Post: #1

Admittedly, I have a complicated relationship with the police. I love to rail against them as symbols, but respect them in person. Not surprising for a person with narcissistic issues.

Still, I am a big fan of what is termed "community policing." I think police officers should cultivate better relations with the citizens in their district. It helps officers to see people as humans instead of perps or witnesses and helps people become better acquainted with their local force.

Personally, I talk about how country folk approach life better than city folk, but I see this on display with policing. Sure, small-town cops are dicks to outsiders - that much is true. However, with known people, the situation is much smoother. In my thread on the country, I mentioned by friend's neighbor getting busted by the Feds.

One officer was savvy about country folk, because he approached my friend's family after busting the next-door meth lab. He shook hands and asked my friend's big and burly dad about his Harley. Fed had game. But he nailed it when my friend's mom invited him in for a "hot plate" (dinner). The cop was "ah, shucks" and came in for dinner. Although he didn't get much out of my friend's family that he didn't already know (they were pretty oblivious) he built a solid relationship with the family. He would stop in and talk to them whenever he had some leads about drugs in the town.

You could say that is about lowering people's defenses against government intervention. A fair point.

However, cops -- especially at the local level -- exert great discretion in their job. I know a cop who let a guy off on DUI just because the cop knew once he phoned that guy's Dad the guy was going to get some serious shit. I knew a guy busted with a joint and the cop simply drove him home and his mom was waiting to give homeboy a lecture.

What are your opinions about American policing? Should cops emphasize social relations as a way of bettering people's behavior? What changes should or need to be in our system to advance justice or rehabilitation?

As long as it is about policing, this seems to be a pretty wide open thread.

Post: #2

Fuck the Cops and I come from a family of cops.

Post: #3

Cops in America tend to abuse their power. I grew up in a small town outside of Las Vegas with a population of only around 16,000, and the cops were straight up dickheads. They'd pull you over and harass you, asking where your pot was even if you didn't have any. They had nothing better to do so on weekends their main goal was to break up whichever high school party was going on. I have no respect for the cops in that town.

In Miami I saw a lot of racism with the police. I've written about this somewhere else, but I was at the beach with a group of black friends drinking (I actually wasn't drinking but there was no way for the cops to know that as I was standing up to go get my backpack when they approached us). We weren't being ignorant or really even doing anything wrong. This was Miami beach and half the other people on the beach were drinking too, usually this isn't something you get hassled for. Anyways, the cop asks for our ids and when I reach for mine the cop looks over and says, "I don't need your id." He then proceeded to look at all my black friends ids and then wrote then all tickets. He did nothing to me. Another time in Miami a friend of mine was assaulted at a stop light and a cop saw the fight go down. When he came and broke everything up and questioned everyone, he let the dude who assaulted my friend go, and I asked the cop, "so it's alright to just beat people up in south beach now?" The cop replied, "he said your friend cut him off." I couldn't believe it. I know the guy had to have been connected somehow because the whole thing just didn't make sense. There are countless cases of how I can point out the corruption in the Miami beach police department. They have/had a lot of heat on them in the past years.

The only cool cops I've come across have been cops in colorado. I remember years before pot became legal, I lit up a joint on Main Street, look up and see two cops standing there. I'm thinking, "oh shit I'm fucked. What an idiot." The cops just look at me, shook their heads, and let me walk right by, didn't even take my joint.

Overall I have very little respect for the police. That all being said, I always treat cops with respect when I've been caught doing something wrong. At least now I do. My mentality when I was younger was "fuck these pigs, they treat me like shit, I'll treat them like shit." Now my mentality is more, "fuck these pigs. But if you just play their game, it's going to be a lot easier for you." I realized that not arguing and being nice can get you a long way. I've talked my way out of a DUI before once I realized that arguing and talking back wasn't the right way to go about it.

For the most part, I say fuck the police unless they are actually doing something to help out the community. But I think a lot things they do spend and citations they write are bullshit. Sometimes, the cops are the biggest crooks of them all.

Post: #4

I was going to say a lot more, but most cops are the guys that got beat up in high school and now they are trying to live the life as a bad man.

Gay

*I've met a very few good ones. Not all are bad, but when their cohorts say the same things I do..... Yeah, a bunch of strokes.

Post: #5

Hey, how do the police get their funding over in America? Is it through taxation/fines like Britain or something completely different. Just wondering as it could be a good way to keep them in check.

Post: #6

They have a yearly budget like anything else.

Try to claim that when they bust people for borderline shit it is not for the fines, but anyone with half a brain knows better than that.

When an OWI is around $1000 and the fact they pull people over indiscriminately at 2AM, it's pretty obvious.

The county I live in has a Huber center that holds 300 guys.

The whole county has around 30K people.

They need to keep it full.

Post: #7

Cheers for that. They have merged every regional police force where I'm from
into one big squad recently, which will cause more trouble than it's worth due to each city/town having their own set of laws. I can actually see one set of laws implemented just to make their jobs easier.

Post: #8

Fuck the cops.

Post: #9

Don't like, nor respect police. You have to earn my respect. You don't automatically have it granted to you because you finished high school and were able to make it through a 6 month academy. That puts you in the same camp as a truck driver for me. I respect truck drivers much more actually.

Post: #10

One of my best friends is a cop. Nevertheless, I hate the police. Saddest thing is its the system that fucks over cops who want to do good while rewarding the bullies. No respect for cops who 'do their job', respect for those who do their best to help people and try to not fuck people over.

That being said, being a cop has its benefits. If a bouncer doesn't let him skip the line to the club, the club might expect a raid soon.

Post: #11

95% of the US police actions are designed to increase the government's authoritarian grip on the populace, and to enrich the coiffers of the politico-capitalists who created the industrial prison system. Maybe 5% is to do what the police were originally intended to do: protect property & limit civil disorder.

It used to be the other way around.

Post: #12

This new article on RoK is great for this thread /thread-37784-...#pid770857

Post: #13

My approach to policing is one where they could be replaced by robots. I love red light and speed cameras...no fuckery, just empirical evidence that you were breaking the law and thats that. None of this pulling over hot girls to pick them up, fucking chicks in the car while on duty, bribery (I know a cop that would pull someone over at lunch time and let them buy him lunch to get out of a ticket) or sleeping on the job (again, we used to start field work at sunrise...which comes at 4am in the far north in summer and we'd honk the horn to wake up the cop in the cruiser who would snooze in our vehicle pool lot)

Court is supposed to be where reason and the circumstances at hand are argued, not at the side of the road, off the record, with some racist dick thats mad at the world because he never made it to the NHL (canadian cops).

Police support the pussy pass and stereotype everybody else so unless I'm a good looking white girl I'm going to be in favor of any policing strategy the involves less human involvement. ED 209's "You have 20 seconds to comply" is fine in my books

Post: #14

I was once pulled over doing an illegal driving maneuver in LA and I spent a couple of minutes talking to an LAPD guy about UK vs US cops. I told him that the UK cops don’t carry guns and he was surprised. He said that the LAPD see themselves as soldiers in the frontline in a war. I think British policing is supposed to more community based.

(07-03-2014 02:32 PM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  My approach to policing is one where they could be replaced by robots. I love red light and speed cameras...no fuckery, just empirical evidence that you were breaking the law and thats that. None of this pulling over hot girls to pick them up, fucking chicks in the car while on duty, bribery (I know a cop that would pull someone over at lunch time and let them buy him lunch to get out of a ticket) or sleeping on the job (again, we used to start field work at sunrise...which comes at 4am in the far north in summer and we'd honk the horn to wake up the cop in the cruiser who would snooze in our vehicle pool lot)

Court is supposed to be where reason and the circumstances at hand are argued, not at the side of the road, off the record, with some racist dick thats mad at the world because he never made it to the NHL (canadian cops).

Police support the pussy pass and stereotype everybody else so unless I'm a good looking white girl I'm going to be in favor of any policing strategy the involves less human involvement. ED 209's "You have 20 seconds to comply" is fine in my books

In the UK there’s speed cameras everywhere and it’s a fucking pain in the arse. Thank god there doesn’t seem to be many in LA. Some of them are there just generate revenue for the cops. They make sense in a built up area, but why should they give a shit if some guy is going at 80mph on an empty road in the middle of nowehere? Who is he harming?

Post: #15

Privatize police forces and make them all wear cameras on their person. Have insurance companies take up the role of policing. They already are nationwide/international entities with large amounts of capital at their disposal. They could easily take up the task. Have communities decide which private police force they will go with. The insurance companies will compete to provide the best service possible i.e. higher quality of policing, lower prices, less brutalities, etc. If a community does not like the private police force, they can always change companies.

You will see less brutalities, less corruption, better response times, etc.

Post: #16

(07-03-2014 03:00 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  I was once pulled over doing an illegal driving maneuver in LA and I spent a couple of minutes talking to an LAPD guy about UK vs US cops. I told him that the UK cops don’t carry guns and he was surprised. He said that the LAPD see themselves as soldiers in the frontline in a war. I think British policing is supposed to more community based.

(07-03-2014 02:32 PM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  My approach to policing is one where they could be replaced by robots. I love red light and speed cameras...no fuckery, just empirical evidence that you were breaking the law and thats that. None of this pulling over hot girls to pick them up, fucking chicks in the car while on duty, bribery (I know a cop that would pull someone over at lunch time and let them buy him lunch to get out of a ticket) or sleeping on the job (again, we used to start field work at sunrise...which comes at 4am in the far north in summer and we'd honk the horn to wake up the cop in the cruiser who would snooze in our vehicle pool lot)

Court is supposed to be where reason and the circumstances at hand are argued, not at the side of the road, off the record, with some racist dick thats mad at the world because he never made it to the NHL (canadian cops).

Police support the pussy pass and stereotype everybody else so unless I'm a good looking white girl I'm going to be in favor of any policing strategy the involves less human involvement. ED 209's "You have 20 seconds to comply" is fine in my books

In the UK there’s speed cameras everywhere and it’s a fucking pain in the arse. Thank god there doesn’t seem to be many in LA. Some of them are there just generate revenue for the cops. They make sense in a built up area, but why should they give a shit if some guy is going at 80mph on an empty road in the middle of nowehere? Who is he harming?

and thats why I like them, you'd take your red light ticket that came in the mail and go to court and make your argument and it gets decided and recorded. If you get pulled over in the middle of nowhere you get to make your argument off the record against someone who might not like your accent or be like the guys who own the gimp in pulp fiction. A lone cop with no one watching is corruptible.

I do disagree with fee revenue going back to police departments though, that creates the wrong incentive. Pay them enough so that its not easy to buy them off but don't create incentives via fines.

Post: #17

(07-03-2014 04:11 PM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  

(07-03-2014 03:00 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  I was once pulled over doing an illegal driving maneuver in LA and I spent a couple of minutes talking to an LAPD guy about UK vs US cops. I told him that the UK cops don’t carry guns and he was surprised. He said that the LAPD see themselves as soldiers in the frontline in a war. I think British policing is supposed to more community based.

(07-03-2014 02:32 PM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  My approach to policing is one where they could be replaced by robots. I love red light and speed cameras...no fuckery, just empirical evidence that you were breaking the law and thats that. None of this pulling over hot girls to pick them up, fucking chicks in the car while on duty, bribery (I know a cop that would pull someone over at lunch time and let them buy him lunch to get out of a ticket) or sleeping on the job (again, we used to start field work at sunrise...which comes at 4am in the far north in summer and we'd honk the horn to wake up the cop in the cruiser who would snooze in our vehicle pool lot)

Court is supposed to be where reason and the circumstances at hand are argued, not at the side of the road, off the record, with some racist dick thats mad at the world because he never made it to the NHL (canadian cops).

Police support the pussy pass and stereotype everybody else so unless I'm a good looking white girl I'm going to be in favor of any policing strategy the involves less human involvement. ED 209's "You have 20 seconds to comply" is fine in my books

In the UK there’s speed cameras everywhere and it’s a fucking pain in the arse. Thank god there doesn’t seem to be many in LA. Some of them are there just generate revenue for the cops. They make sense in a built up area, but why should they give a shit if some guy is going at 80mph on an empty road in the middle of nowehere? Who is he harming?

and thats why I like them, you'd take your red light ticket that came in the mail and go to court and make your argument and it gets decided and recorded. If you get pulled over in the middle of nowhere you get to make your argument off the record against someone who might not like your accent or be like the guys who own the gimp in pulp fiction. A lone cop with no one watching is corruptible.

I do disagree with fee revenue going back to police departments though, that creates the wrong incentive. Pay them enough so that its not easy to buy them off but don't create incentives via fines.

If the fees get paid into the local city/municipal government it is just as bad! They will always make profits regardless of which pot it goes into. It is the same big pot. Who pays the police? The city does.

Post: #18

I tend to think that this is a bit of a chicken and the egg kind of thing. I don't think it's any surprise that cops reflect the broader culture from which they come. If the neighbourhood is like a war zone, then the cops will be like soldiers, which in turn feeds back into the general negative atmosphere there. It seems like a real feedback loop. Were cops always like they are now in the U.S.?

In Australia, cops can be insufferable, belligerent pricks, but to be honest, the average Australian can be an insufferable, belligerent prick. Some cops are probably the worst of the insufferable, belligerent pricks and naturally gravitate towards being policemen. Others become that way through dealing with the dregs of humanity on a daily basis. Go to a police station in an upper class suburb of Melbourne and the cops are easy enough to deal with. Go to a police station in a lower/under class suburb and you can practically see the hairs on the backs of their necks stand up when they see you.

I would say the same thing is true for anyone who has a job that involves authoritative interactions with the public. I've worked in a fair number of underclass schools and there is definitely a siege mentality there. Indeed, at one school, I worked with a guy who was an ex-cop. He said he became a teacher because he was sick of dealing with society's dregs. Yet he wanted to get out of that school in particular, and teaching in general, for the same reason, and was contemplating becoming a cop again!

So whilst we might say that the police are this or that, I can tell you right now that there's no way I'd want to be a policeman. I can't see how doing such a job could possibly do anything but make one more jaded about humanity.

Here in Taiwan, I am sure that the cops are involved in corruption and so on, but on a daily basis, they're incredibly lax. Westerners complain endlessly about traffic cops. They actually drive down the road with their lights on so everyone knows they're there, which makes everyone behave themselves until the cops are out of sight. Even when they set up roadblocks, they wave 90% of people through. They don't even blink when they see some dude driving the wrong way down the road or doing other such things. Sometimes, driving here is a bit hectic, but I have actually grown to appreciate the fairly lax policing here. I really do think that the fact that a lot of cops here are distinctly non-confrontational is precisely because it's a non-confrontational society.

Post: #19

This is headed a little into 1984 territory but in the shit neighborhoods in America that resemble Mogadishu or Lebanon circa 1981 that it would be better to have extensive video surveillance everywhere. Then you could have some type of oversight commitee (not from the area) who can observe the police to make sure there isn't widespread abuse of power going on. Video surveillance if implemented correctly might cut down on both abusive cop and criminal activities. It's just another check and balance over power.

It seems like whenever you allow cops to run their own little fiefdom beyond prying eyes it inevitably turns into a clusterfuck.

Post: #20

To paraphrase Jack Reacher:

There are four types of people who become cops. For some, it's family trade. Others are helpful types, eager to serve. Next you have those who just need a job. Then there's the kind who want the legal opportunity to shoot people and pets.

Post: #21

(07-03-2014 07:39 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  This is headed a little into 1984 territory but in the shit neighborhoods in America that resemble Mogadishu or Lebanon circa 1981 that it would be better to have extensive video surveillance everywhere. Then you could have some type of oversight commitee (not from the area) who can observe the police to make sure there isn't widespread abuse of power going on. Video surveillance if implemented correctly might cut down on both abusive cop and criminal activities. It's just another check and balance over power.

It seems like whenever you allow cops to run their own little fiefdom beyond prying eyes it inevitably turns into a clusterfuck.

I think that's the wrong approach. It's like prescribing a drug rather than treating the underlying problem. People just build up a tolerance to the drug. If the average cop and the average citizen are both shitheads, then maybe the underlying culture is shit.

If the basic unit of authority, of morality, etc. -- the family -- gets broken down; if the education system vacillates between having no morality and refusing to judge anyone's behaviour on the one hand, and hysterically overreacting to trivial instances of poor behaviour or even non-poor behaviour on the other; if there is a media/entertainment culture that glorifies and promotes the most (self-)destructive possible behaviour; if those at the top of society -- politicians, big businessmen, etc. -- are feral and never held accountable either, then is it any wonder at all that the police are jack booted thugs and the populace are savage barbarians?

Every time a new camera is installed, every time the cops don more armour, people put on more masks and make more molotov cocktails. The former claim it is in response to the latter, and the latter claim it is in response to the former. We need a time out here so that Western culture can go back to some semblance of normality. Of course, that's not going to happen because it's very advantageous for certain groups of people (hint: those at either end of society) to get society to move in this direction. As always, it's the reasonable people in the middle who take it in the neck, yet as always, the so-called reasonable people in the middle also go along with it like sheep. Someone just needs to -- will -- hit the reset button. Unfortunately, we (well, not me anymore) live in the uneasy and mildly uncomfortable lead up to the massive shit storm that is coming.

Post: #22

It really varies. Some cops are cool, others are just looking for an excuse to mess you up.

Post: #23

(07-03-2014 07:41 PM)TheWastelander Wrote:  To paraphrase Jack Reacher:

There are four types of people who become cops. For some, it's family trade. Others are helpful types, eager to serve. Next you have those who just need a job. Then there's the kind who want the legal opportunity to shoot people and pets.

That's pretty much it. Again, I think big city cops (LA possibly excluded by reputation) are the best, because they have perspective from the experience of dealing with important things every day.

Albuquerque, not really a big city, seems to have out-of-control cops, too.

If you live in a tribal city and you're the same tribe as the cop, you'll be treated well, too.

Post: #24

(07-04-2014 05:29 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

(07-03-2014 07:41 PM)TheWastelander Wrote:  To paraphrase Jack Reacher:

There are four types of people who become cops. For some, it's family trade. Others are helpful types, eager to serve. Next you have those who just need a job. Then there's the kind who want the legal opportunity to shoot people and pets.

That's pretty much it. Again, I think big city cops (LA possibly excluded by reputation) are the best, because they have perspective from the experience of dealing with important things every day.

Albuquerque, not really a big city, seems to have out-of-control cops, too.

If you live in a tribal city and you're the same tribe as the cop, you'll be treated well, too.

Related: I wonder if police transfer to or from cities depending on the cop culture...like would a power mad, corrupt cop look for a reason to transfer to LA because he knows he'll find peers there?

Post: #25

The problem is that a volunteer police force allows for the unsavory element to self select in and there's really no incentive for a good police officer to rat out his misbehaving colleagues. So even though the number of bad cops is pretty small, they get to operate with impunity because none of the good cops is every going to say anything.

I think the only way to fix it is to switch to a volunteer force. Two year compulsory civil service would do a lot for the country - if you don't want to be in the military then you can be a cop or some other public servant. You'd still get bad cops occasionally but you'd also have a lot more cops who were just normal people doing a rotation through and who weren't as incentivized to not say anything.