not specific to the brown case,

I worked with lotsa cops from 1985 thru 2005. I estimate 3/4ths of them were good eggs, that is, they weren't in heat to make trouble for anyone if the complaint was nonsense. A few leaped on any excuse to fuck up your day. Like:

I got a call from the Sheriff to assist a sergeant with a problem. The problem was a deputy who wanted to jail a woman for a pack of spoiled ground beef. The sergeant wanted the deputy to throw the meat away and leave. The deputy was stubborn. I was called to reason with the deputy. Finally the sergeant put his foot down and made the deputy leave the scene. A week later the same deputy came to work in heels, dress, and dyed blonde hair. The sheriff fired him on the spot.

On another occasion a female cop responded to a 911 call and jailed the mom because her toddler had a shitty diaper. Mom was found unconscious, duh! The cop charged her with felony child neglect for a shitty diaper. The shit was fresh, no rash. Mom was sick with the flu.

kbate said:

Yes, there is a problem with many police in the U.S.

It isn't that they are bad, it is that they believe they are separate from the public and that they are not constrained by the laws they are supposed to uphold.

Police should be part of the community, but even in small towns they aren't:

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I think the them & us attitude is engrained in American society. here, it shows up most obviously in political debates, but it's also not hard to spot in gender & race relations, attitudes towards the middle east, solvent & poor, etc.

kbate said:

And that's why they hate cameras, they have to do it right or risk losing.

(Not a bad cop, but a bad girl who knew he had a gun at home and lied to try to make the crime appear worse than it was but the police and prosecutor went along with it because, "Glory if we can convict!".

It's a law problem.

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I liked this part---^ Especially that police have to do it right. There is no room for error with their job, and if there is an error, it changes everything.

Being a police officer is a lot like juggling chainsaws, you have to be perfect in your actions, but that only makes it that much more viable for an officer who did make a mistake to try and cover up those mistakes.

Here's the thing: As long as you are alive, even if wrongly convicted of a capital crime, you still have the right to petition the legal system for a redress of grievances.

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

dolf said:

I think the them & us attitude is engrained in American society. here, it shows up most obviously in political debates, but it's also not hard to spot in gender & race relations, attitudes towards the middle east, solvent & poor, etc.

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"If you don't start none, there won't be none."

PayDay said:

I liked this part---^ Especially that police have to do it right. There is no room for error with their job, and if there is an error, it changes everything.

Being a police officer is a lot like juggling chainsaws, you have to be perfect in your actions, but that only makes it that much more viable for an officer who did make a mistake to try and cover up those mistakes.

Here's the thing: As long as you are alive, even if wrongly convicted of a capital crime, you still have the right to petition the legal system for a redress of grievances.

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

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They only have to do everything right, if there is a camera or outside witness watching. Without the camera, it's the word of a cop against the word of a suspect, and the 'word of a suspect never wins. Every single cop should be wearing a camera on his uniform, or his belt or his hat, and have another in his cruiser, and none of the cameras should be under the control of the patrolman.

If we can use traffic cameras to track suspects through cities, and to find bombers, perhaps it is time to use cameras to ensure public servants are doing their jobs properly as well.

They do a job I don't want and could never do, but they don't have to be a dick about it.

kbate said:

If we can use traffic cameras to track suspects through cities, and to find bombers, perhaps it is time to use cameras to ensure public servants are doing their jobs properly as well.

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not only that.

if we assume the cop was innocent in the brown case, a lapel cam would have saved him being hounded, interrogated, put under threat of legal action.

and if a cop is assaulted or killed, getting justice would be made simpler.

dolf said:

this doesn't solve the obvious problem.

suggest some solutions.

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Fuck if I know.

Anyone who watches American tv is familiar with the term "armed and dangerous." It's basically a classification which means a policeman can expect the suspect to shoot first. At one time, A&D was a fairly uncommon thing.

Maybe it's too much television, or maybe it's American gun culture, but all the recent shootings of unarmed citizens are because they were assumed to be armed and dangerous. The policemen in question did not wait to determine the level of the threat to their personal safety. They used deadly force to resolve the question. End if threat.

There are all kinds of pop psychology explanations. When police patrol cars were first introduced, they were manned by a partners. Every officer had at least one person to back him up. As far as I know, all the recent shootings of unarmed citizens involved a lone officer. It's easy to see a siege mentality in a person who rides around in their mobile fortress.

Maybe psychology is the answer and the problem is actually that too many police departments fail to screen for officers who can't handle the stress of the job. What would happen to a firefighter who was so paralyzed by a fear of heights, he couldn't climb a ladder? If a policeman can't face the idea of personal danger, maybe he should go find a different occupation. Coal miners live with the idea of dying in a cave in or explosion. It's part of the job and no one pretends it is not.

kbate said:

They only have to do everything right, if there is a camera or outside witness watching. Without the camera, it's the word of a cop against the word of a suspect, and the 'word of a suspect never wins. Every single cop should be wearing a camera on his uniform, or his belt or his hat, and have another in his cruiser, and none of the cameras should be under the control of the patrolman.

If we can use traffic cameras to track suspects through cities, and to find bombers, perhaps it is time to use cameras to ensure public servants are doing their jobs properly as well.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I know all about 'errors are common in municiple court preceedings' and 'since the officer has served the community we are going to take his word for it' kinda stuff.

The cameras would be a good help, I wouldn't doubt, though, that there is many a police officer that loves the idea of a camera, and/or would voluntarily wear one.

...but cameras are just a fix to a root problem of dishonesty in an individual.

For instance, did you know that in-car cameras for recording a traffic stop only record for 30 seconds before the officer turns on his flashing lights?

So how does an in-car camera prevent entrapment or harrassment? What if the officer isn't wearing his body camera when he or she or shim breaks the law?

*also: I have yet to hear if a camera system that has caught a bomb suspect.

spacekowboy said:

They do a job I don't want and could never do, but they don't have to be a dick about it.

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Amen. A-fucking-men.

dolf said:

do you think there's a problem with US policing?
a quick scan of youtube will deliver plenty of cases of cops behaving badly. very little action seems to be taken when things go wrong. with the riots today, it looks like the lives of all cops are being put at risk by this poor relationship with the public.
perhaps the saddest thing I found so far, a guy with downs who was accidentally suffocated by a group of cops, because he was kicking up a (non-violent) fuss at the cinema.

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Sorry But these two are even more disturbing:


FBI: 76 Law Enforcement Officers Killed in Line of Duty Last Year; 49,851 Assaulted
The FBI on Monday said 76 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty in 2013; and another 49,851 officers -- 136 a day -- were assaulted while performing their duties last year

Obama Buddy, HRC Founder Charged with Sexually Abusing Boy
Yet another high-profile “gay” activist has been arrested for homosexual assault on a child. This time authorities bagged a big fish (a rainbow trout?) in boy-loving real estate mogul Terrance Patrick Bean. Bean co-founded the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which is one of the world’s largest, wealthiest and most powerful anti-Christian, pro-homosexual organizations. Bean is also a major bundler for the DNC and is BFF’s with Barack and Michelle Obama. He helped found HRC for the sole purpose of pushing the extremist homosexual political agenda. While, not surprisingly, HRC rushed to scrub its website of any reference to his existence, even now Bean remains on this extremist group’s board of directors

Where's your YouTube moments or media all rankled about this...

dolf said:

not only that.

if we assume the cop was innocent in the brown case, a lapel cam would have saved him being hounded, interrogated, put under threat of legal action.

and if a cop is assaulted or killed, getting justice would be made simpler.

Click to expand...

...only if it records all the time and there is no way to shut it off. A corrupt cop will find a way around something like a body camera, sure you might catch some, at first, but it still comes down to the officer's moral compass in relation to the public trust and law.

TheJAJ said:

I do like the rhetoric on the board today.

Most of the same folks who have a dim view of the authority afforded public servants are the same who will be here to bash them for not "doing their job" when they don't act in a manner they feel needed to stop an injustice.

I personally would not want the job. Especially with the GB mob stirring and brewing just under the surface.:coot:

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Nice bit of sophistry in paragraph 2.

What I expect of law enforcement officers is that they do their job, without prejudice and without breaking the law themselves. Their job is not to stop injustice but rather to administer justice and enforce the law and you do not do that by using canned but good for court statements, edited video, threats, intimidation, and lying to get convictions. I would rather see a thousand guilty people go free due to officers protecting constitutional rights than see one innocent person be jailed through improper procedures and abuse.

Police in Utah kill more people than gang members do

Utah police officers have killed more civilians than gang members, drug dealers, or child abusers have over the past five years, according to a new report from the Salt Lake Tribune.
Use of deadly force by police is the second-most common circumstance in which Utahns killed each other over that time period. Only intimate partner violence killed more people.
But in 2014, more Utahns have died to police use of deadly force than violence between spouses and dating partners.
"The numbers reflect that there could be an issue, and it’s going to take a deeper understanding of these shootings," Chris Gebhardt, a former police lieutenant and sergeant, told the newspaper. "It definitely can't be written off as citizen groups being upset with law enforcement."

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http://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7276877/utah-police-shootings

All of my personal interactions with police, which have been extraordinarily few [I've never been arrested], have been as lovely and professional as one could hope for.

I'm also white, "non-threatening", and extraordinarily polite in those situations.

I think that the vast and overwhelming majority of police officers are genuinely concerned about helping their communities and making them safer, but I think there are two fundamental interrelated issues with policing in the US with regard to police themselves—problems which are extraordinarily difficult to resolve, but not impossible. Firstly, police culture. There is an inherent tribalism which goes with that territory, not just for the police, for any group that identifies as a group. However, much like the military, the police take that to an extreme, forming something of a society within society. So, police form a very insular community, which perceives itself as distinct from the community at large, and wields a great degree of authority over it. That's an inherently dangerous combination. That the police identify with each other above their identity as members of the community is necessarily problematic.

Now, that group identification has some very real benefits for police officers—and not just in shadier ways—in that it fosters a sense of in-group trust, which is absolutely necessary for people who rely upon each other in dangerous situations, as police officers do. Unfortunately, one need only look at people's behaviour here to understand how that can be a bad thing at times. How many times have you seen someone here run in to defend their friends or political allies, or make excuses for their behaviour, without any consideration of the circumstances, but only because of who they are or who is attacking them? How much more so with people who rely upon each other in matters of life and death.

The other inherent aspect of this, which fundamentally builds upon that "us vs. them" mentality, in my opinion, is that Philip Zimbardo is basically right. Any group—even one composed of upstanding, well-intentioned individuals—which is given power and authority over others will conform to an authoritarian pattern—and depending upon the tone set by that group, it can be dangerous. They perceive themselves as distinct, yes, but moreover, as above, and that sets the tone for police-community interactions.

That hierarchic world-view becomes especially problematic and is forced into the forefront when confronted by those who are least keen on society's traditional hierarchies. Similarly, it is no coincidence that those most supportive of the police and willing to give them leeway are those who most share a hierarchic viewpoint.

Cameras perpetually recording police behaviour would certainly help. How much, I can't say yet.

Increasing Police Brutality: Americans Killed by Cops Now Outnumber Americans Killed in Iraq War

The increase in police brutality in this country is a frightening reality. In the last decade alone the number of people murdered by police has reached 5,000. The number of soldiers killed since the inception of the Iraq war, 4489.

What went wrong? In the 1970’s SWAT teams were estimated to be used just a few hundred times per year, now we are looking at over 40,000 military style “knock and announce” police raids a year.

The police presence in this country is being turned into a military with a clearly defined enemy, anyone who questions the establishment.

If we look at the most recent numbers of non-military US citizens killed by terrorism worldwide, that number is 17. You have a better chance of being killed by a bee sting, or a home repair accident than you do a terrorist. And you are 29 times more likely to be murdered by a cop than a terrorist!

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/increa...utnumber-americans-killed-in-iraq-war/5361554

TheJAJ said:

There is no doubt about the above.



If I were a police officer, knowing your past, I would have had to frisk you.

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Yeah, more like your version of Guantanimo.

Naa, there's no problem.

But if you think there is, we should order more guns for protection.

kbate said:

Nice bit of sophistry in paragraph 2.

What I expect of law enforcement officers is that they do their job, without prejudice and without breaking the law themselves. Their job is not to stop injustice but rather to administer justice and enforce the law and you do not do that by using canned but good for court statements, edited video, threats, intimidation, and lying to get convictions. I would rather see a thousand guilty people go free due to officers protecting constitutional rights than see one innocent person be jailed through improper procedures and abuse.

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You're so smexy.

..but (just for persnicketty's sake): "administer justice and enforce the law" --v
Police enforce the law as it applies to the public trust, the courts administer justice.

Skiddles2014 said:

Increasing Police Brutality: Americans Killed by Cops Now Outnumber Americans Killed in Iraq War

http://www.globalresearch.ca/increa...utnumber-americans-killed-in-iraq-war/5361554

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You are evil.---^

How many of those 'murdered' were legitly killed by a police officer in the enforcement of the law? How many of those 'murdered' were in the process of killing someone themselves? How many of those 'murdered' were repeatedly physically hurting or abusing everyone around them?

By your logic, statistically there must be more of one gender than the other, so one must be better than the other? What?

Skiddles, you are total scum.

TheJAJ said:

The courts administer justice by applying the laws and statues to determine guilt or innocence.

The police force have every right to stop an injustice using the limitations that are spelled out in the laws.

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Nice.

The police also have prima facie discretion much of the time. They cannot interpret the law as they see fit, but they can apply it to their actions.

The court is the only thing that can Constitutionally decide what justice is or what the law says. You definately know your cop stuff.