In Germany, police is generally perceived as trustworthy, your "friend and helper" as the slogan goes.
I was surprised by the antagonism and belligerence in the US.
A few observations:
* guns certainly play a big role, and the risk of escalation.
* I wonder whether silly laws also play a role. For example: a 20 year old drinking alcohol, having a cold beer while watching a sunset on the beach, prostitution are all illegal if I'm not mistaken (or smoking a joint, depending on the state). So, in the US, the police might often be the killjoy. In Germany, those things are either officially legal, or in a gray area that the police ignores. So when the police comes on the scene, it's generally an actual crime or problem, and everyone is eager to help and cooperate and fix whatever real problem there is. In short, police have a relatively positive image.
* My experience with the police in the US was much worse when I was on a bike than when I was in a nice BMW. The issues of power differential, authority, lawyers, confrontation seem to loom much larger in the US than I've perceived them in Germany.
* With all these factors, employment with the police might seem a less attractive choice of work in the US than in northern Europe, so people with few other choices (or a penchant for exercising authority) might end up there more frequently than in other countries. This, in turn, could result in a downward cycle and a "besieged" mentality.
At any rate, I'd much rather interact with police in Europe or Asia than the US.
Police in many municipalities are not fully funded via taxes. Instead their revenues are maintained via tickets, fines, and property seizures. There are recent cases that have gone to the supreme court related to some of these issues: https://newrepublic.com/article/148013/will-supreme-court-re..., I don't believe this case has been heard yet.
The point is, the police in the US have an economic necessity to pay their own salaries by fighting "crime". This incentivizes them in seizing property, prior to any conviction in court. Often the property is seized from people without the means to fight to get it back, and/or it's not worth the fight. This tactic of ticketing, fining and seizing property to pay for the police force, IMO, is the root cause of the issues between minorities and low income people and the police. In effect, the police need crime and will find crime, because they need to in order to earn their salaries.
How can this be anything but a case of extreme moral hazard? They sound indistinguishable from the mob.
There is a common perception in America that criminals are morally bad people who must be punished, instead of a perception that they're desperate or broken people who need assistance or reform of behavior. There is a private prison sector that is literally allowed to use prisoners for manual slave labor. We have one of the largest prison populations in the world even when adjusted for our large population.
There are a ton of factors that play into why there is a mistrust of the police (on both side of the political spectrum) but there is also a common air of ambivalence about how we treat people once they're marked criminals. You see it every time a large media stir comes up because of a high profile police shooting. "Well, he was no angel. That thug had a criminal record, so the cop probably..." as if it's impossible that the victim could have been a criminal AND the cop used unneeded lethal force.
Your point is a little blunt and lacks nuance, but it's sentiment seems in line with what many prison reform advocates perceive as being the prevailing culture in the US towards criminals and prisoners.
In Australia the police always niceley greeted you and generally polite, in US, it’s the other way, I’ve rarely met a polite one, most are brash and treat you like a criminal from the get go.
The US police system for some reason I don’t understand doesn’t embrace politeness as a value (may be it makes the police look weak?) I don’t know.
But yeah, you want to stay away from the US cops if you can.
Goes to show how important public policy is.
Somehow, perhaps with the best of intentions, you've ended up with a system perfectly designed for abuse and corruption.
Having read that it even puts some of the more extreme GDPR assumptions and discussions into a somewhat different light.
Is either party ever likely to have chance to fix it, and maybe distance police from proceeds of fines etc?
- The law/lawmakers and the public have differing views on what should be illegal
- The police are incentivized to find crimes, and the public is aware of this
That's another thing. In Australia the police are state-based organisations. Which makes sense because criminal law is also a state responsibility (i.e. not federal). The idea of police reporting to the local municipal council is really weird.
Minorities are also treated with extra scrutiny almost everywhere.
Policing also varies greatly from locality to locality.
I’ve know probably five police officers and all are great people and join the police to help, but I hate to say it many of them have anger or control issues.
Personally I had an issue where I needed an ambulance to my house and trip to the ER. The police showed up along with the ambulance and an officer was in my house and looking around the house with a snooping eye. Even when there to help they are looking for signs of a crime.
My children see the police as strongly positive figures.
When I bike and do do some slightly illegal stuff (not crossing on a red light, rather avoiding some cars by slowly biking on a desert pavement) they would usually either stare to make their point (and I hop back on the road) or just ignore it. This is some kind of an unspoken agreement which has its limits.
I had a case where they stopped me because they saw that I drove through a red light after waiting on the green one. What happened is that there was an old man slowly crossing on his red light (a desert small city on a Sunday afternoon, there was just us), I patiently waited and did not realize that the light changed right when I drove off (onto a roundabout, still deserted). They jokingly congratulated me for not driving over the pedestrian but would have gone full throttle should that have been a true danger and deliberate rules breaking (or a dangerous error).
I just wish Berlin police would focus more on vandalism and awful parking in the city.
US police is conditioned to react like unprofessional cowards and shoot first, ask questions later, even if the suspect is a kid playing in a playground, an old woman holding a knife 30 feet away, or an unarmed homeless person (I'm not making these cases up either).
He had autism and had run away from his family. He was sleeping under someone’s balcony, police came to remove him, ended up killing him.
This was in Hollywood. Los Angeles, off Sunset Blvd.
Edit: I believe this [0] is the case. Looks like those officers sued for being put on desk duty afterward and initially were rewarded $4M. That’s after the police settled with the mother of the man killed for less than $1M.
0 - http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-verdict-lapd-ove...
A caretaker, and the escaped autistic man he was trying to bring back with him to their facility, was confronted by a police officer. The caretaker, immediately realizing the danger of interacting with an American police officer, lays on the ground, puts his hands in the air, and then repeatedly states the man infront of him was 'autistic' and 'holding a toy train'.
While the caretaker was lying on the ground, on his back, with his hands in the air, the cop fires 3 rounds at the pair, striking the caretaker in the leg.
The caretaker, understandably confused and upset, asks "why did you shoot me?". The officer's response, "I don't know."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwHJL5X97Do
Or, refer the case where a Dallas Police woman broke into somebody else's apartment, and then proceeded to execute the man she encountered inside
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/us/botham-jean-dallas-sho...
Or refer to Daniel Shaver being executed at point blank range while crying on his hands and knees to "please not shoot".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/0...
In all of these cases, the person shot was completely and obviously innocent of any sort of crime. The standard penalty for this type of officer behavior is: paid vacation, perhaps firing the officer if the murder is especially egregious.
So not only are (at least some) US police officers insufficiently trained to de-escalate potentially dangerous situations, they are actively punished when they do de-escalate. They are expected to shoot people.
Equally bizarre is that law enforcement experts warn people not to talk to the police without a lawyer. Not even as a witness or to help them. The American attitude towards police and police work is utterly alien to me.
Citation needed. I can't think of any peaceful fix that would get a reprimand unless other stuff fucked up badly behind the scenes.
While cops can kill citizens with relative impunity (especially black ones).
As a counterexample, Eric Torrell was recently shot to death by Swedish police [0] (link is Swedish). He was 20 years old with Downs syndrome and carrying a toy gun.
It was an extremely troublesome case even here in Norway. It rocked the very principals that our societies are based on. So yes, it can happen (it has happened once) but it's not institutionalised.
I suspect this case will also be used in training in the future as an example of what not to do.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
Statistics of police shootings.
>follow a similar policy as American police if their own safety is at risk
Doesn't take guns or actual risk. US cops thing their safety is "at risk" from a middle aged middle class black man sitting in a car with his kids beside them. Or an unarmed homeless person getting too rowdy.
Do you have any stats specifically on cases like this where the person killed was neither armed nor dangerous? Interested but haven't been able to find any.
The united states doesn't track the number of times police shoot a gun, only the number of times police murder somebody. That number is over 1,000 people per year.[0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country
The LAPD put over 100 rounds in one incident into two innocent women's truck when they were out delivering newspapers. The truck looked nothing like the suspect's vehicle. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/no-charges-8-lapd-s...
> When one of the women threw a newspaper onto the pavement in the early-morning hours, an officer believing the sound was a gunshot opened fire. Officers unable to see clearly into the truck sprayed it with 103 rounds, and hit seven nearby homes and nine other vehicles with gunshots and shotgun pellets.
That's more rounds than Germany uses in most years for its entire 80M population, and more than the UK discharged in what looks like the last decade or so. In one shooting, in one city, against people who'd done nothing wrong.
30 guns fired / 10.10^6 people vs 1 000 police murders / 325.10^6 people.
3.10^-6 guns fired per capita vs 3.10^-6 murders per capita.
Couldn't find the Swedish police murders stats. I'd estimate on their police murders per capita to be 2 or 3 orders of magnitude less than the USA.
[0]http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago...
I can't remember the report anymore, but I remember this one incident where parents called the police for help to deal with their mentally unstable son, around 18 years, having a rage fit.
The responding officers managed to cuff the kid and get him to the ground, when one of the police officers just went "I've had enough of this", pulled his gun out, and shoot the cuffed kid on the ground in the back, literally executing the kid while his parents were standing like 5 feet away from it.
The kid ended up dying, can't remember if the officer got any real punishment, but I'm pretty sure his parents will never ever call the police for "help".
2) Think that doesn't happen in the EU ? Think again:
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/05/18/562151/Belgian-pol...
Please note that "police chase" here means that they ordered the van to stop and it calmly kept driving, less than 40km/h on an empty road. No police officer was in danger at any point, nor was anyone else.
So they shot "for the tires" (that wasn't their initial story, but oh well) ... through the backdoor ... and right through a 3 year old Kurdish girl. That girl is now dead.
Then they captured them and refused to bring these people to the hospital. Whether there was anything that could be done for the girl at this point is an open question, but the police did not make such a determination. They just refused medical care, pretending it was an escape attempt.
So just stop it. Police "gung-ho" attitudes are not a US problem. The whole appeal of working for the police obviously includes the power you get over others. Another attraction is the many movies about the police. And there's very few "let's get the legal details right" movies about police, isn't there ? This attracts exactly the sort of people that do shoot to kill in situations that absolutely don't justify it.
And it's not limited to the US.
What IS different however, is that the odds of anyone actually successfully mounting a legal challenge to such an officer afterwards are WAY higher in the US. There's more procedures, less immunity, and generally the system is much more aware of the fact that it makes mistakes in the US.
Does that make it better ? Don't know. At that point the damage is done, of course. Still, it's better than nothing I guess.
What an odd way to put it, you make it sound like "It's all a thing of the past", after you went through so much effort to explain how nothing was supposedly wrong in the first place.
I really don't get why some US Americans insist on this "not being a problem at all", even when literally all metrics point to exactly that: It being a rather big problem.
I mean, don't you even realize how macabre it is to point out "They have more chance of mounting a legal challenge in the US!"? Granted: If they have the money to hire a good lawyer and their case gets them anything.
But having the chance to get some money is rarely a good replacement for losing a family member in often completely preventable incidents.
Compared to absolutely nothing at all in the EU ? That's what I'm pointing out. It's not a good solution, imho, but it's better than anything the EU countries provide for sure.
It means police at least have to be aware that if they use these tactics against the wrong person, they could get seriously convicted for that. In the EU, what is there for them to fear ? I mean if it ends up on national TV then they have a problem. Otherwise ...
They are not a US-only occurrence. But they very much are a US problem (and a relative rarity elsewhere).
>And it's not limited to the US.
No, like incarceration is not limited to the US. But the US has 25% of the world's prison population for just 4% of its total population.
Something occurring elsewhere doesn't mean anything. Most things will happen elsewhere too, even mass shootings.
But some places are the undisputed capitals of those things, by a far margin, and instead of putting one's head in the sand, people should acknowledge the problem.
>What IS different however, is that the odds of anyone actually successfully mounting a legal challenge to such an officer afterwards are WAY higher in the US.
LOL.
That is a truly extraordinary claim. The idea that "law enforcement gets away with everything" is a true meme (not the funny, internet kind), the default expectation in the US among its inhabitants, a stereotype that foreigners have of us, and unfortunately our reality. This is a fact that law enforcement officials both recognize and abuse. I want to say that the template of "cop does [horrible thing] while 3 independent sources record it, and [is given paid vacation/was relocated/had his case dismissed by the DA]" is so pervasive that you might be able to get a matching news story like that every week here. And god help anyone who did not have a recording of their encounter.
Really ? And not in the EU ? Because there recently was a reality series about the Dutch police on TV. Which included one particularly bad scene in Rotterdam. It looked like some obviously North Africans saw the police and turned around (but was it actually that they saw the police ? And was it really that they were criminals because ... read on). The police pursued them, tackled them and, frankly, violently forced them to confess to possession of stolen goods. They had zero proof, or even justification beyond that some goods were stolen (in a neighbourhood of tens of thousands of people).
Are you going to claim that wasn't just outright racism ? And whilst on some level I might agree with the assessment that odds were perhaps good those youth did steal (in general I mean, they're not known for respect of property law is what I mean. Nothing whatsoever against those individuals), but I find the odds of them having stolen specific the goods the police accused them off ... generously (for the police) ASSUMING these kids were indeed thieves, it seems to me that those odds could not possibly have been more than 5%. Not that the police clarify what specific goods they were looking for/accusing them of, nor where they were stolen from, and they were asking people they had just tackled and left tied up on the pavement for several minutes and beat several times. Hell, I doubt the police even knew for sure something had been stolen in the first place (because reporting stolen goods in the center of Rotterdam ... why would you bother ?)
Next time you hear about youth riots in Western European cities you might want to remember that this sort of thing is what the police constantly subjects these kids to.
This was put, with their full permission, on TV, as an example of what they do, intermingled with a sort of recruiting effort. And I'm just sitting there ... FUCK YOU RACIST ASSHOLES. But seriously, this behavior is what they're proud off, or at least what they want to show off.
And let's not kid ourselves here: police in Rotterdam are better behaved than, for example, police in Paris suburbs, if even 5% of the stories are true. So it gets worse, much worse than this in the EU.
While that story is a tragedy, the US police kills about 1200 persons/year - or about 40 adjusting for the size of the population of Belgium. A single case doesn't not make the attitudes equivalent.
Plus it'll be fun. They may even let you fire a few of the weapons.
Thinking about what that means for their attitude in the street ... not so much fun.
Why ? Because the agents think they're cool.
Ok, apparently MRAPs are armored vehicles. Yes they do have armored vehicles. That specific one ? Probably not, but the same general idea ? Yes. They often use them for riots and protests and such.
There was something on the news about buying new ones that are more bomb resistant.
It's not right to characterize all US officers as horrible people but there's definitely something wrong here that seems to be distinctly American.
For a guy pulling the handwaving argument you don't seem to try too hard.
Or that, "someone who has multiple police in his family" could be biased.
Given that police in the US are more likely to encounter dangerous situations than other developed countries [0], it seems plausible that officers in the US enter interactions with a higher level of fear are more likely to do something stupid as a result. Apparently whatever screening and training they get isn't enough because these are the people who are supposed to be able to handle these exact situations.
[0] https://www.vox.com/cards/police-brutality-shootings-us/us-p...
A good friend was an LAPD beat cop, then detective for 30 years.
Every single day he was on duty he took out his loaded firearm, pointed it directly in someones face and had his finger on the trigger, for fear they might pull a gun or do something else to harm him. Police friends of his were shot and killed.
He shot and killed two people on duty, and discharged his firearm many, many times.
He absolutely said "It's a war out there, and we want to come home alive"
I understand (although do not have evidence to hand) a number of LAPD beat cops manage to go quite a long time between instances of having to draw a firearm and point it at someone's face. If this officer was doing it every day, was he simply the world's unluckiest police officer, or was he the kind of police officer who makes situations more violent rather than less? I understand that typical US police training (if there is such a think in a nation with such a large range of police forces) does contain rather less "how to make situations less violent" training than their counterparts in other countries.
You're absolutely going to need a citation for that. I don't believe US cops have to even report instances of upholstering their sidearm - It's such a common occurrence. Discharging a firearm is a different story.
Of course, my friend was a cop in the late 70s, 80s and 90s, and did all kinds of things that would land him in very deep water today. i.e. to disperse an angry crowd you just rack a round in a shotgun. He said it works extremely well without even firing it.
Here are a number of LEOs discussing how frequently they draw their weapon, but again nothing about actually pointing it at someone: https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=432377 Other such discussion seem to indicate similarly; that even drawing is not common.
On such forums, detectives seem to indicate that they have even less need to draw firearms.
The 2016 LAPD review use-of-force review indicates that in 2016 there were 40 officer-involved-shooting. I understand the LAPD employs on the order of 9000 to 10000 police officers, so on the order of 95% or more of those police officers didn't shoot at anyone. However, it looks like they don't record drawing a firearm or pointing firearms at people's faces.
I suspect citations for your hypothesis - that LAPD beat cops draw and point their weapons every day - will be similarly hard to come by, but if you have some, please do present them.
You're right I don't have hard citations, only first-hand evidence from someone with 30 years actually doing it.
So if you might need to defend yourself, but you want to avoid escalating the situation by aiming a gun at someone, it makes sense.
Once a gun is pointed at a person, there are no more steps of escalation, no more ways to express how much you want them to do something; the only next step is to pull the trigger. The situation has suddenly become extremely dangerous and very volatile.
Police in the US are trained heavily in de-escalation, but sometimes overwhelming show of force lets everybody go home alive (yes, the offender as well), rather than allowing a situation to escalate to a point where deadly force has to be used.
Maybe sometimes, but I suspect in the vast majority of cases, a show of force is what causes the situation to escalate to the point where deadly force has to be used.
Who are you more likely to shoot? A policeman pointing a loaded gun at you, or one with gun holstered talking calmly (but maybe firmly) to you. Pulling a gun out automatically leads to a "shoot first or risk getting shot" situation.
[0] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/05/05/police-de-escala...
Warning: Articles contain some graphic but necessary images.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Raid_on_Armando_Diaz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Aldrovandi
https://italychronicles.com/the-shocking-case-of-stefano-cuc...
...etc.
As in many other countries, the real problem is not guns (clarification: I'm against guns) but selection; someone letting his political views or the level of testosterone screw up his personal control during service should never ever be given an uniform, let alone a gun, period. And I'm 100% sure if we publicly screened every cop after service for drugs or steroids use, the scandal would explode within days. Cops are violent because corrupt powers need them as such: once they get a minor punishment or are acquitted after an unprovoked beating/killing, they can become a paramilitary force in the hands of the same politicians who helped them, both during service and after they retire. As usual, it's all about corruption.
I used to trust the police. Then I got arrested. Nothing came of it, but I was shocked at how much the police liad to me to try and catch me out and then how I spent 6 hours incarcerated for simply driving a red car.
Do not trust the police after the age of 18. They are not your friends and trusting them is extremely dangerous if they've decided you're guilty of something.
Always ask for a lawyer, never co-operate.
Too many people just consent because "They have nothing to hide/Don't want to look guilty" and many police officers take that as a challenge to actually find something, no matter how small.
Not consenting to the search puts the burden of proof on the police, they gotta have a cause/reason to search your car. Sure, they can also manufacture that, usually by calling in a K9 unit. These dogs are so well trained, they can give a signal when their handler orders it, the dogs signal is then used as a cause to search you and the car.
But that's a lot of time and effort, not every police officer wants to go through just for a little power trip.
That's why not consenting to the search is so important and can spare you a lot of trouble, there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing it.
There is also an independent "police" that will investigate cases brought against police officers that overstep their authority.
I had the cops bring in a shrink to "observe" an interview.
Right after the interview, they had that same shrink who I'd never met before commit me into a month-long involuntary psychiatric evaluation because I had followed my lawyers advice and refused to answer the questions I was asked.
This sounds like something that might happen in China or maybe Russia, but no. This all happened in Finland.
The system assumes that government officials can do no wrong, so there doesn't exist any effective way to seek legal remedy.
> In Scandinavia you'd have to be genuinely paranoid to not trust the police
In Denmark, a case[1] where police forcefully escorted photographers and journalists away that were following immigrants that were walking a highway as they entered Denmark a couple of years ago, has just been settled, and the behaviour of the police were indeed unlawful.
And it's not just a fluke. It seems to be an increasing trend, unfortunately. Not blindly trusting officials is probably pretty smart.
[1]: https://politiken.dk/kultur/medier/art6740480/Politiet-måtte...
If that's the worse one came up with, and if it was even settled in court, then it's nowhere near close to the way the US is.
At this point, this particular highway was closed off from traffic because of the immigrants and police, if I recall correctly.
In any case, I'm no expert on the matter, but the actions of the police that day were deemed unlawful by the court.
Police forces existed before the emergence of the peelian principles, and they aren't universally accepted. For example, one of the peelian principles is to refrain from the use of physical force as much as possible, and some police forces appear to flaunt physical force, for example by publishing PR blahblah about new water cannon and other military-style gear instead of downplaying such equipment.
If the culture allows that over a mere speeding fine, imagine the sanction for getting a colleague jail time.
OTOH if you play along, you get special treatment for your loved ones. And everyone is doing it...
In fact they're even official about it:
https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-cops-issuing-get-out-jail-f...
https://nypost.com/2018/01/21/police-union-slashes-number-of...
Its not just the attitudes of individual cops. Its the authoritarian disposition of legal authorities on every level, local, state and federal. The goal of the authorities in the United States is not public welfare and safety, its the imposition of order. Offensive, abusive behavior by police towards citizens is common, for which police face no sanction. Prosecutors regularly withhold evidence, suborn perjury (so much so that a term for rampant police perjury has been coined: 'testilying'), and break the law in a variety of ways, none of which is ever punished. The only people in the United States who "trust" the police (or the authorities in general) are those who are lucky enough to be blissfully ignorant (something that quickly changes once they are on the wrong end of a police interaction).
All this isn't to say there aren't "good" cops, who sincerely want to better society and help people out, but the system itself is rotten to the core.
In the UK we had "Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing" with things like "Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police" https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/nyregion/sir-robert-peels...
which seemed to work well and they were thought some of the best in the world. These days they have a lot of politically correct form filling and bureaucracy which means you don't get hassled much but they also aren't around much in terms of catching criminals.
Its tragic the loss of life in this vulgar way can be hand waved away in a civilized country. It's a double dehumanization of victims, one to allow this callous behavior by the police and the second to justify it and let it stand. Often juries release brazen case of murders and elected justice officials support the police by default so its not just the police but the entire justice system that enables this cycle of murder, terrorism and violence.
What is also unique is the support and justification for this kind of policing by many who do not experience the same behavior from the police and infact can count on them to 'protect' and defend.
This is intimately linked to privilege and racism and how the police have been used systematically to harass and terrorize minorities right from enforcing segregation, laws like jaywalking against mostly black people, suppressing the civil rights movement, the drug war, demonization of blacks by administrations like Reagan who ran systematic advertising campaigns linking black populations to crack. [1] [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/new-jim-crow-book-ban-...
- racist: for one example, black and white people smoke marijuana at the same rate but black people are far more likely to be arrested for it
- irresponsible: just recently an officer broke into the wrong apartment during a raid and killed an innocent man. Rather than apologize, her department then tried to discredit the man
- unaccountable: many officers found to have committed misconduct simply find work in nearby departments. Within the last few years a video surfaced where an officer played a twisted Simon-Says game with a potential suspect (asking him to both put his hands on his head and then crawl). The officer shot and killed the suspect, but the judge withheld that video evidence from the trial so the officer was found not guilty.
- violent: many, many, many instances where officers shoot fleeing suspects in the back, choke suspects who are not resisting, beat suspects, etc. The officer in the previous example was found to have etched "You're dead fucker" into his gun - they glorify violence and are eager for "action".
They are becoming more militarized. They are not prepared for mental health situations - in many cases it is not a good idea to call police if a loved one is threatening suicide. They shoot first and ask questions later (exacerbated by gun laws in this country, but that's a different issue.)
These things, to my knowledge, do not happen this often in other developed countries. Police in America do not have a good reputation - the phrase "All Cops Are Bastards" was coined here. I have trouble agreeing with that phrase - I do believe most officers do their work out of a sense of duty and public service - but I understand why people feel that way. Even if they started today, it will take the police in this country decades to undo the decades they've spent building up an awful image.
They're not my peers, they're a force of power and intimidation and an interaction with them feels more like a confrontation waiting to happen than anything else, even if you're not even doing anything wrong.
In some countries, the police is feared because they abuse their power, like the police in India with their colonial attitude: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Common-people-are-...
Most of the times I've interacted with cops, they were not smiling. Sometimes they were not evil, but most of the times they are asking questions to see if they can arrest you for something.
For example, one time a cop came up to me while I was taking a nap in my car. He asked me questions for 5 minutes straight to see if I could admit to any equipment failures on my car, or if I was drunk (despite not operating the vehicle).
In the US, you must exercise extreme caution around cops, at all times, period.
I think that composition of the police has changed. Before, it was mostly local boys who joined police after school. They view random strangers as mostly friendly and have a "do not bug them unless they need help" mind set. Nowadays, there are strong preferences for recruiting vets, which often means time in a combat zone area with distinctly unfriendly locals (and possibly PTSD). They see random strangers as potential threats and this can affect all interactions.
Independently, when you are pulled over, especially on a highway, it is usually a local cop who is encouraged by his town to write tickets that help local budget. They are likely completely professional and probably even friendly, but by default we are at the opposite sides in this interaction. Extra information on my side does not hurt.
No country is perfect, and I'm not Norwegian, but the number of incidents is quite low.
Scaled up, it'd be like having 1,116 officers lose their jobs due to misconduct between 2005 and 2012.
Visibility to the issue in the US was substantially different in that time period than now, but I think the population helps put an absolute number into perspective.
In Scandinavia, the state was involved in forced sterilisations. I truly doubt everyone shares your view of the trustworthiness of their cops.
The biggest difference is that the "high profile" thing happens less: cops have less guns. So people don't get shot as much, they're just harassed, beaten up and arrested for little reason. Yay Europe, I guess.
But, there's a possible other culprit too, that I never noticed before the recent divisions in the populace due to politics, and that is the politization of policing. Now, I could be conflating cause and effect here, but wouldn't it be interesting if the reason we are culturally nervous of the police is that we have been told to be that way by mainstream influences. Just a thought, and I'm happy to have it all backwards.
basically class struggle
If you then look at inequality, mental health issues, crime rates etc... which are largely a function of socioeconomics, man I wouldn't want to be a police officer in the US, either.
It's not necessarily the case that I love the police officers in my country (north-west europe), either. They lie, they don't enjoy it when you verbally challenge their power with an argument, they're fallible.
For example at one point I saw an officer harassing some homeless guy, asking for ID etc. I know they're not looking to help them get shelter, but just looking to get them out of the park because people complain. So what they do is they ask for ID, they obviously don't have one, so they put 'em in a police van, hold them at the police office overnight and then release them outside the city centre the next morning. If they do it often enough, they stay out of the nice city centre where the rich folks live. So I talked to the officer about it, but you immediately get told to stay out unless I wanted a problem: i.e. arresting for obstruction of justice, held and later released. There's very little you can do in this situation, either you shut up or you have to call work and say you've been arrested and can't come in etc. It's not the end of the world but it's an effective deterrent in many cases for having small injustices go unchecked.
Same with racial profiling, happens all the time as well. And every single time I've reported a theft, they did absolutely nothing about it. Even if I gave evidence of the crime and the person's identity etc. Lack of resources... It's understandable to some extent, but frustrating too. It almost invites you to get your own revenge if I didn't know better.
So I don't love the police, either. Police officers are not all that different from most people in their human flaws, except that they're typically relatively lowly-educated (and in the US, lowly trained), combined with far reaching powers and an institution that backs them, it can be problematic in any country.
But police violence is very rare, police drawing guns is rare, let alone shooting them. People in all countries have issues with their police (like they have issues with bad teachers, bad doctors, bad judges, bad politicians, bad hairdressers and bad chefs!), but within OECD countries it's basically only the US that has this level of (lethal) violence. Guns play a large role, as do socioeconomics. But there also has to be strong institutional oversight, it seems the police is institutionally far more inoculated from the consequences of their actions in the US than elsewhere.
Where I'm from, every damaging use of a gun by a police officer will get an automatic investigation, not internally but by an independent national research team that falls under the national prosecutor.
Plus the fact that due to the gun love culture police never know who's going to have a gun and so their behavior goes from helping people to protecting themselves.
It's a pernicious attitude that has sad to say destroyed the good will that people should have for their police.
like i feel totally safe around the cops, but at the same time i realize the "am i being detained" attitute would put me on a fasttrack to the realm of phony assault charges, no matter which country.
Interactions with police in the US depend on a lot of different things. Police officers are individuals, and the majority of my contacts with the majority of them have been satisfactory and what one would expect. The United States is a far larger than Scandinavia in every way and has more cultural variation, even within single ethnic groups. Police in New Mexico are fairly different to Chicago, or Texas. For that matter you’d probably very meet different officers with different attitudes in rural Oregon vs Portland.
I had a lot of negative interactions with police involving cannabis when I was young. That has largely faded with the relaxation of cannabis policies in the US, though laws and attitudes vary widely depending on your region or state. I refuse to even drive through states like Utah, which as one of the strictest states in the US borders Colorado, one of the most relaxed cannabis-wise.
I recently purchased a vehicle and went traveling, so I had an out of state temp license plate in various states. I was stopped by police 3 times in 2 weeks, including twice well after midnight. The main interest they had was whether I had been drinking. This fulfills a serious public safety role, but with the low levels set legally for blood alcohol content, could have put me in serious legal jeopardy when I was not truly impaired. A 3 am traffic stop could go wrong in many other ways, and an officers are generally on edge at night. The risk and severity of being arrested, searched or physically mistreated is magnified by factors like being a minority for that area, having a criminal record, apparent low income or social class (old or beat up car, shoddy clothes), or exhibiting something that personally offends an officer like the wrong sports or political sticker. I would actually drive a car with a lot more personality if I didn’t have to worry about this. Some people I know with Grateful Dead type stickers have been seemingly profiled by police for it.
In Scandinavia you'd have to be genuinely paranoid to not trust the police. The presence of police generally has an aura of safety: actually, with the reductions in force we've been quite unhappy to not see officers patrolling in the city centre in the evenings as much as before.
I'll have to assume that most cops in the US must be friendly and considerate but there seems to exist a minority (hopefully?) that seems to suggest it might be safer to hang out with criminals rather than be confronted by the police.
It's somehow mind-boggling but there must be a path of history and reason why the behaviour of the police forces have diverged so much between countries.