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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]

#141
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am assaulted and mugged I get some bruises and lose my wallet. Those are relatively minor outcomes compared to the enormous court expenses and years or a lifetime of damage that an officer can do. Hell, as per the article, the $300 to get my car out of impound would be a lot more than the pocket change I stand to lose in a mugging. Most well-fed sharks won't attack a human, but I'm not about to dive into the tan…

Bruises and a lost wallet are also minor compared to a transit accident. Yet I'm guessing you get around? They're less than the damage from choking to death, but I'm guessing you eat more than liquid food? I don't think you're actually calculating the risk here.

Actually, I refuse to commute by car because of the risk of accident and the health impact of the stress of driving and the sedentary lifestyle.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renaming the titles isn't the point. The point is freezing new hires into that culture, and creating a new culture to run in parallel to it.

There already exists a separate culture without weapons (corrections officers). Its universally less paid, less equipped, less respected and more dangerous.

So we create a third culture, beat cops who aren't gun slingers.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever actually been to the US? For something like that to happen you'd have to be breaking the law. Saying the wrong thing to a cop won't do it - local police don't have the power to deport you. The most they can do is refer you to CIS, and if there's no crime CIS will say "Why are you bothering us?" It should be common sense you don't go to a foreign country and break the laws, no matter where you're from or…

Ha, right. Police only ever beat you down and jail you when you've broken the law; what a laughable myth. Did you even read the original article?

Yes, and I noted the lack of independent verification. All we have here is an accusation.

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

#144

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?

i knew what you were saying. no harm intended <3

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point does not immediately notifying people that you're a doctor remotely justify beating the shit out of you?

It doesn't justify the beating . But if a random guy walks into the middle of a police confrontation, that random guy is going to be presumed hostile until proven otherwise, with some fairly good reason. He just made the situation considerably less safe, even with the best of cops. From there, the cops went completely out of control. But notifying them that he was a doctor might have prevented them from starting down…

Out of control according to the guy who confronted police, claimed to be a MD, then refused to show his ID and call the police names.

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

#146

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.)

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.

use the term "non whitey" ref. https://g.co/kgs/gFAiGM

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

#147
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In sum, you and others seem to describe the present situation as a result of a more violent historical past? And maybe it could be more like an European model?

Thanks, that answers my question.

(Regarding the equal number of up/down votes on my previous comment: Save the emotional energy. :-) I'm a curious European without a clue about the related political discussion. I'm sorry if I stepped on any toes; for the record, my home country is probably more dysfunctional than USA, but in different ways.)

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

#148
post #33

Yeah ok, brave guy but he will eventually get shot for doing this. Call me a coward, but I'd never do something like this. I have a kid to raise.

Thats all fine and dandy, but if it was your kid being detained (or yourself), wouldn't you like a passerby to check on you? It's not being coward, it's being shortsighted.

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

#149

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...

Thanks, I'd have felt kind of strange linking directly to there. He is a very interesting person, it's well worth watching him.

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to ask you for a hypothetical. Say you are a police officer and one of your coworkers shouts "GUN" and you don't directly see one. You see your coworker freaking out, you see them drawing, and you see the other suspect moving. What do you do? Do you draw your gun/taser? I'd do that just going off of what my coworker has said. It's entirely reasonable to suspect there to be a gun. Now I'd like to run through…

Of course it isn't unreasonable to work together. But the officers in the article were colluding to cover their asses for breaking the law, not cooperating to ensure mutual safety. And indeed, this is a pattern I read and hear about often, unfortunately.

Oh cool, I didn't know you could read minds and see into the past! You should do me next!

Honestly though, we will never objectively know what the officers are thinking in that situation nor know exactly what happened. If they were colluding or if they did think that the person was resisting arrest. Given all the information I have, it's not unreasonable that the officers did what they did. Someone walks up, tries to go towards a suspect, and is confrontational when asked for ID. That is a bit of a hint that something is off.

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