4 ms·

Keep in mind this happens most other places in the world too. The police force is generally a corrupt force. It's just not as obvious and not spoken about as mu

Keep in mind this happens most other places in the world too. The police force is generally a corrupt force. It's just not as obvious and not spoken about as much. Also keep in mind police force generally targets minorities more. So if your country doesn't have an obvious minority population that has systemically been kept behind, you're not going to see as much police corruption. But it's there. As a brown person, my worst experiences with cops was in UK and Germany. When I tell people this they're quick to dismiss it by "This shit doesn't happen here"

acituan 6y ago
> So if your country doesn't have an obvious minority population that has systemically been kept behind, you're not going to see as much police corruption. I don't buy this. There are plenty of ethnically homogeneous countries that also has rampant police corruption (e.g. in Eastern Europe), and there are tons of other parameters that affect police corruption overall. We can't single out presence of minorities as a factor.
- mcguire 6y ago
  I believe the key word there is "see". Without obvious targets, from the outside all you see is everyday activities, even if that includes bribes and preferences, because that is how it's always treated from the inside. On the other hand, you can always find a disliked minority somewhere. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/is-england-fairer-2016-most-disadvantaged-groups-gypsies-travellers-roma.pdf https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/is-e...
- samatman 6y ago
  hmm, when I hear "Eastern Europe", I don't think "ethnically homogeneous", I think "substantial Roma minority". I'm quite confident the police don't treat them particularly well, either.
  - gostsamo 6y ago
    You have no idea. Brown lives does not matter in Eastern Europe. Only thing that saves their lives is that gun ownership is not popular and cops cannot claim that they felt threatened. Beatings though...
  - acituan 6y ago
    > hmm, when I hear "Eastern Europe", I don't think "ethnically homogeneous", I think "substantial Roma minority". What first comes to our minds doesn't constitute data, and is prone to create availability bias. Percentage of Roma for several Eastern European countries are; Bosnia And Herzegovina: 0.36% (2013), Serbia 2.1% (2011), Macedonia 2.7% (2002), Albania 0.6% (2011), Croatia 0.4% (2011), Ukraine 0.3% (2001). There is no substantial Roma minority, in fact Roma is usually one of the smallest among other minorities in these countries.
    - samatman 6y ago
      For several more: Bulgaria: 10.3%, Romania: 8.3%, Slovakia, 9.2%. This same source has Serbia's percentage as 8.2%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people#Contemporary_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people#Contemporary_iss... I would call these numbers substantial. Your mileage may vary.
      - acituan 6y ago
        I’ve picked my numbers from each of these countries’ censuses, whereas your source claims an estimate, and I cannot verify their methodology because source of that table takes me to an unrelated telegraph.co.uk article (likely a bug in the wikipedia article). Either way, if the OPs hypothesis is true, we should see a change in corruption levels with minority percentages. I’m not an expert in Eastern European criminology, but I highly doubt that is the case. There might as well be Eastern European countries with substantial Roma population, for some definition of “substantial”, but that doesn’t change my original point that high cultural homogeniety and high police corruption definiely does co-occur.
markdown 6y ago
> Keep in mind this happens most other places in the world too. Citation needed.
- Hitton 6y ago
  In central Europe it works slightly differently. When stopped by police and getting ticket, you can decide not to pay it on the spot and instead send the infraction to administrative proceedings. There you have chance to dispute the ticket at the cost of risking higher ticket (to cover the cost of proceedings) if found that you really committed the infraction. But if you have friends either at police or at the office which handles the proceedings, you can ask them to pull a few strings, and the ticket simply disappears/gets time-barred/... But at least it's not as brazen as these "courtesy cards". Also your "friends" will usually have influence only locally, to cover up something in different city will be much more complicated. EDIT: Also forgot to mention that cops here know not to bother car with "nice" licence plate numbers, interestingly enough, even though the numbers should be random, there is a class of people who tend to get them disproportionally often...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

acituan 6y ago

> So if your country doesn't have an obvious minority population that has systemically been kept behind, you're not going to see as much police corruption. I don't buy this. There are plenty of ethnically homogeneous countries that also has rampant police corruption (e.g. in Eastern Europe), and there are tons of other parameters that affect police corruption overall. We can't single out presence of minorities as a factor.

mcguire 6y ago
I believe the key word there is "see". Without obvious targets, from the outside all you see is everyday activities, even if that includes bribes and preferences, because that is how it's always treated from the inside. On the other hand, you can always find a disliked minority somewhere. https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/is-england-fairer-2016-most-disadvantaged-groups-gypsies-travellers-roma.pdf https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/is-e...
samatman 6y ago
hmm, when I hear "Eastern Europe", I don't think "ethnically homogeneous", I think "substantial Roma minority". I'm quite confident the police don't treat them particularly well, either.
- gostsamo 6y ago
  You have no idea. Brown lives does not matter in Eastern Europe. Only thing that saves their lives is that gun ownership is not popular and cops cannot claim that they felt threatened. Beatings though...
- acituan 6y ago
  > hmm, when I hear "Eastern Europe", I don't think "ethnically homogeneous", I think "substantial Roma minority". What first comes to our minds doesn't constitute data, and is prone to create availability bias. Percentage of Roma for several Eastern European countries are; Bosnia And Herzegovina: 0.36% (2013), Serbia 2.1% (2011), Macedonia 2.7% (2002), Albania 0.6% (2011), Croatia 0.4% (2011), Ukraine 0.3% (2001). There is no substantial Roma minority, in fact Roma is usually one of the smallest among other minorities in these countries.
  - samatman 6y ago
    For several more: Bulgaria: 10.3%, Romania: 8.3%, Slovakia, 9.2%. This same source has Serbia's percentage as 8.2%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people#Contemporary_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people#Contemporary_iss... I would call these numbers substantial. Your mileage may vary.
    - acituan 6y ago
      I’ve picked my numbers from each of these countries’ censuses, whereas your source claims an estimate, and I cannot verify their methodology because source of that table takes me to an unrelated telegraph.co.uk article (likely a bug in the wikipedia article). Either way, if the OPs hypothesis is true, we should see a change in corruption levels with minority percentages. I’m not an expert in Eastern European criminology, but I highly doubt that is the case. There might as well be Eastern European countries with substantial Roma population, for some definition of “substantial”, but that doesn’t change my original point that high cultural homogeniety and high police corruption definiely does co-occur.

markdown 6y ago

> Keep in mind this happens most other places in the world too. Citation needed.

Hitton 6y ago
In central Europe it works slightly differently. When stopped by police and getting ticket, you can decide not to pay it on the spot and instead send the infraction to administrative proceedings. There you have chance to dispute the ticket at the cost of risking higher ticket (to cover the cost of proceedings) if found that you really committed the infraction. But if you have friends either at police or at the office which handles the proceedings, you can ask them to pull a few strings, and the ticket simply disappears/gets time-barred/... But at least it's not as brazen as these "courtesy cards". Also your "friends" will usually have influence only locally, to cover up something in different city will be much more complicated. EDIT: Also forgot to mention that cops here know not to bother car with "nice" licence plate numbers, interestingly enough, even though the numbers should be random, there is a class of people who tend to get them disproportionally often...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]