Been happening for a while. My coworker’s husband is a good cop from as much as I can tell (never seen him under pressure on the job), and he stays in low paying school resource officer jobs while continually applying for more analytical and forensic type jobs with the FBI and CIA. His reasoning for this is exactly as you feared, he wants to be in a position to help people and doesnt get that satisfaction from patrolling.
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Well, yes. But if the jurisdiction wants to enforce unjust laws, bring in the fines, bring in the asset forfeitures, etc. they can’t rely on good people, and they might go out of their way to find bad people.
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Yesterday, my youngest (a teenager) was home alone for a short while and uncharacteristically she called me on the phone, scared. There were fire trucks outside, right outside, and she could hear an amplified voice but not understand what was being said. (Everything was fine…this was just to give the back story.) Today she had friends over and was explaining to them what had happened. All of her friends agreed that she couldn’t open the door and ask the firefighters what was going on. I looked at them, surprised, and said that of all the emergency workers, firefighters are documented as the most trustworthy on the job, so what was the problem? Every single one of them said that they know the police are dangerous and have to be avoided at all costs, so weren’t firefighters like that too?
These kids are in middle school, and they know that their life could be in danger if they’re near police. That’s the reality they’re growing up in. Fortunately there was a back way out of the building and there wasn’t a fire…but would my kid have stayed in a burning building rather than run out to the scary emergency workers?
How many children are going to be put at risk because of this ripple effect?
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“This is getting so common…”
I think the issue is recording it and putting it on the interwebs where millions of people can see it is getting so common now. Idiot racist cops have been common for some centuries now unfortunately.
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Even there, it can be questionable. The more data points from which you swing away from the “default” of white, straight, male, (Middle class or better,) the more likely a police encounter will end badly.
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You guess most confrontations end reasonably. Well, get a vid of one of those thousands of lion-with-lamb interactions and we’ll talk about it. Meanwhile, could you address the batshit crazy video we’re looking at right now, where this fucking pig cop throws a little girl to the ground and pulls his fucking gun on her? Could we talk about that one?
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coming from an ex cop sadly running likely will get you shot, but by the over zealous cop who’s trying to compensate for his or her lack of self confidence and feel they have to prove how much of a man he or she is to their peers. you know in men they call it the napoleon syndrome in women it’s penis envy. there are good cops but this isn’t about them it’s those few bad apples that snuck by on the psych exams. those who only joined to have the legal right to put boot to some poor slob because they can and their having a bad day. usually that individual very often is single or soon to become so after getting on the job. they have a reputation that when you hear them calling for back-up their own squad openly ask the question as to “what poor slob has that ass hole got cornered now”, and then their like “why are you chasing him/her”? and the response is “he/she ran” and many would say “if you were chasing me i’d run too” if you look in the eyes of these kind of men/women when they encounter someone of color (black,brown, yellow or red) you see in their face terror. i personally believe it’s their own lack of knowledge and fear if the myths are true hype that make the basis of their unfounded fears of a ethnic group of peoples. maybe they grew up in a neighborhood or family that regularly practiced using derogatory slang’s of or about other ethnic groups and it was acceptable even revered. and of course with that a bigot attitude so do the myths. sadly until people change their narrow minded one sided perception of people they haven’t given themselves a chance to know, they never will and so the cycle begins again with the next generation of their kin. bad call bad judgement yes, but moreover they are just plain scared or impudent
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I don’t see any evidence otherwise
and for this someone unfortunately all to often dies or is maimed for life
If the ‘good apples’ are still likely to shoot someone for running away, I can’t tell them apart from the bad ones.
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I’ve been wondering the same thing – cops are avoiding corralling him and he gets in close with no challenge.
At some point you gotta wonder if you’ve got an orchard or a mouldy pile of pigs shit…
Or am i mixing my metaphors?
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Straight after this I immediately read @Sander’s quote this from the Terry Pratchett thread;
“It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was ‘policeman’. If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman , if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.”
Terry Pratchett
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We know teenage kids still are in a process of brain development, we know they often don’t make what adults consider good decisions. We used to kind of shrug it off and say “kids will be kids”. We don’t let them drive till they’re 16 and that’s questionable if they have enough judgment at 16. They can’t buy alcohol till they are 21. In all kind of ways we recognize they need time to finish growing up. So imagine if you’re a kid of color and all of a sudden you’re confronted with known killers. Some will be outraged at the injustice and yell at the cops, Some will be scared senseless and run. Some will go “deer in the headlights” and just stand there and all of them are in danger of dying because Cops.
As an adult I’ve had a crazy-ass cop bump me in the forehead with his gun barrel giving me contradictory commands. At that moment he was totally insane! Raging mad! The only thing that saved me was a sane cop who forced the idiot to stop pointing the gun at me. As soon as the sane cop had him distracted him he told me to get out fast. I was still astride my motorcycle and did just that. I’m white which helped, middle-aged at the time which didn’t matter, and riding an old Harley which did not help. I was scared, pissed, not thinking clear because of the encounter and I’m a well educated white guy in my thirties. What the hell would a kid think in that situation. When I asked a cop about pressing charges the next day I was told to just forget it.
With all the fuss about getting vaccinations for our kids’ health I wish we could vaccinate them against killer cops!
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Well, the police do seem to follow a different set of laws than the regular public, much like how soldiers follow the UCMJ on duty, rather than the regular law. The police are given access to chemical weaponry and full auto firearms, just like the military. Many police departments now have mobile operations bases and MRAPs and APCs, just like the military. They treat the people they’re ostensibly protecting with contempt and incidental death as collateral, much like the military.
However, unlike the military, police officers are almost never charged when they unlawfully kill someone. Whereas the UCMJ is followed very closely, and unlawful killings are harshly punished in the military.
So you could say that “mercenary” is a more appropriate term to call the police, rather than “soldier”. They get all the privileges and are given the authority to take life like soldiers, but aren’t being held to standards or punished when the standards are broken. Just like mercenaries and hired guns.
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I’m confused. You’re using this video to support your point, or to refute it?
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That’s the thing I don’t get. Some police seem to get really really pissed off when you don’t follow directions to a “T”. But it’s not like people are used to having orders barked at them while a gun (or taser) is pointed in their face. Let alone continue to follow directions after they have been tackled or thrown to the ground.
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But not so fast that they notice you.
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