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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]

#101

Post by [deleted] »

SwellJoe wrote: post #90
duaneb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't even the most absurd part about citizen/cop cash transactions: under civil forfeiture, they can take up to (iirc) $10,000 of your cash no justification or remediation path. Really, all they need is a traffic stop or a (suspect) smell of cannabis in the air.

There is no such limit, in most jurisdictions, as far as I know...and, if you happen to be carrying a lot of cash, it is viewed as evidence of wrongdoing. Hell, Oklahoma has begun using a device that allows them to take money from debit cards, as well. My position on police has evolved over the years to the point where I don't even really believe in "good cops", anymore. The entire system seems built to excise honest…

[deleted]

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

#102

Post by eternalban »

fake-name wrote: post #86
eternalban wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Good" police officers should fear losing their livelihoods for helping cover up the abuses of "bad" ones. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/16/baltimore-joe-cryst... There are good cops out there, no doubt about it.

Maybe, but the few "bad apples" have spoilt the bunch.

I wouldn't know if it is "few" or "most" or whatever.

The implied point of citing officer Crystal's ordeals -- and he was basically given a mild form of the Mafia treatment by his "fraternal" brethren -- was that the society-at-large should step up and go to bat for the "good" cops. I'm not sure if we are doing that.

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

#103

Post by justin66 »

davesque wrote: post #91

While I basically agree with the argument of this article -- that it's not okay for officers to be so aggressive, abusive, and dishonest -- I don't find the tone to be very helpful for a couple of reasons. 1) The word "white" appeared in a sequence of insults toward the end of the article. It's hard to deny that, while this kind of talk might be broadly accepted, it's still basically racism. Fundamentally, the ethnic…

I'm white and I didn't view it as any sort of racist slur to identify the cops as white. It indicates that the author viewed his treatment, and the treatment of the handcuffed suspect, at the hands of police as probably being racially motivated.

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

#104

Post by generic_user »

rayiner wrote: post #19

This shit has been happening to poor black and Hispanic people for a long time. In a sick way, it's a good thing that it's happening to doctors now. It's easy for comfortable suburbanites to vote pro-police, but now that the cancer has spread and police are brazenly abusing everyone else, it won't be so easy to ignore. We need a system of collective punishment for such conduct. "Good" police officers should fear losi…

Poor Black and Hispanic people have been driving past crime scenes parking there cars and trying to interfere with Police in the midst of an arrest?

I seriously doubt that. But I have no doubt that anyone of any color that pulls over at a crime scene and tries to approach the suspect is going to be arrested. More then likely you will also be incapacitated in some way. That is what they are trained to do and rightly so. There is no way to judge your intentions. An officer can be dead in a split second in that situation and many have.

You do not pull over at a crime scene to 'help'.

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

#105

Post by SwellJoe »

trungonnews wrote: post #85
trungonnews wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I only learned English after 11 year old. What a confusing language... I thought you guys might know some fancy word, but you only switched the words around.

Race relations are complicated in the US (and in most of the world). A term that wouldn't seem problematic can become problematic because of its historical context. That's the case with many racial epithets in English...words that seemingly have no negative connotation can take on negative connotation when used for a period of time to insult or separate people based on their race, religion, origin, gender, sexual or gender identity, etc.

No one blames you for not knowing; all you're responsible for is how you respond and correcting future usage. The appropriate response is something along the lines of, "I didn't know. I will say X in the future. Thanks for the heads up." And, if you haven't been told what a better option is, you can generally ask without causing upset.

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

#107

Post by dredmorbius »

rayiner wrote: post #19

This shit has been happening to poor black and Hispanic people for a long time. In a sick way, it's a good thing that it's happening to doctors now. It's easy for comfortable suburbanites to vote pro-police, but now that the cancer has spread and police are brazenly abusing everyone else, it won't be so easy to ignore. We need a system of collective punishment for such conduct. "Good" police officers should fear losi…

How do you un-rot a barrel of apples?

Better yet: any instances where this has actually happened?

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

#108

Post by tptacek »

berntb wrote: post #26
soneil wrote: 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…

Weird, it seems counterproductive. Why doesn't the US police in bigger cities try to integrate with the citizens? Is the violence risk so big or are there legal reasons?

They should. The phenomenon of heavily-armed police spending most of their working hours either in a squad car or actively handling a disturbance, rather than walking a beat, is a modern one. It's something Peter Moskos laments in Cop In The Hood, which is a pretty decent book on the practices of modern police forces written by a sociologist who served for a year as an experiment.

Beat policing is not one of the most dangerous occupations in the US, and a lot of the danger police face is self-generated: readiness to escalate conflict alters the calculus of offenders as well.

The big issue we have with current police forces is cultural, and it probably can't be fixed by fiat. We'll have to do it at the organization level, through attrition. It's simple. For simplicity of discussion, rename all current patrol officers "assault officers"; they're the heavily armed ones that spend their day in cars or in confrontation. Now: stop hiring new assault officers. Instead, for every assault officer headcount you'd hire, bring in 1.5-3 new "compliance officers" who can walk beats, help people, de-escalate simple criminal incidents, and very quickly summon assault officers.

(I also think that most police officers should simply be disarmed. They should have ready access to long guns, perhaps in the trunk of their squad car, but they shouldn't be 5 seconds from killing someone else at all times during their work day.)

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

#109

Post by shawndumas »

gravypod wrote: post #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 O…

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsgkhimI0MthrMZo-F2zrTQ/fea...

not an endorsement; just being helpful...

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

#110

Post by AnimalMuppet »

trungonnews wrote: post #89
Meegul wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no difference in the end. The police caused you financial harm, with no restitution. They should be held liable for that under civil law.

Forgot to say that they also took away my driver license for a whole month. I wish I knew how I can get the tow fee reimbursed.

Small claims court might be worth a look. I'm not sure if you can sue a city there, though.
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