So the excesses simply are the filtering down effect as judges are appointed in many areas by the same politicians who are under the thumb of these two very powerful political forces. After all, you can just imagine the FUD they can dispense for anyone who dares cross them.
* note, I listed police and sheriff separately because the sheriff side is more commonly associated with prisons; California's sheriffs union is a notorious cause of the growth of that system. they are just that powerful
They are allowed to do that privately, of course. However, the general influence of police forces on politics is low to zero here. A local police officer (for example, in a small town / village) doing local politics would seem quite strange.
There is of course some influence of police unions on the departments of interior of the states (Länder) and the federal government (Bund), but this is more like an employee complaining to their superior about low-level problems that could be fixed by legislative changes. It is almost never done publicly.
> Some of the unions have been known to openly attack with billboards, having squad cars follow, and more, candidates who seek to reform policing and pension benefits; benefits which are excessive on any level of sane measurement.
If something like that (police cars enforcing a political agenda) would happen here it would almost certainly be national news instantly, and the officers would most certainly (and rightfully so) loose their jobs. We had some bad experience with stuff like that not too long ago :)
I think the US is suffering from the disadvantages of decentralization. Local police forces have much more freedom and get away with a lot of stuff. The training is also very inconsistent and generally not sufficient.
Also the fact that sheriffs and judges get elected seems to have the opposite effect from the intended one. Instead of more accountability this seems to lead to less accountability and there is less professionalism.
There was an attempt to import the American system by establishing "police and crime commissioners". They are absurdly highly paid compared to most political appointments (especially councillors they replaced): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22624096 - but they remain pretty invisible in the news. My pet theory is they were created to establish a funding channel to Conservative party candidates.
All shootings by police are routinely investigated by the fairly independent IPCC.
(The one big exception to all this was the history of the RUC in Northern Ireland, which is a whole other story)
Policing in Italy is still mostly stuck in the “authoritarian” phase, for umpteen reasons that would be tedious to list here. Suffice to say that a country where the largest police force is effectively military police, is not exactly a model.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/09/minister-tries-to-have...
Yes, I know this contradicts the parent, but the US is large, and every place is different.
Can't find a link or remember the title so it may have been quite some time back - maybe when I still had an FT subscription.
With current budgets and manpower they don't even patrol in cars that much any more, just respond to incidents. That can't be good for avoiding the impression of "us and them".
The non-armament of the UK police does make a huge difference though.
Said no Irishman ever.
In general this is true of many other things about America that may not make sense to Europeans. All other explanations are extraneous at best and more likely, disingenuous.
The current system of law enforcement almost from its inception was setup to protect whites from various "threats". Through out the history of the country these "threats" have taken various forms, be it native Americans during early settlement of the country, slaves, Urban crime or more currently immigrants.
When you understand this core purpose of American law enforcement, it will start to make sense :)
Remember, the people in power are white, but that does not mean that white people are the people in power.
In fact poor whites are treated quite poorly (no pun intended) by lawless law enforcement in their communities. Ever seen an episode of cops in a trailer park(greatly satirized by the show Reno 911:))? It is disgusting how the cops sometimes behave...even so, have you ever seen a rally of poor whites to protest poor law enforcement treatment?
There is an implied bargain that law enforcement exists to protect [whites] against "threats" from "others" and with that most whites avert their gaze when it comes to law enforcement abuse.
There is a lot more that could be written on this topic, HN is probably not the best forum for that:)
This. You can blame about cars, tazers, unions, culture all you want (and those things certainly do affect the shape the problem takes) but as long as the police get to keep screwing up with no proportionate negative consequences and nobody to deliver said consequences nothing will change.
This is something that I see radically different between the USA and Europe. Europe had more authoritative states and police enforcement moved from repression force to citizens service. In the USA the path seems the opposite. From self-policing and freedom towards repression.
> U.S. courts did more to encourage and sustain, rather than to check, the growing authority of the police.
I guess that there was a need for more law enforcement. But, the trend never stopped even when it made no sense anymore.
> The upshot, as time would tell, was not the protection of individuals’ privacy in their cars but the empowerment of highway patrollers and traffic cops who could take advantage of the thicket of procedures to exercise their power in discretionary, even discriminatory, ways.
This is the pattern that I have seen. The problem with much of the cases that I see on the news is that there is no accountability. Police forces are going to make mistakes, and that mistakes can be lethal. But, I do not see self-reflection or improvement.
When you make the same mistake a hundred times. It is not a mistake anymore but part of the system.