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The behaviour of US police officers

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quadraginta said:
Probably. But 'resistance' to what?

Raising your hands to keep from being repeatedly punched in the face is, as you so cogently pointed out, 'resistance' ... by definition. But is it necessarily anything more than resistance to being repeatedly punched in the face.

Because what all too commonly happens is that it is somehow morphed into "resisting arrest". Cops beat on you, and when you try to protect yourself you're "resisting". Even though the only thing you are resisting is being beaten up, not anything else.

See how that works? Instant charges conveniently available.
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In 2009 police in Ferguson (yes that Ferguson) charged a man with bleeding on their uniforms after they beat him.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-day-ferguson-cops-were-caught-in-a-bloody-lie
 
JoeMorgue said:
In 2009 police in Ferguson (yes that Ferguson) charged a man with bleeding on their uniforms after they beat him.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-day-ferguson-cops-were-caught-in-a-bloody-lie
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I remember that report which only came out after the protests there.

The whole 100 pages of the DoJ report into Ferguson is hard to summarise as every page was damning.

And there is nothing to suggest that Ferguson PD was particularly atypical. It's disparity index in vehicular stops was actually better than the Missouri average.
 
Which is the whole point the "few bad apples" and the "but that only X number of incident out of Y number of law enforcement interactions that happens on any given day" arguments miss.

There are ~800,000 law enforcement officers in America. Nobody is expecting "perfection" from them.

It's that the system they are part of doesn't react when they do go wrong. If every single incident we're talking about in the public discourse in the last few years still happened but we could see a Law Enforcement culture reacting to with even token effort it would be a radically different conversation we would be having right now.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Which is the whole point the "few bad apples" and the "but that only X number of incident out of Y number of law enforcement interactions that happens on any given day" arguments miss.

There are ~800,000 law enforcement officers in America. Nobody is expecting "perfection" from them.

It's that the system they are part of doesn't react when they do go wrong. If every single incident we're talking about in the public discourse in the last few years still happened but we could see a Law Enforcement culture reacting to with even token effort it would be a radically different conversation we would be having right now.
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QFT.

And also that there isn't even a system to measure how many apples are bad, so it's only an assertion without evidence that they are only a few bad apples.
 
Bob001 said:
And where do you come from? In the U.S., policing is largely a local function. There are around 18,000 independent police departments and sheriffs' offices in the U.S. at the city, county and state levels, ranging in size from one guy with a dog to the 55,000 officers and civilian employees of the NYPD. There are also federal law enforcement authorities like the FBI, ATF, ICE, Secret Service etc., but they have zero authority over other local forces or each other. There is nothing like a national police authority.

In six months you couldn't even assemble the mailing addresses for 18,000 agencies, and the president has absolutely nothing to do with any of it. Your lack of understanding explains your lack of understanding.
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I'm from the UK.

Now, what is it you're getting so "het up" about?
 
I may have mentioned this before, but very long ago I knew a doctor, and psychologist, who theorized that one big problem with police (racism not a factor there) was that they see themselves as the hammers of god, the forces of righteousness in a wicked society, and get carried away with their mission, believing that their excesses are excusable in the battle. He said he recalled meeting only one cop whose motives were really healthy. He asked a trooper once, why he had become a cop. He responded that as a kid he'd liked to drive fast, and thought the uniforms were snappy. He was a Connecticut State trooper, and eventually rose to be the State police commissioner. He was, by all accounts, a good cop.
 
jimbob said:
QFT.



And also that there isn't even a system to measure how many apples are bad, so it's only an assertion without evidence that they are only a few bad apples.
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Also that platitude is based on forgetting the second half of the very quote it invokes (see also: "my country, right or wrong....")
 
bruto said:
I may have mentioned this before, but very long ago I knew a doctor, and psychologist, who theorized that one big problem with police (racism not a factor there) was that they see themselves as the hammers of god, the forces of righteousness in a wicked society, and get carried away with their mission, believing that their excesses are excusable in the battle. He said he recalled meeting only one cop whose motives were really healthy. He asked a trooper once, why he had become a cop. He responded that as a kid he'd liked to drive fast, and thought the uniforms were snappy. He was a Connecticut State trooper, and eventually rose to be the State police commissioner. He was, by all accounts, a good cop.
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There also is probably a culture of "closing ranks" and a tribalism once in whichever force.
 
jimbob said:
There also is probably a culture of "closing ranks" and a tribalism once in whichever force.
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Of course, and there are and have been terrible problems with police forces all over the world. The UK as an example can hardly adopt a holier-than-thou attitude but it does seem that the USA is for once truly exceptional. Parsman said a few posts back “… I may often not care for the Police service in Scotland, but I have never actually feared for my life when I have interacted with them...” and I think that gets to the root of the difference, it seems that Americans are afraid of their police and their police are afraid of them.
 
jimbob said:
There also is probably a culture of "closing ranks" and a tribalism once in whichever force.
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That's true of... well everything. But other equivalent organization still either maintain their own or agree to external ways of policing (no pun, although the irony is unavoidable) themselves.
 
Darat said:
Of course, and there are and have been terrible problems with police forces all over the world. The UK as an example can hardly adopt a holier-than-thou attitude but it does seem that the USA is for once truly exceptional. Parsman said a few posts back “… I may often not care for the Police service in Scotland, but I have never actually feared for my life when I have interacted with them...” and I think that gets to the root of the difference, it seems that Americans are afraid of their police and their police are afraid of them.
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Indeed, and Nessie, for example, has highlighted multiple examples of bad UK police. And complete lack of convictions for any of the unlawful killings by UK police officers is shameful. But the US is in a different league.
 
jimbob said:
Indeed, and Nessie, for example, has highlighted multiple examples of bad UK police. And complete lack of convictions for any of the unlawful killings by UK police officers is shameful. But the US is in a different league.
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International comparison of deaths in custody, rate per million;

https://assets.publishing.service.g...dy_A_review_of_the_international_evidence.pdf

USA - 1
Scotland - 0.84
E & W - 0.73
New Zealand - 0.65
Australia - 0.32
Sweden - 0.29
Norway - 0.23
Germany - 0.14

In that respect, the USA is not in its own league, it is top of the league, but the UK is not far behind.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Deaths in custody is a different thing though.
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Any death that happens during an arrest, or once someone has been arrested and is detained by the police, is a death in custody. The report I linked to specifically ensured it was comparing like with like.
 
I must say that this thread has made me very pessimistic about human nature today. Aside from the article about a Kentucky man who was charged room and board for his 14 months of false imprisonment (or did I read that somewhere else, now I forget), I think that if I were looking for a prime example of "what is the wrongest way bad people can be evil and wrong," to charge your victim for bleeding on a cop's uniform, not only after being beaten, but being wrongly arrested in the first place, is about at that maximum level. It goes beyond just wrong, beyond just evil, into the realm of truly insane perversion. About the only way I think you could top that would be if a cop, after murdering a man, charged his estate for the trouble he caused. I look forward to reading some example of just this, soon enough.
 
bruto said:
I must say that this thread has made me very pessimistic about human nature today. Aside from the article about a Kentucky man who was charged room and board for his 14 months of false imprisonment (or did I read that somewhere else, now I forget), I think that if I were looking for a prime example of "what is the wrongest way bad people can be evil and wrong," to charge your victim for bleeding on a cop's uniform, not only after being beaten, but being wrongly arrested in the first place, is about at that maximum level. It goes beyond just wrong, beyond just evil, into the realm of truly insane perversion. About the only way I think you could top that would be if a cop, after murdering a man, charged his estate for the trouble he caused. I look forward to reading some example of just this, soon enough.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35519757
 
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