Police brutality, how should it be handled?

[Shymer]

When a police officer near for example a kettling site (an abusive crowd-control practice that should be banned) happens to cave in the head of a news stand worker who just happened to be walking home from a place nearby (this actually happened in London), I think that officer should receive a mandatory full-life sentence in solitary confinement. Not 25 years, but life. All solitary.

If you are referring to the death of Ian Tomlinson, then some of your assertions are wrong. He was struck on the leg by an officer and pushed to the ground. He walked away from the incident, but died minutes later of natural causes. The officer in question was charged with manslaughter and stood trial. He was found not guilty by public jury. However he was dismissed for gross misconduct and the police subsequently settled with the family accepting "use of excessive and unlawful force".

It was a bad enough incident without portraying it as a police officer caving in the head of a innocent man to justify your belief that police breaking the law should be subject to harsher sentences than civilians breaking the same laws.

 

[Thaluikhain]

When a police officer near for example a kettling site (an abusive crowd-control practice that should be banned)

Kettling isn't such a straightforwards thing, it requires intent.

If the police are intentionally bottlign people up in a confined area to provoke a reaction they can respond with force to, that's obviously wrong and malicious. But, then again, if they just pushing people somewhere else and holding them there because it's convenient to do so, that's a bad mistake that could lead to the same situation, but not one they intended.

Proving which one is going to be difficult.

 

[Shymer]

Yes. The camera should always be on during their shifts in my opinion. If there isn't a video feed available, then we can straight assume it was shut down by the officer, thus condemning him.

I assume there would be an attempt to rule out technical failure before condemning someone for a lack of video recording? Of course an explanation like "There is no video recording of the incident because of a technical failure." will only serve as fuel for conspiracy theorists, and act as something to defend against by police supporters - thereby only entrenching people in their own prejudice, rather than moving things towards consensus.

 

[chris89300]

I've just seen yet another police brutality video, as usual without provocation and I wanted to know what you guys thought about it.

Did you see any videos about police brutality where there was provocation? If you haven't, then why not? How about where there was provocation and the police did not react with brutality? What do you think is the relative proportion of outcomes of angry incidents between civilians and police? 100% police brutality? 100% police calm and professional?

More specifically, how we, as citizens, should handle it. But, and this is the tricky part, not individually. Because as we all know, if an individual goes up against a cop in court, the citizen will pay dearly, but never the cop, even if all the evidence is against that cop.

Do you have any statistics of the result of court proceedings between civilians and law enforcement? I may not live in your country - and different police forces and legal systems have different results - so I would like to be informed.

So, as the people who PUT FOOD ON COPS' TABLES, how should we handle this? Cuz let's be honest, they're little more than garbage men. Public servants. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for garbage men, but not in the slightest for cops.

It sounds like you have had difficult experiences with police officers that inform your current belief about police and policing. If you then come across videos of police brutality, then it seems not surprise that it should reinforce your negative views of people doing a difficult job.

There are tens of millions of civilians in the country - a much smaller number of law enforcement officers, and a large number of interactions between the two - most of which are in difficult stressful circumstances - violence, crime, disagreements, disputes, conflict of all types. The Internet tends to give you content that you look for. If you look for evidence of police brutality you will find it - no doubt. Have you also looked for evidence of positive policing? Have you tried to balance the two? Can you be objective? Can any of us?

What is the alternative to a society which enshrines shared moral values in a a code of law, and then employs and trains people to enforce that law paid through taxes? Can we realistically expect to remove humanity from those people who serve as law enforcement? If we cannot, then we also cannot expect them to not have human failings. They get angry, they make bad decisions, they can respond badly to provocation, they can carry prejudice.

The simple answer to your question, if you feel that the recruitment policies, police procedures, training quality, tools or other aspects of policing in your community are not to your liking, is to research your position, contact your political representative and lobby for change. You live in a democracy - make best use of the tools available to concerned citizens to make positive change. Make your ideas heard.

And for the smartasses: YES, I know there are good, even great cops, hell, I personally know a few, but most of them are little more than abusive little shits, so the topic is about the latter.

I am not certain that pre-denegrating people who may oppose your views is an ideal conclusion to your post. Also your assertion that most police are, in your words "little more than abusive little shits" needs to be backed up by more than an appeal to people's prejudices.

Yes, I have and in those too they use excessive force. I get it, if the guy attacks them, they should definitely defend themselves, as should anyone.
But too many of them see this, even without an actual attack, but with merely verbal provocations, as a free brutality card. There's a difference between defending themselves or arresting someone and beating the shit out of them or worse.

If I tell a cop to fuck off, I do expect him to question/charge/arrest me. But I do not expect him to pull his gun or baton on me.

I don't care about the citizen/police brutality proportions here, their JOB is to not do precisely that. They're supposed to be police officers, not drunken brawlers.

You expect civilians to be assholes, but their job is to handle this appropriately, not to react to assholery with bigger assholery, being an asshole is not against the law as far as I know.
The position they're in gives them much more power, but with even less responsibility than civilians?


I've never been a victim of physical police abuse (mostly because I used to hang out with the wrong people) so no, that isn't why this bothers me.

Yes, but firemen have much more difficult AND dangerous jobs and a lot of them aren't even paid to do so. But you don't see them beating people up in the street.

Yes we can be objective, because they're held to a greater moral standard than civilians. And violent crime has never been lower. Hell crime altogether has never been lower. And they're trolling people with BATTLE TANKS in suburbia? Is this Irak ? Where is all the anarchy, chaos, rampant crime rate etc? Where is this happening in the western world?
What justifies what they're doing.

SWAT interventions have increased 1500% (google it) in the last two decades while the crime rates have been falling for even longer.
That number right there is INSANE!
Put the battle tank back into an army garage and be decent human beings, not violence-hungry lunatics.

Next thing you know, rocket and grenade launchers will be standard issue.


Yeah, I perfectly understand what you mean. It's a shitty job. But it's their job. You don't like your job, you quit it, simple, effective, and above all, common sense. The fact that they repeat this means they don't have a problem with their previous bad decision.
If they don't see this as a problem, they won't fix it, because why fix what isn't broke? As you said, we're human. BUT they're held to a higher standard than Joey the town drunk who picks a fight every other week in bars.


The alternative is remove money, remove religion and bam. If something pays up, you're gonna have criminals, because you get more cash illegally than legally.

But you're talking unrealistic standards here.

I only expect basic human decency from them, no more, no less. But there's nothing decent when you have a gigantic landmine-proof armored battle tank in your face because you're jaywalking.



Nah, I'm not denegrating people (the pre preffix is useless), I just wanted to point out that I don't want this thread to turn into a "but there are good cops too! no there aren't!" trolling contest.

 

[Varis]

Spoiler

Yes. The camera should always be on during their shifts in my opinion. If there isn't a video feed available, then we can straight assume it was shut down by the officer, thus condemning him.

I assume there would be an attempt to rule out technical failure before condemning someone for a lack of video recording? Of course an explanation like "There is no video recording of the incident because of a technical failure." will only serve as fuel for conspiracy theorists, and act as something to defend against by police supporters - thereby only entrenching people in their own prejudice, rather than moving things towards consensus.

Yes, a technical failure would always be a conventional excuse in an event where an officer is accused. But, I believe the responsibility would still remain with the officer, because checking your equipment before going on the field is standard protocol with every other gear an officer has, why should the camera be any different.

 

[wildstyle96]

Here in Australia I have a great dislike for the police due to their support of movements and government policies which don't benefit anyone except themselves and the government.

In Victoria we have a massive "speeding problem", one so bad that on average you will find a speed camera ever 2km of highway and on pretty much every major road in the state. The problem I have with these cameras is that they are used incorrectly, they're meant to be used in a 10% calibration which is disregarded, and as a literal money making machine for the state.

Unlike other states the Victorian speed cameras operate on an allowance of 2km over the limit for fixed cameras and 3km for mobile. Imagine getting a $170 fine for doing 102 in a 100 zone. Saving lives people.
I could agree with them if they were catching thousands of people doing 40km/h over. but a giant percentage (I can't find the paper this data was in) are fines for people doing 2-3km over with only 5% being 40km/h over. Further more they claim that the cameras are stopping people speeding. This would be fine if the statistics backed this up. Over the decade these cameras statistics have been taken the revenue brought in from these cameras has never peaked and is still rising, at nearly 300 million from Victoria alone.

Because of this, it's almost impossible to get the main highway between Melbourne and Sydney, a road of 800km, to have its speed increased as the police continue to retort that speed kills. They won't even entertain the thought of a 140km/h speed limit on a brand new highway with no towns in between.


The police support things such as this, medical marijuana, anti-protest laws and other initiatives that only serve the agenda of the police and government while ignoring the large percentage of Australians who disagree with the laws.

 

[Lokis Maliki]

cops that break the law - pay the same price as anyone else. It is only fair, and just.

Usually, they just lose their jobs - even if they kill someone. How is that a good system?

Personally and in my opinion, a person who takes on a position of power in society and then abuses it should be liable for double the normal punishment.

Give an increase in liability to correspond with the power they are assuming over their fellow citizens.

As things stand here in my country, the police can and do get away with murder. May be better than some banana republics, but it has been becoming worse as time goes on.

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

I've never been a jackass to cops, but that didn't stop them from being jackasses to me.

Frankly, I think you're lying. I don't believe for a second that someone who boasts about something like this:

I was LOLing so hard the other day. Some jackass police officer (don't remember his rank, he was a higher-up) was "shocked" at how no one in the entire crowd had helped a cop out when getting his ass kicked by some kid.

Oh wow, so we're supposed to help them now? Isn't that pretty much the description of their job?
Haha the nerve of that guy. When half the planet passionately hates police, he actually thinks someone would be dumb enough to intervene. He's adorable really .

has never been hostile towards a police officer.

I'm guessing that attitudes like this are why cops, for good or ill, stick together the way they do.

Ah, so you admit that the police do tend to do this?

Certainly, and sometimes when they really shouldn't. But there's also cases where the laws that keep the police in check are abused by criminals to weasel their way out of punishment. Plenty of media-savvy defense attorneys and criminals will also do everything they can to vilify police officers to turn the public opinion against them.

Police, particularly in the US, are often condemned for attacking peaceful protests.

Are you talking about doctored images spread on social media of ''poor, defenseless victims of police brutality''? If so, I know better than to seriously consider biased sources like that. Yeah, I've seen such pictures on Twitter. Not pictured: stores being plundered and vandalized, rocks being thrown at police officers and other sorts of behavior that would seriously undermine the whole ''peaceful protester'' angle.

 

[chris89300]

Not everyone is a criminal. A protest isn't a riot, where do you live? Syria? Afghanistan? Why do US cops from shitty little 5000 people towns have BATTLE TANKS in the US?

Do they need ***landmine-proof*** armored vehicles? Crimes rates are the lowest they've ever been, give that shit back to the military, who are actually trained professionals and not showing off in the streets.

Where do we draw the line? I'm tired of seeing 15-20 cops ganging up to "immobilize" ONE GUY. They gang up as to obstruct the view, so we don't see how savagely they beat the guy up.

Nowhere in the US do the police have battle tanks. They've gotten lots of pre-loved armoured vehicles the military doesn't want anymore, but that's not in of itself a bad thing. Lots of nations have armoured vehicles for the police, and train heavily armed units. The problem is that the US police has lots of hammers, and likes to act like too many things are nails. SWAT teams are all well and good, but they aren't there for things that don't require SWAT teams, which is most things...only, you're paying for these expensive teams to sit round and do nothing most of the time, so someone gets the bright idea to use them for other things. SWAT teams and armoured vehicles should be (hopefully) never actually used.

Likewise, I don't see anything wrong with sending lots of police (if available) to deal with one person. There's no reason that many police have to needlessly harm them.

I'm actually not opposed to giving them any of that, but when they treat their equipment like boys with their toys, you take the toys back.

If your kid starting beating on another kid with a toy weapon, you take that toy away.
When police use military hardware to harass and injure/kill ***unarmed civilians***, they get to keep it and of course they'll start doing it again the next day, because there were no consequences. If there is no punishment for such huge fuck-ups, there is no lesson to be learned except that police can do whatever they want.

Children are better trained than some of these officers, because even children are capable of restraint.

Ganging up on a single guy says everything about their training. That behavior is expected of street thugs, not police officers.

 

[likalaruku]

Really, the only thing you can do is poll social money into a lobby group who will eventually somehow make it illegal for anything related to prison to be privately owned. Once jails stop making money by treating citizens like cattle for slaughter, things should calm down & there won;t be any rich folks to throw money at problems to make them go away.

 

[CrystalShadow]

It's a tricky subject...

But to be honest, I've never met any cops who were all that bad. (Security guards are another matter... But even then it's isolated issues.)

My grandfather was chief of police somewhere, but he was known for being incredibly diplomatic... (Apparently he once managed to get two rival gangs to stop fighting one another not with force, but by listening to them and negotiation. Or something like that)

I'm also friends of sorts with the LGBT liason officer in the place I used to live. (Her job in that sense is to help people in the LGBT community with issues related to discrimination and the like, and be someone that is easier for members of the LGBT community to talk to than your average police officer. - That's not her only job, she's also a crime scene photographer, and does data forensics too, it seems)

Based on what she's said, there are indeed a fair few police officers that are kind of assholes... But still, there are plenty that are not, too.

That may of course be influenced by the fact that she's a lesbian (presumably why she does the LGBT support stuff), which, in spite of everything can certainly influence the behaviour of certain types of people... (And make them seem somewhat worse than they are in general...)
(Though she said something to the effect of there are a few too many officers that have massive ego trips, and treat being a member of the police force as something that makes them 'powerful' or 'important' rather than as a public service...)
But still...

I would say one of the issues surrounding the problem of badly behaved police officers is that the testimony of police officers is given undue weight in court, coupled with a tendency for groups of police officers to 'protect' each-other.
If a single officer gives testimony contradicting your claim against them, that can get bad enough. But when 3 or 4 officers all say the same thing (even if they are lying), you end up having a hard time arguing against it...

Clearly, there is a potential issue there, regardless of how many police officers actually exhibit bad behaviour.
We don't seem to be very effective at policing the police, as it were...

I'm not sure if there is any effective way to combat this... Perhaps multiple police forces that have power over each-other in a rock-paper-scissors style? But that's probably horribly unworkable in reality...

It's tricky... But hopefully not as common as it sometimes seems...

 

[chris89300]

I've never been a jackass to cops, but that didn't stop them from being jackasses to me.

Frankly, I think you're lying. I don't believe for a second that someone who boasts about something like this:

I was LOLing so hard the other day. Some jackass police officer (don't remember his rank, he was a higher-up) was "shocked" at how no one in the entire crowd had helped a cop out when getting his ass kicked by some kid.

Oh wow, so we're supposed to help them now? Isn't that pretty much the description of their job?
Haha the nerve of that guy. When half the planet passionately hates police, he actually thinks someone would be dumb enough to intervene. He's adorable really .

has never been hostile towards a police officer.

I'm guessing that attitudes like this are why cops, for good or ill, stick together the way they do.

Ah, so you admit that the police do tend to do this?

Certainly, and sometimes when they really shouldn't. But there's also cases where the laws that keep the police in check are abused by criminals to weasel their way out of punishment. Plenty of media-savvy defense attorneys and criminals will also do everything they can to vilify police officers to turn the public opinion against them.

Police, particularly in the US, are often condemned for attacking peaceful protests.

Are you talking about doctored images spread on social media of ''poor, defenseless victims of police brutality''? If so, I know better than to seriously consider biased sources like that. Yeah, I've seen such pictures on Twitter. Not pictured: stores being plundered and vandalized, rocks being thrown at police officers and other sorts of behavior that would seriously undermine the whole ''peaceful protester'' angle.

I'm not lying, because as a human being, I'm also capable of restraint. If a cop isn't an asshole towards me, I have no reason to be an asshole to him, simple as that.

I was riding a scooter with a pal once they pulled in front of us and stopped us because they noticed we were going too slow (I was almost out of gas and I didn't think I'd make it to the gas station, so I was going at like 15 miles an hour) at like 12:30am.

It was a huge van. 6 officers, armed to the teeth surrounded us, even with the engine cut, fingers near their ***automatic assault rifles*** triggers. Bulletproof vest and grenade/shells belts. We were 15 year old kids going to a party.

They let us go, because they didn't have anything on us. But I do not expect police to act like thugs towards me.

When I asked if the huge ass rifles were really necessary when pulling over 2 teens on a scooter he stared at me like I've just killed his dog and very aggressively told me "Don't tell me how to do my job, kid, OR I WILL PUT YOU DOWN". Both I and my pal were incredibly polite the whole time, calmly explaining why I was driving so slow in the middle of the night, at the edge of town where there was nothing in sight.


So, was their treatment of us justified in any way? No, because you don't surround and pull automatic assault weapons on random teenagers for no damn reason.


Edit: Oh, and you don't ***threaten said teens with MURDER***. You are not a street thug, you are a POLICE OFFICER, start acting like one.

 

[chris89300]

There are a lot more good cops than bad cops, just that good cops don't usually make the media salivate because its just not sensational enough to get headlines. Thats the unfortunate part of the media, they don't care about truth, just shock value. So please, stop feeding from the media trough. I'm pretty sure it lowers the IQ.
Why is it more prevalent? Media bias, its easy to play up the bad parts of society by rarely showing its good side. Skewing data can show anything to be "true" but it doesn't make it that way. I've known a lot of different law enforcement personnel in my life, and yes some of them were unfit to wear the badge, scumbags. But the rest (and the absolute majority) are decent hardworking folks who have a shitty job and get little to zero credit for what they do.
Most of the ones I know aren't on a powertrip. Actually the ones who act as if the badge gives them super-powered authority to fuck with people however they want don't last as cops or get stuck on traffic duty their entire careers.
There are bullies and jackasses everywhere, badges don't make them that way.

I actually haven't watched TV or the mainstream media since I was like 13 or something, so it has nothing to do with it. I'm talking about stuff I see everywhere I go. I posted something in the next page, check it out, it's a personal encounter with asshole militarized police officers. And that was almost 10 years ago, nowadays, it's getting to the point of ridicule.

 

[chris89300]

It 7 at night when I got a call that my father had been injured by a suspect. I was doing homework, I was pretty young, and I remember I was reading a social studies book. I think we were on the civil war portion of the book. I was bored out of my mind because each civil war portion was always the same. I could recite it to you by this point.

My mum answered the phone. And I remember she got really quiet and then she handed the phone to me. It was my step-mother, and my father was in the hospital. During a routine stop, someone drunk driving, a woman had climbed on top of her car, and when my father had tried to get her down she used her heel and stabbed his hand with it. It didn't seem like much at the time, except he lost the feeling to his hand shortly there after. And his wrist. And now they weren't sure if he was going to be able to save his fingers.

I was 400 miles away and I was a kid. This is the kind of thing you worry about when you have a parent that fights on the force, because you can't do anything to save them. You wonder every day they go out for a routine stop if this is the day someone will pull out a gun, or someone won't slow down when they see a cop pulled over on the side and hit him, or one of the many other things that happens every day that takes a life.

He didn't lose his fingers, but he never got the full range of his left hand back. Which sucks, because he was left handed. And the woman? She didn't get any prison time, she got probation and made to go to AA. She fully apologized to my father, which he accepted, after she got sober.

You know, there are a million and one stories like this. But these aren't what make the papers because why would they? Why would this be interesting to read? Sure, dad had to have over a years worth of re-constructive surgeries to get the use of his fingers back, and even now they aren't perfect, but what about that guy that used a foul word on tape while talking to that guy he pulled over?! That's corruption

How about how many of these guys spend extra time doing other things for their communities when they leave the job? What? That's a thing? No, that doesn't make a good story (except at Christmas or Thanksgiving), we want something juicy. We want a story that people can get outraged about. Because outrage sells. So lets show the same story, over and over and over, of that one guy who during a take down, slams someone's head into the ground. Who knows about the mitigating circumstances on the fuzzy dash cam, it's a story! And it's a great story, because people already distrust the police!

Of course bad cops exist, hell, whole entire bad departments exist. But I'd rather deal with those on a department by department/cop by cop level than paint an entire country worth of people who could be risking their lives to save mine as not deserving of respect. That, that is just so damn sad.

This has nothing to do with anything. Your job is a choice. If your father chose this job and chose to put his family into that position, that is ALL on him, not on the general public.

I don't want to be treated like a sub-human mongoloid because the cop has a shitty day. We all have shitty days, except I don't go around harassing people and threatening to kill them. One of my encounters with asshole cops: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.862308.21478001

Their shitty jobs/life choices are theirs and theirs alone, if they can't take it, they should quit the force. I get it's a stressful and potentially dangerous job, but again, firemen have it worse, but they don't go around antagonizing people just hoping for that first blow, then bash theirs skulls in with their friends. That's a street thug's definition of "fun".

I want my police officers to be officers, not street thugs.

 

[chris89300]

When a police officer near for example a kettling site (an abusive crowd-control practice that should be banned) happens to cave in the head of a news stand worker who just happened to be walking home from a place nearby (this actually happened in London), I think that officer should receive a mandatory full-life sentence in solitary confinement. Not 25 years, but life. All solitary.

Police officers who steal from peoples' homes should get 30 years; no parole, no nothing.
Police officers who confiscate legal items during random stop-and-searches (like USBs) with no legal right or good reason should ALSO get 30 years.

In short, I'm saying that if you put a foot wrong as an officer it should be the end of your fucking life.

Police officers should live and work and sleep under a sword on a string, figuratively speaking.

Exactly! They shouldn't be allowed to confiscate your Xbox because theirs just broke down and they can't be arsed to sent it back to MS.

 

[chris89300]

Here in Australia I have a great dislike for the police due to their support of movements and government policies which don't benefit anyone except themselves and the government.

In Victoria we have a massive "speeding problem", one so bad that on average you will find a speed camera ever 2km of highway and on pretty much every major road in the state. The problem I have with these cameras is that they are used incorrectly, they're meant to be used in a 10% calibration which is disregarded, and as a literal money making machine for the state.

Unlike other states the Victorian speed cameras operate on an allowance of 2km over the limit for fixed cameras and 3km for mobile. Imagine getting a $170 fine for doing 102 in a 100 zone. Saving lives people.
I could agree with them if they were catching thousands of people doing 40km/h over. but a giant percentage (I can't find the paper this data was in) are fines for people doing 2-3km over with only 5% being 40km/h over. Further more they claim that the cameras are stopping people speeding. This would be fine if the statistics backed this up. Over the decade these cameras statistics have been taken the revenue brought in from these cameras has never peaked and is still rising, at nearly 300 million from Victoria alone.

Because of this, it's almost impossible to get the main highway between Melbourne and Sydney, a road of 800km, to have its speed increased as the police continue to retort that speed kills. They won't even entertain the thought of a 140km/h speed limit on a brand new highway with no towns in between.


The police support things such as this, medical marijuana, anti-protest laws and other initiatives that only serve the agenda of the police and government while ignoring the large percentage of Australians who disagree with the laws.

Yeah, I live in France and it's all over the place. On the same stretch of 10kms of road, they installed 3 new radars in 1 year. This road sees pretty much 0 accidents per year. Can't find the stats on that, but the only accidents that happen on this road is when it's frozen and that's not because of speeding.

I'm tired of hearing the same "speed kills" bullshit. Speed doesn't kill, but getting distracted trying to look for speed cameras before you're in their range does.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. It's all about money.

 

[chris89300]

It 7 at night when I got a call that my father had been injured by a suspect. I was doing homework, I was pretty young, and I remember I was reading a social studies book. I think we were on the civil war portion of the book. I was bored out of my mind because each civil war portion was always the same. I could recite it to you by this point.

My mum answered the phone. And I remember she got really quiet and then she handed the phone to me. It was my step-mother, and my father was in the hospital. During a routine stop, someone drunk driving, a woman had climbed on top of her car, and when my father had tried to get her down she used her heel and stabbed his hand with it. It didn't seem like much at the time, except he lost the feeling to his hand shortly there after. And his wrist. And now they weren't sure if he was going to be able to save his fingers.

I was 400 miles away and I was a kid. This is the kind of thing you worry about when you have a parent that fights on the force, because you can't do anything to save them. You wonder every day they go out for a routine stop if this is the day someone will pull out a gun, or someone won't slow down when they see a cop pulled over on the side and hit him, or one of the many other things that happens every day that takes a life.

He didn't lose his fingers, but he never got the full range of his left hand back. Which sucks, because he was left handed. And the woman? She didn't get any prison time, she got probation and made to go to AA. She fully apologized to my father, which he accepted, after she got sober.

You know, there are a million and one stories like this. But these aren't what make the papers because why would they? Why would this be interesting to read? Sure, dad had to have over a years worth of re-constructive surgeries to get the use of his fingers back, and even now they aren't perfect, but what about that guy that used a foul word on tape while talking to that guy he pulled over?! That's corruption

How about how many of these guys spend extra time doing other things for their communities when they leave the job? What? That's a thing? No, that doesn't make a good story (except at Christmas or Thanksgiving), we want something juicy. We want a story that people can get outraged about. Because outrage sells. So lets show the same story, over and over and over, of that one guy who during a take down, slams someone's head into the ground. Who knows about the mitigating circumstances on the fuzzy dash cam, it's a story! And it's a great story, because people already distrust the police!

Of course bad cops exist, hell, whole entire bad departments exist. But I'd rather deal with those on a department by department/cop by cop level than paint an entire country worth of people who could be risking their lives to save mine as not deserving of respect. That, that is just so damn sad.

This has nothing to do with anything. Your job is a choice. If your father chose this job and chose to put his family into that position, that is ALL on him, not on the general public.

I don't want to be treated like a sub-human mongoloid because the cop has a shitty day. We all have shitty days, except I don't go around harassing people and threatening to kill them. One of my encounters with asshole cops: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.862308.21478001

Their shitty jobs/life choices are theirs and theirs alone, if they can't take it, they should quit the force. I get it's a stressful and potentially dangerous job, but again, firemen have it worse, but they don't go around antagonizing people just hoping for that first blow, then bash theirs skulls in with their friends. That's a street thug's definition of "fun".

I want my police officers to be officers, not street thugs.

So you chose to ignore my post where I talk about the police defectiveness I encountered, and only go after where I talk about where I stuck up for them? As if I see the police through rose colour glasses?

There is no debating you, because you have your mind set, you came in here with a preconceived notion, and anyone can say anything, pull out anything they want as examples, and you will shoot down every single one of them as not enough because you have a mind made up that police are bad and that's that. So I go back to my original statement, I find your original post incredibly offensive and rude.

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I'm actually trying to find it again, sorry, multitasking. Point me to it plz.

edit: Nevermind, found it, gimme a sec to reply.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

There are a lot more good cops than bad cops, just that good cops don't usually make the media salivate because its just not sensational enough to get headlines. Thats the unfortunate part of the media, they don't care about truth, just shock value. So please, stop feeding from the media trough. I'm pretty sure it lowers the IQ.
Why is it more prevalent? Media bias, its easy to play up the bad parts of society by rarely showing its good side. Skewing data can show anything to be "true" but it doesn't make it that way. I've known a lot of different law enforcement personnel in my life, and yes some of them were unfit to wear the badge, scumbags. But the rest (and the absolute majority) are decent hardworking folks who have a shitty job and get little to zero credit for what they do.
Most of the ones I know aren't on a powertrip. Actually the ones who act as if the badge gives them super-powered authority to fuck with people however they want don't last as cops or get stuck on traffic duty their entire careers.
There are bullies and jackasses everywhere, badges don't make them that way.

I actually haven't watched TV or the mainstream media since I was like 13 or something, so it has nothing to do with it. I'm talking about stuff I see everywhere I go. I posted something in the next page, check it out, it's a personal encounter with asshole militarized police officers. And that was almost 10 years ago, nowadays, it's getting to the point of ridicule.

You're still one in about 1000 encounters with cops. Like I said there are jackasses everywhere in every profession and cops happen to carry weapons. I read your story, seems a bit out of place and you may have rolled up on some cops doing something else and happened to think you were suspicious. Hell I have a tendency to think kids out past 12:30am are suspicious as hell.
As for media bias, you don't have to watch mainstream things to be affected by the bias. Where else are you getting your information? Underground news sites? Its kind of hard these days to avoid all types of media unless you stay off the internet. How much truth do you think is really true and not just a context issue?
I don't know you so I can't say but its hard for me to believe you have managed to avoid every outlet of news media there is and somehow stay plugged into whats been happening in society. I may be wrong but I do my utmost to keep out of certain things in life, most recently I did everything I could to stay the hell way from the Zoe Quinn issue and I still ended up knowing more about it than I wanted to. Without unplugging yourself from society, you can't stay away from media it just isn't possible. Myself I take what I hear in passing with a grain of salt due to humanity's penchant for embellishing the truth to make things sound bigger than they are.
Are cops more militaristic? No, they have some hardware but its not exactly military grade stuff. Its usually used stuff thats had most of the militaristic features removed and its not trotted out on a consistent basis. Also one other thing, unless they are using heavy machine guns, no cops have fully automatic weapons. AR-15's (M-16's) and their 8-inch barrel equivalents are not fully automatic, they have single fire and 3-round burst modes, as do their military equivalents. Automatic fire is wasteful of ammunition and in an urban environment a hazard to civilians. There's no reason for cops to have them or use them.
So yeah, there's shitty cops but they haven't gotten worse or more prevalent. There's just more noise being made about them in society as of now, especially after the whole Ferguson issue.