11 ms·

I wonder what's the difference between countries that makes the police behave so differently as to citizens having to come up with video surveillance to back up

by yason 8y ago

I wonder what's the difference between countries that makes the police behave so differently as to citizens having to come up with video surveillance to back up their case? In Scandinavia you'd have to be genuinely paranoid to not trust the police. The presence of police generally has an aura of safety: actually, with the reductions in force we've been quite unhappy to not see officers patrolling in the city centre in the evenings as much as before. I'll have to assume that most cops in the US must be friendly and considerate but there seems to exist a minority (hopefully?) that seems to suggest it might be safer to hang out with criminals rather than be confronted by the police. It's somehow mind-boggling but there must be a path of history and reason why the behaviour of the police forces have diverged so much between countries.

cust0m 8y ago
I think the biggest diference here is the society in US is more heterogenous, divided and the levels of inequality is high than in Scandinavia. The white Americans that live in rich neighborhoods would feel safer with police presence but an afro American will be viewed as a threat an enemy by the policial forces so is natural this part of population feel unsafe. basically class struggle
superflyguy 8y ago
Any hypothesis that only a minority of police are bad would have to explain why the good police who outnumber them don't do anything to make the public safer/protect the reputation of the police and law enforcement order generally/explain the higher arrest count of and use of violence against Blacks, etc.
- michaelt 8y ago
  I’ve heard it claimed of a cop pulls over a colleague’s family member for speeding and doesn’t let them off after seeing who it is, he can expect social sanctions like his locker being messed with. If the culture allows that over a mere speeding fine, imagine the sanction for getting a colleague jail time. OTOH if you play along, you get special treatment for your loved ones. And everyone is doing it...
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >OTOH if you play along, you get special treatment for your loved ones. And everyone is doing it... In fact they're even official about it: https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-cops-issuing-get-out-jail-free-cards-788356 https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-cops-issuing-get-out-jail-f... https://nypost.com/2018/01/21/police-union-slashes-number-of-get-out-of-jail-free-cards-issued/ https://nypost.com/2018/01/21/police-union-slashes-number-of...
vincentmarle 8y ago
From my perspective - as an European living in the US - the biggest difference is: guns. The likelihood that a routine traffic stop will result in a gun fight is near zero in Europe, in the US it’s... probably slightly above zero. So approaching people and cars is done with extremely high tension and high possibility for escalation.
- eecc 8y ago
  I’ve also read somewhere that US firearms training focuses a lot on conditioning users to actually use the weapon. Apparently, someone in the US Army found that soldiers rarely fired in the general direction of the enemy, so they developed programs to train away the taboo around shooting at other humans. I guess this percolated out of the military and now you have lots of police officers that are very skilled at killing, but not so as de-escalating and so on...
  - nradov 8y ago
    Police use of force training is really nothing like military combat training.
    - eecc 8y ago
      Of course it isn’t, who ever said that. I’m saying that in the use of firearms, a whole lot of effort is put into conditioning it into a fully thoughtless routine of acquire and fire. Pair that to neglecting other forms of de-escalation training and a fair amount of prejudice (if not outright racism) and you have a problem
      - nradov 8y ago
        No US police academy conditions recruits to a fully thoughtless routine of acquire and fire. And firearms training isn't even a huge part of the curriculum.
    - InitialLastName 8y ago
      Correct. The police are less beholden to strict rules of engagement.
fredsir 8y ago
It's trending in Scandinavia too. > In Scandinavia you'd have to be genuinely paranoid to not trust the police In Denmark, a case[1] where police forcefully escorted photographers and journalists away that were following immigrants that were walking a highway as they entered Denmark a couple of years ago, has just been settled, and the behaviour of the police were indeed unlawful. And it's not just a fluke. It seems to be an increasing trend, unfortunately. Not blindly trusting officials is probably pretty smart. [1]: https://politiken.dk/kultur/medier/art6740480/Politiet-måtte-ikke-bortvise-Politiken-fotograf-der-fulgte-flygtningestrøm-på-E45 https://politiken.dk/kultur/medier/art6740480/Politiet-måtte...
- coldtea 8y ago
  >In Denmark, a case[1] where police forcefully escorted photographers and journalists away that were following immigrants that were walking a highway as they entered Denmark a couple of years ago, has just been settled, and the behaviour of the police were indeed unlawful. If that's the worse one came up with, and if it was even settled in court, then it's nowhere near close to the way the US is.
- baud147258 8y ago
  You can walk on a highway in Denmark? If that's not the case, the cops may have arrested/forcefully moved the wrong person.
  - fredsir 8y ago
    You can't, but the immigrants did, and so did police too to follow them, and of course photographers and journalist documented it, in which case the police forcefully removed the journalists and the photographers. At this point, this particular highway was closed off from traffic because of the immigrants and police, if I recall correctly. In any case, I'm no expert on the matter, but the actions of the police that day were deemed unlawful by the court.
    - mcv 8y ago
      Why not immediately send a bus to pick up the immigrants and get them off the highway?
Arnt 8y ago
The great divergence, IMO, is called Robert Peel, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles Police forces existed before the emergence of the peelian principles, and they aren't universally accepted. For example, one of the peelian principles is to refrain from the use of physical force as much as possible, and some police forces appear to flaunt physical force, for example by publishing PR blahblah about new water cannon and other military-style gear instead of downplaying such equipment.
mattmanser 8y ago
Have you ever been arrested? I used to trust the police. Then I got arrested. Nothing came of it, but I was shocked at how much the police liad to me to try and catch me out and then how I spent 6 hours incarcerated for simply driving a red car. Do not trust the police after the age of 18. They are not your friends and trusting them is extremely dangerous if they've decided you're guilty of something. Always ask for a lawyer, never co-operate.
- freeflight 8y ago
  And most important: Never consent to any searches of anything. Too many people just consent because "They have nothing to hide/Don't want to look guilty" and many police officers take that as a challenge to actually find something, no matter how small. Not consenting to the search puts the burden of proof on the police, they gotta have a cause/reason to search your car. Sure, they can also manufacture that, usually by calling in a K9 unit. These dogs are so well trained, they can give a signal when their handler orders it, the dogs signal is then used as a cause to search you and the car. But that's a lot of time and effort, not every police officer wants to go through just for a little power trip. That's why not consenting to the search is so important and can spare you a lot of trouble, there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing it.
tyfon 8y ago
I think the difference is that in the US the police is trained for 30 weeks (I think) in escalating situations and using violence to solve their problems while here in Norway the police education is a full three year bachelors degree with emphasis on de-escalation of situations and how violence is only a very last resort. There is also an independent "police" that will investigate cases brought against police officers that overstep their authority.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  I think it's not exactly that American police are trained to escalate, but that the culture is highly authoritarian, which changes their meaning of "escalation". Anything short of instantaneous and absolute deference and obedience is viewed as a threat. If that standard exceeds your ability to comply (e.g. deaf/hard-of-hearing, serious mental illness, dementia, traumatic brain injury), then your existence is implicitly threatening to them.
tdeck 8y ago
I don't know, it seems like Norway at least has its problems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_misconduct#Norway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_misconduct#Norway
- mullsork 8y ago
  > According to a 2012 official report, 18 police officers have lost their jobs as result of misconduct since 2005 No country is perfect, and I'm not Norwegian, but the number of incidents is quite low.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    And if the officers guilty of misconduct lose their job, it's a sign that there is a system to deal with them and that it works (at least for those cases).
  - froindt 8y ago
    For sake of comparison, Norway has about 5.23 million people compared to 325 in the US. Scaled up, it'd be like having 1,116 officers lose their jobs due to misconduct between 2005 and 2012. Visibility to the issue in the US was substantially different in that time period than now, but I think the population helps put an absolute number into perspective.
FabHK 8y ago
Very good observation & totally agreed. In Germany, police is generally perceived as trustworthy, your "friend and helper" as the slogan goes. I was surprised by the antagonism and belligerence in the US. A few observations: * guns certainly play a big role, and the risk of escalation. * I wonder whether silly laws also play a role. For example: a 20 year old drinking alcohol, having a cold beer while watching a sunset on the beach, prostitution are all illegal if I'm not mistaken (or smoking a joint, depending on the state). So, in the US, the police might often be the killjoy. In Germany, those things are either officially legal, or in a gray area that the police ignores. So when the police comes on the scene, it's generally an actual crime or problem, and everyone is eager to help and cooperate and fix whatever real problem there is. In short, police have a relatively positive image. * My experience with the police in the US was much worse when I was on a bike than when I was in a nice BMW. The issues of power differential, authority, lawyers, confrontation seem to loom much larger in the US than I've perceived them in Germany. * With all these factors, employment with the police might seem a less attractive choice of work in the US than in northern Europe, so people with few other choices (or a penchant for exercising authority) might end up there more frequently than in other countries. This, in turn, could result in a downward cycle and a "besieged" mentality. At any rate, I'd much rather interact with police in Europe or Asia than the US.
- rubyfan 8y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, the United States is somewhat uptight especially when it comes to telling other people how to live their lives. Certainly this is a contributing factor. Minorities are also treated with extra scrutiny almost everywhere. Policing also varies greatly from locality to locality. I’ve know probably five police officers and all are great people and join the police to help, but I hate to say it many of them have anger or control issues. Personally I had an issue where I needed an ambulance to my house and trip to the ER. The police showed up along with the ambulance and an officer was in my house and looking around the house with a snooping eye. Even when there to help they are looking for signs of a crime.
- bluejekyll 8y ago
  All of these are definitely part of it, but we need to look more deeply at the economic realities of policing in the US to understand some of this. Read this article: https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/policing-and-profit/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/policing-and-profit/ Police in many municipalities are not fully funded via taxes. Instead their revenues are maintained via tickets, fines, and property seizures. There are recent cases that have gone to the supreme court related to some of these issues: https://newrepublic.com/article/148013/will-supreme-court-rein-civil-forfeiture https://newrepublic.com/article/148013/will-supreme-court-re..., I don't believe this case has been heard yet. The point is, the police in the US have an economic necessity to pay their own salaries by fighting "crime". This incentivizes them in seizing property, prior to any conviction in court. Often the property is seized from people without the means to fight to get it back, and/or it's not worth the fight. This tactic of ticketing, fining and seizing property to pay for the police force, IMO, is the root cause of the issues between minorities and low income people and the police. In effect, the police need crime and will find crime, because they need to in order to earn their salaries.
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
Part of it is training but part of it is also what police officers face. In my country the odds a police officer will pull over someone for speeding who has a gun in the car is 1:10000. In the US in some parts I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than 1:10. If you then look at inequality, mental health issues, crime rates etc... which are largely a function of socioeconomics, man I wouldn't want to be a police officer in the US, either. It's not necessarily the case that I love the police officers in my country (north-west europe), either. They lie, they don't enjoy it when you verbally challenge their power with an argument, they're fallible. For example at one point I saw an officer harassing some homeless guy, asking for ID etc. I know they're not looking to help them get shelter, but just looking to get them out of the park because people complain. So what they do is they ask for ID, they obviously don't have one, so they put 'em in a police van, hold them at the police office overnight and then release them outside the city centre the next morning. If they do it often enough, they stay out of the nice city centre where the rich folks live. So I talked to the officer about it, but you immediately get told to stay out unless I wanted a problem: i.e. arresting for obstruction of justice, held and later released. There's very little you can do in this situation, either you shut up or you have to call work and say you've been arrested and can't come in etc. It's not the end of the world but it's an effective deterrent in many cases for having small injustices go unchecked. Same with racial profiling, happens all the time as well. And every single time I've reported a theft, they did absolutely nothing about it. Even if I gave evidence of the crime and the person's identity etc. Lack of resources... It's understandable to some extent, but frustrating too. It almost invites you to get your own revenge if I didn't know better. So I don't love the police, either. Police officers are not all that different from most people in their human flaws, except that they're typically relatively lowly-educated (and in the US, lowly trained), combined with far reaching powers and an institution that backs them, it can be problematic in any country. But police violence is very rare, police drawing guns is rare, let alone shooting them. People in all countries have issues with their police (like they have issues with bad teachers, bad doctors, bad judges, bad politicians, bad hairdressers and bad chefs!), but within OECD countries it's basically only the US that has this level of (lethal) violence. Guns play a large role, as do socioeconomics. But there also has to be strong institutional oversight, it seems the police is institutionally far more inoculated from the consequences of their actions in the US than elsewhere. Where I'm from, every damaging use of a gun by a police officer will get an automatic investigation, not internally but by an independent national research team that falls under the national prosecutor.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
>I'll have to assume that most cops in the US must be friendly and considerate Its not just the attitudes of individual cops. Its the authoritarian disposition of legal authorities on every level, local, state and federal. The goal of the authorities in the United States is not public welfare and safety, its the imposition of order. Offensive, abusive behavior by police towards citizens is common, for which police face no sanction. Prosecutors regularly withhold evidence, suborn perjury (so much so that a term for rampant police perjury has been coined: 'testilying'), and break the law in a variety of ways, none of which is ever punished. The only people in the United States who "trust" the police (or the authorities in general) are those who are lucky enough to be blissfully ignorant (something that quickly changes once they are on the wrong end of a police interaction). All this isn't to say there aren't "good" cops, who sincerely want to better society and help people out, but the system itself is rotten to the core.
ryanlol 8y ago
>In Scandinavia you'd have to be genuinely paranoid to not trust the police. I had the cops bring in a shrink to "observe" an interview. Right after the interview, they had that same shrink who I'd never met before commit me into a month-long involuntary psychiatric evaluation because I had followed my lawyers advice and refused to answer the questions I was asked. This sounds like something that might happen in China or maybe Russia, but no. This all happened in Finland. The system assumes that government officials can do no wrong, so there doesn't exist any effective way to seek legal remedy.
tim333 8y ago
I guess the philosophy and incentives must be different. I'm not that up on US cops as I'm a brit. In the UK we had "Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing" with things like "Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police" https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/nyregion/sir-robert-peels-nine-principles-of-policing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/nyregion/sir-robert-peels... which seemed to work well and they were thought some of the best in the world. These days they have a lot of politically correct form filling and bureaucracy which means you don't get hassled much but they also aren't around much in terms of catching criminals.
gardaani 8y ago
The police in some countries are very corrupt. When they pull you over, they won't give you a fine. They will just ask for money, otherwise they will drag you to the police station for whatever reason. It happens in Eastern Europe and other poor countries. In some countries, the police is feared because they abuse their power, like the police in India with their colonial attitude: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Common-people-are-afraid-to-approach-us/articleshow/5451859.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Common-people-are-...
rdl 8y ago
For me it depends greatly on the department/agency. If I am around Palo Alto or Mountain View or Bellevue or Redmond or WA State Patrol or CHP, I feel safer (unless they are there due to some specific situation, in which case my goal is to get out of the area, but I’d still want them there.). There are a lot of departments where enough (10%?) of the officers are incompetent or malicious, so I’d rarely want them to be around.
LaGrange 8y ago
In the US there are many groups that feel safe around the police as well — to the point where using white people to shield black folk from cops isn't unusual. In Scandinavia, the state was involved in forced sterilisations. I truly doubt everyone shares your view of the trustworthiness of their cops. The biggest difference is that the "high profile" thing happens less: cops have less guns. So people don't get shot as much, they're just harassed, beaten up and arrested for little reason. Yay Europe, I guess.
lr4444lr 8y ago
It depends heavily on the neighborhood. I don't know if you have anything quite like the inner city slums of the NYC housing projects or the the bad areas of Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, etc. in the Scandinavian cities you have in mind. They aren't places seen by most tourists.
throw2016 8y ago
The situation in the US is very unique. You will be hard pressed to find any country with this level of paranoia and fear with police stops, acts of excessive violence including completely unnecessary killings, and requirement for complete 'submission' by the police. It's like a police state, but for minorities. Its tragic the loss of life in this vulgar way can be hand waved away in a civilized country. It's a double dehumanization of victims, one to allow this callous behavior by the police and the second to justify it and let it stand. Often juries release brazen case of murders and elected justice officials support the police by default so its not just the police but the entire justice system that enables this cycle of murder, terrorism and violence. What is also unique is the support and justification for this kind of policing by many who do not experience the same behavior from the police and infact can count on them to 'protect' and defend. This is intimately linked to privilege and racism and how the police have been used systematically to harass and terrorize minorities right from enforcing segregation, laws like jaywalking against mostly black people, suppressing the civil rights movement, the drug war, demonization of blacks by administrations like Reagan who ran systematic advertising campaigns linking black populations to crack. [1] [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/new-jim-crow-book-ban-prison.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/new-jim-crow-book-ban-...
izzydata 8y ago
I always thought it was due to misguided police training that conditions them to escalate situations to quickly.
ptero 8y ago
Good observations. A few data points (from a white citizen of the US). 20 years ago I saw a police officer as a friend. If I was lost, I would ask one for directions, help, etc. Now I generally prefer to ask a sane-looking stranger. I saw other folks, including military officers, express similar feelings. I think that composition of the police has changed. Before, it was mostly local boys who joined police after school. They view random strangers as mostly friendly and have a "do not bug them unless they need help" mind set. Nowadays, there are strong preferences for recruiting vets, which often means time in a combat zone area with distinctly unfriendly locals (and possibly PTSD). They see random strangers as potential threats and this can affect all interactions. Independently, when you are pulled over, especially on a highway, it is usually a local cop who is encouraged by his town to write tickets that help local budget. They are likely completely professional and probably even friendly, but by default we are at the opposite sides in this interaction. Extra information on my side does not hurt.
thetrumanshow 8y ago
From the other responses here, I like the 'its the guns' answer the best, as it has likely led to police treating every interaction as a possible life and death scenario. This is likely to be it. But, there's a possible other culprit too, that I never noticed before the recent divisions in the populace due to politics, and that is the politization of policing. Now, I could be conflating cause and effect here, but wouldn't it be interesting if the reason we are culturally nervous of the police is that we have been told to be that way by mainstream influences. Just a thought, and I'm happy to have it all backwards.
SpikeDad 8y ago
It's the difference living in a homogenous culture vs a diverse one like the US. Plus the fact that due to the gun love culture police never know who's going to have a gun and so their behavior goes from helping people to protecting themselves. It's a pernicious attitude that has sad to say destroyed the good will that people should have for their police.
mkane848 8y ago
Cops here don't act like part of the community. I guess the general feel is that even if you're not doing something wrong, if you see a cop you're likely to get anxious because all of a sudden you're wondering if they're going to hassle you just because, hassle you due to a minor thing that's going to get blown out of proportion, or if you're lucky they'll just leave. They're not my peers, they're a force of power and intimidation and an interaction with them feels more like a confrontation waiting to happen than anything else, even if you're not even doing anything wrong.
anoncoward111 8y ago
You've received a lot of responses, but I'm shocked that nobody has told you most US cops are assholes. Most of the times I've interacted with cops, they were not smiling. Sometimes they were not evil, but most of the times they are asking questions to see if they can arrest you for something. For example, one time a cop came up to me while I was taking a nap in my car. He asked me questions for 5 minutes straight to see if I could admit to any equipment failures on my car, or if I was drunk (despite not operating the vehicle). In the US, you must exercise extreme caution around cops, at all times, period.
code_duck 8y ago
My interactions with police in emergencies have generally been good. When I am looking for a police officer, it’s great to find one. I noticed that the same officers will act differently to various people depending on the situation and how they perceive (stereotype) that person or the company they keep. The issue with them looking for evidence of a crime or trying to trap you with your own seemingly innocent words is true. Basically some officers are very suspicious all the time. It can be opportunistic, like to confiscate property and arrest someone for marijuana when they arrive for something else - or rooted in a genuine desire to solve crime, like finding someone held captive when they show up for something else. Interactions with police in the US depend on a lot of different things. Police officers are individuals, and the majority of my contacts with the majority of them have been satisfactory and what one would expect. The United States is a far larger than Scandinavia in every way and has more cultural variation, even within single ethnic groups. Police in New Mexico are fairly different to Chicago, or Texas. For that matter you’d probably very meet different officers with different attitudes in rural Oregon vs Portland. I had a lot of negative interactions with police involving cannabis when I was young. That has largely faded with the relaxation of cannabis policies in the US, though laws and attitudes vary widely depending on your region or state. I refuse to even drive through states like Utah, which as one of the strictest states in the US borders Colorado, one of the most relaxed cannabis-wise. I recently purchased a vehicle and went traveling, so I had an out of state temp license plate in various states. I was stopped by police 3 times in 2 weeks, including twice well after midnight. The main interest they had was whether I had been drinking. This fulfills a serious public safety role, but with the low levels set legally for blood alcohol content, could have put me in serious legal jeopardy when I was not truly impaired. A 3 am traffic stop could go wrong in many other ways, and an officers are generally on edge at night. The risk and severity of being arrested, searched or physically mistreated is magnified by factors like being a minority for that area, having a criminal record, apparent low income or social class (old or beat up car, shoddy clothes), or exhibiting something that personally offends an officer like the wrong sports or political sticker. I would actually drive a car with a lot more personality if I didn’t have to worry about this. Some people I know with Grateful Dead type stickers have been seemingly profiled by police for it.
r41nbowdash 8y ago
may have something to do with the way population interacts with the police like i feel totally safe around the cops, but at the same time i realize the "am i being detained" attitute would put me on a fasttrack to the realm of phony assault charges, no matter which country.
dejawu 8y ago
Historically they've been: - racist: for one example, black and white people smoke marijuana at the same rate but black people are far more likely to be arrested for it - irresponsible: just recently an officer broke into the wrong apartment during a raid and killed an innocent man. Rather than apologize, her department then tried to discredit the man - unaccountable: many officers found to have committed misconduct simply find work in nearby departments. Within the last few years a video surfaced where an officer played a twisted Simon-Says game with a potential suspect (asking him to both put his hands on his head and then crawl). The officer shot and killed the suspect, but the judge withheld that video evidence from the trial so the officer was found not guilty. - violent: many, many, many instances where officers shoot fleeing suspects in the back, choke suspects who are not resisting, beat suspects, etc. The officer in the previous example was found to have etched "You're dead fucker" into his gun - they glorify violence and are eager for "action". They are becoming more militarized. They are not prepared for mental health situations - in many cases it is not a good idea to call police if a loved one is threatening suicide. They shoot first and ask questions later (exacerbated by gun laws in this country, but that's a different issue.) These things, to my knowledge, do not happen this often in other developed countries. Police in America do not have a good reputation - the phrase "All Cops Are Bastards" was coined here. I have trouble agreeing with that phrase - I do believe most officers do their work out of a sense of duty and public service - but I understand why people feel that way. Even if they started today, it will take the police in this country decades to undo the decades they've spent building up an awful image.
meko 8y ago
Many American police have authority complexes and take any indignation as a front to their existence. There's also the whole 'not held accountable for their crimes' aspect which I suspect contributes to the lack of trust between law enforcement and other civilians.

by yason 8y ago

cust0m 8y ago

I think the biggest diference here is the society in US is more heterogenous, divided and the levels of inequality is high than in Scandinavia. The white Americans that live in rich neighborhoods would feel safer with police presence but an afro American will be viewed as a threat an enemy by the policial forces so is natural this part of population feel unsafe. basically class struggle

superflyguy 8y ago

Any hypothesis that only a minority of police are bad would have to explain why the good police who outnumber them don't do anything to make the public safer/protect the reputation of the police and law enforcement order generally/explain the higher arrest count of and use of violence against Blacks, etc.

michaelt 8y ago
I’ve heard it claimed of a cop pulls over a colleague’s family member for speeding and doesn’t let them off after seeing who it is, he can expect social sanctions like his locker being messed with. If the culture allows that over a mere speeding fine, imagine the sanction for getting a colleague jail time. OTOH if you play along, you get special treatment for your loved ones. And everyone is doing it...
- coldtea 8y ago
  >OTOH if you play along, you get special treatment for your loved ones. And everyone is doing it... In fact they're even official about it: https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-cops-issuing-get-out-jail-free-cards-788356 https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-cops-issuing-get-out-jail-f... https://nypost.com/2018/01/21/police-union-slashes-number-of-get-out-of-jail-free-cards-issued/ https://nypost.com/2018/01/21/police-union-slashes-number-of...

vincentmarle 8y ago

From my perspective - as an European living in the US - the biggest difference is: guns. The likelihood that a routine traffic stop will result in a gun fight is near zero in Europe, in the US it’s... probably slightly above zero. So approaching people and cars is done with extremely high tension and high possibility for escalation.

eecc 8y ago
I’ve also read somewhere that US firearms training focuses a lot on conditioning users to actually use the weapon. Apparently, someone in the US Army found that soldiers rarely fired in the general direction of the enemy, so they developed programs to train away the taboo around shooting at other humans. I guess this percolated out of the military and now you have lots of police officers that are very skilled at killing, but not so as de-escalating and so on...
- nradov 8y ago
  Police use of force training is really nothing like military combat training.
  - eecc 8y ago
    Of course it isn’t, who ever said that. I’m saying that in the use of firearms, a whole lot of effort is put into conditioning it into a fully thoughtless routine of acquire and fire. Pair that to neglecting other forms of de-escalation training and a fair amount of prejudice (if not outright racism) and you have a problem
    - nradov 8y ago
      No US police academy conditions recruits to a fully thoughtless routine of acquire and fire. And firearms training isn't even a huge part of the curriculum.
  - InitialLastName 8y ago
    Correct. The police are less beholden to strict rules of engagement.

fredsir 8y ago

It's trending in Scandinavia too. > In Scandinavia you'd have to be genuinely paranoid to not trust the police In Denmark, a case[1] where police forcefully escorted photographers and journalists away that were following immigrants that were walking a highway as they entered Denmark a couple of years ago, has just been settled, and the behaviour of the police were indeed unlawful. And it's not just a fluke. It seems to be an increasing trend, unfortunately. Not blindly trusting officials is probably pretty smart. [1]: https://politiken.dk/kultur/medier/art6740480/Politiet-måtte-ikke-bortvise-Politiken-fotograf-der-fulgte-flygtningestrøm-på-E45 https://politiken.dk/kultur/medier/art6740480/Politiet-måtte...

coldtea 8y ago
>In Denmark, a case[1] where police forcefully escorted photographers and journalists away that were following immigrants that were walking a highway as they entered Denmark a couple of years ago, has just been settled, and the behaviour of the police were indeed unlawful. If that's the worse one came up with, and if it was even settled in court, then it's nowhere near close to the way the US is.
baud147258 8y ago
You can walk on a highway in Denmark? If that's not the case, the cops may have arrested/forcefully moved the wrong person.
- fredsir 8y ago
  You can't, but the immigrants did, and so did police too to follow them, and of course photographers and journalist documented it, in which case the police forcefully removed the journalists and the photographers. At this point, this particular highway was closed off from traffic because of the immigrants and police, if I recall correctly. In any case, I'm no expert on the matter, but the actions of the police that day were deemed unlawful by the court.
  - mcv 8y ago
    Why not immediately send a bus to pick up the immigrants and get them off the highway?

Arnt 8y ago

The great divergence, IMO, is called Robert Peel, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles Police forces existed before the emergence of the peelian principles, and they aren't universally accepted. For example, one of the peelian principles is to refrain from the use of physical force as much as possible, and some police forces appear to flaunt physical force, for example by publishing PR blahblah about new water cannon and other military-style gear instead of downplaying such equipment.

mattmanser 8y ago

Have you ever been arrested? I used to trust the police. Then I got arrested. Nothing came of it, but I was shocked at how much the police liad to me to try and catch me out and then how I spent 6 hours incarcerated for simply driving a red car. Do not trust the police after the age of 18. They are not your friends and trusting them is extremely dangerous if they've decided you're guilty of something. Always ask for a lawyer, never co-operate.

freeflight 8y ago
And most important: Never consent to any searches of anything. Too many people just consent because "They have nothing to hide/Don't want to look guilty" and many police officers take that as a challenge to actually find something, no matter how small. Not consenting to the search puts the burden of proof on the police, they gotta have a cause/reason to search your car. Sure, they can also manufacture that, usually by calling in a K9 unit. These dogs are so well trained, they can give a signal when their handler orders it, the dogs signal is then used as a cause to search you and the car. But that's a lot of time and effort, not every police officer wants to go through just for a little power trip. That's why not consenting to the search is so important and can spare you a lot of trouble, there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing it.

tyfon 8y ago

I think the difference is that in the US the police is trained for 30 weeks (I think) in escalating situations and using violence to solve their problems while here in Norway the police education is a full three year bachelors degree with emphasis on de-escalation of situations and how violence is only a very last resort. There is also an independent "police" that will investigate cases brought against police officers that overstep their authority.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago
I think it's not exactly that American police are trained to escalate, but that the culture is highly authoritarian, which changes their meaning of "escalation". Anything short of instantaneous and absolute deference and obedience is viewed as a threat. If that standard exceeds your ability to comply (e.g. deaf/hard-of-hearing, serious mental illness, dementia, traumatic brain injury), then your existence is implicitly threatening to them.

tdeck 8y ago

I don't know, it seems like Norway at least has its problems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_misconduct#Norway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_misconduct#Norway

mullsork 8y ago
> According to a 2012 official report, 18 police officers have lost their jobs as result of misconduct since 2005 No country is perfect, and I'm not Norwegian, but the number of incidents is quite low.
- baud147258 8y ago
  And if the officers guilty of misconduct lose their job, it's a sign that there is a system to deal with them and that it works (at least for those cases).
- froindt 8y ago
  For sake of comparison, Norway has about 5.23 million people compared to 325 in the US. Scaled up, it'd be like having 1,116 officers lose their jobs due to misconduct between 2005 and 2012. Visibility to the issue in the US was substantially different in that time period than now, but I think the population helps put an absolute number into perspective.

FabHK 8y ago

Very good observation & totally agreed. In Germany, police is generally perceived as trustworthy, your "friend and helper" as the slogan goes. I was surprised by the antagonism and belligerence in the US. A few observations: * guns certainly play a big role, and the risk of escalation. * I wonder whether silly laws also play a role. For example: a 20 year old drinking alcohol, having a cold beer while watching a sunset on the beach, prostitution are all illegal if I'm not mistaken (or smoking a joint, depending on the state). So, in the US, the police might often be the killjoy. In Germany, those things are either officially legal, or in a gray area that the police ignores. So when the police comes on the scene, it's generally an actual crime or problem, and everyone is eager to help and cooperate and fix whatever real problem there is. In short, police have a relatively positive image. * My experience with the police in the US was much worse when I was on a bike than when I was in a nice BMW. The issues of power differential, authority, lawyers, confrontation seem to loom much larger in the US than I've perceived them in Germany. * With all these factors, employment with the police might seem a less attractive choice of work in the US than in northern Europe, so people with few other choices (or a penchant for exercising authority) might end up there more frequently than in other countries. This, in turn, could result in a downward cycle and a "besieged" mentality. At any rate, I'd much rather interact with police in Europe or Asia than the US.

rubyfan 8y ago
I agree with the sentiment, the United States is somewhat uptight especially when it comes to telling other people how to live their lives. Certainly this is a contributing factor. Minorities are also treated with extra scrutiny almost everywhere. Policing also varies greatly from locality to locality. I’ve know probably five police officers and all are great people and join the police to help, but I hate to say it many of them have anger or control issues. Personally I had an issue where I needed an ambulance to my house and trip to the ER. The police showed up along with the ambulance and an officer was in my house and looking around the house with a snooping eye. Even when there to help they are looking for signs of a crime.
bluejekyll 8y ago
All of these are definitely part of it, but we need to look more deeply at the economic realities of policing in the US to understand some of this. Read this article: https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/policing-and-profit/ https://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/policing-and-profit/ Police in many municipalities are not fully funded via taxes. Instead their revenues are maintained via tickets, fines, and property seizures. There are recent cases that have gone to the supreme court related to some of these issues: https://newrepublic.com/article/148013/will-supreme-court-rein-civil-forfeiture https://newrepublic.com/article/148013/will-supreme-court-re..., I don't believe this case has been heard yet. The point is, the police in the US have an economic necessity to pay their own salaries by fighting "crime". This incentivizes them in seizing property, prior to any conviction in court. Often the property is seized from people without the means to fight to get it back, and/or it's not worth the fight. This tactic of ticketing, fining and seizing property to pay for the police force, IMO, is the root cause of the issues between minorities and low income people and the police. In effect, the police need crime and will find crime, because they need to in order to earn their salaries.

IkmoIkmo 8y ago

Part of it is training but part of it is also what police officers face. In my country the odds a police officer will pull over someone for speeding who has a gun in the car is 1:10000. In the US in some parts I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than 1:10. If you then look at inequality, mental health issues, crime rates etc... which are largely a function of socioeconomics, man I wouldn't want to be a police officer in the US, either. It's not necessarily the case that I love the police officers in my country (north-west europe), either. They lie, they don't enjoy it when you verbally challenge their power with an argument, they're fallible. For example at one point I saw an officer harassing some homeless guy, asking for ID etc. I know they're not looking to help them get shelter, but just looking to get them out of the park because people complain. So what they do is they ask for ID, they obviously don't have one, so they put 'em in a police van, hold them at the police office overnight and then release them outside the city centre the next morning. If they do it often enough, they stay out of the nice city centre where the rich folks live. So I talked to the officer about it, but you immediately get told to stay out unless I wanted a problem: i.e. arresting for obstruction of justice, held and later released. There's very little you can do in this situation, either you shut up or you have to call work and say you've been arrested and can't come in etc. It's not the end of the world but it's an effective deterrent in many cases for having small injustices go unchecked. Same with racial profiling, happens all the time as well. And every single time I've reported a theft, they did absolutely nothing about it. Even if I gave evidence of the crime and the person's identity etc. Lack of resources... It's understandable to some extent, but frustrating too. It almost invites you to get your own revenge if I didn't know better. So I don't love the police, either. Police officers are not all that different from most people in their human flaws, except that they're typically relatively lowly-educated (and in the US, lowly trained), combined with far reaching powers and an institution that backs them, it can be problematic in any country. But police violence is very rare, police drawing guns is rare, let alone shooting them. People in all countries have issues with their police (like they have issues with bad teachers, bad doctors, bad judges, bad politicians, bad hairdressers and bad chefs!), but within OECD countries it's basically only the US that has this level of (lethal) violence. Guns play a large role, as do socioeconomics. But there also has to be strong institutional oversight, it seems the police is institutionally far more inoculated from the consequences of their actions in the US than elsewhere. Where I'm from, every damaging use of a gun by a police officer will get an automatic investigation, not internally but by an independent national research team that falls under the national prosecutor.

StanislavPetrov 8y ago

>I'll have to assume that most cops in the US must be friendly and considerate Its not just the attitudes of individual cops. Its the authoritarian disposition of legal authorities on every level, local, state and federal. The goal of the authorities in the United States is not public welfare and safety, its the imposition of order. Offensive, abusive behavior by police towards citizens is common, for which police face no sanction. Prosecutors regularly withhold evidence, suborn perjury (so much so that a term for rampant police perjury has been coined: 'testilying'), and break the law in a variety of ways, none of which is ever punished. The only people in the United States who "trust" the police (or the authorities in general) are those who are lucky enough to be blissfully ignorant (something that quickly changes once they are on the wrong end of a police interaction). All this isn't to say there aren't "good" cops, who sincerely want to better society and help people out, but the system itself is rotten to the core.

ryanlol 8y ago

>In Scandinavia you'd have to be genuinely paranoid to not trust the police. I had the cops bring in a shrink to "observe" an interview. Right after the interview, they had that same shrink who I'd never met before commit me into a month-long involuntary psychiatric evaluation because I had followed my lawyers advice and refused to answer the questions I was asked. This sounds like something that might happen in China or maybe Russia, but no. This all happened in Finland. The system assumes that government officials can do no wrong, so there doesn't exist any effective way to seek legal remedy.

tim333 8y ago

I guess the philosophy and incentives must be different. I'm not that up on US cops as I'm a brit. In the UK we had "Sir Robert Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing" with things like "Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police" https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/nyregion/sir-robert-peels-nine-principles-of-policing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/nyregion/sir-robert-peels... which seemed to work well and they were thought some of the best in the world. These days they have a lot of politically correct form filling and bureaucracy which means you don't get hassled much but they also aren't around much in terms of catching criminals.

gardaani 8y ago

The police in some countries are very corrupt. When they pull you over, they won't give you a fine. They will just ask for money, otherwise they will drag you to the police station for whatever reason. It happens in Eastern Europe and other poor countries. In some countries, the police is feared because they abuse their power, like the police in India with their colonial attitude: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Common-people-are-afraid-to-approach-us/articleshow/5451859.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Common-people-are-...

rdl 8y ago

For me it depends greatly on the department/agency. If I am around Palo Alto or Mountain View or Bellevue or Redmond or WA State Patrol or CHP, I feel safer (unless they are there due to some specific situation, in which case my goal is to get out of the area, but I’d still want them there.). There are a lot of departments where enough (10%?) of the officers are incompetent or malicious, so I’d rarely want them to be around.

LaGrange 8y ago

In the US there are many groups that feel safe around the police as well — to the point where using white people to shield black folk from cops isn't unusual. In Scandinavia, the state was involved in forced sterilisations. I truly doubt everyone shares your view of the trustworthiness of their cops. The biggest difference is that the "high profile" thing happens less: cops have less guns. So people don't get shot as much, they're just harassed, beaten up and arrested for little reason. Yay Europe, I guess.

lr4444lr 8y ago

It depends heavily on the neighborhood. I don't know if you have anything quite like the inner city slums of the NYC housing projects or the the bad areas of Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, etc. in the Scandinavian cities you have in mind. They aren't places seen by most tourists.

throw2016 8y ago

The situation in the US is very unique. You will be hard pressed to find any country with this level of paranoia and fear with police stops, acts of excessive violence including completely unnecessary killings, and requirement for complete 'submission' by the police. It's like a police state, but for minorities. Its tragic the loss of life in this vulgar way can be hand waved away in a civilized country. It's a double dehumanization of victims, one to allow this callous behavior by the police and the second to justify it and let it stand. Often juries release brazen case of murders and elected justice officials support the police by default so its not just the police but the entire justice system that enables this cycle of murder, terrorism and violence. What is also unique is the support and justification for this kind of policing by many who do not experience the same behavior from the police and infact can count on them to 'protect' and defend. This is intimately linked to privilege and racism and how the police have been used systematically to harass and terrorize minorities right from enforcing segregation, laws like jaywalking against mostly black people, suppressing the civil rights movement, the drug war, demonization of blacks by administrations like Reagan who ran systematic advertising campaigns linking black populations to crack. [1] [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/new-jim-crow-book-ban-prison.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/new-jim-crow-book-ban-...

izzydata 8y ago

I always thought it was due to misguided police training that conditions them to escalate situations to quickly.

ptero 8y ago

Good observations. A few data points (from a white citizen of the US). 20 years ago I saw a police officer as a friend. If I was lost, I would ask one for directions, help, etc. Now I generally prefer to ask a sane-looking stranger. I saw other folks, including military officers, express similar feelings. I think that composition of the police has changed. Before, it was mostly local boys who joined police after school. They view random strangers as mostly friendly and have a "do not bug them unless they need help" mind set. Nowadays, there are strong preferences for recruiting vets, which often means time in a combat zone area with distinctly unfriendly locals (and possibly PTSD). They see random strangers as potential threats and this can affect all interactions. Independently, when you are pulled over, especially on a highway, it is usually a local cop who is encouraged by his town to write tickets that help local budget. They are likely completely professional and probably even friendly, but by default we are at the opposite sides in this interaction. Extra information on my side does not hurt.

thetrumanshow 8y ago

From the other responses here, I like the 'its the guns' answer the best, as it has likely led to police treating every interaction as a possible life and death scenario. This is likely to be it. But, there's a possible other culprit too, that I never noticed before the recent divisions in the populace due to politics, and that is the politization of policing. Now, I could be conflating cause and effect here, but wouldn't it be interesting if the reason we are culturally nervous of the police is that we have been told to be that way by mainstream influences. Just a thought, and I'm happy to have it all backwards.

SpikeDad 8y ago

It's the difference living in a homogenous culture vs a diverse one like the US. Plus the fact that due to the gun love culture police never know who's going to have a gun and so their behavior goes from helping people to protecting themselves. It's a pernicious attitude that has sad to say destroyed the good will that people should have for their police.

mkane848 8y ago

Cops here don't act like part of the community. I guess the general feel is that even if you're not doing something wrong, if you see a cop you're likely to get anxious because all of a sudden you're wondering if they're going to hassle you just because, hassle you due to a minor thing that's going to get blown out of proportion, or if you're lucky they'll just leave. They're not my peers, they're a force of power and intimidation and an interaction with them feels more like a confrontation waiting to happen than anything else, even if you're not even doing anything wrong.

anoncoward111 8y ago

You've received a lot of responses, but I'm shocked that nobody has told you most US cops are assholes. Most of the times I've interacted with cops, they were not smiling. Sometimes they were not evil, but most of the times they are asking questions to see if they can arrest you for something. For example, one time a cop came up to me while I was taking a nap in my car. He asked me questions for 5 minutes straight to see if I could admit to any equipment failures on my car, or if I was drunk (despite not operating the vehicle). In the US, you must exercise extreme caution around cops, at all times, period.

code_duck 8y ago

My interactions with police in emergencies have generally been good. When I am looking for a police officer, it’s great to find one. I noticed that the same officers will act differently to various people depending on the situation and how they perceive (stereotype) that person or the company they keep. The issue with them looking for evidence of a crime or trying to trap you with your own seemingly innocent words is true. Basically some officers are very suspicious all the time. It can be opportunistic, like to confiscate property and arrest someone for marijuana when they arrive for something else - or rooted in a genuine desire to solve crime, like finding someone held captive when they show up for something else. Interactions with police in the US depend on a lot of different things. Police officers are individuals, and the majority of my contacts with the majority of them have been satisfactory and what one would expect. The United States is a far larger than Scandinavia in every way and has more cultural variation, even within single ethnic groups. Police in New Mexico are fairly different to Chicago, or Texas. For that matter you’d probably very meet different officers with different attitudes in rural Oregon vs Portland. I had a lot of negative interactions with police involving cannabis when I was young. That has largely faded with the relaxation of cannabis policies in the US, though laws and attitudes vary widely depending on your region or state. I refuse to even drive through states like Utah, which as one of the strictest states in the US borders Colorado, one of the most relaxed cannabis-wise. I recently purchased a vehicle and went traveling, so I had an out of state temp license plate in various states. I was stopped by police 3 times in 2 weeks, including twice well after midnight. The main interest they had was whether I had been drinking. This fulfills a serious public safety role, but with the low levels set legally for blood alcohol content, could have put me in serious legal jeopardy when I was not truly impaired. A 3 am traffic stop could go wrong in many other ways, and an officers are generally on edge at night. The risk and severity of being arrested, searched or physically mistreated is magnified by factors like being a minority for that area, having a criminal record, apparent low income or social class (old or beat up car, shoddy clothes), or exhibiting something that personally offends an officer like the wrong sports or political sticker. I would actually drive a car with a lot more personality if I didn’t have to worry about this. Some people I know with Grateful Dead type stickers have been seemingly profiled by police for it.

r41nbowdash 8y ago

may have something to do with the way population interacts with the police like i feel totally safe around the cops, but at the same time i realize the "am i being detained" attitute would put me on a fasttrack to the realm of phony assault charges, no matter which country.

dejawu 8y ago

Historically they've been: - racist: for one example, black and white people smoke marijuana at the same rate but black people are far more likely to be arrested for it - irresponsible: just recently an officer broke into the wrong apartment during a raid and killed an innocent man. Rather than apologize, her department then tried to discredit the man - unaccountable: many officers found to have committed misconduct simply find work in nearby departments. Within the last few years a video surfaced where an officer played a twisted Simon-Says game with a potential suspect (asking him to both put his hands on his head and then crawl). The officer shot and killed the suspect, but the judge withheld that video evidence from the trial so the officer was found not guilty. - violent: many, many, many instances where officers shoot fleeing suspects in the back, choke suspects who are not resisting, beat suspects, etc. The officer in the previous example was found to have etched "You're dead fucker" into his gun - they glorify violence and are eager for "action". They are becoming more militarized. They are not prepared for mental health situations - in many cases it is not a good idea to call police if a loved one is threatening suicide. They shoot first and ask questions later (exacerbated by gun laws in this country, but that's a different issue.) These things, to my knowledge, do not happen this often in other developed countries. Police in America do not have a good reputation - the phrase "All Cops Are Bastards" was coined here. I have trouble agreeing with that phrase - I do believe most officers do their work out of a sense of duty and public service - but I understand why people feel that way. Even if they started today, it will take the police in this country decades to undo the decades they've spent building up an awful image.

meko 8y ago

Many American police have authority complexes and take any indignation as a front to their existence. There's also the whole 'not held accountable for their crimes' aspect which I suspect contributes to the lack of trust between law enforcement and other civilians.