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No one calls the police because no crime is being committed
Wrong. I spent much of the last few days watching police interactions on youtube. There are literally thousands if not tens of thousands of videos on youtube that show clear abuse by the police, including anonymous tips that lead to police raids on innocent people, as well as stops and detainment without any crime being committed or even probable cause.
Moreover, as others have noted here, when the police "mess up", they will lie, and the entire department will cover for them, and the courts will always take the word of the police over that of a citizen. The only reason police abuse has come to light is the result of cell phones, dashcams, and police body cameras. The reality is, the police have been doing this for decades and getting away with it. Even now only a tiny fraction of these cases end up on youtube or are litigated.
Even in the cases that seem open and shut, the cost of "taking it to court" is often so high and the probability of "winning" so low that most people simply give up because they can't afford it and just want to get on with their lives. The resources of the state are virtually unlimited. In those large settlements the lawyer fees alone are sometimes in the millions because it has been dragged through the courts for years.
We can be reasonably assured that in most cases if not almost all cases of police abuse, there are no youtube videos, and there is no followup. If there are tens of thousands of examples of police abuse on youtube, there must be hundreds of thousands if not millions of interactions where they have gotten away with it.
I was just watching this yesterday. A grandmother was pulled over on claims her tail lights were flickering and the cop planted meth in her vehicle after she was polite and voluntarily agreed to a search of her vehicle when he asked. She was arrested and she even plead no contest for a crime she didn't commit.
When they asked her why she didn't fight it in court she said... "I just didn't think I would be able to beat anything being as it was law enforcement, and I wanted to get home and take care of my grandbaby. She was about to be three months old."
According to the video, they overturned hundreds of convictions after the cop was finally "caught". Which means hundreds of lives were ruined, and if he hadn't been so sloppy he would still be doing it.
Psychopaths. All of them. It is the only personality-trait conducive to being a cop. The ones who aren't are the exception, and they rarely last long.
PS: Nothing I said above is a policy prescription. I don't think there is a solution. Police are evil, but they are a necessary evil in our diverse/unequal/hateful country. They are the only thing that prevents the poor from killing the rich. Without them there would be no United States. They are the only thing that holds this ****hole together.
Last edited by Redshadowz; 03-18-2023 at 10:28 AM..
Are you willing to apply the same standard to groups of like people other than police?
Yeah... I thought not.
People who are armed and drive around with shotguns and have the authority to arrest someone are held to a higher standard.
If lives are at stake it’s a higher standard
Physician, lawyers, nurses, structural engineers all require licensure and are professions where lives are at risk and require more education than being a police officer in most jurisdictions. Just saying
People who are armed and drive around with shotguns and have the authority to arrest someone are held to a higher standard.
If lives are at stake it’s a higher standard
Physician, lawyers, nurses, structural engineers all require licensure and are professions where lives are at risk and require more education than being a police officer in most jurisdictions. Just saying
Police are licenced. That's what, here in Texas, TCLEOSE is.
Police are licenced. That's what, here in Texas, TCLEOSE is.
The issue with TCOLE(the new abbreviation) is that it almost never pulls the license of bad cops. The bad cops just keep working for smaller and smaller agencies as they get fired.
As in criminals without guns? That would be good. We do have way too many guns in circulation. So many that the police will assume that a suspect is armed or reaching for a gun, or has one concealed. We have a seemingly large number of police shootings in a city of 1/2 million, but the culture is wild-west, and everyone seems to have an accessible gun. The notion of peaceful conflict resolution is an alien concept. As a result, almost everything seems to warrant extra police force or resemble a SWAT team event. We have police shootings of unarmed suspects. We have unarmed mentally ill people shot for not obeying an order in their own home.
We don't need fewer police. In this town we need more police but smarter and trained would be good. The citizenry has come to distrust the police and have a negative view of them. This comes from a long history of police violating civil rights. The DOJ stepped in and documented decades of abuse, imposed some changes, and still monitors the situation -- much to the police force's aggravation. There are dozens of vacancies on the police force.
Not every situation needs a SWAT team. If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The idea of sending one cop as part of a team of trained social/psych staff would probably resolve a lot of problems. We have a serious homeless problem that the police have to deal with. Many of those situations could be better handled without four or five police officers in confrontational mode. Confrontation is often ramped up as more police are involved.
You had the advantage of working in the military, which is less patient with idiots.
Military police
Well, many large police departments, by design, are para-military organizations. Command presence would be developed as part of the training. "Idiots" are weeded out.
But thanks, I did not know this about the military.
Wrong. I spent much of the last few days watching police interactions on youtube. There are literally thousands if not tens of thousands of videos on youtube that show clear abuse by the police, including anonymous tips that lead to police raids on innocent peop
Videos where the police do the right thing are not going to get lots of views on youtube because they are boring. Out of the millions of police encounters each year there are going to be thousands where the police are wrong. And those cops who violate procedure or break the law need to be disciplined or fired for that.
But its a small percentage. And most of the ones I see the person being pulled over is difficult or not cooperating. That often leads to the officer getting agitated and escalates the traffic stop.
Traffic stops are very simple. Pull over. Roll down your window. Hands on the steering wheel. Give the officer your id and paperwork when asked. Don't converse more than necessary. And if you are polite and its a minor infraction you have a good chance of getting off with a warning (90% of the time in my life) and you can go on your way.
Wrong. I spent much of the last few days watching police interactions on youtube. There are literally thousands if not tens of thousands of videos on youtube that show clear abuse by the police, including anonymous tips that lead to police raids on innocent people, as well as stops and detainment without any crime being committed or even probable cause.
Imagine what youtube would look like if it was possible to post videos of all the criminals in America in their act.
People would spend so much time watching those videos they wouldn't have time to do anything else.
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