More police fun

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Besides, my knowledge of American policing (based exclusively on watching the Wire) shows that in some cases, cops will turn in their colleagues. Blanket generalisations do not help your argument.

I'm midway through season 2. I haven't seen anyone turn anyone in yet. I have seen them cover for each other beating kids and stealing. Based on my knowledge of american policing (based on talking to and knowing cops, many different news sources), I know that cops will rarely, if ever, turn in their colleagues, even over murder.

They don't work for you, they work for the government. If you have a problem with the way the Police are run write a letter to your representative in government or get elected.

I guess we can go ahead and dispense with the whole "of the people, by the people, for the people" thing then. I'm glad people are starting to admit that the government is a seperate entity and doesn't answer to the people anymore though.

It's people, not person. You are no ones boss in the government. The Cops answer to the nation, not just one guy with a bee in his bonnet.

Line me up some people who want cops to cover up for each other when they commit crimes such as assault, theft, murder, extortion. Line me up some people who want a different standard of justice applied to them than to the rest of us. I believe I am representative of the population at large when I say these things are intolerable, but I am willing to be proven wrong.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

The fun thing about starting a thread like this is that you only have to wait a couple hours before fresh fuel gets thrown on the fire courtesy of digg or reddit.

Cop attacks woman for honking at him

Julie Brown alleges that a driver cut her off, she honked at him and he got out of his car. Brown says he pounded on her vehicle and the driver's side window, then closely followed her.

While all this was allegedly happening, Brown was on the phone with 911, as was the other driver, who is an undercover narcotics officer.

[Shryke]

We, the people, elect a government to represent us.

That government employs the Police.

The Police do not work for you, they work for the people who represent you.

[Xanrn]

ljkeane,

:o

If the government and government employees doen't work for the people what the hell is the point of the representation "We the People" at the opening of the Constitution of the U.S.?

Thats all well and nice, except the We the People, is not We the mentally stable, non-bigoted law abiding, friendly, nice, good, not complete arseholes People.

We the People if you want to get down to that, includes, Neo-Nazis, KKK, White Supremascists, Black Supremascists, Other Ethnic Group Supremascists, Criminals (from Gangs to Paedos), Terrorists of various loyalties, Religious Extremists (West Baptist Church springs to mind) and assorted other scum.

So no the People should not control the Police, because the People have more scumbags than the Police and can be trusted less.

IF the people were fit to control the Police, you wouldn't need the Police.

Few handfuls of out of control Cops are the price you have to pay to have you and your family protected.

Yes they should be punished but this hyperbolic shit that the entire police force are corrupt arseholes is fuckin nonsense.

Seriously go live in some crappy 3rd World country and deal with their police and then compare them to the US/UK police and see how much you want to fuckin bitch then.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Loving your idealism but it doesn't work that way. Work in any job long enough and you become tainted by it.

I was a journalist for 11 years and one of the reasons I quit was because I started to view everybody cynically and just assume they were hiding something or had some agenda to push. If I was a cop, I'd probably just assume they were lying to me.

So now our rights are idealistic? Sorry to all those who died in the wars to protect our rights, it was just ideals we don't really uphold because it isn't possible.

I know when I deployed as an armed soldier I had a lot of frustration due to factors back at home, and sometimes I was given opportunities to alleviate those frustrations on detained prisoners in a real "hush hush" fashion. I mean these guys are terrorists so no guilt right? I never let my cynicism drag me low enough to take out any of my problems, whether they stemmed from home or from the effects of the conflicts we were in as a military, on those I was dealing with.

In a position of power, especially an armed position of power, it is an absolute necessity.

[Dornish]

Some are willing to turn on their own, some are not. Some will stand on principle, a whole lot wont. This isn't radically different from any group. Even in less hectic work places the 'office backstabber' is universally scorned.

Analogy invalid unless office workers regularly kill people out of incompetence, have it covered up by their peers, and receive paid vacation as a punishment.

[Black Dow]

Analogy invalid unless office workers regularly kill people out of incompetence, have it covered up by their peers, and receive paid vacation as a punishment.

Response invalid unless the police regularly do it, too. They don't.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Xanrn,

I've never said all law enforcement are corrupt. I specifically said that is not the case. However the "blue wall of silence" protects bad apples and it needs to stop. Police officers are public servants whether they work directly for the public or not. That is a fact they would do well to remember when they cover up corruption.

[Dornish]

Response invalid unless the police regularly do it, too. They don't.

Let's play a game, I'll find an example of it happening with police, then you find one involving some mundane profession. We'll see who runs out first.

ETA: OK, so I've looked at something around 20 incidents of police officers killing innocent people without being prosecuted, but I've found precious few that mention corrective action taken by the department at all. Being honest I have to admit that this doesn't necessarily mean they were not disciplined.

[TheKassi]

Let's play a game, I'll find an example of it happening with police, then you find one involving some mundane profession. We'll see who runs out first.

ETA: OK, so I've looked at something around 20 incidents of police officers killing innocent people without being prosecuted, but I've found precious few that mention corrective action taken by the department at all. Being honest I have to admit that this doesn't necessarily mean they were not disciplined.

There is an entire profession that covers up such cases for a living. It is called the Defense Lawyer. Corporate America has a lot of blood on it's hands that gets there from incompetence, and covering up or paying as little as is possible is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The biggest difference is that Corporate America makes no effort to self police. They do not train individuals who will doggedly sniff out corruption in their own camps. They in fact do the opposite, they train and hire people with a proven talent in obscuring inconvenient facts, or hold such people on retainer.

Between wrongful death, malpractice, and class action, I am pretty sure I win.

[Dornish]

Seeing as I've held myself to things I can support, I'm going to need you to back that up.

[TheKassi]

Seeing as I've held myself to things I can support, I'm going to need you to back that up.

First off, that is just false. You haven't backed up or provided support for anything. You just talked about finding twenty stories where innocent people died without a cop going to jail. You didn't actually provide any of them, much less proof of a cover up.

Second, the big tobacco lawsuits. Right there I have already blown your twenty cases right out of the water, and I have actually gone so far as to name the story, not just say that one exists. But heck, I am here, lets quote a few statistics.

An estimated 98,000 Americans die each year due to preventable medical errors (including 7,000 deaths caused by medication errors..

You know, thats enough statistics. 98,000 deaths a year from incompetence, and an entire industry that centers around insuring and obscuring those errors, and that is just one field.

In the real world, people with 'mundane' jobs screw up and kill far more people then the police ever could. Thats why the law is such a huge business. Common everyday people turning avoiding the responsibility for their negligence into a booming industry.

Now if you will actually hold yourself to things you can support, rather then just say you do when you place nothing on the table, we can start playing this game.

Or you can just concede before I pull up information on hazardous working environments that result from negligence, a chemical plant in Ohio just got busted for that, was hit by a lot of OSHA fines after a guy died.

Then I can go to unsafe disposal of hazardous materials. Heck, there I could just quote ten or twenty 'Based on a true story' movie titles for that. Think John Travolta was in one, and Julia Roberts in another.

[Maltaran]

They don't work directly for the people in the sense that individuals get to dictate how they do their jobs or that individuals are their "boss".

Well, not unless your name is Louis XIV.

[Dornish]

Anyone who died from tobacco use after a certain point were victims of their own incompetence. Even if it isn't obvious to someone that breathing smoke is a bad idea, it's been widely known for decades that the things cause cancer. Anyone who smoked after that accepted the risk or was an idiot.

Before that is more interesting. There was certainly a time period during which researchers and tobacco executives were aware of said dangers and chose not to reveal them to the populace at large. This isn't incompetence, not nearly. Far more insidious. Malice is the term I would use, and such people should have been prosecuted to some extent or another. The only incompetence I see in the entire situation lies with the prosecutor of the appropriate district who failed to act.

However at no time did any tobacco executive ever come into a person's home, stick a cigarette in their mouth and light it. However, police do occasionally show up at random people's houses and shoot them.

Joseph Buczek

December 8, 1996—FL

A Sarasota, Florida SWAT team is called to the home of Joseph Buczek, who police concede had done nothing wrong and was suspected of no crime.

The SWAT team arrived after a cab driver falsely called and reported that Buczek was "bloody and injured." When police arrived, they found Buczek asleep in his favorite easy chair, apparently intoxicated and depressed, with a gun at his side.

Hours later, a SWAT team showed up, and deployed a flashbang grenade in Buczek's direction. Buczek, apparently alarmed, raised his gun in the direction of the noise, at which point Sgt. John LeBlanc shot him to death. Police later said they deployed the flashbang and commenced the raid on Buczek "for his own safety" and that police themselves would have been criticized had Buczek killed himself while police continued to wait him out.

A subsequent investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of police, and concluded that Buczek shouldered most of the blame for his own death.

Sources:

Lou Ferrara, "Tragedy on 12th Street; The Shooting of Joseph Buczek, Jr.; Police Decisions Took a Deadly Turn," Sarasota Heard Tribune, Febraury 2, 1997, p. A1.

Lou Ferrara, "Review: Victim most at fault in shooting," Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 18, 1997, p. A1.

[TheKassi]

Okay, so you have one preventable death on the hands of police officers.

I got 98,000 at the feet of doctors. According to the rules of your game:

Let's play a game, I'll find an example of it happening with police, then you find one involving some mundane profession. We'll see who runs out first

You got 97,999 to go before you cover just the one 'mundane' industry.

Look, the assertion was total BS. In 2008 or 2007 (I am too lazy to look up the year again) there were something like 537 deaths during police actions that had any kind of allegation of wrong doing attached to it. Not proven, just the allegation.

Malpractice alone is 98,000.

Thats one out of about sixteen hundred cops involved in a death where there is any form of allegation of wrong doing per year. The amount of people who die in police custody per one hundred thousand police officers is actually lower then homicides committed per one hundred thousand African Americans, even if you count all deaths in police custody as murders, including the deaths of cops.

Being scared that a cop is going to harm you just because they are in a uniform is just as silly, ignorant, and prejudice as being scared of a black man just because he is black. When it comes to negligence, you are far more likely to fall victim to incompetence by dozens of other professions then police misconduct.

Police have power and authority, which means they abuse it. Thus we need a savage and efficient combination of surveillance, investigation, and punishment to combat that threat. A system far more hawkish then the one that already exists.

In reality however, police are some of the safest people to be around. They have comparatively low accident and fatality rates despite the fact that they deal with many of the most dangerous situations.

Vigilance is wise, prejudice is foolish.

[Vestrit]

So now our rights are idealistic? Sorry to all those who died in the wars to protect our rights, it was just ideals we don't really uphold because it isn't possible.

I know when I deployed as an armed soldier I had a lot of frustration due to factors back at home, and sometimes I was given opportunities to alleviate those frustrations on detained prisoners in a real "hush hush" fashion. I mean these guys are terrorists so no guilt right? I never let my cynicism drag me low enough to take out any of my problems, whether they stemmed from home or from the effects of the conflicts we were in as a military, on those I was dealing with.

In a position of power, especially an armed position of power, it is an absolute necessity.

No, it's not wrong to expect people's right to be upheld. And no, I'm not saying you should have taken out frustrations on prisoners by beating the shit out of them. And I've repeatedly said in this thread that bad stuff shouldn't be covered up.

But if you are seriously telling me you never saw proper procedure and the absolutely correct way of doing things ignored due to expediency, pragmatism or frustration, then my already high level of respect for soldiers has just increased by some margin.

People bend rules and they turn a blind eye to things and cover over wee mistakes all the time, because that's how you get the job done with the resources you have, in the time you have and allowing you to focus on the important stuff and not getting caught up in piddly shit and bureaucracy.

Like I've said, the trick is knowing when a rule's been bent too far and when something is too big or too bad to cover up. As the examples in this thread have shown, there are a lot of times when cops (and others) get that wrong. And there are genuinely bad cops, just like there are genuinely bad people in all jobs.

I'm just saying that if you expect every little mistake, every little error of judgement, every little slip to get hauled up and dealt with, then you'll never get any policing done (or any medicine done, or most other professions) because we'll be directing all the resources into disciplinary procedures and putting off anybody from ever applying to join the cops.

Maybe the wrong thread to be making the point I was trying to make

[Dornish]

Okay, so you have one preventable death on the hands of police officers.

I'd say this goes WAY beyond preventable. Police broke into a man's home and killed him, basically in his sleep, and then blamed the victim for their crime.

Police have power and authority, which means they abuse it. Thus we need a savage and efficient combination of surveillance, investigation, and punishment to combat that threat. A system far more hawkish then the one that already exists.

I think I've lost the plot from my original point which I think we're actually in agreement on. This here is really all I want. I just tend to get really carried away with this particular issue because of the apparent lack of outrage. Sorry bout that. Whenever a government employee kills an innocent citizen it is cause for grave concern.

[TheKassi]

Not trying to rag on you any, but given that police unions are asking for the funds to do more training, as well as place a camera in every car, on the person of every officer, along with audio recording equipment, why point the outrage at cops?

Police Unions are begging for more extensive training programs so error is less of an issue. They are begging to be watched 24/7 so corruption is rooted out when it sprouts. It is society that vetoes the request, as they do not wish to shell out the tax money.

Police say we want to do a better job, society says you are doing it good enough. At least until there are headlines, then a bunch of people get angry for a week or two before moving on to other issues.

If you want a more robust training system and more accountability, police unions across the nation are agreeing with you. Why not point the outrage at the complacent population that only thinks it is an issue on slow news days?

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Here is another example of police use of "disorderly conduct" laws to force us mere mortals to bend the knee.

Then the group noticed five or six police cruisers surrounding two cars in an apparent traffic stop on the other side of the street. It seemed to Tuma that was more cops than necessary.

"That's why I hate the police," Tuma said. He told the Huffington Post that in a loud sing-song voice, he then chanted, "I hate the police, I hate the police."

One officer reacted strongly to Tuma's song. "Hey! Hey! Who do you think you're talking to?" Tuma recalled the officer shouting as he strode across an intersection to where Tuma was standing. "Who do you think you are to think you can talk to a police officer like that?" the police officer said, according to Luke Platzer, 30, one of Tuma's companions.

Tuma said he responded, "It is not illegal to say I hate the police. It's not illegal to express my opinion walking down the street."

According to Tuma and Platzer, the officer pushed Tuma against an electric utility box, continuing to ask who he thought he was and to say he couldn't talk to police like that.

This shit has to end. The idea that you can be assaulted, kidnapped, and imprisoned at the whim of an armed overclass is the stuff of feudalism, not governance by the people.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

In case there was any doubt about differing standards of justice for police:

Police DOGS lives are worth more than the lives of citizens

A few weeks after Metz was sentenced to half a year behind bars for striking and wounding a trained dog owned by the local police, an Ohio State student who struck and accidentally killed a man in Columbus received a 60-day jail sentence. That’s one-third the punishment meted out to a fellow Mundane who merely injured a “K-9 Officer.â€

This is exactly how things should be, pontificates Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost, since mere Mundanes are simply not as important as the exalted personages — including dogs — who compose the state’s punitive priesthood:

“The police officer or his canine partner are on the job and are present as a matter of duty, and so a crime against them takes on a greater harm to society than an act between two private citizens.â€

That is to say that a temporary injury to a police dog is a greater social tragedy than the death of an actual human being.

That's right kids. It is a worse crime for me to punch a dog owned by the police department than it is for me to kill you.

See here for a couple dozen incidents in which police murder the dogs of us lower-class citizens with no penalty.