spending-by-country-984701cbc1c340e9)) * America has the highest number of people incarcerated by volume at 2,068,800^1. It also has the highest per-capita rate at 629 per 100,000. In second place is Rwanda at 580, whose numbers are inflated by the genocide of 1994. Turkmenistan is third at 576, and has notably been rated as a 7 (Not free), the worst possible score, by the Freedom of the World survey. ([Incarceration rates by country 2022](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country)) * The annual cost of mass incarceration in the United States (including costs of things like lawyers and bail) is 182,000,000,000 dollars. ([Mass Incarceration Costs $182 Billion Every Year, Without Adding Much to Public Safety](https://eji.org/news/mass-incarceration-costs-182-billion-annually/)) Much of this goes to Private prisons, which have been shown to falsely advertise their cost reduction abilities, and whose financial incentives include increased prison population and high recidivism. ([Impacts of Private Prison Contracting on Inmate Time Served and Recidivism](https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=137098066007090115076116004109017089032018023086008028101070094065073083098024102121048045116005042126027028096120122074001122049004063019046064085005119070122065064070058046008103064118005089071096020111001117006081097002067087010115027002068110115087&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE)) * The Southern institution of Slave Patrols had a large influence on the development of policing in America and modern police culture. ([How You Start is How You Finish? The Slave Patrol and Jim Crow Origins of Policing](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/how-you-start-is-how-you-finish/)) ^1. ^It's ^important ^to ^note ^that ^China's ^data ^is ^incomplete. ^If ^people ^being ^detained ^before ^trial ^and ^Uyghurs ^being ^kept ^in ^concentration ^camps ^in ^Xinjiang ^were ^counted, ^it ^would ^likely ^be ^in ^the ^3 ^or ^4 ^millions. Something that comes up a lot when radical new ideas such as defunding the police are mentioned is that we don't know if such things will work. This obviously implies that we should just keep doing what we're currently doing. But we know that what we're currently doing doesn't work. Our economic incentives have caused global warming and prevented it from being meaningfully addressed. Our political incentives have created a fossilized class of ancient, out of touch lifers who refuse to change and refuse to die. And our legal incentives have created a state where we have more police spending and more people jailed than anywhere else in the world. In conclusion, here's a meme. https://64.media.tumblr.com/9805a3c85d4210af684dccdc0e7f7341/17da57c42e8f8509-d5/s1280x1920/33f528d037f7968d9687f6db6df97da76f461cfd.jpg Oh, also, the SCOTUS has repeatedly upheld the idea that the police are not actually obliged to protect or serve. https://prospect.org/justice/police-have-no-duty-to-protect-the-public/
The problem with police in the US has nothing to do with good cops vs bad cops. It has everything to do with the attitude and types of people who gravitate towards being a cop in the US. Think hyper-aggressive, machismo, toxic, "I don't want to think or use my words and feelings" types. The cops in the US are militarized. In fact, promotion is often limited by whether or not you have military experience. Having a mindset of always being on a battlefield tends to make them overreactive and to treat everything and everyone as a threat. Except they do not have "rules of engagement" or the training that the military does. So even something simple like a stop for speeding has them "at the ready" and in hyper "control" mode - because of the extremely rare chance someone tries something stupid.
As to the original question. I will answer with a few questions. Can you imagine what cops were like before cell phone cameras,street cameras? Can you even start to imagine what thousands upon thousands of cops got away with? Their body cameras that mysteriously shutoff from time to time? The dash cameras? What they still get away with? The wild,Wild West when I grew up. They did what they wanted,banded together,and got away with everything. Sadistic. I’m not saying their job is easy. Far from it. But they are so far from being innocent. Real eye opener. Go to a party where there’s tons of cops. Talk about dregs of society. Bunch of hypocrites.
I'm gonna say yes. White female. Yes. They're usually douche canoes that have been given too much power and think they're above everything. Everything.
It's that one bad apple spoils the bunch. If there is one cop who is a criminal, and no cops arrest him, that means every cop in that department is a criminal. It doesn't matter what else they do. They are criminals.
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Agreed. Even if it’s just “a few bad apples,” that’s unacceptable when these bad apples have a license to kill. Imagine if we put up with that in other life-and-death professions. “Yeah, the surgeons here are pretty good, but there’s a few racists ones that kill most of their black patients. Just gotta roll the dice and hope you get a good one.” “This parachute manufacturer is great save for a few bad chutes they put out in every batch. We only have 3 deaths per 100 jumps. Pretty good ratio!”
Depends a lot on who you are and where you live. America is huge.
Whenever I travel to the US I am always more afraid of being stopped by a cop than anything else
For the most part, yes.
Yes
Yes. Likely even worse. Think about the time before cellphones and social media. They literally did and still do get away with murder. They’re supported by the government & other members of law enforcement and are damn near untouchable
They're *way* worse. You are no doubt aware of the countless abuses that are discovered (and there are many more that don't get widely publicized -- for instance, look up Darren Rainey, a mentally ill prisoner who was locked in the shower and scalded to death by prison guards...they literally boiled him alive). But the media never questions that, despite these abuses, the police are nevertheless effective at protecting against crime. In reality, US police are *hilariously* ineffective. For evidence of this, look up Case Clearance statistics in the US. Case Clearance is basically when the police solve a crime that has been reported to them -- it can involve arresting the person responsible, but there are other ways it can happen as well (for instance, if the perpetrator is known but dies before they can arrest them). And the case clearance rate is the percentage of reported crimes the police solve. The only crimes for which the police have a clearance rate of over 50% are murder (61% clearance rate in 2017, which was a good year) and aggravated assault (53% clearance rate). Which means in 39% of murders and 47% of assaults, the police don't accomplish anything. For other crimes, the clearance rates are truly pathetic -- 34% clearance rate for rape, 29% clearance rate for robbery, and only 13% for motor vehicle theft. These are averages across the US -- some jurisdictions are better, and some are *much* worse. But regardless, this shows something the media rarely asks: the police don't actually do much good in society. Like, they are incredibly ineffective at their jobs. It would be one thing if the cops sometimes broke the rules but nevertheless got results. But in reality, the cops kill lots of innocent people, trample over peoples' civil rights, oppress people...and that's it. The police are corrupt and abusive *and* incompetent/ineffective. And this is entirely absent from media portrayals. The news doesn't review all the crimes that the police fail to solve. And cop shows pretty much *never* show the police failing to solve a crime (and when they do, it's a notable exception to the norm). If 40% of murder investigation cop show episodes ended with the police saying "whelp, I got nothing", it would seem like the police are kind of irrelevant in terms of stopping murders...and that would actually be accurate. The reason the crime rate is so low isn't because police and keeping it low -- it's because most people don't want to hurt each other and will voluntarily live in peace. And armed guys constantly hassling people makes society *less* peaceful, not moreso. We live in peace *despite* cops, not *because* of them.
Also note that crime rates tend to be much worse in areas with worse police brutality. People will claim this is because the cops are reacting to the stress of policing in a high crime area, but what if it's the other way around? What if it's that brutal policing is especially ineffective and leads to higher crime rates?
>But the media never questions that, despite these abuses, the police are nevertheless effective at protecting against crime. Finally, a real answer to OP's question. The media generally cuts police an *enormous* amount of slack on this issue.
> The media generally cuts police an enormous amount of slack on this issue. We should also look beyond just news media. The news media is giving tons of slack to cops and mostly just repeats what they say with zero fact checking. However most media about cops is not the news but rather things like CSI and Law & Order that are nothing but pure copaganda.
> In reality, US police are hilariously ineffective. Not surprising given the fact that the requirement to become a police is so low in so many states. Basically, for many places, you need to graduate high school. That's it. The bar is so low, it's horrifying.
Some places it's a GED.
The media reports actual stories. They are just nipping at the bud because there are more out there. Some go in with good intentions. They either join in, turn a blind eye, or get out of the profession.
>They either join in, turn a blind eye, or get out of the profession. My brother tried to be a jail guard, which in our county is a prerequisite to joining the sheriff's department. His first day he's told to immediately hit inmates who step off of the line while walking them. Not warn them verbally or even wave the baton threateningly, just go straight to violence on the first infraction to "establish authority and discipline". He was also given a baton and given permission to use it but was given essentially zero guidelines on when it was appropriate to use one. He basically had carte blanche to break that thing out whenever he wanted. He was out within two weeks. He wasn't comfortable with their "violence by default" policy. It's not like our country is really violent, it has a fairly low crime rate. It's just the attitude all law enforcement has in this country, that we're under some kind of military occupation or something.
Historically, the cops that go in with the best of intentions and refuse to join in on the toxic criminal culture within PDs, get harassed/threatened/hazed until they’re forced out of the department. There was a story that broke out about a LA sheriffs deputy who reported the existence of law enforcement gangs and how they tried to recruit him in and he refused and tried to be a whistle blower. He also tried blowing the whistle on a gang assault by those very deputies that were part of the police gang called “jump out boys” and when he did, his call was basically intercepted by another dirty cop and nothing came out of that. He was harassed and had death threats. He was also a marine veteran and that’s how much this country “loves” our veterans
Nipping in the bud means to stop something before it gets bigger. Chomping at the bit means being excited or eager to do something.
Cops aren't there to protect you, only to enforce the law. They are not legally obligated to act to help civilians and are allowed in most states to lie to people to get "confessions." They're also shielded heavily from personal accountability, even in cases of clear fault. There are some good cops but the system makes them practically invulnerable. It's only natural that it both corrupts and draws in the corrupted.
They are worse
Yes they are. I'm a white male, and I've had plenty of really crappy interactions with cops that have absolutely no business being cops.
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