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

What if they both decide to break it, and establish alliances between camps? That part sounds too complicated.

:That's a real danger, but if you place the incentives for going after each other right it's not likely.

After all, this system works for the federal government. Not too often the president, Congress and the SCOTUS all conspire to pass an illegal law.

Isn't that because they're in more visible positions? How many people really watch their neighborhood cops to the extent that they do politics?

: Visibility counts for squat. Contributions to elected officials have been public since Nixon and all that's done has made people more cynical about politics.

If you don't actually do something about the problem, it doesn't matter how many people know there is a problem.

The ideas listed after this all will not work. We have cops who watch cops, they are internal affairs. People who are avoided and scorned, even by good cops.(I avoid people of that job description like the plague, and I consider myself a good cop)

I hate being watched, all cops do, for various reasons. I hate being watched because I've never ran things by the book, I tend to "burn the book" as a friend of mine says. Given that when I'm burning the book I'm usually doing it because it makes the overall outcome of a situation better than if I had followed the book, for all parties involved, but still. This is why I am vehemently against body cameras, not because I'm worried about being caught beating some guy down, but because to be honest, I like to take a smoke break every now and again, or when I'm parked and watching the flow of traffic, I like to text(or occasionally whip out a round of Angry Birds, wut wut?). Cops are also extremely offensive motherfuckers when we talk to our own kind. If you planted listening devices in any cop lockeroom, military or civilian, you could bring up charges on like 2/3rds of the squadron in a heartbeat with Equal Opportunity and shit. We're not sensitive people, nor should we be forced to be.

This is why I feel dash cams are sufficient. It's a good compromise, because even officers deserve some measure of privacy. I believe in having a little leeway to screw around, but not in a way that hurts people.

If you want to get rid of the whole culture of protecting eachother through silence, then you have to loosen the rules of what constitutes things we aren't supposed to do a little, to where it's blatantly obvious that doing X is a legitimately bad thing. I know I sure as hell wouldn't say dick if I was working a beat and knew that a cop had a bullshit excuse for whooping the fuck out of some homie. If we weren't being constantly barraged by frivolous lawsuits and claims of abuse that don't usually exist, we would take the legitimate instances much more seriously.

tldr: I don't really have the answer, because I don't know of a way to make people quit launching frivolous complaints against police. If that stopped, cops would rat on eachother for actually doing reprehensible shit. I can say, however, that more cameras is not the answer, all that will do is kill morale.

edited 23rd Apr '11 8:59:49 PM by Barkey

@Barkey: Cops have such great responsibility not to mess up your complaints sound really frivolous.

I really don't really care if you want to swear. I'd rather have all police hate their jobs than a bunch of cops (not even necessarily all cops) that think they're above the law.

Here's the problem, even if all the complaints were entirely legitimate and well-grounded, people genuinely believe Cops would not change one bit.

Your own attitude demonstrates why, because you are deeply upset over what you perceive as an injustice the police suffer, to the point where others think there's not a chance in hell of ever convincing you otherwise.

Really, you think frivolous lawsuits are a problem? Compared to people crippled for life??

The only people it's harder to get justice for their abuses is judges.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:07:04 PM by blueharp

^

I'm in Law Enforcement, you're not, I don't think it's unreasonable where our priorities lie. I care about how this directly affects me and my career, there's a reason police officers have such a ridiculously high suicide and divorce rate, and I'm rather invested in not driving that rate any higher than it is.

Make it so we can switch the body cameras off when we aren't on a call and we're just driving around, and I could find that acceptable. Similar to the way some departments have dash cams that must be on while you are stopping someone, but don't need to be on when you're on your break or driving around.

The reason I'm reacting the way I am is because there's no other Law Enforcement here, and thus nobody who is really even considering what the ramifications are for us. Nobody ever really takes the time to think of cops as anything but the enemy, which is why they stick together so tightly. Shit, make a punishment where a cop goes on a probationary period where he is required to wear a body camera that is on from the moment he clocks in to the moment he clocks out, but don't make the good cops suffer. Most people could give a flying fuck how cops feel about anything regarding cops themselves.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:13:08 PM by Barkey

Why would people even become cops then, if it became that bad?

Admittedly, I would not like to have something recording every single thing I say and do, and I don't even do anything that's societally frowned upon.

@postman: Point, but being a cop is already a pretty dangerous job.

I don't think that anyone who's willing to be shot at occasionally would be chased away by much.

I have doubts about them being all like that, personally.

For the same reasons folks join other very straining professions. Most of the time you don't know what your getting into, until your well into it.

Frivolous law suits are a problem(for society as a whole not just police). Instead of letting a cop do their job they are in court dealing with them. On top of it there is always that one segment who always thinks it is all true. Throw it in with people who run around crying wolf and folks wholly believing them. That whole thing creates a unique problem. I saw a strip that illustrated this point rather poignantly if I can find it again I will share.

I do believe when we find the police breaking the law and deliberately going over the bounds of their authority something more heavy handed then a suspension is needed. Like jail time and permanently being fired from any police or security force.

I am also interested in what leads to these incidents. You can have a cop who honestly has a clean record one day go ballistic and do something horrid. The only thing I can think of is the kind of stress we have with troops in combat all the time.

x6

Yes, you're sticking up for the blue line. In such a way that you are more convincing that cops cannot be trusted, that cops will focus entirely on protecting each other, and not cleaning up their own houses.

Why? Because while you complain about nobody caring what the cops think, you come across as you not caring one bit about any crime a cop does to anybody.

See, in such a case as that, it's going to cause for people to not trust cops even more, and to otherwise lead to a greater and greater dissonance.

That's kind of a bad thing.

Sadly, I don't think that most of the incidents are actually that kind of freak occurrence, more of them are probably cultural or institutional rather than outbursts from seemingly nowhere.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:28:27 PM by blueharp

Willing to and having a desire to be shot at are two different things. Now given, I'm not terribly perturbed by the prospect of being shot at.

However, I'm very fucking perturbed at the idea of having absolutely no god damn privacy.

Now given, I already said that what the cop in the OP did was fucked up, and he deserves a very harsh punishment, and shouldn't be on the police force anymore. He didn't just make a bad judgement call, which is honestly what lots of those suspensions are for, situations where a cop makes a bad judgement call.

But this guy is an obvious psychopathic pile of shit, there's no excuse for miscommunication or "The heat of the moment" or objective reasonableness in this particular case. This bastard needs to first be fired, and then get sued by the victim for the damages, with the realistic possibility of doing some time for assault and battery.

Seems to me that the rest of the world cares more than enough about what cops to do others, with such a surplus of sentiment on that issue, and an absolute deficit in sentiment on the welfare of police officers, I'm going to go with the underdog that I also have more in common with. I've never known a single god damn person who's had empathy for police officers who doesn't have one in their family, know one closely, or is one themselves. Without having a reason to know the officer on a personal level, people really could give a shit about us.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:27:07 PM by Barkey

Yes, the rest of the world has to care because the cops started to care only about themselves. Because they felt the same defensive need to protect themselves from the outside that you espouse. So the rest of the world defends itself.

Don't feel bad though, it started hundreds, if not thousands of years before you were born. Perhaps one day technology will get us past the human issue, perhaps we'll just learn enough about ourselves to fix it in ourselves. Wouldn't it be nice if you could feel others would empathize with you? Wouldn't it be nice if you did the same for others?

I'm not going to bet on living to experience either though.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:33:14 PM by blueharp

I'm not going to either, this divide has existed as long as the profession has. The depth of the divide is all that changes.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:38:15 PM by Barkey

blue: That came off a bit condescending I assume Poe's law is a possibility.

Funny barkey sounds like kind of cop who does empathize. If he honestly lets most of the little shit go when your polite and dealing with him. I have gotten lucky so many times by being polite and courteous. But then again I worked with police at my Reserve Unit.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:41:25 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Not sure what you're talking about actually, but I'll assume it's the "you" language.

Would you prefer it as:

Wouldn't it be nice if cops could feel others would empathize with them? Wouldn't it be nice if cops did the same for others?

And I don't know about Barkey as a cop, but I'm seeing a rather familiar argument, which just makes me sigh and say...this defense is just showing the problem, not solving it.

Ultimately, the only solution is people learning to walk in each other's shoes.

edited 23rd Apr '11 9:56:15 PM by blueharp

@Tueful: Yeah, Barkey is nice, but ultimately that only shows the problem.

The thing is, cops are the government worker that act least mechanically. That sounds like it's a good thing but it's not; nobody wants the DMV to pall around with some people and be total jerks to others, they want the DMV to essentially act like robots. And, for the most part, the DMV does act like robots, because it's got a bunch of checks that everyone is treated exactly the same.

The cops should in theory act like the DMV, but they don't. And that kind of sucks; though it's great to be the guy a cop takes a liking to, it's not so great to be the guy a cop doesn't like.

Yes the cops works better.

It would be nice if both sides of the fence fully grasped the issue but neither looks like it will work out well.

I still think we need to nip this frivolous lawsuit stuff in the bud. Which by the way barkey is another reason I like the body cams. On the privacy bit. As long as your on duty you should be seen. If your on break I could see switching off the cams for a bit.

I have to ask do police do active/time off rotations?

So by DMV standards they should treat everyone like shit :P

Amusingly, the DMV around here is run by cops. No complaints about their services, though clearly the camera needed a Photoshop option. Could even be budget positive, I'd have coughed up a few bucks to glam up the photo a bit.

And I'll chalk up the other bit to a lack of a generic second-person pronoun in English.

edited 23rd Apr '11 10:08:46 PM by blueharp

Ours is run by city employees and a large majority tend to be assholes. Stupid assholes to boot. I was amused when they were politely reminded about the civil servicemen's act in regards to where my father's care was registered.

Hey, the DMV is aggravating but at least it's not unjust.

Though maybe a better metaphor would've been firefighters.

edited 23rd Apr '11 10:06:53 PM by BlackHumor