Cops need to stop dressing like they are mercs in Iraq circa 2004. Tactical vests, cargo pants with a shitload of shit hanging off them-the average (non SWAT) cop now looks like they are ready to go off on a patrol in a hostile village. I'm an Army vet, and cops dressing like that does intimidate me a little bit-I can't imagine that they present the image of a friendly ally to the average person.
Men should also grow their hair out and stop looking like they are in basic training or AIT.
Another Army vet here and totally agree. I remember looking at pictures of Ferguson and seeing how they were setting up their kit and thinking "what are you guys doing? getting ready for an ambush?" They look so absurd...the one picture of the guy on top of the MRAP with a sniper rifle was equally absurd. Beyond how they look, it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants.
Edit1: Here's the picture I was talking about[1]. Looks like an M110? With some kind of compensator?
Edit2: That Tac light on the end of your sniper rifle just screams "I have no idea wtf I'm doing but imma sit here and look cool."
> Beyond how they look, it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants.
This can't be stressed enough. What needs to be stopped is the false distinction of civilian vs non-civilian in police work and policy. That is strictly a military distinction in combat and does not apply to civilized enforcement of the law during normal circumstances. Cops are not above the law and are just civilians empowered to enforce the laws, nothing more.
It's also important to continually remind citizens that police officers are human beings too and not just implements the state uses to punish people. Stuff like a program a local police department started in cooperation with a local pizzeria where they stop children who are properly wearing helmets while riding their bicycles and give them a coupon for a free personal pizza and a thank you for doing the right thing.
It's been very positive for both children, parents and police in breaking down the notion that police are to be feared. More police departments need to do stuff like this to foster positive interactions with police.
I think the drug laws are one of the main reason that cops have isolated themselves from non-LEO. When was the last time you went to a party or even a dinner party and an off-duty police officer was present? The LEOs are isolating because they know that if they witness a crime such as drug use they can get in trouble if they don't report it. To avoid this they don't socialize outside other LEOs which I think reinforces the us vs them or citizen vs non-citizen distinction that needs to be broken down. The internet has really helped as some cops do participate in public forums and this type of socializing is crucial so that cops and cop culture are more integrated with civil society.
> children [...] properly wearing helmets while riding their bicycles [given a] thank you for doing the right thing
So, children who are not wearing helmets then? I don't really get the strange idea that wearing helmets makes children safer on bikes. I grew up riding bicycles without a helmet, much as everyone else did, and has done since bicycles were invented. There were no cases (nor reports or warnings) of traumatic head injury due to lack of protection reported, to a good first order approximation. And even the statistically minor numebr of head injuries sustained by children on bikes has remained exactly that after the increase in helmet wearing. Research indicates there is no benefit provided by helmet wearing, and suggests it may even increase risky behaviour. [citation needed]
It's quite hard to find data on children only, as it happens, but the following quote gives the picture overall: "However, the Statistics Bulletin shows the UK cyclist casualty figure was 16,196 in 2006 compared to 16,297 in 2008 - an increase of about half a percent. For all road users, casualties fell from 258,404 in 2006 to 230,905 in 2008 - a reduction of 11.9%. During this period, helmet wearing increased by 3.6%." So no change in casualties with an increase in helmet wearing. This is borne out by other reports, and in general mandatory helmet wearing is discouraged as a net public health loss due to dimished cycling, causing less exercise and therefore a less healthy population.
Parents today, eh? Get those helmet wearing kids off my lawn! Thanks for listening ;)
Didn't even notice but when I looked again at the subdued flag patch I noticed he's got a mini eotech on the front rail of that gun. My platoon sergeant would have lost his mind.
Eotechs are, generally, optics designed for close quarters combat (though there are limited instances where it would be appropriate on a gun like that...maybe on a long gun from an unstable platform like a helicopter and you have a big target). Think inside of a building where you're shooting around corners or short hallways and you need both eyes open for depth perception. I was a platoon leader (lieutenant) and the platoon sergeant is the senior enlisted man in the platoon who is the most experienced with the technical side of combat. My platoon sergeant hated when people just tried to "look cool" with the things they put on their kit or gun that made no practical sense.
I'd go further and say they need to do the same thing with their vehicles, like in Europe. Police officers and their cars are for public safety, and should be highly visible.
I think the intention in the US is that cop cars have to be less visible so that they can catch people committing "crimes" in order to fill quotas. The policy should be shifted to prevent or deter people from acting badly, and you can do that be just being more visible.
As a complete civilian, I'd say that police in all their gear do not look intimidating to me. Mostly it's the posture, the facial expression, the tone of voice that makes someone look friendly (or not). I look at them as I look at construction workers or garbage truckers: this is what they have to wear to do their job, not best-looking, not most comfortable. I can sympathize.
The posture and expression is a part of training often referred to as "Command Presence". I sympathize with the need to protect oneself on the job, but applying "Command Presence" to every situation also escalates problems which would have otherwise been non-issues.
Verily! But most policemen I meet look either neutral or relaxed and friendly. (Granted, I'm a Caucasian male, etc — but I rarely see the "command presence" appearance on streets of New York.)
Well I'd suggest that this actually started in 1971, when Richard Nixon started the Drug Wars. Since then the threshold for use of deadly force has been so lowered (hey every criminal could be a violent drug dealer connected to a violent drug network) because every civilian is a potential adversary.
Not very long hair though, after a couple inches it gets to be work to keep up and it's something perps can get a hold of. But yes, exactly, more than a buzz cut would be humanizing.
But de-escalation training is expensive, whereas equipment is often given almost for free from ex-military surplus or paid for from "anti-terrorism" federal funds.
Police in other Western countries receive significantly longer training courses than US police do. This is an issue rarely discussed in this topic. If people want de-escalation, they need to fund the longer training regime and more importantly pay for it.
Has it really come to vilifying a haircut? The haircut is not to blame for anything here, it is all the people who may happen to wear it.
Short hair is pragmatic, but more importantly, it is a personal preference. Nobody should be criticized for wearing short hair. Doing that makes you no better than people who talk about "long-haired hippies" disparagingly.
Off topic, but this brought to mind an amusing anecdote about Hunter S. Thompson. When he ran for Sheriff's office of Aspen, CO, he shaved his head bald and referred to the (ex-army, Republican) incumbent he was running against as "my long-haired opponent".
Have you seen catfights? If they're serious about this "warrior" business, they should probably get buzzed down too.
EDIT:
Wow hivemind. It's for a similar reason that, in less hostile environments (say, machine shops), people with long hair put their hair back. It's like nobody's ever seen Bomb Girls before (much less any of the much more graphic images of, say, lathe accidents).
I'm not suggesting that the warrior mindset is acceptable...merely that, if they are going to carry themselves that way (i.e., as jackbooted thugs), they should probably go all the way.
I see where you're going with that premise, but there's a particular character in The Wire that was one of David Simon's not-so-subtle devices to critique militarization of the police. A three-finger fade is wholly unnecessary.
US police services need to move to "policing by consent" (also often called "community policing"). The concept is that a police service is ineffective if they do not have the broad support of the local community, and the police service should adapt to service the community they have (not the community they'd want to have).
If a bunch of gangbangers "hate" cops then that's fine. But when the good law abiding citizens within a community lose faith in the police service, then that police service becomes ineffective since the community won't help with the police's core mission. Or to phase it another way, the police are an arm of the community, they aren't a law upon themselves (in the figurative sense).
A lot of other countries do this, and it works well.
It is a completely different mindset. All law abiding citizens are now allies in this "war" rather than potential law breakers. You actually have police respond to legitimate community concerns rather than trivial things only the police care about (e.g. DUIs might be a big community concern as opposed to prostitution stings).
Honestly the first thing the US absolutely needs is citizen oversight of police (and police complaints). As long as police police themselves, nothing constructive will happen.
I don't know if we'll ever achieve that here in the U.S. Most of these issues arise in heavily black and Hispanic neighborhoods with high crime. These folks have very little faith in the police and for good reason. The understanding that police are there to protect rich white people from poor black and Hispanic people has gotten less overt and less official since the 1960's, but it's still there to a degree, especially in the widespread practice of focusing resources on keeping violence in poor minority neighborhoods from spilling into higher income white neighborhoods.[1] And in any case historical practice has wiped out any trust that might exist between those communities and the police.
Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
[1] As well as the practice of ignoring the deaths of gang members. Maybe they got themselves into their predicament, but you're not going to build trust among their friends and family by treating their deaths as inconsequential, especially given the prevalence of gang membership along a wide spectrum of involvement.
> Here is the real question: how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
You arrest and prosecute the perpetrators just as quickly and with just as much or more punishment than the "regular" public would get. And you keep doing that to any cop who breaks the law. You also get rid of (and prosecute) the "good" cops who don't report the bad ones.
IOW you show the community that you (the local government) means business when it comes to ending the problem.
"You also get rid of (and prosecute) the "good" cops who don't report the bad ones."
This is why I say the police are corrupt. Looking the other way is corrupt, even if you didn't take part in the corruption.
Would the officer in McKinney the other day feel compelled to resign if he hadn't been caught "red handed" on video? Would his fellow officers have even reported him? I seriously doubt it, and because many of us probably have that doubt then it's up to the police to make that idea unthinkable among the public.
> how do you do community policing in the low-income black neighborhoods of Baltimore? How do you rebuild trust?
Time.
Unfortunately trust is earned, and once it is lost it takes twice as long to win back. Baltimore might have issues between the police and community for tens of years to come, but if they start working closely with the community, and actually making changes based on community feedback you may see it turn around slowly.
It may also help to recruit from within the community, more black officers, and more locals in general. That will help sew the bonds of trust between the police and the community (rather than it feeling like us Vs. them).
In general the police need a much better attitude from the top upon down.
Camden is plenty "typical enough" in terms of poverty-stricken, gang-filled neighborhoods.
What might exist in Camden that doesn't exist elsewhere is that, at least as far as local government goes, Camden doesn't have the governing tensions that exist in other cities, with a rich "governing class" (read: white yuppies) doing all that they can to "protect themselves" from "the others". Like all cities, it gets thoroughly screwed by the State, but at least locally, has far less of an internal "us" and "them" than, say, Philadelphia (which lies just across the river, and has neighborhoods with similar problems to Camden, but less policymaking authority to address them).
Like all cities, it gets thoroughly screwed by the State
I'm no expert on this, but I can think of important counterexamples, so I'm not sure this is true at all.
Counterexample #1 - New York. It seems that this name is pretty much synonymous with the city plus a bit of surrounding area, and the upstate regions are completely forgotten. In particular, the areas that have to host NYC's water supply get particularly hosed: their economies are significantly based on tourism and fishing, but the flow of the Upper Delaware is entirely governed by NYC needs, ignoring the fish. Further, the State has banned fracking, largely in order to guarantee the integrity of the reservoirs, and at the expense of the only opportunity that those living on the Marcellus Shale have to escape their rut.
Counterexample #2 - Austin, TX. Again relating to water, it seems that the city gets priority access to water (a scarce commodity in much of TX). Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan were sacrificed, emptying to something around 30% capacity (I forget the exact numbers) until our recent floods, so that Ladybird Lake (the center of the city) could be kept beautiful and full - and they're even talking about building a water park. So suburban and rural interests were subordinated to aesthetics in the city.
NYC and its suburbs fork over about $12 billion a year more in taxes to the state than gets spent in that region on services. That's not including the massive urban/rural cross-subsidies built in to everything from electricity to water to telecommunications.
As a pretty heavy counterexample, compare public transit funding vs. highway funding pretty much anywhere in the US, or education funding (which screws both urban and rural, to the benefit of suburban). In terms of cities I've lived in/near, Philly, Pittsburgh, SF, Chicago, and Baltimore all get pretty thoroughly screwed by the state governments, which are all districted to minimize urban influence.
> The concept is that a police service is ineffective if they do not have the broad support of the local community
I suspect this has already been pre-co-opted in the United States. Journalists and community leaders and pastors and all sorts of others reflexively support, admire, and praise the police.
> A lot of other countries do this, and it works well.
They can do it because their culture(s) isn't so toxic.
That's part of the problem. You have a significant percentage of the population, who tend to live close together, that will not question police action. Other similar groups will not expect the police to cause anything but grief.
The expectation of unlimited trust is just as bad for police work as total distrust, because neither is well aligned to what is important: That the police are there to serve the community, not to serve some laws or some ideals. When policemen feel that they are better than other people, nothing good can come out of it.
This is part of the American police's self image too. I can find plaques for sale at the supermarket with inspirational sentences about the superiority of law enforcement above mere mortals.
I can only imagine how those products would fail to sell back home in Spain.
A grown man chases a bikini-clad 14 year old girl. He grabs her by the hair and hurls her to the ground. He pins her down, with his knee bearing his full weight down on her bare back. He draws his gun.
Does this make you uncomfortable? Can you picture this girl as your sister, or your daughter?
Think about the real world consequences of warrior policing. This doesn't sound like keeping the peace. It sounds like a child molester's rape fantasy. That girl will be scarred for life. She will fear the police. She will fear men. Is that what we want, as a society? Is this what liberty and pursuit of happiness are supposed to be?
Do we want to be the kind of people who make excuses about how she deserved it?
Depends. Did this actually happen? What has the girl done? Did she just kill someone? Has she just bitten someone's ear off? Context is everything... Maybe the police officer now has nightmares about ear-eating fourteen year old bikini clad girls, and can never have a proper releationship, due to this emotional scarring? If your sister or daughter went completely crazy, and had or was going to hurt herself and others, then of course you want someone to physically restrain her, before something worse happens...
So, yes - if she deserved it, then I absolutely want to be the kind of person who makes that excuse!
This is yet one more of the hidden costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars.
You have a large population of soldiers, many who come back home after their tours of duty, where they were in effect an occupying force. And then they get a job in law enforcement. They are used too a certain way of doing things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they bring that culture home with them. Even for those who didn't serve, as the article notes, this "warrior culture" has bled into police forces everywhere.
In the military, they say "train as you fight." Well guess what they've been training to do? Hint: it's not the warm and cuddly community policing. When you're used to "fight or fight," in the military, and then you're put back in the civilian world, these issues come to the fore.
Not to be mean or unfair, but some of these soldiers who come back have PTSD and other mental issues (not their fault), but I've wondered how much of that also plays a role in police violence and the way police officers handle themselves in stressful situations.
The other part is the excessive hero worship, also driven by the War on Terror. The "support the troops" conversation stopper has extended to law enforcement and any other public-facing service job, to the point where it's impossible to have a civil debate about the military, police, teachers, or anyone, without offending someone just for bringing up the topic.
It doesn't extend to all public-facing government service jobs.
A friend of mine is a social worker with the county, dealing with people's aid - food stamps, welfare, etc. He has to deny people benefits multiple times every day. This morning, one of his co-workers denied food stamps to someone. That person went outside, got a rock, came back in, and hit the social worker in the head with it, sending her to the hospital.
Won't be seeing "Support our social workers!" stickers at the Wal-Mart anytime soon.
And law enforcement weren't "heroes" before 9/11???
Now, I'm probably older than you, old enough to have watched the first run of hagiographic Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. F.B.I. TV series that ran until 1974, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F.B.I._(TV_series) ), but I assure this is nothing new. E.g. I can remember more than a few debates I had with co-workers in the '90s on the War on Drugs, I said we could have that, or a free nation, but they were so petrified by the prospect of their children doing drugs that they preferred they'd live in an eventual police state.
EDITED: added eventual, since this was in the context of where we were going, still a confirmed trend two decades later.
It's all a matter of degree. In the 1950s and '60s, African-Americans in Mississippi were terrorized by the State Sovereignty Commission, a kind of Cracker Barrel Stasi that had files on virtually every black citizen in the state, kept surveillance on anyone associated with the Civil Rights movement, and regularly used their power to hound undesirable citizens out of jobs, call in bank loans, deny credit, and so on. They weren't cross-burning Klansmen -- in fact, they saw themselves as anti-Klan -- but they ran a second-rate police state down in the Delta for decades. And where they didn't operate, Hoover, with his voluminous blackmail archives on politicians and his secret campaigns of vilification against civil rights leaders, did.
Today, we have pervasive state surveillance, a culture of secrecy that permeates every level of government, and a society that maintains a separate class of police and law enforcement officials who arguably operate with near-impunity, with tacit sanction for everything from extrajudicial beatings (and, at the risk of sounding overheated, SWAT-based extrajudicial executions) to prosecutorial misconduct. Thanks to Bennis, SCOTUS has ruled that the government may seize your personal property if you are the innocent owner of an item that the government might proceed against in rem (e.g., United States vs. $124,700) -- and those proceeds then go to fund further law enforcement and security operations.
We live in a state where Lincoln's fear that "all the laws but one go unexecuted" is the spoken and unspoken impetus for all security and law enforcement efforts -- every immigrant may be a terrorist, every demonstration a riot, every black man a gang member. In a state that is organized for the security and convenience of the police power, what else is there to call it?
We may not have police disappearing people in the middle of the night or conducting summary executions on the street on a regular basis. They don't (well, they might thanks to the NSA and other sources) have extensive dossiers on every citizen. But we do have systemic racism and violence in the current system that leaves a large portion of the population in fear for their safety, and rightly so.
Cops conducting no knock raids for a low level meth dealer scarred a young boy and lied to his family about the severity of his injuries (claiming he'd just lost a tooth) [1]. Just check CNN for all the recent stories of unarmed black men, boys and teenagers killed by cops. An officer in Alabama paralyzed an Indian man who didn't obey his commands because he couldn't speak English [2] (at least he's been charged).
This may not be the same as police states seen in other parts of the world for the majority of Americans. But for many, we've already crossed that line.
You have a point due to my lack of clarity, which I've corrected above.
This was in the context of the society they were helping to create for their children and grandchildren. We're not there yet, and the reaction to the gun grabbers of that time (Americans arming themselves like never before after 9/11 and its response told us we were own our own) suggests there's a strong and developing counter-force developing, but the potential is there. There are certainly too many politicians in high places and other influential members of our ruling class who'd like to institute a full blown police state. That's one reason I'm interested in Strange Loop controversy.
ADDED: as for how things are today, since I can and do legally carry concealed almost every time I walk out the door, and how my police department has changed since back then, it's my considered opinion I am in more danger from the police than criminals. None of the latter have ever pretended to try to run me down with their car.
> There are certainly too many politicians in high places and other influential members of our ruling class who'd like to institute a full blown police state. That's one reason I'm interested in Strange Loop controversy.
That is Orwellian state. In it the policing is internalized in the individual.
That is perhaps valid, though a counter argument is that in many police states such people are executed instead of imprisoned.
Typically it means the police are an instrument of whomever is controlling the state to keep themselves in power, e.g. per Wikipedia "Police state is a term denoting government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_state).
I also like to define Japan as a police state, a polite one, granted, but policing was done for the convenience of the police, not for "justice" as we at least attempt. I.e. it's more important to close a case than get the real perpetrator, which was made easy by a "judicial" system with a combined "confession" and conviction rate exceeding 99.9% (really). Past tense because citizen jurors of some sort have recently been added to the mix, although I note that the history of that in England suggests it'll be a long time if ever before that becomes anything resembling the common law system.
> in many police states such people are executed instead of imprisoned.
Well, let's try a thought-experiment with some napkin-math, focusing on "man-hours dominated by the state per capita" and comparing incarceration to execution.
Assuming a stable incarceration rate of 1%, it follows that 1% of all "man-hours" in the nation is being taken, or about 88 man-hours per person per year.
Now, let's assume that another nation, the Bizarro States of America, achieves the same effect, but purely through less-frequent executions. The executed average a "lost remaining life" of 30,000 hours. (~35 years.)
That would require 0.29% of an execution per person per year. The BSA would have to execute 876 THOUSAND people every year to match the USA.
Cops kill 3 people a day, sounds like execution to me. Funny how dead men can't defend themselves or contradict the narrative police give -- which is often wrong when caught on tape.
I don't think you fully grok how many more people the US imprisons, a country would have to execute tens of thousands of people per year for decades to match the amount.
And more often right, at least in the tapes I and people I trust have analyzed. In theory (yes, I know, you can stop laughing), per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_v._Garner police can only use lethal force in self-defense and in defense of others, no shooting a non-violent fleeing criminal, they have no more rights in that area than us armed civilians.
I wonder if you grok the concept of per-capita statistics, or comparing like demographics, and I'll note that one of the hallmarks of modern police states is slaughtering a lot more people than they publicly acknowledge.
Its bizarre how people will say something when it flies in the face of observable reality.
the US police state slaughters more people than is acknowledged, it requires a UK newspaper to get the correct amount.
Cite court cases all you want, they directly contradict what the police get away with everyday, you plainly see on tape them beating and killing people, planting evidence, destroying evidence and private property, and it happens without consequence.
You are a police apologist, defending murderous thugs.
I guess it's too fine a distinction for your tastes; in my book you might say there are are:
Good cops in a few rural places where they're too busy to be bad or thugs.
Bad cops who don't directly commit crimes but are part of the Blue Wall of Silence that covers up for:
Thug cops who assault citizens and their dogs (and see elsewhere in this discussion for a cat executed by a cop, but that seems to be rare).
(There's also dirty cops who e.g. get paid to do stuff like look the other way, but we're not talking about them and I don't think they're now hardly as bad a problem as thug cops, but they are another argument for ending the War On Drugs.)
I believe the majority of cops are "bad cops" per the above, which does not mean there aren't a lot of thug cops, neither of whom I make apologies for their crimes.
Sorry, but this trend seems to have started with changes in the War on Drugs in the '70s, and the popularization of SWAT teams. It was certainly very strong before 9/11.
The irony is that the only way to have had a shot at making the Afghan and Iraq campaigns successful would have been to use the old-fashioned beat-cop tactics: de-escalation, peace-keeping and what is now called "community outreach" (which used to just be "knowing folks").
I honestly have no idea what the numbers are, it's one of those things I've been meaning to research, but have never gotten around too. But from my experience, a large number of troops coming back from the war enter law enforcement.
But I also think (key word, think, it's a hypothesis, no current hard data to back this up at this point, see above paragraph on how I need to do this, but I've been too lazy/busy) this may be highly regional. In the sense that I live in a state with a large number of military bases/troops/persons who go into the military. They come back from their deployments, they go back home, they join the local PD. Some states have less of this than others.
Further, others have made this point, and I guess I was not as clear as I should have been, but in part, you only need one officer who's a vet to come into the department and he says, "When I was in Iraq, this is how we did it..." I don't think that's a huge influence, but I do think it's part of spreading the military culture that the original article is talking about.
Call it militarization of the police, hero worship, cargo-cult, whatever. I believe at the end of the day, the effect is the same, the GWoT has had negative impacts on how America has chosen to police itself.
You don't even need that one officer who's a MidEast veteran. Since the 1980s and 1990s, police have been militarizing. The only real change this century has been the explosion of surplus gear given to smaller police departments since 9/11. The mentality long predates that.
These guys were gearing up - and psyching up - to fight the War on Drugs long before any War on Terror.
Another effect here is the paramilitarization of police equipment. Surplus equipment - armored vehicles, assault rifles, body armor, etc - is given away to police forces, leftovers from our overseas wars. This is why you see police in masks and camo that make no sense in an urban environment.
Clothes help define our relationship to others. How much does it change the attitude of a policeman to be wearing body armor and riot gear rather than shirt sleeves?
Is that really true though? I'd always heard that our military was a lot less trigger happy about arresting people - usually surrounding a house and demanding that the residents come out rather than battering down the door and rushing in with guns drawn.
If police officers here in the UK started talking about having a Warrior midset there's be an outcry. It would be a major scadal that would put the credibility of the police force into crisis. (Brit here, so obviously I have no real right of a say in US internal affairs, but I visit the US from time to time).
I can see where it comes from, US officers are armed, and need to be so because they frequently face armed criminals. They have to deal with a different situation. The problem is that those members of the US public that are not armed and actualy have no intention of criminality, or if they do in a minor and non-threatening form, are being dealt with by armed police officers expecting to deal with armed violent thugs. That's a recipe for utter disaster.
There's no easy answer to this. It's right to support police that have to deal with life threatening situations daily. But equally the non-violent public do not deserve to face potential threats to their life and violent coercion in routine interactions with law enforcers.
You've never been to Police College in the UK. I have.
'Officer Safety Training' is all about banging in the concept of "There is no such thing as no threat. There is only a known threat and an unknown threat." It's even on posters around the college showing a police officer talking to an old lady carrying some shopping.
I'd describe it more as a siege mentality than warrior. However it leads to officers drawing batons in completely inappropriate situations and causing all sorts of problems for no reason.
I'm thankful firearms are not routinely issued as these same officers would just as quickly draw a gun and completely fuck a totally innocent situation into a major incident for no reason.
I had colleagues who were proud to be nicknamed Tackleberry. Not a good situation.
>> But equally the non-violent public do not deserve to face potential threats to their life and violent coercion in routine interactions with law enforcers.
It is really not "the public" at large, at least not in many cases. The police seems to be profiling and directing excessive force towards non-Caucasians, as it was so obvious in the shocking incident in Texas.
This case, which sort of crystallized the problem, all started with a typical overweight Walmart white-trash female attacking a group of noisy (?) children in the pool.
For the outsider, the US looks a very unpleasant place to be if you're not white. Not to mention the huge incarceration rate for minor offenses, and the proportion on non caucasians there.
I used to come to the US at least once a year, staying for up to 2-3 weeks on holiday. I haven't in a long time, and I will probably not anytime soon.
The police seems to be profiling and directing excessive force towards non-Caucasians
Law enforcement has always directed this kind of treatment towards non-whites in the US. What has changed is that there are now cameras everywhere so the officer's word isn't enough anymore and they have begun to subject middle and upper middle income white people to the same kind of treatment that used to be reserved for black and brown people.
For the outsider, the US looks a very unpleasant place to be if you're not white.
Racism isn't a US-only problem. There are incidents of European soccer fans making monkey noises when black players come onto the field. In some parts of Africa, there are issues with the government seizing land owned by whites.
It's not even always about race. Every Irishman with whom I have ever spoken has told me stories about how they and/or their (grand)parents were treated by other Europeans.
I don't know if it's possible to fix the underlying cause of these problems. Whenever people think in terms of "Us vs Them", they find justifications for doing all manner of terrible things to each other. It's just that police are the ones tasked with enforcing the laws of a society so when the laws reflect this conflict, so does the behavior of the police.
And we will always think in terms of "us vs. them" because we're monkeys, and we've evolved highly intelligent brains to, among other things, protect our bananas from the monkey tribe next door.
But we are getting better at overruling our monkey instincts with reason and compassion. So that's a good sign.
My belief is that it's primarily about access to one resource. Wombs. Everything else is ancillary.
What makes a racist more irate than anything? Seeing one of "Them" with one of "Our" women.
Denying good housing, education and employment to the "other" group will make them less able to compete for females from "our" group.
There are versions of this on display in the animal kingdom as well. Male lions are known to kill cubs sired by other males so that they can replace them with their own offspring. In the Gombe Chimpanzee War, females were kidnapped, raped and killed as a method of destroying the "other" group.
I also agree, humanity has come a long way and is getting better.
The incident in Texas in only shocking when one considers the slanted reporting that the media is doing. Those kids were trespassing, were violent with minors, and flatly refused to listen to police officers. The reporting of this is nothing more then a propaganda piece. We have large populations of minorities who feel entitled to behave badly without any consequence because the color of their skin.
How does one get from "a few kids being rowdy and not listening to police officers" to "x group of people has entitlement issues"? Seems like quite a disingenuous stretch.
edit: to be clear, I'm talking about the video specifically, not the parent comment's general perspective.
Watching the video, while has was telling the girl to get on her face, several teens were encroaching and yelling. The one he chased with gun out came up behind him and made a motion that looked like he was feinting pulling out a gun. I think the events in Ferguson and otherwise and causing some to become a bit more cavalier, as if they've "earned" the right to act that way during a police action due to what has happened elsewhere.
When you say "some" and "they" do you mean "black people"? I only ask because the parent comment specifically talks about minorities. If so, that's a unfortunate dichotomy that you have created.
If anything, the safer generalization is that cops are the ones that have a history of acting recklessly in their interactions with non-police. Especially considering that they are civil servants, whose job is to protect all people with equal consideration.
Sorry, I was only discussing the video; I failed to read the parent comment fully (which was quite bigoted). Looking at the video specifically, you see a lot of brazen action, and you have to wonder what is emboldening them.
From what I've read, most of the teens were invited by another teen who lived in the community (including the one who was slammed to the ground for mouthing off to the cop). Apparently, some additional teens who were not invited showed up which is what prompted someone to call the police but when this particular officer arrived on scene he didn't attempt to distinguish between teens who were invited and teens who were not and instead just started subduing every black kid in sight.
That is not what happened. First there were more then a "few" uninvited teens. Many of them jumped over the fence. They were being aggressive the young children who were there. They were not heading the warnings of adults. There was more then one police office there and they weren't subduing everyone in site. This incident occurred because the "victim" in question was aggressive and unresponsive to the police officers commands. Yet that portion of the video "some how" didn't make it onto the main stream media.
Stating a group of people has entitlement issues isn't Racist. Racism is denying people the ability to do something based on their race. I am not denying anyone access to anything. I am simply stating that I see an issue with how allowing people to continually play the race card emboldens them to believe there are no consequences to their actions.
You're right, it was less racism than bigotry. Stating that a whole race of people has an entitlement issue is bigoted.
Why not just say "blacks", anyway? Everone knows what we're talking about here, but if you say "blacks have an entitlement issue", it's harder to pretend that you're not a bigot.
To say that "black people" have an entitlement problem, and not "all people", is to imply that this is a flaw that non-blacks do not share, or at least to a much lesser degree.
And buddy, that is implying the superiority of one race over another. Which is racist.
So you're saying that you implied something from the parent comment and that by further implying from your first implication led you to believe the author was racist?
Do you also find it racist when prominent black people criticize what they term "entitlement" problems amongst blacks? (Not that the author specifically mentioned "black people" but I want to follow your line of reasoning.)
The great advance of cameras being cheap and ubiquitous has effectively been countermoved by "Yeah, we saw the video, we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong" or district attorneys that either decline to prosecute police abuse or treat grand juries in police-abuse cases completely differently than they would in any other case.
That's just a short term fix; we know what's really happening (although it's not always clear in videos, especially if conveniently edited like the Rodney King one), and the longer this goes on without resolution the nastier it gets for everyone.
Which, I suppose, can be a reinforcing cycle; in another sub-thread Army vet remarkEon said "it's like they're at times forgetting these are citizens and not enemy combatants." As the police continue to lose support from the populace, including the traditionally supportive right, more and more of us become enemy combatants in a sense even if the vast majority of us don't take action. And with the concealed carry sweep of most of the nation, we don't actually need the police so much.
IMO, the warrior problem leads to the no accountability problem you speak of. If you program officers to think and act a certain way, then you can't really punish them when they act on their training.
They feed on each other. No accountability means they can be bad actors. Being bad actors encourages them to lobby (directly or through spokesmen in political office or media) for a reduction of accountability.
I'd like to think that most officers really do want to make a positive impact, so I don't necessarily agree with your 'no accountability means they can be bad actors' statement...it makes it seem like the officers have malicious intent. I think it has more to do with the general population and the police community being on different pages when it comes to acceptable behavior. When there is an officer involved shooting, the general population wants the officer to be held accountable for their actions (sometimes), but if the officer followed protocol then there is no case to be made. We need training reform
It doesn't matter what attitudes change, the community relationship between police and citizens will not be repaired till at least my generation is dead (mid 30s) but more likely till at least three current generation of young people is dead. And that only if dramatic changes happen now. Otherwise things will continue to degrade and the police will continue to arrest and kill innocent people for committing crimes that are victim less and shouldn't be crimes at all.
The irony is, of course, that being a police officer is not even a very dangerous job. That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
> That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
Ah yes, let's demonize a large, heterogeneous group of people because they seem to be inappropriately making generalizations about a large, heterogeneous group of people....
Routine traffic stop. Pretty sure I've never heard of a developer being murdered during a pull request.
> That leads me to conclude they're just a bunch of cowards with an inferiority complex out to hurt people to make themselves feel better. I'm sure cops exist who aren't like this but that doesn't disprove the fact that the majority are. Then you add their racism to the mix... Cowards will be cowards.
Congratulations, I think this is the most bigoted and stereotyping post I have ever read on Hacker News. Ever.
Your single example means nothing. There are (at conservative estimate) around 750,000 law officers w/ arrest powers in the USA. 114 were killed in 2014. This is a 0.016% mortality rate -- and this number includes accidental deaths while on duty. This is about the same percentage as murders only in Chicago -- meaning the population of Chicago is, on average, in more danger just existing than any given police officer is while armed and on duty.
First off, statistics:
For your analogy to be fair, you'd need to compare mortality among police in Chicago, not nationwide police mortality, since an officer, like a citizen, is under great threat in Chicago than rural Kansas.
Even so, you can compare the job to anything, and find statistics that sound more impressive. More children die via drowning in swimming pools than by gunshot wounds, but that doesn't mean that gun control discussions are immediately null and void.
I have been places in life, and known people, that have an intense hatred for cops and are happy to express their desire for an open season on them. People that if facing arrest for something small, will use any weapon at their disposal - gun, knife, vehicle - to get away. The fact that someone doesn't know of this world - it's not proof it doesn't exist, but simply a blessing for that person.
There are very, very bad people in this world, that if given the chance would take your MacBook, your iPhone, your iPad, and your money. "But but.. you don't understand! They'd never hurt me! I retweet about social injustice!"
There's some very, very bad cops who abuse their authority. But for someone to say that there's no danger is incredulous.
Nobody is saying the job is completely free of danger. We're saying they don't need MRAPs and assault rifles. You don't get to exclude the middle ground here.
And fuck your passing dig at accusing me of armchair activism; I've served in actual wars, as infantry, where I was less well-equipped than some of these suburban police departments. I am fully aware that danger exists, and what it looks like. It is being overstated.
I was originally address joesmo's comment: "being a police officer is not even a very dangerous job"
And I apologize if my words suggested a dig at you - I was still addressing the idea that it's a safe pedestrian job filled with intentional racists. I really was speaking to the general HN'er, rather than you specifically. I think you'll agree that there is a lot of armchair activists who have never seen a battle field, or a bullet wound, and whose opinions are shaped more by Twitter and emojis than reality.
It really isn't a particularly dangerous job, regardless of the opinions of social media users. For instance, doing the research you suggested isn't feasible, because no Chicago police officers have been killed AT ALL since 2011.
A brief record search indicates approximately 440 Chicago PD officers died in the entire 20th century -- remarkably similar to the number of murder victims in the city per annum among the general population.
Police officers need training, and they need public support, and they need good leadership and a healthy government to support and oversee them -- but they don't need breathless hyperbole that justifies warfare-grade equipment loadout.
> Congratulations, I think this is the most bigoted and stereotyping post I have ever read on Hacker News. Ever.
DamnYuppie:
> We have large populations of minorities who feel entitled to behave badly without any consequence because the color of their skin.
I dunno. DamnYuppie may be winning. At least joesmo is bigoted against people because of their chosen profession. Unlike DamnYuppie who's bigoted against people for the color of their skin.
Both are pretty bigoted. However, he wasn't attacking a profession, as much as was implying that it's somehow a fact that the majority of the group, simply because of their chosen profession, are racists and cowards. Pure bigotry.
Problem: Larger cities have taxis; many smaller communities do not. Every town have police. For your example to be fair, you'd have to restrict the statistics to only cities that have both police and taxis.
I think statistic lie if you consider a police officer in Detroit or Chicago having the same risk as a police officer in rural Oklahoma. I do believe the statistics would be drastically different for those two groups, and until we have honest statistics, I don't see how we can come up with any conclusion one way or the other. (Unless you're a cop of course, and can speak based on experience, but let's face it, most of us are a bunch of nerds using our elite Googling to verify and prove our version of the world)
"Police officer" is in the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the US...but only barely. It's number 10 after fishing, logging, aircraft pilots and flight engineers, farmers and ranchers, mining, roofing, trash collection, truck driving, and stuntmen. (Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs.ht...). Remember to thank your garbageman.
I didn't say it was safer than programming. One example does not a dangerous job make. If you were threatened with death by police officers for using a public sidewalk or had any clue at all about what police do in this country you'd feel the same too. It's not bigotry, it's a war. Police versus people. You're just too stupid to see it. Or too white possibly.
Compared to many blue collar jobs, that's the case. By the numbers, it's about twice as dangerous as being a car mechanic and significantly less so than being a construction worker. Further, most deaths of police officers on duty aren't from violence.
Hell, a cop executed one of my Dad's old cats one night here in this small town. He allegedly thought it looked "rabid" (it was just ancient, maybe drooling, very, very slow-moving). Call animal control? Call a vet? To hell with that, he wanted to have some shootin' fun, and of course he got away with it, stopping the fearsome, waddling, threat-to-nobody beast in its tracks. In a residential neighborhood. Big man, that cop.
One reason the US has a policing problem is because of the reflexive and thoughtless defense people give them.
How many more Chicago Blacksites, 'accidental' deaths while in custody, and shooting and killing of unarmed citizens do people need to have happen before the cop apologists stop their hero worship excuse making?
Here in Vancouver we have a neighborhood where heavy drug users congregate. There is a heavy foot-patrol police presence, but arresting everyone using drugs is seen as an unworkable solution.
The police have taken to videotaping people who are heavily drugged and out of it. For instance, someone laying stoned in an alley with a needle hanging out of his arm. Of course medical services are summoned too.
The police then make the effort to track these people down to find them at a time when they are not intoxicated and show them the video of themselves... trying to wake them up to the truth and consequences of their addiction.
I don't know how effective this effort is, but I appreciate the police acting like decent human beings rather than bully thugs.
It seems like a no-brainer to me. Training police officers to think like warriors indicates that they're fighting in a war. We already have enough issues with gangs turning our streets into battlegrounds[1]. Why do we need police officers to compound the issue?
Many more cops these days are vets. Many more vet cops have seen combat. It's no surprise we have this militarization of local police forced underway. With increasingly tragic results. Soldiers are trained to advance and overpower by killing, wounding or inspiring enough fear to push the enemy back. I cannot imagine this is a good foundation to build a police officer on in all but the rarest of circumstances.
I'd be very interested to hear from experienced police officers about how accurately this description represents policing, how pervasive this point-of-view is (training or not), why it has arisen, and why it's necessary. I, and I suspect many here, know very little about the job.
Also, in broader society, my impression is that paranoid, angry outlooks are now often accepted as legitimate, 'real' and strong by at least part of a certain segment of our society, rather than being seen as weakness, out-of-control emotion and shameful judgment. For example, this perspective is embraced on a certain cable news channel, it's a hallmark of a certain political movement, and you can see some leaders competing to prove who is angrier and crazier. There's an underlying cultural debate here, also. Many people support this police behavior.
These guys could do worse than read some Terry Pratchett - his Sam Vimes character had a fine appreciation of the difference between a soldier and a policeman.
It also seems in some situations protestor are trying to be a warrior too how many people protesting these days wear masks now compared to 50 years ago?
I'd say it's a culture problem both police and the people they interact with both have a warrior attitude.
The problem is that in many of Americas inner cities there is a gang war going on. You'll never get ride of the warrior view when they are charged with keeping the peace in war zones.
you have "change the world", "python ninja", "rock star", etc.. in software engineering. Cops are people too, and what you see is just similar notions in their professional area. Cool Tazer instead of cool MacBook. Agile law enforcement with multiple refactoring... It is just bad luck if you happen to be the one being "refactored".
'Within law enforcement, few things are more venerated than the concept of the Warrior.'
Sure in some jurisdictions. But not all.
I work with LE in the field as a paramedic, and in the office as a SW Dev. Lots of agencies. Most of the LE folk have been super professional and very mindful of their public service role. Even in stressful situations.
From what I've seen, most cops are just regular people, not wanna-be soldiers.
All cops should be wearing cameras, but I don't think it will work out very well for the SJWs when all the interactions are clearly documented. Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
> Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
That's what causes the problem. Police apologists imagine circumstances that justify their abuse, and are absolutely certain that's what actually happened.
If there was a video, I wouldn't imagine. I'd watch and see what happened.
>If there was a video, I wouldn't imagine. I'd watch and see what happened.
Well you saw the video of him robbing the store and assaulting the clerk moments earlier but that doesn't bother you?
Edit since I can't reply:
At least you didn't say "Police murder innocent black child" so that is a start. His actions moments before make the cops story more likely to be true.
A crime is something that someone does, it does not define who they are. A robbery doesn't make someone's life 'not matter'. It is not a capital offense. Neither is jaywalking, or being stoned. I think it's interesting that the narrative that the police presented about Michael Brown grabbing a gun is nearly identical to the South Carolina narrative presented about Walter Scott. However, The Ferguson police didn't make the same mistake as the South Carolina police. They made sure there weren't any leaked videos of the event, which in the case of Walter Scott, showed the cop placing a taser on a dead body. Remember how many hours Michael Brown was left to rot the sun? Remember how many months it took for the grand jury to even begin? Despite all the coaching that he no doubt received, Wilson's own narrative revealed itself: "He was like a demon."
The only thing that gives the police legitimate cause to kill someone is the threat of imminent violence.
Even if there was a video of him murdering someone that wouldn't justify killing him on the spot. It would justify arresting him and letting his punishment be decided in court.
> Imagine if there was video of Michael Brown going for the officers gun, would they still riot?
You say this as if people are looking for an excuse to riot. No one wants a riot, it's bad for the participants, the police, the community, and the local economy. The only winners are looters.
Police are murderous thugs. Their pensions should be cut and department budgets gutted.
US police kill about three people a day, and shoot and harrass many more and all with hardly any consequences. They even openly operate 'blacksites' where people are detained without rights and tortured, sometimes even killed.
These are not the hallmarks of a free society, it is the symptoms of fascist military rule.
