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To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

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Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#71
post #27
post #4

This is why I teach my children never to speak to police officers, to avoid them as much as possible, and to leave the area should they become visibly present. And I live in Canada; when I travel to the USA on business I stay in the hotel or the venue and restrict my traveling as much as possible. I don't fear the citizens, I fear the police.

Frankly, you've allowed yourself to fall prey to US election year propaganda. If you look at the numbers you're very safe travelling in the US, and to the extent you're in danger it's from criminals and not police.

My position is in-line with the advice of lawyers[0][1][2][...] and police[3]. And as a foreigner I have virtually no rights while on American soil.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UezKO4TnaHs

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKe-NC30obg

3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y_l3sa-iJQ

Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#73
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some rural communities this is how the police behave in the US. I've seen police changing tires for people near my house countless times for example.

I lived in rural Michigan for a few years. I knew every city cop by first name ( very small city. like "how on earth to do you call that a city" small), and it'd generally fit that description. But the sheriff, state police and tribal police .. wide berth. Obviously anecdotal so I can't disagree with you. Just that my experience of rural police was a mixed bag. Black uniform good. Blue uniform bad. Brown uniform real…

I'm from Pennsylvania, I think it was the Quakers[0] who framed it originally like this but police here do more community policing as opposed to broken windows policing. In my experience, most police mainly use the law as a tool to keep the peace and don't really care what you do as long as it doesn't bother anyone else. Sure there must be some bad ones out there, but it goes to show you that a different mindset can have a measurable effect on the outcome.

[0]https://www.quakercloud.org/cloud/chicago-friends-meeting/an... (looks like they are still at it 400 years later)

Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#74
post #4

This is why I teach my children never to speak to police officers, to avoid them as much as possible, and to leave the area should they become visibly present. And I live in Canada; when I travel to the USA on business I stay in the hotel or the venue and restrict my traveling as much as possible. I don't fear the citizens, I fear the police.

The best advice I ever got regarding police came from my mother years ago, who got out of defense law the moment she laid eyes on the system. "At the end of the day, a cop is just someone with a gun, and if no one else is there to contradict them, their story will be believed."

Now of course we know that even with video evidence, there's little hope.

Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#75
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's always made me sad. My ex was American - when we moved to Ireland, I made a habit of routinely (once a week or so) asking random policemen for directions to places, just to teach her that they're entirely approachable here. The closest thing we had to a bad experience, was one chap who took it upon himself to walk with us until we could see our destination, just to make sure we found it. I'd only wanted to was…

In some rural communities this is how the police behave in the US. I've seen police changing tires for people near my house countless times for example.

It's still good advice in general.

I grew up in a small rural community. I'm sure the cops here occasionally do things like changing tires for people.

They're also bullies who like to go on power trips. If they feel disrespected at all, they will beat you senseless (and have).

Police across the US are almost universally bullies on power trips. The job of police offer is every bully's biggest dream: they can get paid to go around and abuse people while demanding respect from everyone.

Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#76
Had I read through this article years ago I'd feel very different about this then I do now. My default position is, and always will be, to suspect the government is at fault but that being said I still understand why police officers do what they do.

I'd like to leave something that has helped me to understand the thought process of most police officers. There is a youtube channel called "Think Like A Cop - The Rest Of The Story" run by an..... interesting character. He's an expolice officer who, by all accounts I've been able to find, was very good at what he did.

He presents the "other side of the story", the side of the police that you don't usually hear well developed. From watching many of his videos, I can pretty safely assume that he doesn't trust the government, I'm fairly sure he isn't racist, and I'm fairly sure he isn't sexist. What is more representative of him is that he tries his hardest not to be politically correct. It is my opinion that even if you don't respect him as a person, you can probably respect his methods of thinking about problems and his experience as a police officer. I'd hope some of the people here watch some of his stories about how cops react to situations as he makes things that seem 100% unreasonable seem much more sensible.

For instance his motto is "no people belong on the ground" which refer to to people who want to be adversarial to the police. This policy is blanketed across all people that cops deal with and after watching some of his police shooting videos you can see why. When he shows videos of cops getting shot or killed he mostly shows videos where the police don't follow this golden rule. This rings true with all of the cop shooting videos I've seen.

I'm not saying he is right, I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying he offers a very "interesting" perspective that I think many will enjoy.

Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you didn't intend any offense, but for future reference, "colored" is considered archaic and borderline racial-epithet in the U.S. (I realize it's quite normal and non-offensive elsewhere.)

I didn't mean to offend. What word is more appropriate to describe cops who are not white?

Person of Color or POC. You might say, "Cops who are People of Color."

Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#78

Consider it from the cops' point of view. A random person shows up and wants to "check the health" of their suspect. When asked for id, he wants to debate "why". Does he seriously think they'll let some unknown person who refuses to provide id interfere with their arrest? Would any cop in any country allow this? What he should have done is opened with "I am a licensed physician, here's my license and id. May I check…

[deleted]

Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, officers of color are usually nicer. The Asian cop who helped me retrieve the impound release paperwork was nice to me. Even waived the $100 paper work fee. But I'm still pissed about the whole situation. Wasted three hours and $300 because of some cop decided to arrest a sober person to kill time rather than patrolling the street and catching the real criminals. Edit: had to change colored to officers of colo…

I'm sure you didn't intend any offense, but for future reference, "colored" is considered archaic and borderline racial-epithet in the U.S. (I realize it's quite normal and non-offensive elsewhere.)

The problem with this bullshit.

Yes bullshit.

The problem with this bullshit is that the politically correct adjectives seem to change on a daily basis. I can't keep up. What word are we supposed to use in this half-hour period?

Clearly the parent commenter didn't mean any harm. Can we all just relax a bit.

Re: To the 4 white male policemen who beat me for checking the health of [detainee]

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure you didn't intend any offense, but for future reference, "colored" is considered archaic and borderline racial-epithet in the U.S. (I realize it's quite normal and non-offensive elsewhere.)

I didn't mean to offend. What word is more appropriate to describe cops who are not white?

"Officers of color" is more palatable.
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