Shymer said:
chris89300 said:
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.