6 ms·

As someone who is 1)Rich(relatively) 2)White, and who has been falsely accused, and harassed by the police for idiotic reasons, I have an enormous amount of sym

As someone who is 1)Rich(relatively) 2)White, and who has been falsely accused, and harassed by the police for idiotic reasons, I have an enormous amount of sympathy. I went through something similar a couple of times in my life where I had to fight to prove my innocence against incompetent and frankly really stupid police officers who where in my opinion, mainly big assholes who just wanted to bully people. I can say that had I not been pretty wealthy and able to afford lawyers I am pretty sure they would have fucked me over. Once something like that happens to you, you start to sort of understand how someone less fortunate can really get screwed over pretty easily.

vinbreau 9y ago
Same here. I was once assaulted by a police officer on the property where my father worked. The cop was employed as security and did not wear his badge openly. He was dressed in civilian clothes with his badge on his belt, behind his back. He verbally accosted me on a visit to my dad's place of work. Not knowing he was a cop I let him know where to go. He grabbed me, bent my arm behind my back and shoved me face first through hard metal doors. My father was livid and got in on the argument, on my side. I had bruises all over my face, neck and arms. I filed a complaint against him, but a week later he was part of the largest cocaine bust in my town's history. As a result he was beyond reproach. I've got a few other encounters like this, though not as bad. Not all cops I've run in with were bad, some were more than reasonable, but the bad encounters outweigh the good at least 3 to 1. Give a power tripping person a badge and a gun, hide them behind the blue code and the average civilian has little to no recourse.
- zw123456 9y ago
  It is interesting, almost everyone I know has a story where some cop abused there authority. When people start sharing their stories, it is always amazing to me how many people chime in with similar encounters. Until it happens to you, people don't realize how frightening and scaring it is. I completely feel for you. I was physically ill for weeks after my encounter. I believe that it is a problem that is far more pervasive than maybe is realized.
  - happynomad 9y ago
    I am in a somewhat similar situation. The article talks of Mitchell fearing for his life due to police unwilling to protect him. I had a nasty string of events happen to me that also left me fearing for my life and unemployed (threatened after I quit my job... I quit twice, first time they nearly doubled my salary, second they said: 'you are going to not be able to keep a job ever again.' Months later at my new job I started receiving violent threats, then people violently broke into my office--nothing was stolen.) I notified the police, I asked them if they could look into--there were video cameras, and they could see who broke in and chased after me as I hurried out the emergency exit. They didnt investigate anything, or even record the break in as a crime AFAIK. I was then told I was being be fired for the break in occurring after I was told not to report it, but said that I did anyways ("this has nothing to do with you performance here in your job duties"). both were relatively small companies. There is a lot more that was happening at that time, and it went from concerning to blatant to surreal. I was stalked/followed home by unsavoury-looking people. Men were knocking on my door speaking inaudibly and sometimes in Spanish. My tires had oil smeared all over them one time and had been overinflated. This is not inclusive of everything that happened. I called the police repeatedly and nobody did anything. I dont know how to get these concerns raised to anyone that cares. Eventually I left the country and have been living abroad a couple of years since then. I am not really sure what to do without a job reference as a mid career male, but I get by in my days by meeting so many nice people and going to such beautiful places and trying to forget about what happened. I dont know if I can find a real job again and I think my life will be basically over if I cant. Im thankful for everything, but to be honest, I want to work again and am not sure how to recover from this in terms of career. I havent talked about this with anyone, but when I read this I thought I'd chime in. Enforcing law and peace with prudence is important enough that when it isn't done right, people like Mitchell and I experience our lives are transformed and we are unemploued. In the meantime, terrible people are enabled. Police in my case and in the story's may have just been too busy, or misunderstanding, or overwhelmed--I dont know what the problem is, but the outcomen is awful.
    - jpatokal 9y ago
      It's difficult to say this in a polite way, but I think you should get an appointment at a psychiatrist and get assessed for schizophrenia. What you describe, particularly the "blatant to surreal" bit, sounds very much like potential symptoms: I'm not saying you're making this up, but that there's a very real possibility that your brain is connecting dots that it shouldn't be.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ams6110 9y ago
  Cops are not trained to be "reasonable" they are trained to use overwhelming sudden force. This is for their own safety, because most people they deal with in close encounters are also not reasonable people.
  - istjohn 9y ago
    Then they are trained wrong. It is imperative that cops--the people who patrol the neighborhoods our children play in, who are the first response to a (usually harmless) mentally ill person violating social norms, who are the recourse of overwhelmed parents with unruly children--it is imperative that cops are approachable, amicable, empathic, and reasonable.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Most cops never have any reason to fire their weapon. Being a police officer is a relatively safe profession. Everyone they have contact with has legal rights.
  - mr_overalls 9y ago
    I'm afraid you have been given wrong information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum
3131s 9y ago
I have dealt with cops on a lot of occasions, some of the major ones being a fortunately non-fatal OD of two of my friends, getting my door kicked in, and one arrest for sneaking into a building. I also am a white guy from an upper-middle class background. The OD was a difficult moment. I found my friends and called it in. Both of them lived, which I am of course grateful for, but afterwards the cops spent a lot of time yelling at the group of guys who had been obliviously smoking weed downstairs, pressuring them to snitch on the dealer, and even threatening to charge us with possession (which actually can happen). The raid was mostly as expected. The house was not too torn up or anything. The cops actually claim it was a mistake, that they were looking for someone who had lived in my apartment over a year before. I'm not so sure about that though. They didn't find any drugs, which I believe they were looking for. They confiscated a bunch of electronics from my roommates and I and it took about 2 weeks to get those back. The cops were friendly during this process. I also know one other person, a female family friend, who was completely innocent and got mistakenly raided in the middle of the night. The building one I was just too curious. At night a friend and I snuck into a rubber plant that was under renovation. We didn't break or steal anything. I was the younger of the two, at 13 and 15 respectively. The cops had guns drawn (which I don't fault them for) and gave us a couple good knees to the stomach during the arrest. The very weird part was a cop holding down my friend and joking "did you piss yourself?" (he had not) while grabbing his crotch for easily 3-4 seconds. The above are easily dismissed as being related to my choices in life, granted. But I've also had other random incidents. A cop pointed a gun at me because I was walking through a large college campus and stumbled into some incident where police looking for someone. Another time, my friend was the designated driver one night and, being unfamiliar with my car, accidentally flashed the brights at a police car going the opposite direction -- the cops did a burnout, came speeding up behind and slammed on the breaks, screamed at us, then peeled out in a cloud of smoke! And yet another time, looking out the front window of a law-abiding friend's house, we saw a swat team lining up to storm the neighbor's house, which had at least three or four young kids living there -- we went downstairs. One a lighter note, a police helicopter shined its spotlight directly on me while I was sitting on my porch alone, at night, on a high dose of LSD. That was awesome and surreal, but a little dystopian.
- GFischer 9y ago
denzil_correa 9y ago
> I can say that had I not been pretty wealthy and able to afford lawyers I am pretty sure they would have fucked me over. This is one part of the justice system which needs fixing. I prefer the system of legal aid like they do in Germany rather than a public defender .
II2II 9y ago
As bad as your case is, this story seems to have very little to do with the police outside of them being tasked to enforce a court order. It sounds like these orders are being requested by the DA and granted by judges. It is also about laws that may be debatable in merit but are most likely abused in practice. (We can only say "most likely" because the only records available are difficult to process to judge how often these orders are used, never mind whether their use can be construed as legitimate.)

vinbreau 9y ago

Same here. I was once assaulted by a police officer on the property where my father worked. The cop was employed as security and did not wear his badge openly. He was dressed in civilian clothes with his badge on his belt, behind his back. He verbally accosted me on a visit to my dad's place of work. Not knowing he was a cop I let him know where to go. He grabbed me, bent my arm behind my back and shoved me face first through hard metal doors. My father was livid and got in on the argument, on my side. I had bruises all over my face, neck and arms. I filed a complaint against him, but a week later he was part of the largest cocaine bust in my town's history. As a result he was beyond reproach. I've got a few other encounters like this, though not as bad. Not all cops I've run in with were bad, some were more than reasonable, but the bad encounters outweigh the good at least 3 to 1. Give a power tripping person a badge and a gun, hide them behind the blue code and the average civilian has little to no recourse.

zw123456 9y ago
It is interesting, almost everyone I know has a story where some cop abused there authority. When people start sharing their stories, it is always amazing to me how many people chime in with similar encounters. Until it happens to you, people don't realize how frightening and scaring it is. I completely feel for you. I was physically ill for weeks after my encounter. I believe that it is a problem that is far more pervasive than maybe is realized.
- happynomad 9y ago
  I am in a somewhat similar situation. The article talks of Mitchell fearing for his life due to police unwilling to protect him. I had a nasty string of events happen to me that also left me fearing for my life and unemployed (threatened after I quit my job... I quit twice, first time they nearly doubled my salary, second they said: 'you are going to not be able to keep a job ever again.' Months later at my new job I started receiving violent threats, then people violently broke into my office--nothing was stolen.) I notified the police, I asked them if they could look into--there were video cameras, and they could see who broke in and chased after me as I hurried out the emergency exit. They didnt investigate anything, or even record the break in as a crime AFAIK. I was then told I was being be fired for the break in occurring after I was told not to report it, but said that I did anyways ("this has nothing to do with you performance here in your job duties"). both were relatively small companies. There is a lot more that was happening at that time, and it went from concerning to blatant to surreal. I was stalked/followed home by unsavoury-looking people. Men were knocking on my door speaking inaudibly and sometimes in Spanish. My tires had oil smeared all over them one time and had been overinflated. This is not inclusive of everything that happened. I called the police repeatedly and nobody did anything. I dont know how to get these concerns raised to anyone that cares. Eventually I left the country and have been living abroad a couple of years since then. I am not really sure what to do without a job reference as a mid career male, but I get by in my days by meeting so many nice people and going to such beautiful places and trying to forget about what happened. I dont know if I can find a real job again and I think my life will be basically over if I cant. Im thankful for everything, but to be honest, I want to work again and am not sure how to recover from this in terms of career. I havent talked about this with anyone, but when I read this I thought I'd chime in. Enforcing law and peace with prudence is important enough that when it isn't done right, people like Mitchell and I experience our lives are transformed and we are unemploued. In the meantime, terrible people are enabled. Police in my case and in the story's may have just been too busy, or misunderstanding, or overwhelmed--I dont know what the problem is, but the outcomen is awful.
  - jpatokal 9y ago
    It's difficult to say this in a polite way, but I think you should get an appointment at a psychiatrist and get assessed for schizophrenia. What you describe, particularly the "blatant to surreal" bit, sounds very much like potential symptoms: I'm not saying you're making this up, but that there's a very real possibility that your brain is connecting dots that it shouldn't be.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ams6110 9y ago
Cops are not trained to be "reasonable" they are trained to use overwhelming sudden force. This is for their own safety, because most people they deal with in close encounters are also not reasonable people.
- istjohn 9y ago
  Then they are trained wrong. It is imperative that cops--the people who patrol the neighborhoods our children play in, who are the first response to a (usually harmless) mentally ill person violating social norms, who are the recourse of overwhelmed parents with unruly children--it is imperative that cops are approachable, amicable, empathic, and reasonable.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Most cops never have any reason to fire their weapon. Being a police officer is a relatively safe profession. Everyone they have contact with has legal rights.
- mr_overalls 9y ago
  I'm afraid you have been given wrong information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum

3131s 9y ago

I have dealt with cops on a lot of occasions, some of the major ones being a fortunately non-fatal OD of two of my friends, getting my door kicked in, and one arrest for sneaking into a building. I also am a white guy from an upper-middle class background. The OD was a difficult moment. I found my friends and called it in. Both of them lived, which I am of course grateful for, but afterwards the cops spent a lot of time yelling at the group of guys who had been obliviously smoking weed downstairs, pressuring them to snitch on the dealer, and even threatening to charge us with possession (which actually can happen). The raid was mostly as expected. The house was not too torn up or anything. The cops actually claim it was a mistake, that they were looking for someone who had lived in my apartment over a year before. I'm not so sure about that though. They didn't find any drugs, which I believe they were looking for. They confiscated a bunch of electronics from my roommates and I and it took about 2 weeks to get those back. The cops were friendly during this process. I also know one other person, a female family friend, who was completely innocent and got mistakenly raided in the middle of the night. The building one I was just too curious. At night a friend and I snuck into a rubber plant that was under renovation. We didn't break or steal anything. I was the younger of the two, at 13 and 15 respectively. The cops had guns drawn (which I don't fault them for) and gave us a couple good knees to the stomach during the arrest. The very weird part was a cop holding down my friend and joking "did you piss yourself?" (he had not) while grabbing his crotch for easily 3-4 seconds. The above are easily dismissed as being related to my choices in life, granted. But I've also had other random incidents. A cop pointed a gun at me because I was walking through a large college campus and stumbled into some incident where police looking for someone. Another time, my friend was the designated driver one night and, being unfamiliar with my car, accidentally flashed the brights at a police car going the opposite direction -- the cops did a burnout, came speeding up behind and slammed on the breaks, screamed at us, then peeled out in a cloud of smoke! And yet another time, looking out the front window of a law-abiding friend's house, we saw a swat team lining up to storm the neighbor's house, which had at least three or four young kids living there -- we went downstairs. One a lighter note, a police helicopter shined its spotlight directly on me while I was sitting on my porch alone, at night, on a high dose of LSD. That was awesome and surreal, but a little dystopian.

GFischer 9y ago

denzil_correa 9y ago

> I can say that had I not been pretty wealthy and able to afford lawyers I am pretty sure they would have fucked me over. This is one part of the justice system which needs fixing. I prefer the system of legal aid like they do in Germany rather than a public defender .

II2II 9y ago

As bad as your case is, this story seems to have very little to do with the police outside of them being tasked to enforce a court order. It sounds like these orders are being requested by the DA and granted by judges. It is also about laws that may be debatable in merit but are most likely abused in practice. (We can only say "most likely" because the only records available are difficult to process to judge how often these orders are used, never mind whether their use can be construed as legitimate.)