No it's not. Police in Europe is, on average, very kind. When they stop you, you don't have to be afraid of anything, and more often than not you stop them to ask for help, even if it's just to ask for directions.
I've been stopped on my motorcycle for no reasons by officers in an unmarked car, they kept me 30 min on the road under full summer sun and didn't provide me any reason for stopping me whatsoever. "don't do crimes and the police will leave you alone" doesn't exist
My dad got a ticket for using his mobile phone in a stopped car (engine off, parked) even though he didn't own a mobile phone. I can't come up with a single good interaction me or any member of my family had with the police and as far as I can tell I'm far from the only one.
A quick look at the yellow vests protest will tell you that French riot police are just the same as the American one. They killed a grandma by shooting a tear gas canister into her 4th floor flat [2].. Dozen lost hands, eyes, & c. The only reason it isn't worse is because they're less equipped and have more legal constraints
Potentially nsfl, lost of yellow vests injuries with pics: http://lemurjaune.fr
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Adama_Traoré
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lexpress.fr/actualite/socie...
[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.leparisien.fr/amp/faits-div...
I got held at the (utterly empty otherwise) border for 40 minutes. They went through my whole backpack (just wet stinking climbing clothing equipment), did some obscure exercises like taking out all my cash & cards from wallet, counting it, putting into envelope and then back to me and so on.
I was super thirsty, when I asked them for a cup of water they repeatedly ignored it. They yelled at me and were generally super unfriendly, treating me like a criminal. I cross normally (non-covid times) that border several times a week, never anything similar. You can't do much, they have all the power, and they make you feel it.
This is Swiss, don't hold your breath for other european places. There are sane normal policemen, just like everywhere, but there are also fucked up power tripping assholes. They just can be more trigger-happy in places like US.
I got stopped while entering the US, they asked me to follow them in some kind of room, I did, they asked me for my passport, I gave it to them, they then put the passport on a table and went chatting on the other side of the room, a few minute later a woman came in and took the passport while no one was paying attention. 5 min later one of the chatting officer noticed the passport was missing and tried to make me confess I took it back from the table and hid it, he was very obviously trying to escalate the situation... The woman came back after a while and the threatening officer tried to pass his whole act as a joke. I lost 2 hours because these people were less organised than an elementary school kid and treated me like a criminal for no reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
United States is between Congo and Iraq when sorted by rate per 10 mil. people.
The first european country is way down that list.
Granted I think european police is less violent than US (a low bar), but to say that we don't have a problem with this at all is pretty naive. Just look at how french or swedish police have responded to black lives matters protests for example.
It's not a problem of policeman brutally beating/killing people (its a issue alright but). Its about the organisation protecting and turning blind eye on their misdeeds.
There will be bad apples in any organisation. Be it police fore or church. The problem starts when the perpetrators are protected insted of being ousted.
That emboldens other to do similar and openly advertises to anyone 'Join our org and you can to X, Y, Z with no repercussions'.
Maybe the met does have "poor race relations" historically but it isn't anything remotely close to the US police.
I generally agree. "The left" in Germany does disagree completely, though, so I think it's pretty controversial and not really as simple as you make it out to be.
However, people do acknowledge police is authoritative, profile racially, and abuse their power at times.
I think you can acknowledge both without being inconsistent.
And that's not what I said. They certainly won't agree that police in Europe is "on average, very kind".
> However, people do acknowledge police is authoritative, profile racially, and abuse their power at times.
That's an overly euphemistic way of describing "ACAB", which is very common and not controversial on the left.
There's little rejection in left wing parties and German trade unions (with the exception of the police unions, obviously) with regards to ACAB and similar messages, although you won't find anybody running for chancellor embracing it. As they will march with the Black Bloc on ocassion, I don't think you can draw a clear line.
The parties' youth organizations are generally significantly further left, so that's a different story entirely, but that's probably true for any youth organization.
I lived for a number of years on a caribbean island–modern, mix of people, pretty crowded, but a police force that was just cool af. They just didn’t get aggressive unless it was absolutely, positively, unquestionably a life or death situation. They weren’t invisible, but they weren’t anywhere near as pervasive as we see in US cities.
And I never felt unsafe there. I would walk through the worst parts of the cities at night and no one bothered you. Sure, there was crime, but basically the same shit you see in US cities where the cops everywhere and hyper-aggressive.
There is something going on with our cops and it’s a large and very deep cultural problem.
Other places have police who are drastically scaled back and the quality of life is so much better.
I’m guessing unless we alter our policing structures to where our police understand they need to make the overall community’s day to day quality of life better, these massive cracks are going to continue to widen.
Again, there were far less police and the world did not fall apart, the daily quality of life was significantly higher.
One of the major hurdles we need to get over is the rather large amount of people (and many of the police also belong to this group) who just don’t understand that people have different interests. A bad analogy, but this is a group of people who rage out when someone has pink or green hair. It’s not enough for them to personally choose to have a buzzcut, they’re furious that everyone else doesn’t also have one.
I could probably come up with a better analogy, but I think one of the answers is in there. I’m not sure how we convince those people to live and let live, because at the heart of our policing emergency is that thought process.
The rate of police killings is vastly higher in the US than any other Western country. So something is going on there that is not a universal phenomenon.
And despite this, it's continually hammered home into their heads that they have a very, very dangerous job. Yeah, you're correct, it's fear from the lies told to them.
Gun violence in the US is the symptom of very deep problems, you can't consider it just by itself while disregarding the societal issues being it.
Here in the Netherlands _basic_ education is 3 years; and then you have another few years to specialize into a specific topic (abuse, fraud, forensics, narcotics..).
Here is a bit more info:
https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2020/06/05/killology-is-not-a-...
I am afraid that it is not limited by police. You can see it everywhere. For example, downvoting a post with an alternative opinion and trying to have one opinion is a sign that you will be a good policeman. People like diversity only if it is a minor deviation which in this sense only confirm the dominance of one opinion. And this behavior is visible almost everywhere: police, governments, protests against police, forum moderation etc.
Frankly I am a bit cynical about politicians declaring the need for police reform. In my country protests are regularly "subdued" with excessive violence but the decision to handle it this way comes from the top, not from police officers.
I think clearer legal rules would help. Also maybe teaching people how to behave in case law enforcement conducts a search. The ability for surveillance and raiding homes should certainly be under intense scrutiny. Because I think the fear of decision makers is the main driver we might see some problems.
> I've been in a few protests and I can easily say that I have never seen more hatred in someone's eyes other than the cops that were beating up people.
That can be true for protesters and criminals too. I am aware of the irony of mentioning them in the same sentence. But the "psychology" study should show, that police is just often required to just do the dirty work and some might adjust to the crime they see in their daily routines. The systematic problems are programs like war on drugs or excessive militarization.
Imagine being legally allowed to own and carry a gun and getting killed because you legally own and carry your gun. How is that logic?
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2017/06/22/philando-castil...
There have been multiple instances where the us police shot someone and fired more bullets in this situation than the while german police in a whole year. And i don't mean big standoffs but shooting a single person.
/edit: in 2018 the german police fired a total of 54 bullets on persona killing 11.
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_i...
No, this is incorrect. Police are trained to stop a threat. Handguns despite what you see in movies are actually quite poor at doing this, so the accepted and common doctrine is “at least 5-6 rounds center mass”.
This is in life or desth situations where that person must be stopped or someone else will die.
If police were trained for one and reassess, they would shoot one. Trained for two; and they’ll a lot two regardless if they have a good sight picture after the first shot or not.
So the training is “stop the threat”, be prepared to shoot 5 rounds center mass as quickly as possible, move, maintain a sight picture, do all the things you need to do but focus on the target first and gun and number of bullets second.
Not most. Ireland, Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Maldives have police officers work unarmed. Are there others?