Police - a thin blue line, a wad of cash and scary guns

[dbergkvist]

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Police forces also don't exactly recruit the best. Sorry for not providing a link, juggling a few things at the moment, but there was a case a few years, damn maybe as far back as a decade ago, in which a guy sued a police force for not getting hired. He aced the test and was shocked to not get the job. What was revealed at some point in the process is that they actually target average recruits, and that this is nation wide practice. Logic being they were less likely to quit. Typical America to target those just smart enough to do the job while being too dumb to really ever think about why they're doing it.

But another problem, and this is pretty common knowledge, white supremacists groups and been infiltrating police departments for a long time now. What better way to take out their hate? And when you watch that video, and watch that cop's body language, that's exactly what is happening. He was taking joy in doing that.

But are either of these two things unique to the US? Regarding the second point, a few years ago there was a huge scandal in Malmö, a city in southern Sweden, when it turned out that the cops had written all sorts of racists remarks about various suspects in their internal investigations. But they didn't go out and murder people.

[Tywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Are cops who are also vets more likely to be involved in a violent encounter?  Somehow I doubt it.  It's giving police depts military surplus gear and an us against them mentality in training and in the culture.  

Just an anecdote but I remember this one cop, an Iraq vet, who was fired for not using force when he basically talked a suicidal guy down from suicide and then back up arrived and shot the guy.  

ETA: 100% agree on white supremacy being a thing with US cops

I come from a military family, and there are a number of them who went into law enforcement. There are certain overlapping skills, and well, mindsets, that overlap as well, but I am skeptical of people who served multiple tours becoming cops. Some of that training you cannot unlearn, at least quickly, and they were trained in many cases to be an occupying force. 

[Tywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, dbergkvist said:

But are either of these two things unique to the US? Regarding the second point, a few years ago there was a huge scandal in Malmö, a city in southern Sweden, when it turned out that the cops had written all sorts of racists remarks about various suspects in their internal investigations. But they didn't go out and murder people.

Well I'm not sure where you're from, but one thing I've heard cops say, when being honest, is that many of them who were not hateful people before joining the force grew to hate the people in the area they policed, especially if they were stationed in lower class neighborhoods. 

[Tywin et al.]

Damn people are really fucking mad here. 

This may finally be the last straw. 

[BigFatCoward]

That was one of the most upsetting things I've ever seen.  The incompetence of these people is staggering, the wilful ignorance. 

This has nothing to do with Vets, it maybe has to do with US Vets.  I love getting ex military in the job, they do what they are told, they don't moan, they aren't cowardly, but aren't gung ho either.  (definitely) Maybe our military is just much better than yours. 

Most of the ones I know end up in the firearms command anyway, but they aren't all out shooting the shit out of people for no reason.

[polishgenius]

40 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

 

This has nothing to do with Vets, it maybe has to do with US Vets.  I love getting ex military in the job, they do what they are told, they don't moan, they aren't cowardly, but aren't gung ho either.  (definitely) Maybe our military is just much better than yours. 

 

I'm sure it depends on the Vet, but I've heard and read more than once that veterans on the force are more responsible with their firearms because not only are they trained how to use them but also how to react in high-stress situations without flipping out. Hell, there was an incident a couple of years ago where a guy was disciplined- possibly fired? - for not shooting someone because he saw the guy wasn't dangerous and trying to commit suicide by cop, was talking him down, then the next units arrived, shot him, and he was brought up on charges of endangering fellow officers by not shooting the chap as soon as he arrived.

That doesn't necessarily mean veterans are necessarily good choices for police overall, though, of course, and has nothing to do with the Minneapolis murder.

[DMC]

58 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

it maybe has to do with US Vets.  I love getting ex military in the job, they do what they are told, they don't moan, they aren't cowardly, but aren't gung ho either.  (definitely) Maybe our military is just much better than yours. 

This type of depiction rankles me.  There's obviously a lot to be said, as has been mentioned, about the insipid white supremacy that permeates both US law enforcement and the armed forces.  But the implications here are downright offensive to many people I know that have or are currently serving in the armed forces - of many ethnicities - let alone those that have since transitioned to LEOs.  How a certain regime employs its military may have an adverse, or horrid, effect on the attitudes of the rank and file, but that doesn't mean you jump to this conclusion.  Not to mention the mindset of "our" military indiscriminately killing people is much derived from "yours."

[TrueMetis]

I'd imagine the biggest difference is that military aren't taught things like "I feared for my life" (or claims there of) is an acceptable reason to shoot back. You follow ROE. Sometimes that means yeah, light anyone who looks at you funny up, other times though it means no firing your weapon until you've been fired upon, and sometime not even then.

I can get being wary of vets becoming cops, but there's a bunch of thing that militaries are taught that should be taught to the police, probably the biggest one is the concept of unlimited liability, the idea that you can be ordered into harms way and that you just have to accept that as part of the profession. Unfortunately IIRC a court ruling basically gutted that possibility in the US by declaring that cops don't have a duty to protect. (Someone more familiar with this can correct me if I'm wrong) So what you end up is the cops given military equipment, but little to none of the training necessary to use it properly. (Not that the police should have military equipment anyway)

[BigFatCoward]

30 minutes ago, DMC said:

This type of depiction rankles me.  There's obviously a lot to be said, as has been mentioned, about the insipid white supremacy that permeates both US law enforcement and the armed forces.  But the implications here are downright offensive to many people I know that have or are currently serving in the armed forces - of many ethnicities - let alone those that have since transitioned to LEOs.  How a certain regime employs its military may have an adverse, or horrid, effect on the attitudes of the rank and file, but that doesn't mean you jump to this conclusion.  Not to mention the mindset of "our" military indiscriminately killing people is much derived from "yours."

Did you read the 'maybe' part? I speak from experience on UK military joining the police. I can only guess why your police are so completely fucking absurd. 

But the way your tubthumping military appear to be, along with the weird esteem they are held in maybe gives them a false sense of their invulnerability to being held to account when they do join up. 

 

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Did you read the 'maybe' part? I speak from experience on UK military joining the police. I can only guess why your police are so completely fucking absurd. 

But the way your tubthumping military appear to be, along with the weird esteem they are held in maybe gives them a false sense of their invulnerability to being held to account when they do join up. 

Yeah you say "maybe" a lot, but in a way that makes me think you mean "actually."  That's my problem.  You wanna shit on the high/upper/whatever command of the US military over the past, oh, entirety of its existence and I won't say a peep in objection.  But who you're actually attacking here, yeah I got a problem with that.  And I'm pretty sure you would too if you knew any of them.  The US armed forces aren't trained like the first half of Full Metal Jacket.

[Fury Resurrected]

So a couple background things people here might not know about Minneapolis-

the chief of police seems like an ok guy who wants to change our HORRIBLE track record of violence against POC.

-but-

the president of the police union is a humongous Trump supporter. It was a big to do when Trump held a rally here and a ton of MPLS PD wanted to attend in full uniform to stump for him. The chief said no, so they made t shirts instead. The cops working the event were very free with the batons and pepper spray on the protestors. In pictures in the Star Tribune of this rally, you can see the cop who murdered George Floyd on stage with Trump and the president of the police union. The union president is married to a local news anchor who reports on the police all the time.

 

Like all union presidents- that’s the guy the members elected because that’s who they wanted, who reflects their views and values. Who looks like them. They don’t want a guy like chief Arradondo. They don’t want a guy like the mayor. And the power of the chief and the mayor to address the issue is limited a ton by this. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

So a couple background things people here might not know about Minneapolis-

the chief of police seems like an ok guy who wants to change our HORRIBLE track record of violence against POC.

-but-

the president of the police union is a humongous Trump supporter. It was a big to do when Trump held a rally here and a ton of MPLS PD wanted to attend in full uniform to stump for him. The chief said no, so they made t shirts instead. The cops working the event were very free with the batons and pepper spray on the protestors. In pictures in the Star Tribune of this rally, you can see the cop who murdered George Floyd on stage with Trump and the president of the police union. The union president is married to a local news anchor who reports on the police all the time.

 

Like all union presidents- that’s the guy the members elected because that’s who they wanted, who reflects their views and values. Who looks like them. They don’t want a guy like chief Arradondo. They don’t want a guy like the mayor. And the power of the chief and the mayor to address the issue is limited a ton by this. 

And... that’s another reason I strongly dislike police unions.  They defend officers who abuse their power.

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

And... that’s another reason I strongly dislike police unions.  They defend officers who abuse their power.

Don't lawyers do the same? 

[KingintheNorth4]

My heart breaks for George Floyd's family. Watching the footage of his murder was jarring.

But what I fucking infuriating was when the EMT was checking his pulse, that piece of shit pig STILL had his knee on his neck. Disgusting.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, KingintheNorth4 said:

My heart breaks for George Floyd's family. Watching the footage of his murder was jarring.

But what I fucking infuriating was when the EMT was checking his pulse, that piece of shit pig STILL had his knee on his neck. Disgusting.

It couldn't have been anything other than a punitive measure for "resisting arrest". 

There were 4 officers on scene, Floyd was face-down, prone, handcuffed, and not resisting. He should have been pulled up by two officers and escorted into the cruiser. There is no rational explanation for the need to apply force to the neck for that fucking long. I'm usually against the death penalty, but I'm struggling over whether to make an exception for so blatant and callous a murder, in front of several witnesses no less.

[Fury Resurrected]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

And... that’s another reason I strongly dislike police unions.  They defend officers who abuse their power.

I like unions. I think every worker should have a union. I don’t like the police union because in cases like this one it is full of bad people and the union leadership reflects that. The problem is systemic in the culture of the police themselves. If it is up to police and the people they work with every day to punish police when they do wrong, and they have a culture of us vs the world and protecting each other blindly- this is what happens.

No other profession is like this. A local tattoo artist was outed as sending tons of clients unwanted pictures of his dick. The shop he was at fired him immediately and publicly outed him. Tattoo artists who had never met this asshole wrote long posts on their own social media and their shop pages denouncing him and his behavior. This didn’t even take 12 hours. Nobody defended him, nobody would hire him. He had to move to Colorado. A lot of industries are like this. We need the police to be the first to crucify bad cops.

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I like unions. I think every worker should have a union.

Yeah I think you can be totally pro-union in principle and not like police unions.  I think public interest groups are a great thing - the grassroots of affecting change.  But the NRA are still a bag of dicks.

[Larry of the Lawn]

12 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I'm sure it depends on the Vet, but I've heard and read more than once that veterans on the force are more responsible with their firearms because not only are they trained how to use them but also how to react in high-stress situations without flipping out. Hell, there was an incident a couple of years ago where a guy was disciplined- possibly fired? - for not shooting someone because he saw the guy wasn't dangerous and trying to commit suicide by cop, was talking him down, then the next units arrived, shot him, and he was brought up on charges of endangering fellow officers by not shooting the chap as soon as he arrived.

That doesn't necessarily mean veterans are necessarily good choices for police overall, though, of course, and has nothing to do with the Minneapolis murder.

Yeah, that's the case I was trying to find yesterday.  Found it here:

https://www.aclu.org/video/meet-officer-mader-fired-trying-do-right-thing

ETA: I would bet that if there was data on use of force amongst vets and non-vets in LE in the US, vets are less likely to use force.  Will try some google fu.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 hours ago, maarsen said:

Don't lawyers do the same? 

Not all lawyers.  What else do Police Unions do?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I like unions. I think every worker should have a union. I don’t like the police union because in cases like this one it is full of bad people and the union leadership reflects that. The problem is systemic in the culture of the police themselves. If it is up to police and the people they work with every day to punish police when they do wrong, and they have a culture of us vs the world and protecting each other blindly- this is what happens.

No other profession is like this. A local tattoo artist was outed as sending tons of clients unwanted pictures of his dick. The shop he was at fired him immediately and publicly outed him. Tattoo artists who had never met this asshole wrote long posts on their own social media and their shop pages denouncing him and his behavior. This didn’t even take 12 hours. Nobody defended him, nobody would hire him. He had to move to Colorado. A lot of industries are like this. We need the police to be the first to crucify bad cops.

To be clear, I don’t have a problem with Unions generally.  I have a problem with police unions.