What the **** is Wrong with American Cops?

I remember a study that was brought up on one of the NPR shows I listen to. Essentially, during the worst of the “rust belt” economy collapse in the greater Detroit area, the drug trade was largely responsible for keeping things running in the poorer communities.
Billions of dollars moved through the area, dollars which tended to be spent keeping local businesses running.
Folks selling drugs need groceries, pizzas, haircuts, and clothing to wear....

It’s been my opinion for years now that the war on drugs has been an unmitigated disaster; not only utterly ineffective by the government’s own assessment (the GAO did two studies) but creating a permanent underclass of citizens who have no hope of ever becoming “productive members of society”.
And our legislator’s response? Get tougher on crime. Here in Missouri they want to eliminate probation and parole and try kids as young as 12 as adults.
 
The police in France and Spain are no fun once they take you in, either. Rarely, but they do get away with murder. Slap-happy since Franco's days, though, as I can attest. But you never see arrests go down as violently as you do in the US, nor are casual encounters considered potentially dangerous, although I wonder about African immigrants (most are working in dire conditions in rural areas, aka, slave labor).

My personal view is that Americans are culturally predisposed to violence, and "take 'em out behind the shed" is considered a viable option to life's many social challenges. Take a gander at, say, a 2K or 4K menu screen of Amazon Prime video, and you can spend your time leisurely counting the guns and explosions, cop shows, and glorified mercenary work. It is cool to kill ("make my day"), and a good citizen is one who has "served" in the Armed Forces (or will otherwise be suspect), and as Trey Gowdy once exhibited during a Congressional hearing, time in the military gives you the right to silence others and command moral authority.

But beyond all that, there is the knowledge among the police that suspects and bystanders may all be armed and dangerous, elevating encounters to the level of violence you might expect the police need or would use in, say, Afghanistan. Friend vs foe is determined by skin color, accent, type of vehicle, and any other indications white supremacists are looking for that someone is of the tribe. How many good ole boys get gunned down, per perp? Or do, say, good ole double murder suspects get water when detained, and no knee to the neck?


Violent culture. Presence of firearms. Racism. Class grievances. Toss that in any model and you get USA-style statistics.
 
Bikewer said:
I remember a study that was brought up on one of the NPR shows I listen to. Essentially, during the worst of the “rust belt” economy collapse in the greater Detroit area, the drug trade was largely responsible for keeping things running in the poorer communities.
Billions of dollars moved through the area, dollars which tended to be spent keeping local businesses running.
Folks selling drugs need groceries, pizzas, haircuts, and clothing to wear....

It’s been my opinion for years now that the war on drugs has been an unmitigated disaster; not only utterly ineffective by the government’s own assessment (the GAO did two studies) but creating a permanent underclass of citizens who have no hope of ever becoming “productive members of society”.
And our legislator’s response? Get tougher on crime. Here in Missouri they want to eliminate probation and parole and try kids as young as 12 as adults.
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I grew up in Detroit during that period.
Fun adjuncts to the drug houses were the impromptu thrift stores that the dealers branched out into.
If one wished to purchase a VCR, car stereo, leather jacket, pair of expensive sneakers, television set, bicycle, or car battery one need only visit the drug-house annex to score such merchandise at a discount.
The junkies and crackheads had taken to paying the dealers in merchandise- and the entrepreneurial spirit of the dealers combined with the high numbers of vacant properties led to the creation of these outlets.

Good times...
I can't shake the suspicion that I am going to have a chance to relive them at the other end of my life.
 
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Distracted1 said:
I strongly agree with that. I think it is a bit backwards though, much easier to integrate high-income people into low-income neighborhoods (much less expensive all the way around)
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What you are suggesting is called “gentrification” and that is racist.
 
Ziggurat said:
I said nothing about deserve. Someone who plays on train tracks doesn’t deserve to die for it. But it’s a rather foreseeable and avoidable consequence.
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Does sleeping in one's house whilst black count as "playing on train tracks"?
 
arthwollipot said:
You know something else that's wrong with American cops?

Dave Grossman. Take that guy out of the picture and things might improve.
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It's not just him. A lot of these training contractors who started their companies at the height of the Iran and Afghan wars shifted to police training when those contracts started to dry up. There's an entire industry of former special forces types teach our police that they are patrolling an area of active insurgency instead of protecting their neighbors.

It would do a great deal of good if departments had policies that only a supervisory officer/deputy (meaning management, not union) can teach and evaluate officers on the use of deadly force. If departments want to rent facilities like ranges and shoot houses from these companies, go nuts. Just make the training and certification on the use of force a government function.
 
Craig4 said:
While we're on the topic of what's wrong with police, what in the actual ****?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/11/us/8-year-old-boy-key-west-arrest-trnd/index.html

If you can't summon the command presence to bring an eight-year-old under control, maybe you're in the wrong line of work.
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Well the police chief seems rather proud that his officer followed the correct procedures. Procedures that were no doubt established by the police dept themselves, with no flexibility to allow for circumstances.

And it was very polite of the little fellow to allow himself to be arrested without the use of handcuffs. Maybe there is a lesson here for the police.
 
Steve said:
Well the police chief seems rather proud that his officer followed the correct procedures. Procedures that were no doubt established by the police dept themselves, with no flexibility to allow for circumstances.

And it was very polite of the little fellow to allow himself to be arrested without the use of handcuffs. Maybe there is a lesson here for the police.
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This topic perhaps merits more exploration. Should the police be the the ones deciding how they are going to police us?
 
Distracted1 said:
Do you think they have?
Warrants, Miranda, Reasonable Cause, use of force rules. etc..
You think it was the Police who included those things in their rule book?
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Yes, I think the police included, or added, those things to their procedures book as the law evolved. I also think that police forces establish their own procedures, using current law, for how they expect arrests to be conducted. The point that you seem to be missing is that, just because arrest procedures are carried out in a lawful manner, it does not always make them the appropriate thing to do.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
God damned libs trying to cancel another hero:



https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/08/12/salt-lake-city-police/
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People forget how much fun it is watching a dog tear someone up for a cop.

"Police records show that Lemay’s injuries came up in electronic messages sent between Officers Bush and Brandon McHale later that day.

“YOUR BITE OR (Dietz’s)?” McHale inquired.

“I LET (Dietz) HAVE IT,” Bush replied.

“NICE, HOW BAD?” McHale asked.

“BAD,” Bush wrote. “FACE AND BACK.”

“SKIN GRAFT BAD?” McHale asked.

“NO,” Bush wrote.

“COULDA BEEN WORSE THEN, HE SHOULD HAVE COMPLIED,” McHale said, ending the conversation."

http://watchdogsarasota.heraldtribune.com/2015/12/26/scarred-come-get-ur-bite/
 
Steve said:
Chief says they did it right. Followed the book.
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There was a recent case here where the police dog injured someone. The police report says that the behavior of the police was consistent with police department policies.

The response from the community was, if that is consistent with policy, then the policy needs to be changed.
 
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