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

[SummerMadness]

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

On an early Monday morning in a chilly classroom in Baltimore, a diverse group of recruits to one of the nation’s most troubled police departments gathered for a new kind of training. The screen flashed a photo of a man whose face is now familiar to the world.

“What happened to George Floyd?” the instructor barked.

“He was lynched,” one trainee responded. “He was murdered,” another said.

“How many other officers were there?” the instructor asked.

Many knew the answer: “Three.”

That was the crux of the matter at hand — not the senior officer who knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, but the three others who did not stop him.

Officers across the country have been told they must intervene, but they have not necessarily been taught how to do so.

Active bystander training is not new — the airline industry and hospitals have used it to empower co-pilots and nurses to speak up to prevent mistakes, and it has even been used to help stop sexual assault on college campuses.

Its use in policing began in New Orleans in 2016 after a number of officers faced criminal charges, including a rookie who went to prison for helping cover up a fatal beating perpetrated by his training officer.

 

[muichimotsu]

Problem is they're often outcast for actually going against the misbehavior of their colleagues based on what borders on a gang culture where they intimidate people into submission.

The thin blue line and the like enforces conformity via that fear of being ostracized and seen as a "snitch" or "rat" and thus lumped together with criminals while trying to actually enforce and comport with the law, as they've sworn to do.

Not that it's necessarily any more likely with citizens in general because of the bystander effect and peer pressure, among other factors that tend to make people far less likely to intervene

 

[Ana the Ist]

[Staff Edited Quote]

Do you think those three cops standing next to Chauvin should be convicted of something serious? I haven't looked at it in awhile...I imagine they're being charged with felonies.

I'm also under the impression that they were under "trainee" status and Chauvin was their journeyman or trainer or whatever they call that senior/mentor position at that station.

 

[public hermit]

Do you think those three cops standing next to Chauvin should be convicted of something serious? I haven't looked at it in awhile...I imagine they're being charged with felonies

They were convicted on federal civil rights charges, and are still facing state charges. My post is a bit misleading on that account.

I do think they should be convicted of serious charges. I take the federal charges to be serious; although, we'll have to wait for sentencing. The state charges are aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

3 officers found guilty on federal charges in George Floyd’s killing

I don't know that being a trainee absolves one of a responsibility to intervene. The civilians were distressed about the situation. It distressed me to watch it. It didn't take police training to see this was not good. One of officers was ridiculing the distress of the civilians. That's off, to me. Lane spoke up and helped the paramedics, but he was convicted on federal charges. I don't know if that will help him with the state charges. I don't think it should.

I think the issue is pretty basic. The officers are allowed to use force. All three of them have force as a tool for upholding the law. Once the suspect is subdued, which certainly seems to be the case in this instance, they have a responsibility to do no harm. And, they have a duty to render aid. If that ain't clear in the law or department policy, it should be. If a trainee sees another officer causing undue harm, they have an obligation to intervene. And since they have the use of force as a tool to uphold the law, they have an obligation to do more than voice concern. They have an obligation to use their force to uphold the law. They're cops, and they did not police their own. If the law or department policy does not make their obligation clear, then it should be changed. All of that seems pretty basic and obvious to me, but I'm no lawyer.

I think the department policy is under investigation.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

[Staff Edited Quote]
[Staff Edit]

There's public opinion poling that indicates that it's a much more prevalent mindset than just a "few bad apples" who believe that way.

In fact, this is a link that I posted in response to you in a thread where we were discussing this exact same thing almost literally almost 2 years ago to the day.

Police Internal Affairs Duty Is Unpopular, a Survey Shows (Published 2000)


As well as this
Ticketing off-duty officers: P1 Members speak out

A website "by cops/for cops", and they conducted a survey on the matter
(meaning, they're not even trying to hide their mentality on it)

And some of the quotes from the officers responding (some in leadership positions) are even more telling

“I feel there are two things to consider: 1. An off-duty officer will help you if he is driving by and you need help. 2. We should treat our brother/sister officers like we want to be treated. If we would want professional courtesy when we get pulled over then we should pay the same respect back. The bottom line: we should not be giving other cops tickets, period.”
— Officer Anthony Signore, Redding (Conn.) Police Dept.


“I'm a Sgt. with my department with 18 years of service. Normally, I do not give other officers traffic tickets, but I have done so in the past.”
— Sgt. Guy Finney, La Coste (Texas) Police Dept.


“Law enforcement officers need to stick together, now more than ever! Petty nonsense like writing other cops is ridiculous and it should be taught in all police academies that you don’t write [up] cops!”
— Detective Gary Olivier, Rye (N.Y.) Police Dept.


“I’ve got more important things to do than cite a fellow officer. I haven’t found a need to do so in 37 years on the job.”
— Sgt. Brian Stover

“I thought ‘blue was blue’ but it appears from the poll that isn't the case anymore! Glad I'm retired after 31 years in LE. The job isn't the brotherhood it used to be.”
— Ken Frisbie, Retired from Chicopee (Mass.) Police Dept. since Sept. 2003

“Sorry, but to the officers that issue citations to other officers, I have to say: If you’re on a traffic stop and you’re getting your butt kicked, you had better pray an off-duty officer is driving by. We need to take care of each other because the general public is most likely not going to.”
— Officer Mike Ely, Aurora (Ill.) Police Dept.



These kinds of statements (combined with a third of them responding that they won't write up other cops) shows that followers of the "blue code" aren't just a few random outliers.

 

[muichimotsu]

Yeah...but that's not what he said, and I'd like clarification.

Well you seemingly got it, here's wondering what you think about it

Defending the culture? You mean the one that's basically completely unexamined from anything remotely approaching a nuetral position?

If your view of "the culture" is only ever informed by people who hate police.....why would you think that you have an accurate view of the culture?

Oh, because absolute neutrality is possible in your mind? Like you don't have ANY bias remotely?

Pretty sure I can say confidently I have heard both sides, I live in the South, police worship (a bit hyperbolic, but the point stands) is kind of the norm here

I'm not even clear on what the problem is in the video....

Did the cops not arrest him? Was he not charged?

Tell me what you think the problem was in that video that demonstrates "bad policing"?

Him being arrested is not the issue, because that's accountability that's RARE and should be encouraged MORE. It's his attitude that he shouldn't be arrested, that there's more important matters or the like, that he should get special exceptions in regards to arrest for violating policy or the law.

When you act like the problem is overstated, it sounds more like you want to avoid any implication that there might be a problem, because that'd affect the comfortable status quo where it stays swept under the rug[/QUOTE]

 

[muichimotsu]

Would it be fair to say that you aren't going to be able to answer on what "the problem" is?

Is that because you know that when you say something like "the culture" or the "system" or "the status quo"....I'm just going to point out how vague those terms are and ask you to specify?

I haven't watched the video. It sounds like if I do watch it, I'll see a cop getting pulled over for DUI, and fleeing the police, and then indignant about being arrested.

In short, I'll see a video of the police doing exactly what we want them to do in this situation...right? I want them to hold lawbreaking cops accountable. I'm sure you do too. Is that what the video shows?

Then why is it an example of "the problem"? Why isn't it being praised as an example of good policing?

After all, there's no possible method for identifying which cops will at some point engage in criminal behavior. None. There's far more rigorous and difficult training processes in many different occupations and guess what? They have people who engage criminal behavior sometimes too.

It's nice that you understand that the police can't possibly be perfect. I don't know what you mean by "they should strive to be better". If they did everything we want them to do (in the video) what exactly do you want them to improve?

Consider that maybe the problem is that even when they do exactly what they should do....people still hold that up as an example of the "problem" of policing. There's no incentive to doing things right.

Only if you keep hedging and goalpost shifting to avoid considering what a provisional formulation of the problem is. But that's easier than admitting there's any problem that's systemic in nature versus a "few bad apples" because the latter is enabling abuse, the former is confronting toxicity in power dynamics like what exists with civilians and law enforcement.

They're only vague if you refuse to even push past your comfort zone and consider that there's more to social science than the strawman you keep creating that it's all ideological indoctrination and the like

It's an example of the minority of police holding other officers accountable, that's like being happy we stopped one pedophile who outright admits there are others out there getting away with abusing children. It doesn't address the disease, only the symptoms, so way after the fact and stop gap measures.

Wow...no there isn't, I'm almost certain becoming even a nurse takes more capacity physically and mentally, while cops can seemingly pass muster even when they're clearly out of shape and unfit for duty physically, let alone mentally. You idealize police officers to a point that you treat them like they're even in the same ballpark as military officers/soldiers, who have grueling standards because there's consequences to business interests if nothing else (oh and maybe the citizens if they're not considered expendable or acceptable losses in war)

I want this to happen less often in the sense that officers regard it as a problem at all, you're blaming people who criticize police officers as if you've even taken the time to actually understand what they want to happen and play dumb like they aren't making it clear, even if it might be abstract from a perspective that wants everything spelled out in numbers concretely (which is not how discussions of social problems work, they don't exist in some nebulous vacuum where we can study it in a lab or regard it with some distant neutrality like you seem to think applies to everything). Sounds like you could just as easily claim the Holocaust is overblown or such, like there were "legitimate" reasons the 3rd Reich did the atrocities visited upon anyone they thought was "lesser", that they're just "misunderstood"

Maybe there shouldn't have to be an incentive to be a decent person in terms of something that is about sacrifice in the first place. That's the issue at its core: we've reduced every action to something that has to involve an immediate or even relatively immediate reward to it instead of wanting to better society in an altruistic fashion that's cooperative in nature and not pitting people against each other while claiming they're only about "unity"

 

[Ana the Ist]

They were convicted on federal civil rights charges, and are still facing state charges. My post is a bit misleading on that account.

Thanks for clearing that up....yikes.

I do think they should be convicted of serious charges. I take the federal charges to be serious; although, we'll have to wait for sentencing. The state charges are aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

3 officers found guilty on federal charges in George Floyd’s killing

I would probably be more comfortable with something lighter than accomplice to murder. I do think Chauvin committed murder....they clearly didn't. They didn't prevent the murder, like we all wished they did, but they didn't cause it either.

I don't know that being a trainee absolves one of a responsibility to intervene. The civilians were distressed about the situation. It distressed me to watch it. It didn't take police training to see this was not good. One of officers was ridiculing the distress of the civilians. That's off, to me. Lane spoke up and helped the paramedics, but he was convicted on federal charges. I don't know if that will help him with the state charges. I don't think it should.

I think the issue is pretty basic. The officers are allowed to use force. All three of them have force as a tool for upholding the law. Once the suspect is subdued, which certainly seems to be the case in this instance, they have a responsibility to do no harm. And, they have a duty to render aid. If that ain't clear in the law or department policy, it should be. If a trainee sees another officer causing undue harm, they have an obligation to intervene. And since they have the use of force as a tool to uphold the law, they have an obligation to do more than voice concern. They have an obligation to use their force to uphold the law. They're cops, and they did not police their own. If the law or department policy does not make their obligation clear, then it should be changed. All of that seems pretty basic and obvious to me, but I'm no lawyer.

I think the department policy is under investigation.

Yeah, generally speaking we don't consider the deflection of responsibility for one's actions onto another person because of the "chain of command" as an acceptable reason for one's actions (or in this case inactions).

However, that's really because we like to imagine we would have done something different.

The reality is....the vast majority of time, we would do exactly the same.

And we know this....we know it to a fact....we see it over and over again throughout history, across cultures, regardless of race, religion, sex, or whatever. Remember the milgram experiments? The one where they have a simulated electro-shock "execution/torture" under the supervision of an "authority figure"?

Well...that's not a unique phenomenon. If you take a person, throw them into an unusual situation that they aren't accustomed to, and tell them to do what "this guy" says....and don't disobey or hesitate or you'll hear about it...

That person will allow some rather awful stuff to happen because in their minds...they're doing what is "correct".

I mean we all like imagine in Hitler's Germany....we're Oscar Schindler. We aren't though. If that was the normal reaction, there would be a ton of Schindlers to talk about. The reality is that under the right circumstances...we're 95% nazis, and just doing whatever we're told no matter how awful.

To that point....Derek Chauvin was probably presented to them as a sterling example of a veteran cop. This guy had won multiple awards/decorations. He made cop of the month or year or something several times (same guy who had been disciplined for excessive force several times). It's not as if doing his job well was a one day thing, then doing his job bad was another day. I don't think he turned a corner and became a bad cop. I simply think he likely overused force in a variety of circumstances and it probably caught up to him. I don't think he went there looking to murder anyone....and that doesn't change the fact that he did.

It's a fine line though.

Consider a situation where cop#1 has his gun drawn for reasons unclear to another cop#2.

Do you want cop #2 to tap him on the shoulder and say "hey man, why do you have your gun drawn?"

Or do you want cop#2 to draw and shoot cop#1 in the head?

That's a rather troubling scenario that I don't know what the answer would be....

If he doesn't shoot...and cop#1 shoots a suspect that was merely reaching in his pocket for his phone....should we send cop#2 to jail with cop#1 (assuming we decided to send cop#1 to jail)?

If cop#2 does shoot....and it turns out the subject was reaching for a gun in his pocket, well obviously he's going to jail. He killed a cop because of his misunderstanding.

I don't disagree with the idea that I would prefer a world where the cops intervene whenever they see an obvious and clear misuse of force or procedure even.

The thing is though, we look at these incidents in hindsight, and we have knowledge those cops don't, and things that are obvious to us aren't always going to be obvious in the moment to them.

 

[Ana the Ist]

While I only posted only one example, it's not the only example of cops giving other cops preferential treatment when they do something that would get any of us the book thrown at us.

There's public opinion poling that indicates that it's a much more prevalent mindset than just a "few bad apples" who believe that way.

In fact, this is a link that I posted in response to you in a thread where we were discussing this exact same thing almost literally almost 2 years ago to the day.

Police Internal Affairs Duty Is Unpopular, a Survey Shows (Published 2000)

I don't know if it was behind a paywall then, but it is now. Can you give me the gist of it?

As well as this
Ticketing off-duty officers: P1 Members speak out

A website "by cops/for cops", and they conducted a survey on the matter
(meaning, they're not even trying to hide their mentality on it)

View attachment 313466

And some of the quotes from the officers responding (some in leadership positions) are even more telling

“I feel there are two things to consider: 1. An off-duty officer will help you if he is driving by and you need help. 2. We should treat our brother/sister officers like we want to be treated. If we would want professional courtesy when we get pulled over then we should pay the same respect back. The bottom line: we should not be giving other cops tickets, period.”
— Officer Anthony Signore, Redding (Conn.) Police Dept.


“I'm a Sgt. with my department with 18 years of service. Normally, I do not give other officers traffic tickets, but I have done so in the past.”
— Sgt. Guy Finney, La Coste (Texas) Police Dept.


“Law enforcement officers need to stick together, now more than ever! Petty nonsense like writing other cops is ridiculous and it should be taught in all police academies that you don’t write [up] cops!”
— Detective Gary Olivier, Rye (N.Y.) Police Dept.


“I’ve got more important things to do than cite a fellow officer. I haven’t found a need to do so in 37 years on the job.”
— Sgt. Brian Stover

“I thought ‘blue was blue’ but it appears from the poll that isn't the case anymore! Glad I'm retired after 31 years in LE. The job isn't the brotherhood it used to be.”
— Ken Frisbie, Retired from Chicopee (Mass.) Police Dept. since Sept. 2003

“Sorry, but to the officers that issue citations to other officers, I have to say: If you’re on a traffic stop and you’re getting your butt kicked, you had better pray an off-duty officer is driving by. We need to take care of each other because the general public is most likely not going to.”
— Officer Mike Ely, Aurora (Ill.) Police Dept.



These kinds of statements (combined with a third of them responding that they won't write up other cops) shows that followers of the "blue code" aren't just a few random outliers.

I don't know how accurate a "P1 readers poll" is nor do I know how accurately those sentiments reflect the opinions of police who answered the poll.

It's also not clear what point you're trying to make. This is a poll about giving a ticket for a minor traffic violation (I'm assuming, it doesn't seem clear from the poll) not for driving drunk while heavily armed and fleeing from the police.

I'm sure you understand that there's a vast difference between those two things.

It's also not at all exclusive to cops. I've been let off with a warning for minor violations multiple times. I can guarantee it's not because I'm attractive or charming at all. I make traffic stops about as easy for the police as humanly possible. I've had a cop scream at me, literally inches from my face, and he even let me off without a ticket. I don't know if he was simply a bad cop or whether something else was going on...but police frequently do this with the public if the severity of the violation is minor.

What exactly is the point you're trying to make with the video and the poll here?

If you're saying that every single time a cop pulls someone over for a violation....no matter how small....they should issue a ticket, then say that.

If that's the case though, you'll need to acknowledge that we're almost certainly going to be done including you in the conversation should the issue of "racial profiling" ever come up lol. Those cases are overwhelmingly started by someone who isn't white committing a minor traffic violation, often in the presence of many people committing the same violation, like driving 5 mph over the limit. You can't possibly argue that the police should treat everyone the same without any room for personal judgement....and then claim that they were biased for doing so.

Do you want cops to exercise personal judgement? Or do you want cops who treat everyone the same?

I think a good argument can be made for both....but I prefer personal judgement, by a lot.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Only if you keep hedging and goalpost shifting to avoid considering what a provisional formulation of the problem is. But that's easier than admitting there's any problem that's systemic in nature versus a "few bad apples" because the latter is enabling abuse, the former is confronting toxicity in power dynamics like what exists with civilians and law enforcement.

Step 1 in any serious attempt at solving any problem is going to be...

Identifying the problem.

If you can't do that....and let's be honest, you can't....then what exactly do you expect me to do? Applaud your attempt to put together a vague and incoherent statement about a generalized concept that you call a problem?

I can understand what a systemic problem is....I can even give you examples, and point put clearly where the problems are. We can debate the solutions, but if you want to skip to the solutions before identifying the problem because it's difficult...well I'm sorry, but you're likely going to make things worse.

They're only vague if you refuse to even push past your comfort zone and consider that there's more to social science than the strawman you keep creating that it's all ideological indoctrination and the like

Social science can make a pretty good argument that prior to just a few years ago....we had a rather excellent police force, all things considered.

They made contact with the public a couple of million times a day on average, and hundreds of millions of times a year.

Of those incidents, they are assaulted thousands if not tens of thousands of times. They are shot at hundreds of times. They end up killing dangerous subjects in completely justified situations about 1000 times a year. Of those incidents maybe 50 are in a sort of grey area....and a dozen or less involve a wrongful or criminal shooting by the police.

They solve thousands of murders, and I'm not even going to bother with how many violent or dangerous crimes they solved/stopped. As far as government sectors go....our police were one of the best. In many cases, they're underfunded, understaffed, and lacking resources...but they still managed to decrease crime year after year by targeting high crime areas specifically (a strategy that was created by the social sciences!).

That's not the case anymore because a few people focused solely on the handful of bad incidents every year and ignored just how few they were compared to the good incidents.

So excuse me if I don't want to discuss solutions with people who can't identify the problem.

It's an example of the minority of police holding other officers accountable,

How do you know it's a minority? Do you think cops are catching other cops driving drunk and armed and just letting it slide frequently? Do you have any evidence of this?

that's like being happy we stopped one pedophile who outright admits there are others out there getting away with abusing children. It doesn't address the disease, only the symptoms, so way after the fact and stop gap measures.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. You haven't identified a "disease" or any symptoms.

Wow...no there isn't, I'm almost certain becoming even a nurse takes more capacity physically and mentally,

That's hilarious. I can guarantee that nurses watch negligent or wrongful behavior from doctors and other nurses all the time and do nothing about it. There's actually internal reporting procedures for that sort of thing at every hospital....and if you were able to obtain those records (I don't know if they are publicly obtainable) you would see thousands of mistakes and negligent behavior reported at major hospitals every year, the vast majority of which carry no consequences at all. In fact, the last time I read an article about it, it was about how such incidents are under reported. Our medical community causes more injuries and deaths, wrongfully, either through mistakes or negligence than our police do...

By a lot.

while cops can seemingly pass muster even when they're clearly out of shape and unfit for duty physically, let alone mentally.
You idealize police officers to a point that you treat them like they're even in the same ballpark as military officers/soldiers, who have grueling standards because there's consequences to business interests if nothing else (oh and maybe the citizens if they're not considered expendable or acceptable losses in war)

I don't idealize them. I'm more than willing to point out that they make mistakes and even engage in criminal behavior. I certainly wouldn't say that cop pulled over and arrested for driving drunk should be excused for his behavior. He should be arrested and fired.

My problem is that the longer this attack on cops went on....the clearer it became that the people complaining didn't actually have a clear problem in mind. This was more obvious when they blamed police for doing exactly what they are supposed to do.

Identity the problem.

I want this to happen less often in the sense that officers regard it as a problem at all,

What are you talking about? Regard what as a problem?

you're blaming people who criticize police officers as if you've even taken the time to actually understand what they want to happen and play dumb like they aren't making it clear,

No....I've given a lot of consideration for what problems might actually exist.

The problem that people perceive isn't clear.

There was a young black men in Philadelphia I think who, while having a psychotic episode of some sort, started chasing people with a butcher knife. The police spent a significant amount of time trying to calmly talk this man into dropping the weapon and accepting help....before he finally chose to charge the police and was shot mere feet in front of one. The police were blamed for that like everything else. I saw a young black girl in Columbus Ohio about to shove a butcher knife into another girl's gut....and despite having mere seconds to react to the situation, the cop managed to shoot her, and only her, before trying to render her aid....and he was blamed.

Blamed for doing his job perfectly!

So again, tell me what the problem is. I'm not going to entertain vaguely one sided misconceptions and generalizations. It's getting old.

even if it might be abstract from a perspective that wants everything spelled out in numbers concretely (which is not how discussions of social problems work, they don't exist in some nebulous vacuum where we can study it in a lab or regard it with some distant neutrality like you seem to think applies to everything).

That's remarkable considering that I don't recall you ever considering the actions of the subjects involved in police encounters.

Surely they have some effect on outcomes? This doesn't all happen in a vaccuum does it?

It would make sense to give at least equal consideration to that side of the equation but some people simply won't do that.

Sounds like you could just as easily claim the Holocaust is overblown or such, like there were "legitimate" reasons the 3rd Reich did the atrocities visited upon anyone they thought was "lesser", that they're just "misunderstood"

Are you saying that the police are committing genocide?

Maybe there shouldn't have to be an incentive to be a decent person in terms of something that is about sacrifice in the first place.

Well then why didn't all those people who stood and watched George Floyd get murdered try to intervene? Why didn't they try to tackle Derek Chauvin?

Is it because it wasn't their responsibility? Did they not have any incentive to do the right thing?

That's the issue at its core: we've reduced every action to something that has to involve an immediate or even relatively immediate reward to it instead of wanting to better society in an altruistic fashion that's cooperative in nature and not pitting people against each other while claiming they're only about "unity"

Do you remember when all those nurses quit when covid hit? Their job suddenly involved being exposed to a small modicum of danger and they quit.

Well cops always have a small modicum of danger....the difference is that they are aware of this at the start, and they don't really get much warning for it.

At this point, the people complaining appear to want cops to wait until they've been killed before fighting back. I don't see how that is either reasonable or plausible....but that does appear to be the desired outcome.

 

[rjs330]

Only if you keep hedging and goalpost shifting to avoid considering what a provisional formulation of the problem is. But that's easier than admitting there's any problem that's systemic in nature versus a "few bad apples" because the latter is enabling abuse, the former is confronting toxicity in power dynamics like what exists with civilians and law enforcement.

They're only vague if you refuse to even push past your comfort zone and consider that there's more to social science than the strawman you keep creating that it's all ideological indoctrination and the like

It's an example of the minority of police holding other officers accountable, that's like being happy we stopped one pedophile who outright admits there are others out there getting away with abusing children. It doesn't address the disease, only the symptoms, so way after the fact and stop gap measures.

Wow...no there isn't, I'm almost certain becoming even a nurse takes more capacity physically and mentally, while cops can seemingly pass muster even when they're clearly out of shape and unfit for duty physically, let alone mentally. You idealize police officers to a point that you treat them like they're even in the same ballpark as military officers/soldiers, who have grueling standards because there's consequences to business interests if nothing else (oh and maybe the citizens if they're not considered expendable or acceptable losses in war)

I want this to happen less often in the sense that officers regard it as a problem at all, you're blaming people who criticize police officers as if you've even taken the time to actually understand what they want to happen and play dumb like they aren't making it clear, even if it might be abstract from a perspective that wants everything spelled out in numbers concretely (which is not how discussions of social problems work, they don't exist in some nebulous vacuum where we can study it in a lab or regard it with some distant neutrality like you seem to think applies to everything). Sounds like you could just as easily claim the Holocaust is overblown or such, like there were "legitimate" reasons the 3rd Reich did the atrocities visited upon anyone they thought was "lesser", that they're just "misunderstood"

Maybe there shouldn't have to be an incentive to be a decent person in terms of something that is about sacrifice in the first place. That's the issue at its core: we've reduced every action to something that has to involve an immediate or even relatively immediate reward to it instead of wanting to better society in an altruistic fashion that's cooperative in nature and not pitting people against each other while claiming they're only about "unity"

What I don't get is the constant diatribe against police, but not a peep is said about doctors. You know doctors screw up on a far more pervasive level than police do? Yet doctors will protect their own like nobody's business. Same goes for lawyers.

No cops should not cover for a other cop. That's very unacceptable. Bit toake it out like it's worse than anything is really overstating the case. It happens everywhere.

And we are seeing more and more cops prosecuted or fired for crime and misconduct. Which is a good thing. But to continue to beat the drum against cops when the problem isn't thay big, well it just shows you have a soapbox. Some kind of issue with the police. I sure wish you were more consistent with your criticism..

 

[muichimotsu]

Step 1 in any serious attempt at solving any problem is going to be...

Identifying the problem.

If you can't do that....and let's be honest, you can't....then what exactly do you expect me to do? Applaud your attempt to put together a vague and incoherent statement about a generalized concept that you call a problem?

I can understand what a systemic problem is....I can even give you examples, and point put clearly where the problems are. We can debate the solutions, but if you want to skip to the solutions before identifying the problem because it's difficult...well I'm sorry, but you're likely going to make things worse.

I can identify it, just not to your satisfaction, which frankly I could care less about when you seem to just want to hem and haw around any systemic issue that is inconvenient for you to discuss and can just be dismissed as anecdotal or bad apples and not culture affecting even good intentioned individuals. Not even good cops meaning well are free from the possibility of ENABLING the bad ones by inaction of some form or fashion because of the blue wall of silence

Social science can make a pretty good argument that prior to just a few years ago....we had a rather excellent police force, all things considered.

They made contact with the public a couple of million times a day on average, and hundreds of millions of times a year.

Of those incidents, they are assaulted thousands if not tens of thousands of times. They are shot at hundreds of times. They end up killing dangerous subjects in completely justified situations about 1000 times a year. Of those incidents maybe 50 are in a sort of grey area....and a dozen or less involve a wrongful or criminal shooting by the police.

They solve thousands of murders, and I'm not even going to bother with how many violent or dangerous crimes they solved/stopped. As far as government sectors go....our police were one of the best. In many cases, they're underfunded, understaffed, and lacking resources...but they still managed to decrease crime year after year by targeting high crime areas specifically (a strategy that was created by the social sciences!).

That's not the case anymore because a few people focused solely on the handful of bad incidents every year and ignored just how few they were compared to the good incidents.

So excuse me if I don't want to discuss solutions with people who can't identify the problem.

So you're just going to take their reporting at face value, as if there can't be underreporting or false reporting? Pretty sure we have examples of that, you cannot state with absolute certainty that isn't a potential issue involved in corruption, which there have been cases in terms of police corruption up to the Supreme Court.

Social sciences never claimed to be perfect, you're buying into broken windows theory and other thoroughly reductive ideas that think more police will make for less crime rather than just creating vacuums of power and not addressing socioeconomic issues that aren't solved by police use of force and violence to intimidate people into conformity.

Also, 99% sure you're flat out wrong in the broad scheme of things: police departments are anything but underfunded except in instances that are not representative of the whole (which would be a compositional fallacy, if not the fallacy of division, claiming something you haven't substantiated with facts, merely claimed and expect me to just take at face value as true like an idiot). If anything, we have plenty of other needed institutions that are vastly underfunded: mental health, social workers, the list goes on, while police are expected to be able to deal with a mentally ill person being violent and NOT resort to shooting them in the end? When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, seems pretty fitting in the context of a force that rarely seems to use negotiation or diplomacy unless it suits them (and often towards those who are white rather than the non whites)

How do you know it's a minority? Do you think cops are catching other cops driving drunk and armed and just letting it slide frequently? Do you have any evidence of this?

Pretty sure I didn't say that, you'd have to substantiate that claim, because I'm stating that the fact that these instances are as noteworthy as they are reflects how the police can be affected by a preconception that they need to be treated better as to situations where they violate the law rather than civilians. Any violation should be taken seriously, drunk driving or a traffic violation and anything in between or above. Equity of executing the law is a reasonable goal if we're going to be a society that supposedly holds officers to a higher standard and not lower than the citizens they protect.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. You haven't identified a "disease" or any symptoms.

Systemic racism is the disease, marginalization of black and brown citizens is a symptom. Better?

That's hilarious. I can guarantee that nurses watch negligent or wrongful behavior from doctors and other nurses all the time and do nothing about it. There's actually internal reporting procedures for that sort of thing at every hospital....and if you were able to obtain those records (I don't know if they are publicly obtainable) you would see thousands of mistakes and negligent behavior reported at major hospitals every year, the vast majority of which carry no consequences at all. In fact, the last time I read an article about it, it was about how such incidents are under reported. Our medical community causes more injuries and deaths, wrongfully, either through mistakes or negligence than our police do...

The metaphor could be flawed, but sounds like you're just being vindictive here and demonizing anyone else you can, as if police are paragons of virtue, even if they can be flawed. You'll sweep that under the rug, but healthcare workers deserve to be sneered at because you assume in bad faith that they're being intentionally incompetent?

I don't idealize them. I'm more than willing to point out that they make mistakes and even engage in criminal behavior. I certainly wouldn't say that cop pulled over and arrested for driving drunk should be excused for his behavior. He should be arrested and fired.

My problem is that the longer this attack on cops went on....the clearer it became that the people complaining didn't actually have a clear problem in mind. This was more obvious when they blamed police for doing exactly what they are supposed to do.

Identity the problem.

Injustice by police officers has been a thing since even before Rodney King's incident. Are we just going to think that police magically stopped being racist in their culture or even implicit policy aspects that don't target black people explicitly, but still disproportionately affect them just because the Civil War made slavery illegal and thus police didn't have that "important" job to do for slave owners and the like?

The problem is injustice, you seem to be willfully blind to it because you don't want to think it emerges from societal norms, but just from bad people, which is hopelessly naive and so focused on agency that it forgets those aspects of social conditioning we often neglect.

What are you talking about? Regard what as a problem?

That police behave with flagrant disregard for the law and protect each other more often than we want to admit, let alone good police officers within those departments who are forced to turn a blind eye or lose their job or otherwise be ostracized in some way.

No....I've given a lot of consideration for what problems might actually exist.

The problem that people perceive isn't clear.

There was a young black men in Philadelphia I think who, while having a psychotic episode of some sort, started chasing people with a butcher knife. The police spent a significant amount of time trying to calmly talk this man into dropping the weapon and accepting help....before he finally chose to charge the police and was shot mere feet in front of one. The police were blamed for that like everything else. I saw a young black girl in Columbus Ohio about to shove a butcher knife into another girl's gut....and despite having mere seconds to react to the situation, the cop managed to shoot her, and only her, before trying to render her aid....and he was blamed.

Blamed for doing his job perfectly!

So again, tell me what the problem is. I'm not going to entertain vaguely one sided misconceptions and generalizations. It's getting old.

So you think you know those situations perfectly? And you think the police should be the first ones called as a matter of principle? That's the problem: you think every situation needs a gun to be called to deal with it when that assumes the worst of humanity far too easily and thinks violence should be the first impulse when we see bad things occur.

That's remarkable considering that I don't recall you ever considering the actions of the subjects involved in police encounters.

Surely they have some effect on outcomes? This doesn't all happen in a vaccuum does it?

It would make sense to give at least equal consideration to that side of the equation but some people simply won't do that.

Thing is, civilians are not expected to have the level of knowledge about the law that police officers are and their violations are not treated as lesser out of ignorance. But cops should not regard themselves as judge, jury and executioner, even if the situations are stressful. If they cannot handle that, then they are not fit for the position, which is not just meant for any trigger happy schmuck that thinks they can use the clout to bully people into submission out of some resentment from adolescence.

Are you saying that the police are committing genocide?

I'm saying you're treating this like a fascist would, where the police are seen as the only thing keeping society from crumbling and that people should comply as much as possible instead of objecting to problems they see and be taken seriously and not reactionaries or revolutionaries.

Well then why didn't all those people who stood and watched George Floyd get murdered try to intervene? Why didn't they try to tackle Derek Chauvin?

Is it because it wasn't their responsibility? Did they not have any incentive to do the right thing?

Seems you've never heard of the bystander effect or other psychological adn sociological aspects that can affect why people don't do those things. This isn't fiction, this is real life, people can die, lose their jobs, be maimed or injured, all for doing something that we tend to think is common sense, but it's rarer than we think in real life.

Good Samaritan laws are variable by state anyway and as much as we'd like to think the law would side with those doing good by a reasonable observer, the problem is still there in a way you apparently haven't thought about: when was the last time before Chauvin that a police officer was convicted of a crime? Qualified immunity is used almost as an easy smokescreen to avoid any culpability because as long as one could claim an officer thought they were doing right and it isn't just blatantly them being a psychopath, they couldn't possibly have done wrong and get off because no jury that isn't composed of people well vetted will convict a cop, especially when people bring up Chauvin's accomplishments, like that will just skim off how he brutalized a man on drug charges (as if the war on drugs has fixed ANYTHING)

Do you remember when all those nurses quit when covid hit? Their job suddenly involved being exposed to a small modicum of danger and they quit.

Well cops always have a small modicum of danger....the difference is that they are aware of this at the start, and they don't really get much warning for it.

At this point, the people complaining appear to want cops to wait until they've been killed before fighting back. I don't see how that is either reasonable or plausible....but that does appear to be the desired outcome.

Small modicum my eye, we know covid is crippling and unpredictable in terms of how it affects individuals, even if it may not be as fatal (though spinning the numbers on that only speaks to Mark Twain's saying about figures not lying, but liars figuring). The risk in terms of nursing is distinct from law enforcement, it doesn't mean there isn't issues, such as compassion fatigue (which I can't say I'd heard of until around 2020, which felt appropriate as a point for that discussion in mental health).

Also, pretty sure "all those nurses" is not as big a number as you seem to think and, even if it was significant to a degree, they didn't all quit for the same reasons as some have (which are a vast minority, thankfully). It's a stressful job in its own right, something I don't think you want to consider even when someone brings up police corruption. Nope, just pull a tu quoque and throw all these accusations that generalize healthcare professionals, that's rational.

Not remotely my position, because defunding the police is not the same as abolishing them, much as people want to try and spin a word to mean something they think it does when that's not been the intent for pretty much anyone since the 60s when this started to become a more prominent issue in social consideration.

My 1st cousin (who babysat me) is married to a cop, a detective last I recall, I don't want to see him die or hear any such thing. I can disagree with the institution and observe corruption without thinking everyone involved is corrupt in the same way or even necessarily malicious in nature. You're reducing this to individuals without considering how an institution's norms override policy and even throw a sense of shame out the window. We see plenty how cops will escalate a conflict because of their perceived notion that they have an authority and can wield it like a bludgeon without any consideration of nuance or humanity, just a mechanical automaton programmed to enforce the law in an absolutist perspective.

 

[SummerMadness]

Some people will stan for police corruption now matter how egregious it is. Police reform is needed, the police are even begging for it; those that believe in no transparency and accountability are the only ones that oppose messages like "if you see something, say something."

 

[Ana the Ist]

While I only posted only one example, it's not the only example of cops giving other cops preferential treatment when they do something that would get any of us the book thrown at us.

I'm sorry...this didn't register the first time I read it. He got preferential treatment? I was under the impression that he was arrested and charged and I would imagine fired.

Is that not what happened?

These kinds of statements (combined with a third of them responding that they won't write up other cops) shows that followers of the "blue code" aren't just a few random outliers.

Those show that it happens. That's the most we can reliably say about what it shows.

What it doesn't show is...

1. How often cops are letting other cops off on minor traffic violations.
2. What percentage of cops are are committing minor traffic violations (this matters just as much as #1).
3. Whether or not it's reasonable to consider this "the culture" of policing as opposed to the opposite. After all, you have a graph that suggests more cops hold other cops accountable than not. Why isn't that the way you would characterize the "culture" or problem?

Consider this...cell phones haven't just revealed misconceptions that the public held about cops. There's another group of public servants who have dramatically changed in public perception...

Female teachers.

Prior to the last 10 years....I would have imagined that female teachers raping or sexually abusing students was far more rare than male teachers doing so. However, mainly because of cell phones, there's been a large number of incidents of female teachers who have been sexually assaulting, raping, and otherwise using their position to engage in criminal sexual activity with students.

Now, I would completely understand if someone said they found this shocking and far more prevalent than they had ever realized. If they were to start describing this as a "systemic" problem...I'd probably roll my eyes and think ok...whatever.

However once they began campaigning for changes in our entire educational institutions to solve this problem (which is far more clearly defined and not at all a moving target) I would still start pointing out that their conclusions are completely irrational and largely based on misconceptions. After all....

They don't know what percentage of teachers who sexually abuse students are female. They just know it's more than they realized. They haven't actually examined the causes of it. It could be that we need to aggressively police these teachers and monitor their behavior because they're disturbed child predators. However, it could also be a far more effective and elegant solution to simply enforce rules that don't allow students to have cell phones in school. This might put a stop to 16 and 17 year old students from aggressively sexually pursuing their attractive young and frankly, criminally irresponsible teachers. Obviously, some people are going to call that victim blaming....but since we don't allow students many types of rights (in some cases they can't even choose what clothes they wear to school) it's clearly a viable and possibly effective option. We might also learn that despite female teachers getting most of the press.....it's actually the male teachers who are overwhelmingly the ones committing these crimes.

What I do know is that if we start making changes to the institution without a full and detailed consideration of exactly what is causing the problem (and again, it's still more clearly defined than whatever problem people have with the police)....attempting to guess our way to a workable solution is very likely to have many negative consequences that reduce the quality of our rather pathetic educational system without ever coming close to solving the problem at all. If for example, someone suggested that policies should be created to prevent students from ever contacting teachers outside of the classroom....that could have a very negative effect on the performance of students who genuinely need help understanding the course work. Does that make sense?

That's the risk involved with trying to solve a problem without any real understanding of what causes it. It's not even a great comparison because unlike whatever problem people imagine is endemic to our police....we know for a fact that every single instance of a teacher engaging in this behavior is a crime, not a mistake or accident. It's not as if some female teacher accidentally invited over a student, accidentally got naked, and mistakenly had sex with them.

Yet we don't see the same outrage and rhetoric surrounding female teachers. We don't see mass protests. We don't see vague accusations against the entire institution of education and claims that it's corrupt from its creation. We don't make insane demands of unrealistic standards like all schools should somehow magically be able to identify and remove criminal teachers before they actually commit any crimes. We don't demand perfection....we don't even demand consistency in the consequences since many of these female teachers get far milder sentences than a man would in a similar situation.

I'm also 100% certain that if you found a story of a female teacher hitting on a male student in a wildly inappropriate manner, getting caught, and getting punished....you wouldn't hold that up as some sort of example of the "problem" with our educational system. You'd probably think it was a good thing that she was caught and punished for it.

Now, it's not as if I cannot come up with explanations for why the public has vastly different reactions to the unexpected knowledge that there's some criminal behavior in teaching. There's actually a lot of reasonable explanations for why so many in the public react so differently to the two scenarios....despite the fact that they both changed misconceptions about the reality of these public servants.

Those explanations, for the most part, are actually going to involve the public....and their biases about police and female teachers and cops. The public is easily manipulated by their exposure to these things in the media. The public has an innate, and well documented bias in favor of women....and most cops are men. The teachers have very little authority to abuse...and the number of people who might experience it falls within a rather limited and narrow age group. There's also the fact that we imagine that everyone working with the teacher is oblivious to the crimes....despite no real knowledge about if that is true.

In short, the mistakes in logic, reasoning, and rationality that the public makes...actually favors the teachers. In the case of cops....the mistakes in logic, reasoning, and rationality are against the police.

If I were to suggest the exact same thing about female teachers....that there's simply no way to ensure that they will never engage in criminal behavior....people probably would accept that as obviously true, because it is, no matter what profession we're talking about.

Yet somehow, when I say that exact same truth about the police....the answer is wildly different and completely unreasonable. It's something like..."we should demand a higher standard from the police because they have authority and are public servants and blah blah blah".

 

[Ana the Ist]

Some people will stan for police corruption now matter how egregious it is. Police reform is needed, the police are even begging for it; those that believe in no transparency and accountability are the only ones that oppose messages like "if you see something, say something."

I'm sure you can find examples of cops "begging for it". I'm also sure that if they could give their honest opinion to the public under anonymity....you'd certainly find a number of cops who think it's an incredibly stupid idea.

I'm inclined to go with the latter for two reasons.

1. There's no clear problem identified nor is there any examination of its cause....just like every other "problem" that people have complained about the police.

2. Every single attempt to solve these problems has either failed miserably...or actually made the situation worse by making it harder for police to do their jobs, or outright creating more crime.

It's not just a reasonable request to ask that people complaining about police clearly explain what the problem is....or even what a successful result of a solution looks like....that's pretty much the only reasonable position at this point.

This half baked narrative about the police has really only had a negative impact on the very same communities it's supposed to be helping. I haven't seen any evidence it had reduced crime, and it's definitely increased violent crimes, most notably murder. It's also devastated the police themselves, as they've lost many experienced cops to early retirement and many new cops to attrition. The real impact of these failed "solutions" is going to continue years down the road as it becomes harder to find anyone competent who is also dumb enough to take a job that people demand perfection from. The increases in crime resulting not just from the endless blaming of police, but also the endless excuses for criminals is going to predictably result in more crime for many communities.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I can identify it, just not to your satisfaction, which frankly I could care less about when you seem to just want to hem and haw around any systemic issue that is inconvenient for you to discuss and can just be dismissed as anecdotal or bad apples and not culture affecting even good intentioned individuals. Not even good cops meaning well are free from the possibility of ENABLING the bad ones by inaction of some form or fashion because of the blue wall of silence

Well there's two issues with people who complain about vague problems and offer up random solutions....

1. We never get a chance to understand the problem, so there's no real hope of fixing it.

2. The solutions are almost certainly not going to improve anything...as has been proven by everything suggested from "implicit bias training" to "defund the police". None of it worked.

So you're just going to take their reporting at face value, as if there can't be underreporting or false reporting?

Why would I assume that?

Pretty sure we have examples of that, you cannot state with absolute certainty that isn't a potential issue involved in corruption, which there have been cases in terms of police corruption up to the Supreme Court.

Is it possible? Sure. Is it proven? No.

Is it possible that the problem exists entirely in your imagination?

Social sciences never claimed to be perfect, you're buying into broken windows theory and other thoroughly reductive ideas that think more police will make for less crime rather than just creating vacuums of power and not addressing socioeconomic issues that aren't solved by police use of force and violence to intimidate people into conformity.

Well we've got pretty good evidence of how well they work. Back in the 80s when crime was far worse than it is now....huge investments were made in policing, and guess what? A steady drop in crime followed for 2-3 decades.

Now two years ago....a bunch of activists who can't even identify a problem complained about police to the point of rioting frequently and got cops who were completely innocent fired from jobs.

Now crime is back on the rise. You don't have to be a genius to spot the correlation here.

Also, 99% sure you're flat out wrong in the broad scheme of things: police departments are anything but underfunded except in instances that are not representative of the whole

No...they're underfunded. They don't have enough detectives, dna labs, specialists, and a whole host of necessary resources. There's backlogs in many major cities on rape kits. Detectives frequently don't have enough time to thoroughly investigate a case before moving onto the next. It's not a good situation.

(which would be a compositional fallacy, if not the fallacy of division, claiming something you haven't substantiated with facts, merely claimed and expect me to just take at face value as true like an idiot). If anything, we have plenty of other needed institutions that are vastly underfunded: mental health, social workers, the list goes on, while police are expected to be able to deal with a mentally ill person being violent and NOT resort to shooting them in the end? When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, seems pretty fitting in the context of a force that rarely seems to use negotiation or diplomacy unless it suits them (and often towards those who are white rather than the non whites)

I'm sure that makes sense to you....because frankly, you don't have any idea what is going on.

What is a mental health worker going to do with a subject having a psychotic episode? Do you think that they are just going to talk them out of it?

Pretty sure I didn't say that, you'd have to substantiate that claim, because I'm stating that the fact that these instances are as noteworthy as they are reflects how the police can be affected by a preconception that they need to be treated better as to situations where they violate the law rather than civilians.

What happened to the cop that was a better result than a civilian would have?

Wasn't he arrested?

Any violation should be taken seriously, drunk driving or a traffic violation and anything in between or above. Equity of executing the law is a reasonable goal if we're going to be a society that supposedly holds officers to a higher standard and not lower than the citizens they protect.

I suppose if a cop comes across someone shoplifting...then you would want them arrested, and you're against these laws that decriminalize such things?

Systemic racism is the disease, marginalization of black and brown citizens is a symptom. Better?

Not really. Are you saying that the cops are racist? Are you saying that the policies are racist? What are you saying?

The system isn't a living thing. It doesn't have a mind, it doesn't have ideas, it doesn't form racist thoughts.

If you think the cops are racist....just say so.

The metaphor could be flawed, but sounds like you're just being vindictive here and demonizing anyone else you can, as if police are paragons of virtue, even if they can be flawed. You'll sweep that under the rug, but healthcare workers deserve to be sneered at because you assume in bad faith that they're being intentionally incompetent?

I'm simply pointing out that there's no job that every employee does perfectly without any mistakes. There's no job that doesn't have some criminals working it.

Injustice by police officers has been a thing since even before Rodney King's incident.

Sure.

Are we just going to think that police magically stopped being racist in their culture

Is that the problem? A racist "culture"?

or even implicit policy aspects that don't target black people explicitly, but still disproportionately affect them

More white men are arrested for methamphetamine possession than any other race.

Does that law implicitly target white men?

just because the Civil War made slavery illegal and thus police didn't have that "important" job to do for slave owners and the like?

What in the world are you talking about? Do you honestly think that cops are walking around missing the days of slavery?

The problem is injustice, you seem to be willfully blind to it because you don't want to think it emerges from societal norms, but just from bad people, which is hopelessly naive and so focused on agency that it forgets those aspects of social conditioning we often neglect.

I don't think you would be able to explain the "social conditioning" of cops if I gave you all day.

That police behave with flagrant disregard for the law and protect each other more often than we want to admit, let alone good police officers within those departments who are forced to turn a blind eye or lose their job or otherwise be ostracized in some way.

Flagrant disregard for the law huh? So out of the hundred million encounters with the public...you imagine that a large number of these are flagrant disregard for the law?

So you think you know those situations perfectly?

Perfectly? No. All I can do is judge the cop's performance based on the information available.

In both the cases I presented...I don't see what they could have possibly done better.

And you think the police should be the first ones called as a matter of principle?

If someone is swinging a knife at someone else? Yes.

That's the problem: you think every situation needs a gun to be called to deal with it when that assumes the worst of humanity far too easily and thinks violence should be the first impulse when we see bad things occur.

Some people followed the suggestion of activists and raised the standards for a prosecutable shoplifting offense.

The result was immediate.

Mass gangs of criminals began looting stores because even if they were caught by police, prosecutors declined to press charges.

The result is, of course, that the stores they've been looting are leaving....and the services and jobs they provide with them.

If you think people are all a bunch of angels then clearly you have no idea how bad things have been in the past, or could be in the future.

Thing is, civilians are not expected to have the level of knowledge about the law that police officers are and their violations are not treated as lesser out of ignorance. But cops should not regard themselves as judge, jury and executioner, even if the situations are stressful. If they cannot handle that, then they are not fit for the position, which is not just meant for any trigger happy schmuck that thinks they can use the clout to bully people into submission out of some resentment from adolescence.

Are telling me that only the cops are ever responsible for their actions? People aren't expected to know they are breaking the law?

I'm pretty sure I've figured out the problem.

I'm saying you're treating this like a fascist would, where the police are seen as the only thing keeping society from crumbling and that people should comply as much as possible instead of objecting to problems they see and be taken seriously and not reactionaries or revolutionaries.

What are the problems? You said you don't expect perfection. The number of wrongful shootings is extremely low.

What is the problem?

Seems you've never heard of the bystander effect or other psychological adn sociological aspects that can affect why people don't do those things. This isn't fiction, this is real life, people can die, lose their jobs, be maimed or injured, all for doing something that we tend to think is common sense, but it's rarer than we think in real life.

But you expect a cop to just turn all that off and always act in a perfectly moral manner without any mistakes ever.

Good Samaritan laws are variable by state anyway and as much as we'd like to think the law would side with those doing good by a reasonable observer, the problem is still there in a way you apparently haven't thought about: when was the last time before Chauvin that a police officer was convicted of a crime?

There's several. There's the cop who went into the wrong apartment and shot the guy living there. Remember her? Want some more examples?

Qualified immunity is used almost as an easy smokescreen to avoid any culpability because as long as one could claim an officer thought they were doing right and it isn't just blatantly them being a psychopath, they couldn't possibly have done wrong and get off because no jury that isn't composed of people well vetted will convict a cop, especially when people bring up Chauvin's accomplishments, like that will just skim off how he brutalized a man on drug charges (as if the war on drugs has fixed ANYTHING)

Do you want cops to enforce the law or not? You seem to want them to police themselves and ignore all other crimes. You just said above that they should be treating everyone the same without exception.

Small modicum my eye, we know covid is crippling and unpredictable in terms of how it affects individuals, even if it may not be as fatal (though spinning the numbers on that only speaks to Mark Twain's saying about figures not lying, but liars figuring). The risk in terms of nursing is distinct from law enforcement, it doesn't mean there isn't issues, such as compassion fatigue (which I can't say I'd heard of until around 2020, which felt appropriate as a point for that discussion in mental health).

Oh ok....compassion fatigue. Well I'm sure that the next time you call 911, if they respond that they don't have any cops to send because they're all suffering from compassion fatigue, you'll understand.

Also, pretty sure "all those nurses" is not as big a number as you seem to think and, even if it was significant to a degree, they didn't all quit for the same reasons as some have (which are a vast minority, thankfully). It's a stressful job in its own right, something I don't think you want to consider even when someone brings up police corruption. Nope, just pull a tu quoque and throw all these accusations that generalize healthcare professionals, that's rational.

Again, I'm simply pointing out your misconceptions.

Not remotely my position, because defunding the police is not the same as abolishing them, much as people want to try and spin a word to mean something they think it does when that's not been the intent for pretty much anyone since the 60s when this started to become a more prominent issue in social consideration.

I'm not at all surprised that you don't agree on the problem.

My 1st cousin (who babysat me) is married to a cop, a detective last I recall, I don't want to see him die or hear any such thing. I can disagree with the institution and observe corruption without thinking everyone involved is corrupt in the same way or even necessarily malicious in nature. You're reducing this to individuals without considering how an institution's norms

Name a "norm". Tell me what these evil norms are.

override policy and even throw a sense of shame out the window. We see plenty how cops will escalate a conflict because of their perceived notion that they have an authority

It's not perceived. They are given authority. They can't really do the job without it.

and can wield it like a bludgeon without any consideration of nuance or humanity, just a mechanical automaton programmed to enforce the law in an absolutist perspective.

And yet when they let a cop off the hook for a minor traffic violation....you're upset that they didn't act like a mindless automaton.

You still haven't identified a problem.

 

[muichimotsu]

I'm sure you can find examples of cops "begging for it". I'm also sure that if they could give their honest opinion to the public under anonymity....you'd certainly find a number of cops who think it's an incredibly stupid idea.

I'm inclined to go with the latter for two reasons.

1. There's no clear problem identified nor is there any examination of its cause....just like every other "problem" that people have complained about the police.

2. Every single attempt to solve these problems has either failed miserably...or actually made the situation worse by making it harder for police to do their jobs, or outright creating more crime.

It's not just a reasonable request to ask that people complaining about police clearly explain what the problem is....or even what a successful result of a solution looks like....that's pretty much the only reasonable position at this point.

This half baked narrative about the police has really only had a negative impact on the very same communities it's supposed to be helping. I haven't seen any evidence it had reduced crime, and it's definitely increased violent crimes, most notably murder. It's also devastated the police themselves, as they've lost many experienced cops to early retirement and many new cops to attrition. The real impact of these failed "solutions" is going to continue years down the road as it becomes harder to find anyone competent who is also dumb enough to take a job that people demand perfection from. The increases in crime resulting not just from the endless blaming of police, but also the endless excuses for criminals is going to predictably result in more crime for many communities.

Accountability /=/ expecting perfection. I don't expect any job to be done perfectly, I expect the institutions to be able to hold an honest mirror to themselves and admit a problem that THEY have a primary responsibility to solve, not push that onto the public, something you seem keen to do, as if sociologists and the like haven't adequately explained the problem.

I'm not sure if you want the police to actually hold their officers accountable when they consistently make "mistakes" (which are still crimes, even if you do them out of ignorance, that isn't ever a valid excuse) instead of protecting them, moving them to other townships and the like in the vein of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church, and generally treating them with kid gloves because of...you guessed it, the blue wall of silence

But if that's the case, is it possible you just don't understand how they've explained it rather than it being a failing on their part?

 

[muichimotsu]

Well there's two issues with people who complain about vague problems and offer up random solutions....

1. We never get a chance to understand the problem, so there's no real hope of fixing it.

2. The solutions are almost certainly not going to improve anything...as has been proven by everything suggested from "implicit bias training" to "defund the police". None of it worked.

You claiming you don't understand the problem doesn't mean other people don't, that's personal incredulity, which is fallacious reasoning to reach your conclusion

You also don't get to determine that as if your metrics are absolute or conclusive. The issue is manifold, no one EVER claimed the issues would be fixed with ONE policy change or even just addressing the institution of policing, that's a strawman of the highest order (Wicker Man would tell you to tone it down)

Why would I assume that?

Why would you assume there isn't that as a possibility remotely? Sounds like you've bought into the idea that the institution is innately heroic somehow and not authoritarian jackboot thuggery.

Is it possible? Sure. Is it proven? No.

Is it possible that the problem exists entirely in your imagination?

So the several Supreme Court cases in regards to this mean nothing? Is it possible you just want to keep dodging the implications because it'd bring up cognitive dissonance you don't want to confront?

Well we've got pretty good evidence of how well they work. Back in the 80s when crime was far worse than it is now....huge investments were made in policing, and guess what? A steady drop in crime followed for 2-3 decades.

Now two years ago....a bunch of activists who can't even identify a problem complained about police to the point of rioting frequently and got cops who were completely innocent fired from jobs.

Now crime is back on the rise. You don't have to be a genius to spot the correlation here.

Correlation /=/ causation, you're embarrassing yourself to suggest that those investments were the only reason crime went down, which is reductive on top of being mere correlation and not demonstrating the causative link

Pretty sure they can, you're willfully blind to the issue because you want to think racism has to be something that is only individual prejudice and nothing in regards to societal ideas

Crime's rise cannot be simply correlated to one factor, you've already been told this is nonsensical and yet you continue to double down

No...they're underfunded. They don't have enough detectives, dna labs, specialists, and a whole host of necessary resources. There's backlogs in many major cities on rape kits. Detectives frequently don't have enough time to thoroughly investigate a case before moving onto the next. It's not a good situation.

It's almost like people expect too much of police in terms of addressing problems that could be assisted by getting funding to other institutions. You'd need to demonstrate and substantiate these claims, otherwise I'm sensing a biased narrative where you want to make this like policing is the ONLY solution to crime as a societal problem

I'm sure that makes sense to you....because frankly, you don't have any idea what is going on.

What is a mental health worker going to do with a subject having a psychotic episode? Do you think that they are just going to talk them out of it?

I'm not so pessimistic to think they can't handle it in a way that doesn't have to involve treating them like a child, or worse, a rabid animal. If you think cops can handle ALL situations, the one who's out of their depth is YOU, because I'm not naive enough to think a cop should be the one to address something that social workers are far better equipped for.

What happened to the cop that was a better result than a civilian would have?

Wasn't he arrested?

No one said that was the problem: being arrested is the technical outcome, the particulars of how they were treated is more often the issue here. Like how a black student is held down like a beast while the white passing Hispanic is treated like they were the victim and couldn't possibly have been just as violent, if not moreso. Little convenient amnesia there, hm?

I suppose if a cop comes across someone shoplifting...then you would want them arrested, and you're against these laws that decriminalize such things?

Decriminalization is more complex than you're reducing it to. No one's made it legal, they've reduced the criminal classification. If you're not a lawyer or can't admit when you're wrong, then maybe you shouldn't speak about something as if it's a concluded fact in regards to an issue more complex than you appear to realize

Shoplifting is a crime, no one is saying otherwise, because decriminalization /=/ legalization, just as defunding/=/ abolishing. I'm beginning to think you just don't have the sense of nuance to consider that words don't have a singular prescribed meaning, they change because they're social constructs to describe concepts and applications

Not really. Are you saying that the cops are racist? Are you saying that the policies are racist? What are you saying?

The system isn't a living thing. It doesn't have a mind, it doesn't have ideas, it doesn't form racist thoughts.

If you think the cops are racist....just say so.

The culture encourages racism in the implicit sense, a concept that seems to fly over your head because you can't conceive of the idea that one might have prejudices that affect how they treat people even if to them it seems like they "don't see color" (which is nonsense)

No one said the system was a living thing, we've been over this. It conditions ideas in that it is seen as normative and encourages such things by people's adherence to it without questioning it.

Racism is one manifestation, it doesn't mean that an institution that disproportionately has negative effects and injustices on a minority group isn't enabling and perpetuating racial prejudices. Just because Jim Crow law didn't explicitly invoke black people doesn't make them less racist. Or are you unaware of how those disenfranchised black people post Civil War?

I'm simply pointing out that there's no job that every employee does perfectly without any mistakes. There's no job that doesn't have some criminals working it.

Wow, so I guess we just don't need to hold anyone accountable when they hold inordinate amounts of power AND are seen as bastions of justice (because I think we'd be in agreement that politicians and elected officials should be taken to task, but they're elected, police aren't, barring the chief, if even that). Expecting the best of police officers ignores that there's an abusive power dynamic pushed by a system that systematically oppressed black people for over 2 centuries in America and continues to in insidious ways





Sure.

Is that the problem? A racist "culture"?

Are we going to continue to perpetuate the idea that culture is somehow a nebulous word now?

More white men are arrested for methamphetamine possession than any other race.

Does that law implicitly target white men?

Only if you assume whiteness is innately tied to ethnicity or other factors you're likely implying with that. Also, that's a reductive cherry picked example, because it fails to consider why white men are being caught with meth more often than black people. Could it be that meth is something more "affluent" people engage in as a drug to abuse?

What in the world are you talking about? Do you honestly think that cops are walking around missing the days of slavery?

Not explicitly, but the ideas of how black people were treated don't just go away because we made slavery illegal anymore than the idea that discriminatory and prejudiced ideas about black people as "uncivilized" and such disappeared when we made such racist treatments illegal in 1964. MLK Jr. and Malcolm X, among others, were assassinated (albeit under different circumstances respectively) AFTER that was passed. It's been over 50 years since then and yet we seem to have MORE out white supremacists engaging in intimidation. What does that tell you? I certainly don't have this assumption like some that racism just went away after the CRA of 1964 was passed, it just went underground until we elected a pedagogue that peddled in white nationalism lite.

I don't think you would be able to explain the "social conditioning" of cops if I gave you all day.

Pretty sure I'm not claiming expertise here, so...maybe you could make an effort to consider this position, do some research. Unless you're afraid you might be found wanting in this enabling of an abusive system that treats ALL citizens like they have to be whipped into submission. Police brutality affects every group to some degree, some are more insulated from it than others. To say otherwise is not even naive, it's outright damaging.

Flagrant disregard for the law huh? So out of the hundred million encounters with the public...you imagine that a large number of these are flagrant disregard for the law?

When police target people for perceived infractions, even exaggerate charges (in spite of having bodycams that could invalidate that testimony?), you don't think that's a problem when they're doing what would be considered harassment, singling out groups because they're seen as more "criminal"?

Perfectly? No. All I can do is judge the cop's performance based on the information available.

In both the cases I presented...I don't see what they could have possibly done better.

This assumes THEY are the only ones involved in the situation, you're stacking the deck in your favor to act like police shouldn't be scrutinized in a way that isn't just from outside, but from inside. That's the thing lacking here: policing as an institution actually admitting a problem and trying to fix it, especially by cooperative efforts and not the equivalent of wolves being a jury for a fox.

If someone is swinging a knife at someone else? Yes.

Then that's the issue: a knife is not as deadly as a gun. And there are ways to address the situation that don't have to involve immediate deadly force that is disproportional to what is happening. If someone has a freaking bomb or a gun, then sure, match force with equivalent force. Not using an elephant gun for a deer.

Some people followed the suggestion of activists and raised the standards for a prosecutable shoplifting offense.

The result was immediate.

Mass gangs of criminals began looting stores because even if they were caught by police, prosecutors declined to press charges.

The result is, of course, that the stores they've been looting are leaving....and the services and jobs they provide with them.

If you think people are all a bunch of angels then clearly you have no idea how bad things have been in the past, or could be in the future.

It's almost like a purely retributive justice system doesn't actually work, which is why policing needs to be taken into perspective as well for enforcing that attitude and the norms that encourage such an idea where as long as you can get away with it, the law doesn't matter

Never did I claim people were innately good, if you want to mischaracterize me, at least be able to quote me saying something to that sentiment instead of reading into it dishonestly

Are telling me that only the cops are ever responsible for their actions? People aren't expected to know they are breaking the law?

I'm pretty sure I've figured out the problem.

Ah because cops can just be considered okay because they BELIEVED they were following the law? You can be wrong even if you're considered someone that isn't often wrong. Hero worship is the issue here and you're a prime example of it, blaming citizens as the core instigator instead of holding everyone accountable equally and not with this white glove treatment for cops

What are the problems? You said you don't expect perfection. The number of wrongful shootings is extremely low.

What is the problem?

"Wrongful shooting" by whose standards? The internal investigations that aren't going to be treated well if they actually call out the biases or mistakes done by officers in regards to disproportionate treatment of black people in a way that doesn't reflect the same for white people? That's like expecting Trump to not hire someone he trusts to do his "taxes" and expect the same result as a brown noser

But you expect a cop to just turn all that off and always act in a perfectly moral manner without any mistakes ever.

Nope, you're strawmanning again, because the goal is never perfection, it's accountability and an attempt to be better instead of just maintaining a comfortable status quo

There's several. There's the cop who went into the wrong apartment and shot the guy living there. Remember her? Want some more examples?

Problem is these happen more often than they should with situations that don't require this kind of reckless abandon these thugs utilize in pursuit of "justice", as if that'll help things instead of creating a toxic climate where we treat the cops with "respect" out of fear and not respect out of them being humble

Do you want cops to enforce the law or not? You seem to want them to police themselves and ignore all other crimes. You just said above that they should be treating everyone the same without exception.

The two aren't mutually exclusive: if they want to enforce laws, they enforce them on themselves with the same standard they do with the citizens: they're not above the law, they're not special in terms of violations, even in the exercise of their duties. Qualified immunity should be far stricter than it is, yet we treat cops like some golden child a narcissistic parent thinks can do no wrong even when it's clear as bird crap on the asphalt.

Oh ok....compassion fatigue. Well I'm sure that the next time you call 911, if they respond that they don't have any cops to send because they're all suffering from compassion fatigue, you'll understand.

As if cops are permitted the idea of being "vulnerable". You keep acting like the idea of admitting any kind of problem is tantamount to a catastrophe, a cognitive distortion that's especially prominent when trying to deflect responsibility from a group accused of wrongdoing. Though that's just as easily done by projection anyway.

I'm not at all surprised that you don't agree on the problem.

So what do you think my position is? Just take a shot

Name a "norm". Tell me what these evil norms are.

So there's no prejudices that assume black people are all the same, that go with vague descriptions to pin someone as the suspect (like a guy who was charged with stealing his own car because the cops apparently went with a description that mostly fixated on him being black and not the clothes he was wearing?). If I have to explain what a norm is and then point out that they can be implicit, then I don't think you're equipped to even start discussing this, because you're working on elementary school level understanding of civics and social issues

It's not perceived. They are given authority. They can't really do the job without it.

Problem is authority is not absolute, it can be taken away when it is shown you are not taking it seriously, when you are not being consistent, when you are abusing said authority. Or is it fine because...they're given authority, right?

And yet when they let a cop off the hook for a minor traffic violation....you're upset that they didn't act like a mindless automaton.

You still haven't identified a problem.

Letting anyone off the hook for a minor traffic violation is case by case anyway, my dad ran a stop sign and cop just gave him a warning as I recall. But do you think they'd do the same if a black guy in the 95% white area I live in did the exact same violation?

You want one singular problem, that's the naivete, it's manifold

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I'm sorry...this didn't register the first time I read it. He got preferential treatment? I was under the impression that he was arrested and charged and I would imagine fired.

Is that not what happened?

Of course he did, they took the cuffs off, let him keep his gun on him, and let his friends from his precinct come to pick him up after processing.

And to your other question, no he wasn't fired.

He was given a 30 day suspension, and given work driving privileges. (despite the fact that he was driving a work vehicle at the time of getting busted passed out behind the wheel)

If I got pulled over drunk with my concealed carry Glock 27 on me, you think they would take the cuffs off and let me keep my gun during processing? And then let some of my coworkers come pick me up without having to pay any money to bail me out? (Hint: the answer is "No"...I'd be going to jail for 6 months and getting hit with heavy fines because that's the penalty in Ohio for carrying a firearm while intoxicated...and they certainly wouldn't let me keep my gun on me while I was drunk in a police station as a "professional courtesy")

Those show that it happens. That's the most we can reliably say about what it shows.

What it doesn't show is...

1. How often cops are letting other cops off on minor traffic violations.
2. What percentage of cops are are committing minor traffic violations (this matters just as much as #1).
3. Whether or not it's reasonable to consider this "the culture" of policing as opposed to the opposite. After all, you have a graph that suggests more cops hold other cops accountable than not. Why isn't that the way you would characterize the "culture" or problem?

Do you have any reason to believe that the attitudes of the 3,000 cops surveyed differs greatly from the profession as a whole? Or did they just get unlucky with the 3,000 particular officers they picked to survey?

There are 700,000 police officers in the US (give or take), even if it's only those survey respondents having those concerning attitudes (which we know obviously isn't the case, there have to be others), that's still way outside the acceptable window.

Obviously every profession has bad actors, no reasonable person would expect there to be 0 bad cops.

To overlay that kind of ratio on another profession that's given elevated levels of public trust and has roughly the same amount:

Doctors - there are just under 700,000 MDs in the US. If we surveyed 3,000 random doctors, and of them surveyed, > 35% thought it was okay to cover for their co-workers if they knowingly violated best practices, people would see it as a much bigger issue.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Accountability /=/ expecting perfection. I don't expect any job to be done perfectly,

Oh?

I expect the institutions to be able to hold an honest mirror to themselves and admit a problem that THEY have a primary responsibility to solve,

A problem you can't identify.

not push that onto the public, something you seem keen to do,

Push what onto the public? We haven't gotten to step 1 in solving a problem.

as if sociologists and the like haven't adequately explained the problem.

And the like? I don't think a sociologist could look at your posts and have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

I'm not sure if you want the police to actually hold their officers accountable when they consistently make "mistakes" (which are still crimes, even if you do them out of ignorance, that isn't ever a valid excuse)

Oh ok...so you do want perfection.

You think if a cop makes a mistake....that's a crime. If the cops commit a crime, it should be reported and prosecuted accordingly.

And therefore any cop who ever makes a mistake should be treated as criminal.

So...you don't see anything wrong with that? You think that would work?

instead of protecting them, moving them to other townships and the like in the vein of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church, and generally treating them with kid gloves because of...you guessed it, the blue wall of silence

Most mistakes are handled in the department I would imagine. There's been instances where the records of entire departments have been made public and the average cop makes multiple mistakes over their careers.

But if that's the case, is it possible you just don't understand how they've explained it rather than it being a failing on their part?

No...I'm pretty sure the problem is that a group of people hate the police because they aren't perfect, will always complain about them, and should excluded from any further conversation about the police.