A New Message for Police: If You See Something, Say Something

[Ana the Ist]

Maybe identify what these dogmatic beliefs are and show that they're held instead of just your characterization to fit a preconception

Not the thread topic sadly.

Evidence in terms of these discussions starts as anecdotal and then becomes reflective of a pattern

That's not how evidence, social science, or even rational thinking works.

That's just a series of logical fallacies and biases...

That's why no science anywhere starts with "anecdotal evidence".

when the situations are comparable in nature and outcome. Don't patronize me with this notion that you have it all figured out, you don't, especially if you just keep parroting the same accusations and offer nothing of substance to help, just cheap shots

There's nothing of substance to address.

Do I need to go back and count how many posts you've been complaining about a problem that you can't describe?

So it's okay to give cops special privileges even when they blatantly violated the law instead of having them actually get rehabilitation for a problem they clearly have with drinking and driving?

Are we talking about the cop from the video?

The judge gave him driving privileges. That's not an example of a problem with police....if you're saying it's a problem at all.

Going 1mph over the speed limit is not generally considered that serious, I'm almost certain, so you might want to use a less ridiculous example and stop being a petulant juvenile in your "arguments"

That's a minor traffic violation.

You can be pulled over for speeding at 1mph over the limit.

How's this? Police culture encourages implicit biases

How would you know that?

Is there some reliable proven method for detecting implicit bias?

against non white people in treating them as more serious threats

How do you know that? Is there a body of evidence demonstrating a clear casual relationship between implicit biases and behavior?

and will resort to deadly force quicker than with white people in the same situation, particularly drug related crimes, but the list goes on

Are you saying that cops are shooting black people they catch with drugs?

What do you think is happening?

Wow, pretty sure I didn't say anything resembling that, you're reaching in the idea of what collusion means. I didn't say they were the mafia, I said they had gang tendencies, particularly in demonstrable contexts like LA. Banditos, etc, ring a bell? They don't have to kill cops, only their career potential

Well then witness protection was a really bad analogy. People in witness protection are hiding from people who will murder them.

When the mistakes are that fatal, you think we should just keep letting civilians suffer and cops get off like they're just "tragic heroes"?

I didn't say anything about heroes.....but yes.

Is it not possible there's considerations that lead to cops using violent force needlessly

Sure...but the example I gave wasn't needlessly. It was a cop being shot at.

because of how they're trained or even just how the culture encourages this mentality of power and enforcement?

That's not a culture....they're actually given power to do enforcement. That's pretty much the job lol.

That's hilarious if you think that's the problem. It's like you're saying that they act like they've been given power to enforce laws....and that's the problem.

The degree of punishment is going to be different in misuse of force versus outright corruption. But acting like you can just teach this out of the policing institution is naive to say the least.

Actually I'm saying the opposite.

I'm saying every job will inevitably have some criminals. Every single type of job. This includes police.

Until we can see into the future....there's no way to spot them in advance.

A "criminal free" police force is literally impossible and not a valid complaint.

Civilians are essentially just expendable in your view because apparently police can make mistakes, just like the military can "make mistakes" and there's just acceptable losses to "maintain freedom".

It's not that they can make mistakes....it's that they will...

They're people. They make mistakes.

The fact this needs explained at all just reinforces my point about why you should stop trying to help.

But freedom apparently means no real sense of safety,

There's a pretty direct tradeoff between liberty and security, sure

because at any moment, you could be a victim because the cops have all the responsibility put on them to address crime

Well there's also federal law enforcement.

instead of maybe having policies that don't [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] them as the be all end all.

If you have any other suggestions I'm more than willing to listen.

If you say "social workers" I'm going to be asking how many social workers have to be patrolling the streets before crime goes down.

Where is it damaging to redirect some amount of police funding to other desperately needed social benefits and institutions?

Seattle was the one I read about most recently.....

https://www.google.com/amp/s/komone...sing-their-downtown-location-because-of-crime

See Seattle is a very liberal city....so even though they didn't have any viral police incidents, they jumped right on the bandwagon anyway. They abused their police so badly they burned down a station and then set up a "free zone?" where, hilariously, they killed some people. They police left in droves and they can't hire anyone to replace them. They have the money....but it's not worth the abuse.

The result of this, as you see, is a spike in crime. Junkies are roaming around the streets and people are shooting each other. People call the police and nobody shows up.

That's how these crime ridden areas happen. Legitimate business owners leave. Tax bases are reduced. Services, like police, reduced with them. Pretty soon it's rock bottom.

If you supported the protests....this is what you supported.

That person shooting at the cops could've been nipped in the bud without the need to kill them if they had better access to mental healthcare, to social services, etc. Does that just not register to you?

Not every criminal is suffering a mental disorder. There's always going to be people who commit crimes.

The fact that you act so incredulous is telling with the idea that you think America must be the best damn country in the world...which we are, but not at what you think.

I'll just explain it once because I don't think you'll understand......

Every single nation that we would agree is both "successful" and "a good place to live" is either partly, or completely, modeled after the US. Peel apart the pages of a history book one day and go count how many Democratic republics based upon individual rights and liberty with capitalist economies existed before the US and how many existed after.

Wow, you just want to keep making a joke of this? Rehabilitative justice is not coddling people, you couldn't be further from the truth in your absurd characterizations of how to help criminals. You apparently just think all criminals deserve absolute disenfranchisement from society and can never reincorporate at all.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/cnycen...ty-in-murder-of-84-year-old-woman-in-syracuse

That's a 14yo black kid who brutally murdered an 84 year woman during a robbery. I only mention that he's black because I'm sure it matters to you.

What's "restorative justice" in this case according to you? Serious mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder don't typically occur in the early teens. That's not a likely factor. He's 14 so we can be pretty certain hes not doing this because he can't find a job.

Go ahead, explain how this works.

Rehabilitative justice is not REWARDING the crime, that's not even a strawman at this point, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what rehabilitative justice is. Punishment should be proportional to the crime and with a goal in mind of helping the criminal reincorporate into society

Uh huh.

When a society based on corporatist capitalism

Our society isn't based on "corporatist capitalism"....and don't say corporatist capitalism. I don't think you would have paired those words if you knew what they mean.

thinks people can just all work hard and have success,

Nobody thinks that.

the naivete is on stans like you who think criminals are all just lazy dependents who want everything handed to them

Nobody thinks that either.

rather than desperate for something so their families don't starve or become homeless.

See the above example of a criminal. Sadly, I didn't know about it, I just had to Google "teen kills elderly" and dozens of examples pop up.

It would be comical if it wasn't so sad. You don't know anything about crime in the US.

You're part of the problem by acting like the issues are always individual responsibility

Don't preach your dogma to me. I know how quickly you drop the idea of collective responsibility.

I was alive in 2020. I saw crowds of people looting and burning and the same people who nonsensically repeat the same dogma as you blamed it on a "few bad actors".

Then those same people donated money to bail out those bad actors.

I don't think collective responsibility is something you actually believe in....it's just something you talk about to avoid individual responsibility.

A black family is not always going to be the same as a white family even if they have the SAME job and work the same amount:

Wow. If you told me that this was a quote from a KKK grand wizard I would have believed it.

acting like that's how America works is insulting to an ostrich sticking their head in the sand (which apparently is for adjusting the eggs, not the myth of hiding, but that's anthropocentric perspectives for you, like our stupid notion that cats are giving us "kisses" when they don't have human lips or express affection that way at all, let alone understand that)

I'd be interested in your critique of America if you knew anything about how it works.

Did you catch Biden's state of the union?

He delivered a speech that would make a Republican proud. He said "fund the police" like 3 times in a row....like saying it would make it happen. Sadly, I don't think they quite understand the damage done. At this point, you'll have to not only fund them but give them a raise if you want people to do that job. If you continue to endlessly blame them for not being perfect, I don't think even a raise will help.

Rich people will still have police. Red states will have police. It's mainly the people you claimed to want to help who will suffer.

That's how bad the ideas you supported are. The very candidates who ran on those positions are now running from them.

You can't come up with solutions that will work without first identifying and understanding problems. It's not that easy. There are a lot of ways to organize a society that people have imagined...but you can literally count on one hand all the ones that work.

 

[ruthiesea]

The last ten years that I was working included doing internal investigations. A mistake can be a violation of the rules and regs, criminal, or both. Criminal investigations were handled by an outside agency, either the sheriffs office or FDLE. A violation of the rules and regs was not started until after the the criminal investigation was concluded.

 

[rjs330]

Take your own advice and stop assuming I hate police then. Good faith discussion goes BOTH ways.

Well it sure sounds like you do. I don't recall you ever defending a police action on this board. Maybe you have but I don't remember any.

And you keep combining about some problem that you aren't defining. That's also a clue.

Why don't you define a problem, determine how bad of a problem it is and how pervasive it is?

Then offer a really good solution for it?

I haven't seen any of that from you.

 

[rjs330]

He was convicted. I don't think they took away his license because he was innocent. He may have retained his job and got privileges to drive to work....but they typically don't have to give you driving privileges unless they convict you and take your driver's license

Not to mention this is very typical for DUI cases. Particularly on first offenses. They give the driver a probationary license so they can get to work, the doctor, get groceries etc. They give the driver privileges to operate a vehicle for work. The judges don't want to take a way someones ability to work.

 

[rjs330]

Those are more or less the margins of "criminal behavior" and "honest mistakes" in police work. The vast majority of incidents I see people getting worked up over fall well between those margins. The reason why they get worked up....is because they are people who think they can magically read minds and find malice of some sort in the actions of the cop.

This is so spot on. There is an automatic jump to the cop is "racist" or the cop is a thug or wants to kill or is a law breaker any time they screw up or even when they don't. How many time do we see the cop acted within the bounds of the law and still get excoriated by certain people.

You participated in one conversation recently which was a great example regarding the two kids fighting in the mall.

Some folks are just either anti-cop or extremely ignorant.

There are some cases of course where the cops are definitely wrong and should be prosecuted. We are seeing this happen.

But far too many are being accused of things based upon biased assumptions against them.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Not to mention this is very typical for DUI cases. Particularly on first offenses. They give the driver a probationary license so they can get to work, the doctor, get groceries etc. They give the driver privileges to operate a vehicle for work. The judges don't want to take a way someones ability to work.

It's not unusual. I can't say if it's more common than not.

Apparently it's not "fair" unless the cop is dragged from the vehicle, beaten, shot, and spit on.

People need to get a grip. We're likely about less than a year from finding out BLM was just a scam...and a lot of people were too easily duped to see it.

Did you see the clip of Cullors crying about the attacks she's received from black people? There's an easy fix for that. Show your tax returns so everyone knows you didn't spend money donated for black people on yourself.

I don't even know what the OP topic is supposed to solve. Everyone who has a job at a business that employs more than 50 people knows the kind of employee who points out every flaw in every coworker to the boss. Nobody likes them. They do it because they can't get ahead on their own merits....so they try to get ahead by pointing out the imperfections of everyone else.

That's really all the "blue wall of silence" is....cops don't like those coworkers either.

 

[rjs330]

Problem is in the purely retributive style of justice we see in America, no goal of rehabilitation that's genuine or counters recidivism effectively.

Is that the problem you've been talking about? Cause I don't think police are really involved in that. They just find law breakers and charge them. The rest is up to the courts.

 

[rjs330]

Oh, poor police, they're such an underappreciated group, heaven forbid they be put down a peg. You're treating them with kid gloves based on some perception that they're essentially beyond reproach, at least the "good" ones, which you can't really identify in any consistent manner, due to the basic problem of enabling you don't want to acknowledge.

And you claim not to be a cop hater. I think your damaging your claim here.

 

[Pommer]

Pay cops $200k/yr.
The competition to not *lose* such remuneration due to shoddy work will take care of the problems.

 

[rjs330]

because trying to act like they have a solution is how they keep getting money to continue funding the police, who have gotten more money versus any other institution in its history in America. That doesn't sound like a problem in that we STILL have inordinate amounts of crime, yet more police is supposed to solve those problems?

And you think taking away money and less funding is going to fix the problem?

You know police are not the cause.

If you want to fix these "social problems" you keep mentioning then did them first and then you won't have the need for as much police finding. We've already seen what happens when you defund the police before riding the other issues first. Fix the issues first then there will be a need for less police and the defunding comes naturally. But taking money away just creates more crime.

 

[rjs330]

This isn't about total control, don't paint me or others as authoritarians because you don't want to have mirror held up to show that you are more than willing to throw police and their threats of enforcement via needless violence at societal problems

Lol, you are showing your bias and ignorance again. This whole police and threats of of enforcement through needless violence schtick isn't working. Cause cops aren't threatening that. I have yet to see evidence that cops are doing that. Your just making stuff up at this point.

 

[Ana the Ist]

This is so spot on. There is an automatic jump to the cop is "racist" or the cop is a thug or wants to kill or is a law breaker any time they screw up or even when they don't. How many time do we see the cop acted within the bounds of the law and still get excoriated by certain people.

You participated in one conversation recently which was a great example regarding the two kids fighting in the mall.

Some folks are just either anti-cop or extremely ignorant.

There are some cases of course where the cops are definitely wrong and should be prosecuted. We are seeing this happen.

But far too many are being accused of things based upon biased assumptions against them.

Yeah I was thinking of that example. End result? Nobody was hurt. Is that good? Yes.

Do the cops get praise? No. Somehow they're supposed to magically realize that if the slightest bit more force is applied to the black kid, in relation to the white kid, then guess what .....they're racist!

It doesn't matter that the white kid stopped fighting immediately and the black kid kept throwing punches. Nope....they're racist.

Meanwhile the endless pursuit of perfection in police is ruining them.

What is the old saying? The perfect is the enemy of the good? The perfect is the death of the good? Nothing is perfect. The idea that we're going to have social workers fix problems cops deal with is stupid. Social workers can't fix problems that social workers deal with now lol.

Moreover, criticism is easy. It's easy. If all you're doing is looking for flaws, you'll find them. These people who endlessly point them out aren't deserved of any applause or even consideration. They're petty.

And it's getting old. They've done real damage to police departments now. I posted a link to an article about a business closing because of the increase in crime and cops not responding to calls....that's not a coincidence.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ki...uses/281-fc1931d1-70c5-49ce-a06d-f1a844bbf304

They can't find anyone qualified to hire... and it's a safe bet they actually lowered qualifications. They're offering 25k hiring bonuses and no one wants to do the job.

I'm using Seattle as an example...but it's happening in multiple major cities. The damage done to police will likely last years and only end once crime gets so bad that people are begging for more police. It will be years after that before those cities get back the businesses they lost.

I'm tired of it. People are too naive to see the effects of what they're doing or they simply don't care. They don't care about black people....at all. They just hate police.

So with that in mind, any further attempts to point out a problem with the police are going to be met with me pointing out they can't actually describe the problem....or only have a tiny bit of anecdotal evidence of it....and then making them look ridiculous.

Seriously, a poster described his method as looking at anecdotes, imagining a "pattern", and then complaining about it.

That's not how it works. That's literally confirmation bias.

 

[rjs330]

you still inordinately give them the benefit of the doubt, especially as concerns racial bias and prejudices, which is not the same as racism in the explicit sense.

It seems you inordinately accuse them of racial bias and prejudice without real evidence of such. At least that's the way it appears from your posts.

It's preferable to have some actual evidence of this before laying at at the feet of law enforcement in general and especially with Individual officers specifically.

 

[rjs330]

it's okay to give cops special privileges even when they blatantly violated the law instead of having them actually get rehabilitation for a problem they clearly have with drinking and driving

How do you know he wasn't? Most jurisdictions require some alcohol counseling as part of the sentencing. Do you know for a fact that the judge did not order that?

 

[Ana the Ist]

Pay cops $200k/yr.
The competition to not *lose* such remuneration due to shoddy work will take care of the problems.

If only Pommer.

In reality, the wealthy already subsidize the police for the poor.

Here's the real issue. It's not obvious what the problem is. It's clear from the OP that some people want cops to intervene when other cops make mistakes or do something wrong.

It's not clear what this is supposed to address.

It's not as if we know how often this already happens and what the results are.

Even more strange is that a couple of posts later....in the same thread....another poster provides an example of this happening. A cop does something wrong, other cops intervene, the cop is arrested and charged.

They intervened and held him accountable. That got held up as another example of the problem, or maybe a different problem.

See the issue there? It's not clear what will actually solve the problem, and that's because the problem isn't clear.

It's just like the sentencing disparities. It's not clear what anyone wants to happen because nobody actually knows.

 

[muichimotsu]

Pay cops $200k/yr.
The competition to not *lose* such remuneration due to shoddy work will take care of the problems.

Except that's unfortunately just playing to people's worst desires, to continue to be greedy and hold onto power.

Treating them like they aren't paragons of justice with no flaws AND considering the underlying aspects of law enforcement as likely needing investigation in their justification would both be good starts to actual accountability

 

[rjs330]

rather than desperate for something so their families don't starve or become homeless.

Oh puhleeze. How many criminals are in prison because they were trying to keep their families from starving or being homeless. It's pretty obvious that you haven't been around that many criminals that are or have been in prison.

I'd like some evidence in how many are in prison for doing this.

 

[rjs330]

black family is not always going to be the same as a white family even if they have the SAME job and work the same amount:

Actually they are pretty much the same. Studies show this. While it's not exact, blacks earn a couple of cents on the dollar less than whites when working the same job with the same education, hours, experience etc. By the way, whites earn a couple of cents less than Asians. But we don't run around making excuses for whites.

 

[Pommer]

Except that's unfortunately just playing to people's worst desires, to continue to be greedy and hold onto power.

Treating them like they aren't paragons of justice with no flaws AND considering the underlying aspects of law enforcement as likely needing investigation in their justification would both be good starts to actual accountability

Well the $200k would be reduced by the liability insurance that each and every cop would have to get, once qualified immunity was done away with.

 

[muichimotsu]

Well the $200k would be reduced by the liability insurance that each and every cop would have to get, once qualified immunity was done away with.

Or if qualified immunity was limited far more in the scope, since supposedly it's based on the idea of a reasonable observer or such that the cop was "trying their best to execute their duties" rather than the consideration that their culture eats policy alive when it comes down to it. The bodycams, the lawsuits, none of it sticks because there's a preconception in police culture that persists: they are the law (ala Judge Dredd almost) and they should not be questioned by uppity citizens who want to challenge that authority.