I'm an American who's only had good experiences with US police.

I'm not gonna spill all my interactions with the police on the internet, of course, but I've been to college parties where the cops just told us to shut up. I've been speeding once or twice and had the officers bump the ticket down or give me a warning.

Perhaps we have good cops over here in Washington?

I'm an American who's had very mixed experiences with the police.

I've had police give me arbitrary orders. I've had police in a state of ever-escalating anger while I'm being completely cooperative and saying not much more than "Yes sir, no sir!" I've had police rant and rave at me outside my car window. I've had police bury incidents of threats and physical intimidation against me as a favor to their friends. I've had police tell me bald-faced lies about the District Attorney's office that the District Attorney told me were complete fabrications.

I've also had very good interactions with the police.

I'm an Ivy League graduate and have often been a highly paid professional -- which was my status for most of the above interactions with the police. I have no police record of any kind. I am rather small in stature and have a meek personal demeanor and a clean cut appearance. I am, however, not "white." My interactions with the police have been astonishingly varied.

Being a teenager is a similar offense. In my teen days we drew the attention of 8 police officers (who circled the building) by sitting nearby a police officers wife who apparently didn't like our language. Mostly just frisked for drugs and whatnot; it became a running joke.

It depends alot on you. People that assert their rights, particularly their right to remain silent, often find themselves confronted with a power-tripping neanderthal armed with a loaded weapon and arrest powers. If you simply cooperate with them - answer questions etc. - you will likely have more pleasant interactions with them, however you dramatically increase your chances of having legal issues because of whatever you say or do not say to them.

This video [1], of course, should always be mentioned when discussing police interaction. In short, don't ever talk to the police. US Police are trained to make exercising the myriad rights we have both uncomfortable and counterintuitive. But you have to remember that by the time you are in front of a police officer, it's too late to talk your way out of whatever situation you are in. You can only make it worse by talking to them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

> Perhaps we have good cops over here in Washington?

My first year in college (in WA), campus police (actual po-lice with a campus jurisdiction) conducted a coordinated raid on pot dealers in the dorms which they treated like a raid on a meth lab : guns drawn, doors kicked in, loud noises, innocent bystanders thrown to the ground, etc.

Obviously, this isn't analogous to a party - and cops do in fact have a SOP they follow when it comes to drug raids - but I still feel like it was handled in an unnecessarily heavy handed and tone-deaf way that's somewhat symptomatic of a larger problem.

Heh I was just about to say that we shouldn't conflate one experience to "all cops in the US", but then realized all of my experiences have also been in Washington, so maybe we just have kinder police.

Because Police are trained state-by-state, county-by-county... and even city-by-city. Some cops are awful, other cops are fine.

That is crazy to me. I'm an American and in the probably twenty or so times I've interacted with police at various times in my thirty plus years, I've never once had a gun drawn on me nor had the threat or implied threat of having a gun drawn on me. I can't think of a single person I know well who's ever had a cop pull a gun on them either.

Are you white? There's your answer. Not even joking.

If the police barge in guns drawn does that mean they peek in the window first before they go in to check what the people look like?

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Every single time this topic comes up here there are always one off incidents of how violent the police are, or are not. These one off's really aren't useful either way.

Also another reason why police arrive here with guns drawn when they've been called to some kind of incident/argument/disturbance is there is a much higher chance that someone here has a gun and could do them harm. I'm not sure why everyone glosses over that fact when the USA has 300 million guns vs. some place like London.

>there is a much higher chance that someone here has a gun

valid point.

You don't have to look into a window to know whether you are in a black or white neighborhood.

I'm an American who had my windows smashed in by police supervisors because I asked them to identify themselves. In Winnipeg.

Don't think we're too far off from our friends down south.

I could imagine the SQ doing that.