While I know that there are a lot more good cops than bad cops, there are also, among the good cops, way too many bullies who seemingly don't even realize what they are doing. They are generally good, family oriented, helpful people, but they are trained in the POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) classes to never, ever trust the citizen. That mistrust bleeds over into their personality and they sometimes don't even realize they have become jerks and bullies. I'm not defending them; it's just been my observation that while the job does attract a certain bad element (low to average intelligence combined with laziness and a lust for authority), it also attracts those who want to do good but end up warped into becoming oppressors despite their good intentions.
And there are a few truly good cops who would prevent something like what we read escalating like it did. They do exist, but they generally don't last very long in that line of work, because they can't take the constant pressure to be part of the team and cover up the bullshit.
Same for me: I never, ever trust the cops. I teach my kids the same (as I was taught by my lawyer mother).
Nope. The supposed good cops are bad too.
Who says that they don't speak out about this sort of stuff? How many good cops do condemn this behavior? How many of them do you not hear about? What happens to cops who condemn other cops?
They get their concerns treated seriously by responsible professionals who's work tirelessly to keep everything at the department above board. [1]
EDIT: Responding to BlackDeath3's comment below
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Because you cant, so stop trolling. If lack of intelligent commentary so annoys you, it is only fair that you hold your comments to an equal standard. Sadly evidence shows otherwise.
Come clean, in some posts you respond with "I exist" when people complain about public invisibility of good cops and in others you insult commenter's for suggesting you are a cop or a law student.
And you have still not addressed this: If you have a specific point to make regarding your parent commenter's response , then make the point, even better substantiate it with verifiable data, dont ask loaded questions.
I'm sorry, I don't think I'll do that. If the consequence is that you completely discount what I'm saying and don't believe me, then that's fine. I don't feel like I should have to point others to relevant comments within the same comment page. I may have time to waste here, but I don't have that much.
If you're going to say that good cops do condemn bad cops, show us examples of this happening. I would love to see them, but I haven't heard of even one. If you're not willing to do the work to come up with these cases, then I'm just not going to believe you. Not saying you have an obligation to prove your case to anyone, but from the volume of comments from you in this post, it seems like you really do care about this issue.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of police officers who are thugs.
It's frustrating; I personally know a few cops who are decent enough people, but they protect their own. They don't do this because they like protecting shitbags; they do it because if they don't protect everyone, they run the risk of getting their own careers ruined by bullshit accusations. The result, of course, is that the good cops get protected from bullshit, but at the cost of protecting the bad ones as well.
They are completely inflexible about it. Their attitude is, "Well, that's too bad for the poor bastards who get brutalized. I have a wife and kids to feed, and I care far more about their future than the well-being of some random guy."
So, people who violate this sort of immunity get bullied and harassed.
I understand this mindset, although I find it repulsive. I think that the only way to prevent this is to smarten the review process and make it easier to get to the bottom of complaints. This would require constant video recording and a smart Internal Review staff who can differentiate between abuse and the necessary use of force.
As typical of somebody posting a throwaway comment to an online forum, I'm not sure that you've taken everything into account when you make such a broad statement.
That is, we're hearing about bad cops who aren't being stopped by good ones. A lot. "Well, the good ones are out there!"; they're either ineffective, or effective, in which case the number of bad cops is even higher than we hear about. Neither of those is particularly placating.
Good police exist, and will continue to exist, despite civilian hostility and shifting definitions of what it means to be a "good cop". I'll never claim that no police are bad, or that there aren't many bad police, but I know that I'll never envy the good ones as long as the people filling this comment page comprise the majority of our population.
I'm saying, we hear about X bad cops.
There may indeed by Y good cops. I am not making any claim about the existence or non-existence of Y good cops (in fact, I've interacted with good cops, so if I was to make any claim at all, it's simply that they exist, and the effects they have on bad cops are unknown).
These Y good cops are either doing nothing to stop bad cops (and thus are ineffective at stopping bad cops; this may be simply because they are in different departments, and/or unaware of it if it's happening within the same one, and/or they may be powerless to stop it, etc etc), or they are effective at stopping Z bad cops (for a total number of X + Z bad cops, since X are still not being stopped).
Either of these situations is terrible, because either the good cops are not stopping bad cops from being bad, or they are, but there are enough bad cops that the good cops are unable to stop them all (and thus the numbers of bad cops are even higher than we hear about).
I'm not sure how else I can put that for you.
I agree that our current situation is sub-optimal. I don't remember ever arguing otherwise.
I'm not speaking to the rational here.
When the entire basis of your point is a clear strawman, and your argument is literally "cops aren't bad, because there are a non-zero number of good cops, is, as the above poster said, vapid and lacking in rational thought. The idea that you need to make up an opponent to make up an argument and call it "blisteringly stupid" to make your point, seems pretty silly.
My argument is "good cops exist". This is in response to somebody in this comment section who quite literally (yes, the real literally) said "the only good cop is a dead cop".
What exactly am I making up here?
This is what you were responding to. This person never said the main thing that seems to have incited your tantrum. At this point you're either trolling or stupid, so there isn't much of a point in us continuing here. Cheers.
Please, do stop responding to me. I have enough to fill my time without trying to explain (what I thought was) the obvious to you.
I don't know that I can blame you for taking the "safe" approach and avoiding police, but don't punish them for your irrationally-negative outlook.
I've been lucky in that my interactions with police have ranged from professionally neutral (mostly traffic cops) to indifferent and bored (cop at a police station clearly not giving two shits that I'd just been mugged). (Of course, me being a white male helps with this "luck".) But the stuff I hear about makes me wonder: if I need the police at any point in time, what are my chances of getting a cop that's helpful vs. one that's on a power trip and wants to fuck with me?
I seriously wonder about that, and I seriously will think twice about calling 911 in an emergency. And that's the problem. It doesn't matter one bit what the percentage is: maybe 0.00001% of cops are bad, and the rest are good. But the perception is that a significant portion of cops are just power-hungry assholes who love being able to strap on a gun and show that they have authority over you. Perception matters more than reality sometimes.
In my country, you have to go through a 3-year training program in order to become a police officer, and these principles are underscored time and time again in training. As a result, most people do in fact trust and respect the police. This makes the job of the police much easier, which in turn leads to a safer society. You never hear normal people say "don't talk to the police", which is something that seems really weird when reading about the US. Granted, I've heard it so often that it doesn't surprise me anymore - especially given stories like the ones in this thread.
Hence, the irrationality comment. Somebody who has one pleasant experience with a cop has had a good day. Somebody who has had one friend murdered by a cop probably never trusts any police again.
This is why cops involved in vases like these need to be made internet famous, including high resolution photos so that face recognition software can be used to spot them at a distance.
So they're like leprechauns?
What is your point?
Of the three, with whom have I ever had a conversation? (Hint: this is a singular answer!)
Are you mentally-ill?
Quid pro quo.
Since I've submitted to your analysis, a turn about is fair play. I think you are a cop. You'd like to think you are good, which is understandable, because most people would like to think that. You realize that you are judged, often unfairly, by various parties. You find yourself valuing the judgment of fellow officers most, but occasionally you are surprised and disappointed by the opinion of the general public. They just don't understand your situation, they don't appreciate your efforts, and besides they don't know how the system works. Still, it hurts.
At the same time, you are genuinely uncomfortable about some of the things you have done and seen being done. You don't blame the police; it's the fucked-up system and the dirtbags they have to deal with. So far you've toed the line, although you imagine there are some things that would cause you to break ranks. Every year, though, those things recede. Sometimes you wonder what you'll find yourself stomaching a decade from now. Maybe you'll switch to just working security. Got to get that pension first, though.
Forget it, you're probably a law student or something. Still, that was fun.
Unfortunately for yourself, your off-the-cuff analysis is quite far off the mark. I do appreciate your trying though, as I've never had the pleasure of having somebody so publicly try to profile me. It was fun!
And to be a pedant, green/unripe apples are poisonous. They make you feel unwell; they just don't maim or kill you. Plenty of people would tuck into a bag of apples where some of them were still not yet ripe.
That's the problem, combined with the fact that police forces are funded by force rather than by providing a service that people are willing to pay for.
The problem is that (especially for minorities in large cities) calling for the police is a gamble.
That many white, suburban kids are taught from a young age that "all police are your friends, you can always go to them if you need help" and that many minorities in cities are taught from a young age "cops are people near complete immunity, great authority and guns; they are to be feared; you would do best to avoid them at all costs and if you must interact with them, be as non-confrontational as possible and if you are arrested say nothing until you have a lawyer".
From the article ...
> I was standing 15 feet from the scene beside Officer Kaur, a stocky female of South Asian complexion. She turned to me and abruptly said that I was not needed as a witness and should leave immediately. I told her we were headed home, just across the way, when my friend and I encountered the accident; and that I’d recently broken my elbow in a similar bike accident here and deeply cared about the outcome.
The cop told the author to leave, the author indicated otherwise.
I guess the author got the "police are your friends" story growing up, not the "avoid at all costs and be non-confrontational if you cannot" story.
Every time the author got confrontational, the situation worsened. Want a doctor? Solitary.
From here, the next thing is "but what about the author's rights? even if the cops don't like you, you still have rights!". Sure, and exercising your rights is inconvenient, at times requiring things like going to jail until things are sorted out.
For a cop arresting you, it's just another day at work. For you, it's missing work unexpectedly, maybe some legal bills, worrying who is watching your kid in a few hours, etc. Your life goes upside for a bit even if charges are ultimately dropped or if the first time in front of a judge your lawyer convinces the judge to throw out the case. You have everything to lose and they/the system/etc. have nothing to lose (except for once in a while when it gets really bad and there's a huge lawsuit, like this recent local story[0], unless you've got some clout, in which case the mayor will call to see how you're doing[1]).
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/nyregion/man-51-dies-in-th...
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/nyregion/de-blasio-defends...
If you'll look closely through this comment section, several people have suggested that good cops don't exist. I'm speaking to them.
I do not deny that calling police can be a big gamble.
It just sidetracks the conversation.
Fuck these pigs.