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I hated the police when I was younger and thought we'd be better with fewer police. I don't believe that anymore. The emergence of body cameras are amazing bec

I hated the police when I was younger and thought we'd be better with fewer police. I don't believe that anymore. The emergence of body cameras are amazing because they show just how bad we're constantly being lied to. YouTubers like Donut Operator really opened my eyes. I think back to my younger years and all the ways I've seen police go out of their way to do things they didn't need to. I've seem some do really shitty things too ... but overall, I think we need to remember they're human beings. We're all just human beings, and most people join the police because they want to do the right thing. If many of these problem cities, police forces are composed of a large number of minorities too. Especially during this time, let's try to remember we're all humans here.

kenjackson 6y ago
“We're all just human beings, and most people join the police because they want to do the right thing.” I think in theory this is the idea, but I think in reality it isn’t. I know four people I grew up with who became police and all four were not people I’d want to run into. One, in high school, stated that being a cop is the only job you can have where you are paid to beat people up (I argued boxing, not realizing he’d later be a cop). Another was the middle school bully. Another was a high school drug dealer — who I’m not sure ever stopped. And the one black guy I knew who became a cop was just a jerk. Maybe coincidence, but I have a feeling that the profession attracts exactly the mindset you don’t want as a cop. But people who don’t have that mindset probably don’t want to be cops.
- codr7 6y ago
  Same goes for politics, or any position of power/authority really, the people who want it the most are the worst alternatives.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  I can’t imagine it’s the most attractive job. Most people with options are going to do something else. The pay is generally ok in a lot of places but it’s a job where you’re going to work bad hours early on and for the most part you’re dealing with the uglier side of society. Your whole world view is going to be shifted negatively as you encounter so many people with drug issues, mental issues, violent people, etc. Who would want that? Who would want to spend their life interacting with this part of society day in and day out? I can only assume for many that take that job that it’s the best they can do. I interact with thoughtful, nice people every day to the point where I take it for granted. I’m not exposed to the desperate, degenerate, or depraved part of society. And I wouldn’t want to be.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    To take this further, all available stats show that the average tenure of a police officer is <5 years. This is no surprise -- the hours are rough, the work can be exceptionally dangerous or stressful at times, pay is middling (generally 50-70k a year, tho often much lower in poorer counties), and there is an entire class of US society that is blatantly "fuck the police". Why get into fist-fights with crackheads at 4am when I can get an A+ and Network+ and answer tickets all day? Slightly less degrading and no one will try to shoot me. The result is that smart, qualified people rightly fuck-off to better paying or less stressful gigs. Additionally, there is no lateral move into higher levels of police leadership (unless you're transferring from another PD). So your mid-to-senior leadership is often whoever manages to stick around. See pg. 6 https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/wpor_ltpov.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/wpor_ltpov.pdf ("Why Police Officers Resign") also https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detectives.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detect... (salary info)
- themaninthedark 6y ago
  Looking at what people are saying and thinking: Some people become cops because they want to help people, Some because they want power. Cops that are good have a tendency to end up dehumanizing members of the public whom they are meant to be helping due to a number of factors(ie. continuous exposure to negative elements). Currently the zeitgeist is defund the police, by either abolishing them or making the job lower paying and using those funds for social workers. I do not see the current proposed solutions fixing any of the problems.
  - DetroitThrow 6y ago
    The solutions being taken up by moderates in both of the American political parties has been about removing liability protections in police actions and/or creating national standards for police oversight. I think those are the solutions that currently have widespread support and people have been discussing qualified immunity and body cameras at length on twitter and elsewhere.
    - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
      No. I suggest to read Franklin Zimring's 2017 book, When Police Kill. We are focused on problem cops but not problem departments. Not 1 person mentions the failure of local chain of command for setting bad/no policy to deal with police encounters. Immunity should be removed also from chain of command AND deparments for not producing directives that troops can follow. Why is it not codified to not shoot when a suspect is running? The ruelbook on proper rules of engagement is surprisingly weak at precinct level and above. Then we go about blaming cops for not having clear limitations on what they can or cannot do. Leadership loves the lack of accountability. They prefer to sacrificial troop lambs rather than themselves to roast. And we are happy to oblige them
    - themaninthedark 6y ago
      I can see that helping in the sense of holding police responsible once they have taken bad actions but I am not sure if that will help with power seeking actions. As an aside, we should remove liability protections for all government officials not just police.
AlotOfReading 6y ago
At the same time, if you look at the police-involved deaths per capita, our neighbors are countries like Iraq and Mali. Other nations in the developed world (and even many who are not) have rates that are far, far lower. The US clearly has something tragically wrong with its policing system.
- hodgesrm 6y ago
  Starting with a lot of guns. Police don't have a lot of time to make decisions when situations escalate. It seems like shoot first and ask questions later in many cases.
  - croh 6y ago
    I somewhat agree with you. If both parties have guns, then it is only question of who shoots first. Even small error in judgement, can end up shooting and tragedy. We seriously need to look into gun control.
    - creato 6y ago
      I agree with you completely, except I think gun control is a lost cause, and attempting anything significant here is a disastrous waste of political capital. The degree of gun control required to change this dynamic (that police need to anticipate a gun in every pocket and under every car seat) will not fly in this country in my lifetime.
      - DuskStar 6y ago
        And IMO will not fly before 3d printers capable of manufacturing reliable guns become widely available, which will render the whole thing moot. (since at that point you'll never be able to get rid of enough guns to make the police stop anticipating them)
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      Given the current political situation with a president "joking" about 12 more years at his party's convention, mass protests in Belarus being put down by force, I am firmly against gun control now more than ever.
tehjoker 6y ago
The police execute public policy. I've seen a friend arrested for trying to simply delivery a letter to their representative calmly (amid a protest, but a calm one). Police can sometimes be individually bad, but often they are bad because they are part of a system that makes it so. If you are a "good" cop, you need to protect the bad cops or you get your ass handed to you and your career prospects cut. If you are a "good" cop and you are forced to kick people out of homes for being poor, lock up some dude forever for stealing a candy bar because of a three strikes law, or some such you're part of a system that values property and the safety of the well off over human dignity. We do need some kind of forces for dealing with the occasional insane situation, but those happen rarely and public policy can be tailored to prevent many problems instead of being merely reactive and punitive. For example, poverty and lack of options cause social conflict, what if we did something about that instead of punishing people?
wvenable 6y ago
More or less police is not really the issue -- accountability is the issue.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> We're all just human beings, and most people join the police because they want to do the right thing Many people join the police because the pay very well, they're some of the highest paid government employees, and often make more than software developers do. They'll also get a full pension with benefits after working for only 20 years. I've never seen an EMT or a social worker destroy homeless people's belongings, but I've seen cops do it. People who want to do the right thing typically go into other fields than law enforcement.
- croh 6y ago
  > Many people join the police because the pay very well, they're some of the highest paid government employees, and often make more than software developers do. They'll also get a full pension with benefits after working for only 20 years. You have to consider risk factor also. > I've never seen an EMT or a social worker destroy homeless people's belongings, but I've seen cops do it. People who want to do the right thing typically go into other fields than law enforcement. This is very general statement. I have seen social-workers taking bribes. You can't characterise whole force based on some incidents. This applies to everything religion, race, gender, region etc. There are good and bad people. But please don't assume whole system is currupt. We need to encourage good things and shun bad things.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > You have to consider risk factor also. If we're considering risk, then Amazon and pizza delivery drivers, garbagemen, landscapers, fishermen, construction workers, and farmers all have higher risks on the job than cops do. According to the BLS, the biggest risk to a cop on the job is their own driving and parking, followed by heart attacks from not eating healthily or getting enough exercise. > This is very general statement. I have seen social-workers taking bribes In general, social workers don't take bribes. Making life difficult for homeless people is literally the cops' job because being homeless is criminalized in most of the US.
nfw2 6y ago
I agree we are all humans. But as humans, we are strongly influenced by our environment, and I think the current system of policing has a number of fundamental issues that makes the flaws we share as humans worse. 1.) Positions of power can attract people who have a longing for power, who may not be well-adjusted, emotionally-healthy individuals. 2.) Policing is a dangerous job, and constant personal danger can lead to regression away from the ideals we hold as a society. Something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When one of the basic needs (personal safety) is compromised, everything above it on the pyramid becomes less stable. 3.) Policing is an adversarial job. This leads to a us vs them mentality and also contributes to the next problem 4.) Racism. Racism has been part of our culture for a long time. This means... a.) some officers certainly will be coming into the force with racial biases to varying degrees, and b.) the fact that the jobs pits them as adversaries against certain races of people more than others will makes these biases worse.
- nfw2 6y ago
  I think these are complicated issues, and I am not sure what the best path forward is. Changes to oversight and immunity policies would likely improve outcomes. I think solving the issues that lead to inequity and crime would indirectly have a positive impact on police behavior. Diverting some police responsibilities to social workers seems like a good idea in general. I don't know if it would be effective in preventing the tragedies we see constantly across our country. These all generally happen in the process of an arrest, which seems like a responsibility that would need to be retained by officers in a system where the responsibilies are split.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    I’m curious about this social worker idea. My mother was one and her job had her working mainly in poor neighborhoods. She was tasked with going into homes, speaking with people, and determining if the children there were in a safe environment. If it was judged it wasn’t safe, then they would remove the children. As you can imagine this was a fairly dangerous job at times. Almost every time they had to make a removal the police would need to be called to assist. Even getting into the homes they’d need police sometimes as they’d be threatened and intimidated. She eventually left that role to work with elderly people in need.
runamok 6y ago
IIRC the stanford prison experiment has been thoroughly criticized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment. The result of that experiment seems to imply even random people being "promoted" to have power over others with little demonstrable accountability is a recipe for disaster. From the dim recesses of my memory what I took away from Plato's Republic is that you never want those who seek power to receive it and only those who don't care about it "deserve" it. (Clearly a bit of an oxymoron) https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosopher-king https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosopher-king > On this view, philosophers are the last people who should or would want to rule. The Republic turns this claim upside down, arguing that it is precisely the fact that philosophers are the last people who would want to rule that qualifies them to do so. Only those who do not wish for political power can be trusted with it. > Thus, the key to the notion of the “philosopher king” is that the philosopher is the only person who can be trusted to rule well. Philosophers are both morally and intellectually suited to rule: morally because it is in their nature to love truth and learning so much that they are free from the greed and lust that tempts others to abuse power and intellectually because they alone can gain full knowledge of reality, which in Books V through VII of the Republic is argued to culminate in knowledge of the forms of Virtue, Beauty, and, above all, the Good. The city can foster such knowledge by putting aspiring philosophers through a demanding education, and the philosophers will use their knowledge of goodness and virtue to help other citizens achieve these so far as possible. I am a fairly optimistic person and believe people are mostly good. I agree some and perhaps many people that become police officers do it because they wish to do good. However, at a minimum I think the job attracts a lot of bullies and people that enjoy having power over others. And I think there is such a code of support of the "thin blue line" that ostensibly "good cops" can't be good cops because they allow "bad cop" behavior by their inaction. This is a powerful article on that topic: https://www.theroot.com/maybe-there-are-no-good-cops-1790856860 https://www.theroot.com/maybe-there-are-no-good-cops-1790856... I'd fix it all tomorrow by making a law that all wrongful violence/death/etc. judgements come out of the police pension and fraternal order of police funds instead of a city's budget. I bet that code of "omerta" would end in a heartbeat.
smcl 6y ago
They’re human beings who happen to have gleefully committed Hundreds of violent crimes against citizens they’re supposed to protect, and they’re basically given free reign to do so. Take the following - think about every single one of the human beings taking turns beating a completely subdued, incapacitated and probably unconscious person: https://twitter.com/abelinasabrina/status/1281448120543371264 https://twitter.com/abelinasabrina/status/128144812054337126... I could've picked from a few hundred similar clips, there's so many. And yet nothing will come of this. This conflict won’t ever be resolved until the police take responsibility for this sort of brutality. And they won’t, so it’ll periodically die down and simmer until another atrocity is committed and it’ll boil over again and again ad infinitum. We can empathise with the police all we want, but this will just keep happening until someone steps in and puts an end to it. I have NO idea what that would look like, I know that when Georgia (i.e. former USSR country) had problems with their police they completely disbanded it and set it up again. Hopefully there's a less disruptive route than that but I honestly do not know.
_Nat_ 6y ago
> I don't believe that anymore. The emergence of body cameras are amazing because they show just how bad we're constantly being lied to. YouTubers like Donut Operator really opened my eyes. Definitely agree that body cameras can help to clarify a lot. Would you mind sharing a bit about what sorts of lies you may've been referencing? Or how "Donut Operator" on YouTube may've been helpful? I'm not sure if I fully understood what you were trying to say, but it sounds like you may have some neat perspective on the topic.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Well, the leaked George Floyd bodycam video shed a whole different light on the incident. The guy was complaining he couldn't breathe while sitting in the back seat of the police car and insisted on getting out and lying on the ground. I'm not calling the original video shot by a bystander a 'lie', but it wasn't the whole story by any means. There's no way those police officers will be found guilty of murder, and there'll be absolute carnage when that happens.
  - sumedh 6y ago
    > I'm not calling the original video shot by a bystander a 'lie', but it wasn't the whole story by any means. So what was misleading about the original video?
    - secondcoming 6y ago
      It didn't capture what happened before Floyd ended up on the ground (at least in the version I saw)
      - sumedh 6y ago
        So what happened before the clip that justified the officer to murder Floyd by keeping his leg on his neck?
        secondcoming 6y ago
kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
Thanks for the Donut Operator mention. That's a great channel.

kenjackson 6y ago

“We're all just human beings, and most people join the police because they want to do the right thing.” I think in theory this is the idea, but I think in reality it isn’t. I know four people I grew up with who became police and all four were not people I’d want to run into. One, in high school, stated that being a cop is the only job you can have where you are paid to beat people up (I argued boxing, not realizing he’d later be a cop). Another was the middle school bully. Another was a high school drug dealer — who I’m not sure ever stopped. And the one black guy I knew who became a cop was just a jerk. Maybe coincidence, but I have a feeling that the profession attracts exactly the mindset you don’t want as a cop. But people who don’t have that mindset probably don’t want to be cops.

codr7 6y ago
Same goes for politics, or any position of power/authority really, the people who want it the most are the worst alternatives.
nemo44x 6y ago
I can’t imagine it’s the most attractive job. Most people with options are going to do something else. The pay is generally ok in a lot of places but it’s a job where you’re going to work bad hours early on and for the most part you’re dealing with the uglier side of society. Your whole world view is going to be shifted negatively as you encounter so many people with drug issues, mental issues, violent people, etc. Who would want that? Who would want to spend their life interacting with this part of society day in and day out? I can only assume for many that take that job that it’s the best they can do. I interact with thoughtful, nice people every day to the point where I take it for granted. I’m not exposed to the desperate, degenerate, or depraved part of society. And I wouldn’t want to be.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  To take this further, all available stats show that the average tenure of a police officer is <5 years. This is no surprise -- the hours are rough, the work can be exceptionally dangerous or stressful at times, pay is middling (generally 50-70k a year, tho often much lower in poorer counties), and there is an entire class of US society that is blatantly "fuck the police". Why get into fist-fights with crackheads at 4am when I can get an A+ and Network+ and answer tickets all day? Slightly less degrading and no one will try to shoot me. The result is that smart, qualified people rightly fuck-off to better paying or less stressful gigs. Additionally, there is no lateral move into higher levels of police leadership (unless you're transferring from another PD). So your mid-to-senior leadership is often whoever manages to stick around. See pg. 6 https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/wpor_ltpov.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/wpor_ltpov.pdf ("Why Police Officers Resign") also https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detectives.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detect... (salary info)
themaninthedark 6y ago
Looking at what people are saying and thinking: Some people become cops because they want to help people, Some because they want power. Cops that are good have a tendency to end up dehumanizing members of the public whom they are meant to be helping due to a number of factors(ie. continuous exposure to negative elements). Currently the zeitgeist is defund the police, by either abolishing them or making the job lower paying and using those funds for social workers. I do not see the current proposed solutions fixing any of the problems.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  The solutions being taken up by moderates in both of the American political parties has been about removing liability protections in police actions and/or creating national standards for police oversight. I think those are the solutions that currently have widespread support and people have been discussing qualified immunity and body cameras at length on twitter and elsewhere.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
    No. I suggest to read Franklin Zimring's 2017 book, When Police Kill. We are focused on problem cops but not problem departments. Not 1 person mentions the failure of local chain of command for setting bad/no policy to deal with police encounters. Immunity should be removed also from chain of command AND deparments for not producing directives that troops can follow. Why is it not codified to not shoot when a suspect is running? The ruelbook on proper rules of engagement is surprisingly weak at precinct level and above. Then we go about blaming cops for not having clear limitations on what they can or cannot do. Leadership loves the lack of accountability. They prefer to sacrificial troop lambs rather than themselves to roast. And we are happy to oblige them
  - themaninthedark 6y ago
    I can see that helping in the sense of holding police responsible once they have taken bad actions but I am not sure if that will help with power seeking actions. As an aside, we should remove liability protections for all government officials not just police.

AlotOfReading 6y ago

At the same time, if you look at the police-involved deaths per capita, our neighbors are countries like Iraq and Mali. Other nations in the developed world (and even many who are not) have rates that are far, far lower. The US clearly has something tragically wrong with its policing system.

hodgesrm 6y ago
Starting with a lot of guns. Police don't have a lot of time to make decisions when situations escalate. It seems like shoot first and ask questions later in many cases.
- croh 6y ago
  I somewhat agree with you. If both parties have guns, then it is only question of who shoots first. Even small error in judgement, can end up shooting and tragedy. We seriously need to look into gun control.
  - creato 6y ago
    I agree with you completely, except I think gun control is a lost cause, and attempting anything significant here is a disastrous waste of political capital. The degree of gun control required to change this dynamic (that police need to anticipate a gun in every pocket and under every car seat) will not fly in this country in my lifetime.
    - DuskStar 6y ago
      And IMO will not fly before 3d printers capable of manufacturing reliable guns become widely available, which will render the whole thing moot. (since at that point you'll never be able to get rid of enough guns to make the police stop anticipating them)
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Given the current political situation with a president "joking" about 12 more years at his party's convention, mass protests in Belarus being put down by force, I am firmly against gun control now more than ever.

tehjoker 6y ago

The police execute public policy. I've seen a friend arrested for trying to simply delivery a letter to their representative calmly (amid a protest, but a calm one). Police can sometimes be individually bad, but often they are bad because they are part of a system that makes it so. If you are a "good" cop, you need to protect the bad cops or you get your ass handed to you and your career prospects cut. If you are a "good" cop and you are forced to kick people out of homes for being poor, lock up some dude forever for stealing a candy bar because of a three strikes law, or some such you're part of a system that values property and the safety of the well off over human dignity. We do need some kind of forces for dealing with the occasional insane situation, but those happen rarely and public policy can be tailored to prevent many problems instead of being merely reactive and punitive. For example, poverty and lack of options cause social conflict, what if we did something about that instead of punishing people?

wvenable 6y ago

More or less police is not really the issue -- accountability is the issue.

heavyset_go 6y ago

> We're all just human beings, and most people join the police because they want to do the right thing Many people join the police because the pay very well, they're some of the highest paid government employees, and often make more than software developers do. They'll also get a full pension with benefits after working for only 20 years. I've never seen an EMT or a social worker destroy homeless people's belongings, but I've seen cops do it. People who want to do the right thing typically go into other fields than law enforcement.

croh 6y ago
> Many people join the police because the pay very well, they're some of the highest paid government employees, and often make more than software developers do. They'll also get a full pension with benefits after working for only 20 years. You have to consider risk factor also. > I've never seen an EMT or a social worker destroy homeless people's belongings, but I've seen cops do it. People who want to do the right thing typically go into other fields than law enforcement. This is very general statement. I have seen social-workers taking bribes. You can't characterise whole force based on some incidents. This applies to everything religion, race, gender, region etc. There are good and bad people. But please don't assume whole system is currupt. We need to encourage good things and shun bad things.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > You have to consider risk factor also. If we're considering risk, then Amazon and pizza delivery drivers, garbagemen, landscapers, fishermen, construction workers, and farmers all have higher risks on the job than cops do. According to the BLS, the biggest risk to a cop on the job is their own driving and parking, followed by heart attacks from not eating healthily or getting enough exercise. > This is very general statement. I have seen social-workers taking bribes In general, social workers don't take bribes. Making life difficult for homeless people is literally the cops' job because being homeless is criminalized in most of the US.

nfw2 6y ago

I agree we are all humans. But as humans, we are strongly influenced by our environment, and I think the current system of policing has a number of fundamental issues that makes the flaws we share as humans worse. 1.) Positions of power can attract people who have a longing for power, who may not be well-adjusted, emotionally-healthy individuals. 2.) Policing is a dangerous job, and constant personal danger can lead to regression away from the ideals we hold as a society. Something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When one of the basic needs (personal safety) is compromised, everything above it on the pyramid becomes less stable. 3.) Policing is an adversarial job. This leads to a us vs them mentality and also contributes to the next problem 4.) Racism. Racism has been part of our culture for a long time. This means... a.) some officers certainly will be coming into the force with racial biases to varying degrees, and b.) the fact that the jobs pits them as adversaries against certain races of people more than others will makes these biases worse.

nfw2 6y ago
I think these are complicated issues, and I am not sure what the best path forward is. Changes to oversight and immunity policies would likely improve outcomes. I think solving the issues that lead to inequity and crime would indirectly have a positive impact on police behavior. Diverting some police responsibilities to social workers seems like a good idea in general. I don't know if it would be effective in preventing the tragedies we see constantly across our country. These all generally happen in the process of an arrest, which seems like a responsibility that would need to be retained by officers in a system where the responsibilies are split.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  I’m curious about this social worker idea. My mother was one and her job had her working mainly in poor neighborhoods. She was tasked with going into homes, speaking with people, and determining if the children there were in a safe environment. If it was judged it wasn’t safe, then they would remove the children. As you can imagine this was a fairly dangerous job at times. Almost every time they had to make a removal the police would need to be called to assist. Even getting into the homes they’d need police sometimes as they’d be threatened and intimidated. She eventually left that role to work with elderly people in need.

runamok 6y ago

IIRC the stanford prison experiment has been thoroughly criticized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment. The result of that experiment seems to imply even random people being "promoted" to have power over others with little demonstrable accountability is a recipe for disaster. From the dim recesses of my memory what I took away from Plato's Republic is that you never want those who seek power to receive it and only those who don't care about it "deserve" it. (Clearly a bit of an oxymoron) https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosopher-king https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosopher-king > On this view, philosophers are the last people who should or would want to rule. The Republic turns this claim upside down, arguing that it is precisely the fact that philosophers are the last people who would want to rule that qualifies them to do so. Only those who do not wish for political power can be trusted with it. > Thus, the key to the notion of the “philosopher king” is that the philosopher is the only person who can be trusted to rule well. Philosophers are both morally and intellectually suited to rule: morally because it is in their nature to love truth and learning so much that they are free from the greed and lust that tempts others to abuse power and intellectually because they alone can gain full knowledge of reality, which in Books V through VII of the Republic is argued to culminate in knowledge of the forms of Virtue, Beauty, and, above all, the Good. The city can foster such knowledge by putting aspiring philosophers through a demanding education, and the philosophers will use their knowledge of goodness and virtue to help other citizens achieve these so far as possible. I am a fairly optimistic person and believe people are mostly good. I agree some and perhaps many people that become police officers do it because they wish to do good. However, at a minimum I think the job attracts a lot of bullies and people that enjoy having power over others. And I think there is such a code of support of the "thin blue line" that ostensibly "good cops" can't be good cops because they allow "bad cop" behavior by their inaction. This is a powerful article on that topic: https://www.theroot.com/maybe-there-are-no-good-cops-1790856860 https://www.theroot.com/maybe-there-are-no-good-cops-1790856... I'd fix it all tomorrow by making a law that all wrongful violence/death/etc. judgements come out of the police pension and fraternal order of police funds instead of a city's budget. I bet that code of "omerta" would end in a heartbeat.

smcl 6y ago

They’re human beings who happen to have gleefully committed Hundreds of violent crimes against citizens they’re supposed to protect, and they’re basically given free reign to do so. Take the following - think about every single one of the human beings taking turns beating a completely subdued, incapacitated and probably unconscious person: https://twitter.com/abelinasabrina/status/1281448120543371264 https://twitter.com/abelinasabrina/status/128144812054337126... I could've picked from a few hundred similar clips, there's so many. And yet nothing will come of this. This conflict won’t ever be resolved until the police take responsibility for this sort of brutality. And they won’t, so it’ll periodically die down and simmer until another atrocity is committed and it’ll boil over again and again ad infinitum. We can empathise with the police all we want, but this will just keep happening until someone steps in and puts an end to it. I have NO idea what that would look like, I know that when Georgia (i.e. former USSR country) had problems with their police they completely disbanded it and set it up again. Hopefully there's a less disruptive route than that but I honestly do not know.

_Nat_ 6y ago

> I don't believe that anymore. The emergence of body cameras are amazing because they show just how bad we're constantly being lied to. YouTubers like Donut Operator really opened my eyes. Definitely agree that body cameras can help to clarify a lot. Would you mind sharing a bit about what sorts of lies you may've been referencing? Or how "Donut Operator" on YouTube may've been helpful? I'm not sure if I fully understood what you were trying to say, but it sounds like you may have some neat perspective on the topic.

secondcoming 6y ago
Well, the leaked George Floyd bodycam video shed a whole different light on the incident. The guy was complaining he couldn't breathe while sitting in the back seat of the police car and insisted on getting out and lying on the ground. I'm not calling the original video shot by a bystander a 'lie', but it wasn't the whole story by any means. There's no way those police officers will be found guilty of murder, and there'll be absolute carnage when that happens.
- sumedh 6y ago
  > I'm not calling the original video shot by a bystander a 'lie', but it wasn't the whole story by any means. So what was misleading about the original video?
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    It didn't capture what happened before Floyd ended up on the ground (at least in the version I saw)
    - sumedh 6y ago
      So what happened before the clip that justified the officer to murder Floyd by keeping his leg on his neck?
      - secondcoming 6y ago

kqvamxurcagg 6y ago

Thanks for the Donut Operator mention. That's a great channel.