8 ms·

This post and the article have the same problem: Thinking the way police works/seems to work in the US (always out to get you) is universal to the world while i

by sgift 7y ago

This post and the article have the same problem: Thinking the way police works/seems to work in the US (always out to get you) is universal to the world while it is the exception. Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help.

taneq 7y ago
I don't know about Canada but I'd apply similar caution in Australia. Note that the police aren't your enemy, but the greater your surface area towards them the more likely you are to have issues, so unless you really need them you're still better off minimizing your exposure to them.
- cjhveal 7y ago
  Having grown up in Canada, this also characterizes my experience with law enforcement.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Having also grown up in Canada the parent/parent could not be more accurate. The larger your surface area the more likely you will have problems. It makes sense. Law enforcement is looking for someone to blame for crimes. You interact enough you might just fit a profile. Police never lose pay for misjudging anyone.
    - jstarfish 7y ago
      > Police never lose pay for misjudging anyone. This is an important point. Police are a bureaucracy with all the same incentives and problems inherent to that structure. They are seldom penalized for being wrong (even if someone gets shot/killed as a result) but they do miss out on promotions for not closing enough cases (or writing enough citations). Detectives under pressure will absolutely name weak suspects to achieve these ends and let the courts sort it out.
lixtra 7y ago
Since Three felonies a day is true almost everywhere in the world it’s clearly risky behavior to interact with police. Of course police is usually helpful just like the rest of humans. Your local mafia clan are also nice people as long as you play by their rules (you can study organized crime in favelas where it is an ordering element similar to police).
- msla 7y ago
  The Three Felonies A Day is an example of politics, not research, and has some rather motivated reasoning: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-average-american-unwittingly-commit-three-felonies-a-day https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-... I'm on your side. Please don't make our shared side weaker by using poor arguments.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >The Three Felonies A Day is an example of politics, not research, and has some rather motivated reasoning: A "sceptics" link is hardly refutation. These sites attract professional "minor detail pickers" and "technically-correct" pedants, who more often than not miss the forest for the trees. The message is not the exact number of felonies per time period, it's that people can have all kind of laws broken and given causes to be arrested without them knowing it. Even if it's 1 felony per month or 1 per year it's still more than enough, and that's the point of "thee felonies a day".
    - sjy 7y ago
      Well, did you read the link? The top answer puts forward a convincing case that the book fails to show that "people can have all kind of laws broken and given causes to be arrested without them knowing it." There are wrongful charges and convictions in every legal system, and contrary to the last sentence of your comment, it matters a lot whether these occur 1,000 times more or less frequently.
      - cheez 7y ago
avar 7y ago
Having grown up in Iceland where the police don't even carry guns I'd be very suspicious of this specific interaction. I wouldn't hesitate to talk to a police officer on the street, or chat with them if I was routinely detained at a traffic stop or whatever. But in this scenario the police are unprompted at your door and their first ask is to come into your house. If the police just want to talk to you because they're concerned about you personally they'll just ask to talk to you in a place they wouldn't otherwise need a search warrant signed by a judge to enter.
- sgift 7y ago
  > But in this scenario the police are unprompted at your door and their first ask is to come into your house. If the police just want to talk to you because they're concerned about you personally they'll just ask to talk to you in a place they wouldn't otherwise need a search warrant signed by a judge to enter. "Their first ask is to come into your house" is based on a quote Vice took out of context (and then blew up into a nice big sub-headline to give it a bit more 'emotional weight'). The second part .. if the police is concerned about you they ask to talk to you where they meet you. For the type of person where this intervention happens this will probably be their home most of the time. I always wonder where people get this idea that the police (and law enforcement in general) are all crooks breaking/bending the law to get you, but will have a problem to get a warrant if that's really what they want. Maybe too many crime shows?
  - jeena 7y ago
    I guess from talks in law schools like this: "Don't Talk to the Police" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
  - clouddrover 7y ago
    > I always wonder where people get this idea that the police (and law enforcement in general) are all crooks breaking/bending the law to get you Bitter experience. Never underestimate the dishonesty of a cop.
clouddrover 7y ago
> Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help. False in my experience. Maybe I haven't found the right countries.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 7y ago
In rural Canada, if you're black or have prior interaction with them the police might as well be US police. If you're white and in good standing the police is super friendly. RCMP is the only force in Canada that I would consider to be professional.
- xvf22 7y ago
  If you're indigenous and especially an indigenous woman then your trust and faith in police can be pretty damn low.[0] [0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/19/canada-police-fail-indigenous-women-saskatchewan https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/19/canada-police-fail-indig...
qazpot 7y ago
> Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help. From my experience in India, Unless you are rich, you should try to stay away from police as much as possible, cause they can really fuck your life up.
munmaek 7y ago
This has absolutely nothing to do with the US and everything to do with an asymmetric relationship. The police have immense power, you do not. What do you have to gain from interacting with the police? Now, compare this to what you stand to lose by interacting with the police. The rule is simple: don't interact with the police. They are not your friends, anything you do or say can and will be used against you at a whim. Do not romanticize other countries, please.
- dTal 7y ago
  Ethics. If everyone avoided talking to the police all the time, it would make their job more difficult, and they would be less effective. Their job is important, and so I would prefer that people talk to the police and make life easier for them. Therefore, to be ethically consistent, I too should talk to the police.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    > If everyone avoided talking to the police all the time, it would make their job more difficult, and they would be less effective. It would make their job more difficult, it doesn't automatically follow that they would be less effective. They might be as effective with less data if most of the data was noise, or be more effective by concentrating their efforts on fewer interactions and getting much better results from that, or become as effective or better by having to work harder. Or it might push them to develop different and better techniques.
- sgift 7y ago
  > What do you have to gain from interacting with the police? Now, compare this to what you stand to lose by interacting with the police. The job of the police is to help me. To do that effectively they have to sometimes talk to me. It is therefore in my interest to talk to them.
  - liability 7y ago
    The job of the police is to collect "unscheduled road taxes" and to document crimes for the local prosecutor. If they end up helping somebody in the process, that is incidental. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...
Razengan 7y ago
> Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help. Maybe I've only seen the uglier parts of the world, but that statement is what seems to be the exception rather than the norm, and a dangerously naive assumption.
jonathanstrange 7y ago
This is extraordinarily bad advice. If the police knocks on your door to talk to you about your behaviour (or business, or family), then you should definitely get a lawyer as soon as possible, no matter where you live.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  You may be projecting your quite reasonable concern about police in your country (the US?) onto everyone's situation. It's perhaps not wise trying to speak for everyone; let them speak for themselves. As a brit I'd be more laid back if this happened to me - and I can be very critical of our coppers!
  - jonathanstrange 7y ago
    No, I'm sure there is no projection going on, since I have never had any concerns about the police in any country I've lived in so far (all in Europe), never had to do with the police except for one case of registering the theft of my bag, and I've never been to the US. As I've said, if the police wants to talk about you or your business or family, then the generally best advice is to get a lawyer. As for other things they want to talk about, that's fine, as long as you bear in mind the following. First, in many countries police has to investigate any suspicion of a criminal offence even if it is unrelated to the initial investigation. In many countries, police has no leeway about that even if they claim the opposite. Second, the police often investigate someone as a mere witness before formally charging the person for a crime, because that's easier to start with.
robdachshund 7y ago
I mean this is basically police harassing you for wrongthink. This is some 1984 stuff.
yosamino 7y ago
> Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help. People rarely see themselves as the bad guys. To understand people's motivations it's usually helpful to understand that they are just trying to do what they think is is best. It's just that the disconnect between what is best for you, and what is in the interest of a member of the police often enough doesn't align, and this is the case everywhere, not specific to the US.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
soraminazuki 7y ago
Maybe police in some countries are run by an overwhelming majority of very nice people who sincerely wants to help. But should that really be a reason not to have restrictions on the power of the police force? Granting more power means that it has the potential to be abused some day. How can you ensure that people in the police force will stay nice forever? IMHO, policing based on mass surveillance goes way too far.
barry-cotter 7y ago
In most of the world the police could beat you to death with video evidence and they’d get away with it. Competent, professional more or less upright police are not the worldwide or historical norm. In most of the world the police are the biggest gang. Police in the US are the very model of probity, courtesy and professionalism compared to almost every country in the Western Hemisphere, never mind African, Arab or Asian police.
- _lessthan0 7y ago
  lmao, unless you are not a white hetero male. US police are most likely the worst in the west.
  - moate 7y ago
    Eh. Latin America has had plenty of well documented problems with police.
  - whenchamenia 7y ago
    Even that doesnt help if you dont look like the right kind of white hetero male. Lets not muddy the water with identity politics please.
- chmod775 7y ago
  > Police in the US are the very model of probity, courtesy and professionalism compared to almost every country in the Western Hemisphere You specified western Hemisphere, which includes only the eastmost edge of Europe, but still leaves (half) of the UK, France and also Canada and Ireland. US police is hardly going to beat those on many positive metrics. Odd choice of geographic region for such a comparison in any case.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    "Worse than these four" can still be "better than most". There is nothing you said that contradicts GP.
cheez 7y ago
I can promise you the police in Canada work the same way.
doctorRetro 7y ago
> ...the way police works/seems to work in the US ... is the exception. Nope. I can't agree with this, as much as I wish I could. It's an easy fallacy to think the U.S. is the exception when it comes to power mad, duplicitous and hostile bullies in the police force since they're the ones getting the bulk of the media coverage. We have them in Canada, too. Yes, they're fewer in numbers, but that's not to say we don't have them. It's easy to assume other countries or cultures are innocent of a problem just because they have a lower, or perhaps invisible, prevalence of that problem. Source: I'm a Canadian (who used to think exactly this way) with family members in the emergency services, including one estranged, asshole bully of a cop who'd happily harass someone and construct a charge if they looked at him the wrong way.
aclsid 7y ago
In South America, such an attitude would be followed by thinking immediately, this guy wants money somehow.

by sgift 7y ago

taneq 7y ago

I don't know about Canada but I'd apply similar caution in Australia. Note that the police aren't your enemy, but the greater your surface area towards them the more likely you are to have issues, so unless you really need them you're still better off minimizing your exposure to them.

cjhveal 7y ago
Having grown up in Canada, this also characterizes my experience with law enforcement.
- wolco 7y ago
  Having also grown up in Canada the parent/parent could not be more accurate. The larger your surface area the more likely you will have problems. It makes sense. Law enforcement is looking for someone to blame for crimes. You interact enough you might just fit a profile. Police never lose pay for misjudging anyone.
  - jstarfish 7y ago
    > Police never lose pay for misjudging anyone. This is an important point. Police are a bureaucracy with all the same incentives and problems inherent to that structure. They are seldom penalized for being wrong (even if someone gets shot/killed as a result) but they do miss out on promotions for not closing enough cases (or writing enough citations). Detectives under pressure will absolutely name weak suspects to achieve these ends and let the courts sort it out.

lixtra 7y ago

Since Three felonies a day is true almost everywhere in the world it’s clearly risky behavior to interact with police. Of course police is usually helpful just like the rest of humans. Your local mafia clan are also nice people as long as you play by their rules (you can study organized crime in favelas where it is an ordering element similar to police).

msla 7y ago
The Three Felonies A Day is an example of politics, not research, and has some rather motivated reasoning: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-average-american-unwittingly-commit-three-felonies-a-day https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22530/does-the-... I'm on your side. Please don't make our shared side weaker by using poor arguments.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >The Three Felonies A Day is an example of politics, not research, and has some rather motivated reasoning: A "sceptics" link is hardly refutation. These sites attract professional "minor detail pickers" and "technically-correct" pedants, who more often than not miss the forest for the trees. The message is not the exact number of felonies per time period, it's that people can have all kind of laws broken and given causes to be arrested without them knowing it. Even if it's 1 felony per month or 1 per year it's still more than enough, and that's the point of "thee felonies a day".
  - sjy 7y ago
    Well, did you read the link? The top answer puts forward a convincing case that the book fails to show that "people can have all kind of laws broken and given causes to be arrested without them knowing it." There are wrongful charges and convictions in every legal system, and contrary to the last sentence of your comment, it matters a lot whether these occur 1,000 times more or less frequently.
    - cheez 7y ago

avar 7y ago

Having grown up in Iceland where the police don't even carry guns I'd be very suspicious of this specific interaction. I wouldn't hesitate to talk to a police officer on the street, or chat with them if I was routinely detained at a traffic stop or whatever. But in this scenario the police are unprompted at your door and their first ask is to come into your house. If the police just want to talk to you because they're concerned about you personally they'll just ask to talk to you in a place they wouldn't otherwise need a search warrant signed by a judge to enter.

sgift 7y ago
> But in this scenario the police are unprompted at your door and their first ask is to come into your house. If the police just want to talk to you because they're concerned about you personally they'll just ask to talk to you in a place they wouldn't otherwise need a search warrant signed by a judge to enter. "Their first ask is to come into your house" is based on a quote Vice took out of context (and then blew up into a nice big sub-headline to give it a bit more 'emotional weight'). The second part .. if the police is concerned about you they ask to talk to you where they meet you. For the type of person where this intervention happens this will probably be their home most of the time. I always wonder where people get this idea that the police (and law enforcement in general) are all crooks breaking/bending the law to get you, but will have a problem to get a warrant if that's really what they want. Maybe too many crime shows?
- jeena 7y ago
  I guess from talks in law schools like this: "Don't Talk to the Police" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
- clouddrover 7y ago
  > I always wonder where people get this idea that the police (and law enforcement in general) are all crooks breaking/bending the law to get you Bitter experience. Never underestimate the dishonesty of a cop.

clouddrover 7y ago

> Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help. False in my experience. Maybe I haven't found the right countries.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 7y ago

In rural Canada, if you're black or have prior interaction with them the police might as well be US police. If you're white and in good standing the police is super friendly. RCMP is the only force in Canada that I would consider to be professional.

xvf22 7y ago
If you're indigenous and especially an indigenous woman then your trust and faith in police can be pretty damn low.[0] [0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/19/canada-police-fail-indigenous-women-saskatchewan https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/19/canada-police-fail-indig...

qazpot 7y ago

> Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help. From my experience in India, Unless you are rich, you should try to stay away from police as much as possible, cause they can really fuck your life up.

munmaek 7y ago

This has absolutely nothing to do with the US and everything to do with an asymmetric relationship. The police have immense power, you do not. What do you have to gain from interacting with the police? Now, compare this to what you stand to lose by interacting with the police. The rule is simple: don't interact with the police. They are not your friends, anything you do or say can and will be used against you at a whim. Do not romanticize other countries, please.

dTal 7y ago
Ethics. If everyone avoided talking to the police all the time, it would make their job more difficult, and they would be less effective. Their job is important, and so I would prefer that people talk to the police and make life easier for them. Therefore, to be ethically consistent, I too should talk to the police.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  > If everyone avoided talking to the police all the time, it would make their job more difficult, and they would be less effective. It would make their job more difficult, it doesn't automatically follow that they would be less effective. They might be as effective with less data if most of the data was noise, or be more effective by concentrating their efforts on fewer interactions and getting much better results from that, or become as effective or better by having to work harder. Or it might push them to develop different and better techniques.
sgift 7y ago
> What do you have to gain from interacting with the police? Now, compare this to what you stand to lose by interacting with the police. The job of the police is to help me. To do that effectively they have to sometimes talk to me. It is therefore in my interest to talk to them.
- liability 7y ago
  The job of the police is to collect "unscheduled road taxes" and to document crimes for the local prosecutor. If they end up helping somebody in the process, that is incidental. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...

Razengan 7y ago

> Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help. Maybe I've only seen the uglier parts of the world, but that statement is what seems to be the exception rather than the norm, and a dangerously naive assumption.

jonathanstrange 7y ago

This is extraordinarily bad advice. If the police knocks on your door to talk to you about your behaviour (or business, or family), then you should definitely get a lawyer as soon as possible, no matter where you live.

tempguy9999 7y ago
You may be projecting your quite reasonable concern about police in your country (the US?) onto everyone's situation. It's perhaps not wise trying to speak for everyone; let them speak for themselves. As a brit I'd be more laid back if this happened to me - and I can be very critical of our coppers!
- jonathanstrange 7y ago
  No, I'm sure there is no projection going on, since I have never had any concerns about the police in any country I've lived in so far (all in Europe), never had to do with the police except for one case of registering the theft of my bag, and I've never been to the US. As I've said, if the police wants to talk about you or your business or family, then the generally best advice is to get a lawyer. As for other things they want to talk about, that's fine, as long as you bear in mind the following. First, in many countries police has to investigate any suspicion of a criminal offence even if it is unrelated to the initial investigation. In many countries, police has no leeway about that even if they claim the opposite. Second, the police often investigate someone as a mere witness before formally charging the person for a crime, because that's easier to start with.

robdachshund 7y ago

I mean this is basically police harassing you for wrongthink. This is some 1984 stuff.

yosamino 7y ago

> Police in other countries usually works out of a desire to help. People rarely see themselves as the bad guys. To understand people's motivations it's usually helpful to understand that they are just trying to do what they think is is best. It's just that the disconnect between what is best for you, and what is in the interest of a member of the police often enough doesn't align, and this is the case everywhere, not specific to the US.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

soraminazuki 7y ago

Maybe police in some countries are run by an overwhelming majority of very nice people who sincerely wants to help. But should that really be a reason not to have restrictions on the power of the police force? Granting more power means that it has the potential to be abused some day. How can you ensure that people in the police force will stay nice forever? IMHO, policing based on mass surveillance goes way too far.

barry-cotter 7y ago

In most of the world the police could beat you to death with video evidence and they’d get away with it. Competent, professional more or less upright police are not the worldwide or historical norm. In most of the world the police are the biggest gang. Police in the US are the very model of probity, courtesy and professionalism compared to almost every country in the Western Hemisphere, never mind African, Arab or Asian police.

_lessthan0 7y ago
lmao, unless you are not a white hetero male. US police are most likely the worst in the west.
- moate 7y ago
  Eh. Latin America has had plenty of well documented problems with police.
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  Even that doesnt help if you dont look like the right kind of white hetero male. Lets not muddy the water with identity politics please.
chmod775 7y ago
> Police in the US are the very model of probity, courtesy and professionalism compared to almost every country in the Western Hemisphere You specified western Hemisphere, which includes only the eastmost edge of Europe, but still leaves (half) of the UK, France and also Canada and Ireland. US police is hardly going to beat those on many positive metrics. Odd choice of geographic region for such a comparison in any case.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  "Worse than these four" can still be "better than most". There is nothing you said that contradicts GP.

cheez 7y ago

I can promise you the police in Canada work the same way.

doctorRetro 7y ago

> ...the way police works/seems to work in the US ... is the exception. Nope. I can't agree with this, as much as I wish I could. It's an easy fallacy to think the U.S. is the exception when it comes to power mad, duplicitous and hostile bullies in the police force since they're the ones getting the bulk of the media coverage. We have them in Canada, too. Yes, they're fewer in numbers, but that's not to say we don't have them. It's easy to assume other countries or cultures are innocent of a problem just because they have a lower, or perhaps invisible, prevalence of that problem. Source: I'm a Canadian (who used to think exactly this way) with family members in the emergency services, including one estranged, asshole bully of a cop who'd happily harass someone and construct a charge if they looked at him the wrong way.

aclsid 7y ago

In South America, such an attitude would be followed by thinking immediately, this guy wants money somehow.