Bad Cop in Trouble for Beating A Man Filming in Las Vegas.

Basically a man was drinking around with his new camera video tapping the scene of police arresting a bunch of teenage burglars. The cop stops by the man and after some verbal exchanges proceeds to beat the man.

He should have said he lived (which he did but was being a smart ass initially) there and avoided trouble but the cop was way out of line for what followed.

Anyone have any idea why cops do this? Is it some sort of creep of having authority for so long added in with exposure to violence?

Here is the Article

edited 22nd Apr '11 8:37:58 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I hate it when dickheads like that give good cops a bad name.

That cop is a loose cannon. I hope the chief has his badge for this. You might say that the mayor would be all over his ass if he didn't.

The ten percenter club needs to shrink noticeably.

I think a lot of those same dickheads who are bullies in high school, seek out these sorts of jobs so they can continue to be bullies as adults.

Not that I'm suggesting these people make up the majority of the police force, mind you. Just that they do exist, and they do get through training-perhaps even thanks to others like within the system approving of their attitudes.

I can think of a person like that from my high school, at least. Anyone else meet someone like that?

I am sure there are a couple. But I don't think it is prolific as you would expect. If your expected to wield an authoritarian attitude of some sort it is possible to miss someone who is a bully for life.

In police circles, the ten percenter club are the ten percent of truly good policemen who live to stop crime and keep people safe, regardless of the ways it may hinder their career. My dad is kind of like that, though I think two decades of doing such are taking their toll.

There will always be bad cops; some people are drawn to power for bad reasons and may not get filtered out until it's too late, and some people cope with the stresses of the job poorly and start behaving in ways they shouldn't.

My problem is that these people don't get dismissed from service when the problems show up. No, they get defended. When a cop does something so bad that it can't be swept under the rug, it's generally the case that it's way from their first incident. No, they've generally racked up a long list of incidents of things like excessive force, questionable use of force, complaints, etc etc. — but cops protect their own, even when the fellow cop in question is an embarrassment to the service and uniform. Being a bad cop doesn't ruin your career. Turning in your fellow cop, no matter how deserved, seems to be the best way to ruin your career in many police departments.

Perhaps if we didn't have a society that made cops feel they have to band together in an "Us V Them" mentality then cops would feel more encouraged to turn in their own.

Unfortunately, everyone hates cops, and when your entire career involves having to dissect the lies that other people tell you, you get rather jaded.

What this particular cop did was some fucked up bullshit, but I have lots of friends in LAPD, and you could say our discussions on what constitutes excessive force and what one can get away with are.. Colorful. But it's not some guy standing on his lawn with a camera, it's usually some repeat offender gangbanger who finally got his shit kicked in because he gave the cops a good excuse, and we all laugh about the fact that it happened. This guy was clearly innocent, and even though he was a dumbass for being such a smartass to this cop, he didn't deserve what happened to him in the slightest.

I think one of the biggest reasons cops don't even turn in cops that none of them like is the fact that no cop wants that sort of attention. I can tell you from personal experience that as a cop, you really want to avoid any levels of scrutiny whatsoever. Public attention is a serious pain in the ass, and we get enough of it by just being in public, the last people we want attention from are the other guys in the department, the only people who don't stare at you wherever you go.

I wish people realized how annoying that was.

edited 22nd Apr '11 11:10:22 PM by Barkey

This. The cops deserve more respect, but unfortunately its a vicious cycle. Mind you. Some groups really do have reasons to hate the cops.

I don't hate cops

Unfortunately, it's incredibly easy for relations to ratchet only in the bad direction between cops and the population. The worse the cops get treated, the worse the cops treat the population, and then the population has more reason to treat the cops badly, and so round it goes.

This is why the people in charge of the police have to work hard at minimizing this. This is why the cops and the population have to interact in ways that aren't just confrontational. This is why the cops' political masters have to do better.

I always try to interact with my community in neutral ways that let me build a rapport and build a positive opinion, unfortunately that isn't enough most of the time. If I ever become a civilian cop it's not feasible for me to build an individual rapport with the population of the entire city.

It doesn't help that ordinarily decent people lie when confronted by the police if they think they have a chance of getting out of punishment. Lying really pisses us off, and is pretty much a one-way ticket to dickhead-pig treatment if you get caught doing so. That's why I always let people off who were honest, it was so damn refreshing for someone to just be like "I fucked up. I was doing X." or "Yeah, I was going over the speed limit, I'm sorry."

"Well shit, since you were honest about it, here's a stupid warning ticket that doesn't go on your driving record, doesn't result in a fine, doesn't go to your first sergeant, and serves only to build a record of paperwork so that if you continue this behavior we will eventually hem your ass in, regardless of how cool you are about it! Stop speeding and enjoy not having to break out your wallet for the government!"

I like to think that after I gave out a shitton of warning tickets for stuff, the base culture changed a little and people were like "The cops here are cool man, they'll give you like a million chances so you have nobody to blame but yourself if you get fined."

edited 22nd Apr '11 11:20:47 PM by Barkey

Another problem is memory. My grandpa hates the police because of the zoot suit riots. He passed his hate on to his kids, who in turn passed it on. There are plenty of families who had some family member harassed or beaten by the cops. Its not like everyone hates them for giving out tickets.

:edit. Or when my parents where divorced my dad decided to call the cops when I was watching my brother and sister, he later claimed he heard fighting in the background. I decided to take a shower and one of the cops told me to open the bathroom door. Freaked me out. Thought he was my cousin. I said give me a minute I am naked, but the guy kicked the door down anyway. What the hell was the point of that? Or randomly stopping me when I am walking down the street and asking me 20 questions.

edited 22nd Apr '11 11:21:02 PM by TheDeadMansLife

You would be surprised about that ticket part.

It's always some douche who was going way over the speed limit and knows it, and is all like "Sorry Officer, I didn't know how fast I was going."

Yeah bullshit. You knew, you just didn't have the awareness to see my squadcar parked by that tree or you would have slowed down until you hit the next block. Lying sack of shit.

Though I do wonder how attitudes to the cops get harmed by the fact that most peoples' early experience with cops is traffic stops. Especially since traffic stops are (by the cops' political masters' command) more about revenue generation than safety.

That and the fact that in some jurisdictions your odds of being stopped are entirely to do with your socio-economic status, not your driving.

Last time I got stopped I honestly had no idea how fast I was going. Empty road late at night, was looking at the road not the gauges. (It does, parenthetically, piss me off that the time of day you're most likely to get a ticket is late at night on an empty road when nobody is in danger, but driving like an asshole in busy traffic where you could kill people seems to be a lot safer for tickets).

edited 22nd Apr '11 11:24:49 PM by Morven

Here in Australia, on long roads we actually have a Law of Averages. They check your speed once, then again further down, and compare the time taken to the distance travelled, or somethin'. So you cant do that here/

In California, speed traps are technically illegal. A law which is creatively avoided by the cops all the time, of course, but it does prevent mechanical enforcement.

Speed limits are bullshit anyways.

edited 23rd Apr '11 12:02:25 AM by CommandoDude

I beg to differ. But that is off topic.

edited 23rd Apr '11 12:48:05 AM by TuefelHundenIV

We would have less abuse of authority if abuse of authority carried harsh punishment. Just sayin'.

edited 23rd Apr '11 8:14:17 AM by SavageHeathen

The only problem with harsh penalties (particularly for perceivedly minor offences) is that you tend to have a lot of difficulty getting people to enforce them appropriately. Expect lots of Loophole Abuse there.

It's not an insurmountable difficulty, but still worth mentioning.

edited 23rd Apr '11 8:19:16 AM by Iaculus

^^

That wouldn't work, trust me. All it would do is make Cops protect eachother even further, because you're probably about to say that cops guilty of abusing authority should be sentenced to death, and no cop wants to sentence another cop to death.

This sort of issue is inherent in the profession itself. Both abuses of authority, protecting eachother, and public misconceptions. You can never completely get rid of these, ever. Not because they need to be factors in police work, but because they always will be, it comes with the territory.

That and some people just hate cops because even though they consistently do things that they know are illegal, they do it anyway, and then get pissed that they get caught. "Fucking pigs" being a response to arresting a gangmember who gets arrested for beating someone up, or stabbing a rival, or robbing someone. I hate that so much, minor infractions are whatever to me, I almost always let them go unless the person is being a dick or is a repeat offender, but if you're either of those, odds are I'm going to be a complete dickhead about it and throw the book at you, and you'll hate cops when you were the one at fault.

Pissed you got a speeding ticket? Your license says you've got a fuckton of those! And multiple warnings! Don't be mad at me, stop fucking speeding.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:05:02 AM by Barkey

Cops are hated because they enforce stupid/oppressive/both at once rules. They're hated with good reason, IMO.

I'm not overly concerned about cops protecting each other even further: They'll protect each other anyway. Those who help an abusive cop escape punishment should be punished as well. If we end up without LE Os at all, we wouldn't have cops abusing authority anymore.

I would make abuse of authority a capital offense, but any extremely harsh punishment (say, ten years in the slammer without any sort of protection at all and letting everyone know prisoner X was a cop) would work equally well.

edited 23rd Apr '11 1:07:37 PM by SavageHeathen