How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

Were I not very familiar with him, an interpretation such as yours would definitely be one of my high probability estimates, which is what compelled me to add my views. Take it as you will.

Always film your interactions with the police, because they WILL lie to make themselves the hero and you the villain.

Also, know your rights, exercise them. Especially your 5th amendment.

I've been lucky in that my interactions with police have ranged from professionally neutral (mostly traffic cops) to indifferent and bored (cop at a police station clearly not giving two shits that I'd just been mugged). (Of course, me being a white male helps with this "luck".) But the stuff I hear about makes me wonder: if I need the police at any point in time, what are my chances of getting a cop that's helpful vs. one that's on a power trip and wants to fuck with me?

I seriously wonder about that, and I seriously will think twice about calling 911 in an emergency. And that's the problem. It doesn't matter one bit what the percentage is: maybe 0.00001% of cops are bad, and the rest are good. But the perception is that a significant portion of cops are just power-hungry assholes who love being able to strap on a gun and show that they have authority over you. Perception matters more than reality sometimes.

The problem is that (especially for minorities in large cities) calling for the police is a gamble.

That many white, suburban kids are taught from a young age that "all police are your friends, you can always go to them if you need help" and that many minorities in cities are taught from a young age "cops are people near complete immunity, great authority and guns; they are to be feared; you would do best to avoid them at all costs and if you must interact with them, be as non-confrontational as possible and if you are arrested say nothing until you have a lawyer".

From the article ...

> I was standing 15 feet from the scene beside Officer Kaur, a stocky female of South Asian complexion. She turned to me and abruptly said that I was not needed as a witness and should leave immediately. I told her we were headed home, just across the way, when my friend and I encountered the accident; and that I’d recently broken my elbow in a similar bike accident here and deeply cared about the outcome.

The cop told the author to leave, the author indicated otherwise.

I guess the author got the "police are your friends" story growing up, not the "avoid at all costs and be non-confrontational if you cannot" story.

Every time the author got confrontational, the situation worsened. Want a doctor? Solitary.

From here, the next thing is "but what about the author's rights? even if the cops don't like you, you still have rights!". Sure, and exercising your rights is inconvenient, at times requiring things like going to jail until things are sorted out.

For a cop arresting you, it's just another day at work. For you, it's missing work unexpectedly, maybe some legal bills, worrying who is watching your kid in a few hours, etc. Your life goes upside for a bit even if charges are ultimately dropped or if the first time in front of a judge your lawyer convinces the judge to throw out the case. You have everything to lose and they/the system/etc. have nothing to lose (except for once in a while when it gets really bad and there's a huge lawsuit, like this recent local story[0], unless you've got some clout, in which case the mayor will call to see how you're doing[1]).

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/nyregion/man-51-dies-in-th...

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/nyregion/de-blasio-defends...

Who says that they don't speak out about this sort of stuff? How many good cops do condemn this behavior? How many of them do you not hear about? What happens to cops who condemn other cops?