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At some point governments will have to address the elephant in the room. Across much of the globe, modern police forces have been empowered and emboldened to s

At some point governments will have to address the elephant in the room. Across much of the globe, modern police forces have been empowered and emboldened to such a degree that many departments, and their members, feel institutionally above the law. In no other occupation, that I can think of, can so many rules and directives be flouted without losing ones job, as is the case with modern police. Its frankly insulting to see, again and again, that people we (civilians) fund the salaries of, see us as beneath them - as evidenced by how we are held to the letter of ordinances and laws by them, while they break ordinances and laws with seemingly wanton abandon. This is unlikely to change until police are held to the exact same legal and prosecutorial rigors as those they police.

rendall 6y ago
> we (civilians) I just want to remind everyone that police are civilians too. I also sometimes forget
- qntty 6y ago
  civilian noun 2a : one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    Why would firefighters not be civilians?
    - qntty 6y ago
      I don't know exactly, but it sounds like the word is context-dependent. During war, it means people who aren't in the military, but during peacetime it means people who aren't expected to risk their lives in more ordinary ways. [If the jobs of firefighters seems irreproachable or lacking authority compared to military or police, then maybe it would help to remember that firefighters turned their hoses on civil rights protesters in the 60s. No doubt there are many similar examples of firefighter's behavior being clearly outside of the what is thought to be typical of civilians.]
- cannabis_sam 6y ago
  Some dictionaries seem to disagree with you: – a person who is not a member of the police or the armed forces https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/civilian https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/civil... – one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian – a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/civilian https://www.dictionary.com/browse/civilian I’m a little curious, why should they be considered civilians?
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    > why should they be considered civilians? Because they are. Robert Peel was insistent on exactly that point when he set up the police force in the UK. See, for instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles Edit: corrected URL
    - cannabis_sam 6y ago
      No, they are not. They are literally instruments of the government’s monopoly on violence. I have no idea why you reference a dead politician’s antiquated analysis of the role of the police.. shit has happened since 1850, and I personally believe catholics should not be barred from parliament. Also, not everyone lives in the UK. Edit: as an example: what’s “sir” Robert Peel’s view on facial recognition...?
      - kwhitefoot 6y ago
        > Also, not everyone lives in the UK. Also quite a substantial number of people don't live in the US. So as I said in another comment, perhaps we should all annotate our comments with information regarding the jurisdiction in which the information applies.
      - Maha-pudma 6y ago
        Not everyone lives in America which is what most of this thread seems to be about. No idea why you're mentioning Catholics in the UK Parliament. Unless its an attempt at discrediting the previous commenters statement. We certainly refer to them as the civi-police in the military. Though we don't have the gun issues the US has, but that seems based on an antiquated amendment even older the Peels analysis.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  As armed representatives of the state, I would argue that they are not. They’re not military, but they’re definitely not civilians.
- 8note 6y ago
  Ah, so if they shoot me at all, it's assault with a deadly weapon, just like any other civilian
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  Are you confusing it with the word "citizen"?
ashtonkem 6y ago
American police don’t feel institutionally above the law, for all intents and purposes they are. Qualified immunity, a doctrine made up out of whole cloth by the courts, means that cops often can’t be prosecuted or even sued for the most egregious of conduct. And the lengths the courts will go to protect cops are ridiculous, to the point where the courts have upheld the idea that a cop didn’t know that attacking a surrendering suspect in a “grassy ditch” was illegal, even though doing the same thing in a wooded area had precedent. And of course, since the cop was let off the hook, no new precedent was made. And even when cops do finally cross the line, they just move towns or states and get a new job. Police unions have fought long and hard to avoid even the slightest forms of accountability; in most states being fired for cause isn’t enough to get your license pulled. This protection for bad cops comes at the cost of us all, both in terms of settlements paid by our money, and by unnecessary deaths inflicted on the poor and vulnerable by the state.
- gabereiser 6y ago
  ^ This. Cops aren’t your friends. They can and will use anything you say against you, never for you, in a court of law. I’m not saying we don’t need them. I’m saying they aren’t your friend. Never underestimate the ability of a cop to twist the truth. In court, a cop has the fullest faith of the courts even if they don’t show up. Defending yourself against what a cop says happened is almost impossible. It can be done though.
  - wtetzner 6y ago
    > I’m not saying we don’t need them We need them, but we also need them to be held accountable for their actions.
    - gabereiser 6y ago
      Absolutely
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I have never seen a convincing argument that we don’t need cops, courts, and prisons (not that you’re making that argument). Every society seems to have them, and I have a very hard time imagining a society that wouldn’t lock up someone like, say, Anders Breivik. That being said, it’s pretty obvious that the American justice system is unnecessarily brutal and inefficient. We lock up a huge percentage of our population and have a pretty high recidivism rate compared to our peer nations. Well short of “defunding the police”, we desperately need to rethink the scope and responsibilities of our criminal justice system, and rethink the relationship between police and the citizens of this country.
rapind 6y ago
> This is unlikely to change until police are held to the exact same legal and prosecutorial rigors as those they police. Forget that! Police should be held to a “higher” standard. These are people we’ve trusted to walk around with guns and big sticks. Shit’s so backwards.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> In no other occupation, that I can think of, can so many rules and directives be flouted without losing ones job, as is the case with modern police. That isn't really true. Have you read half the corporate policies published by large companies? Neither have most of their employees. Nobody cares and they're not enforced until Something Bad happens, at which point it's time to open the book for the first time to see which rule the designated scapegoat can be found to have broken. The problem with the police is that the institutional Something Bad doesn't align with the actually bad things that happen when they break the rules. The institutional Something Bad is bad press. The actual bad thing is sending an innocent person to prison while a guilty one stays free to continue committing robberies and murders. Or the same sort of "bring me the man, I'll find you the crime" except used by the police against dissidents and anti-authoritarians instead of the people presiding over some corporate incompetence. But when that doesn't result in bad press, nobody gets punished and then it keeps happening. This is why it's important to have a media willing to hold any administration's feet to the fire. Ironically, getting the election results many of the people who care about this wanted is having the opposite effect, as now the pressure is off to actually do anything about the problem. Complaining about it when the other guy is in is rhetorically advantageous; actually doing something about it when you're in costs political capital. So now we get to see what they do. But based on the existing media rhetoric, the implication seems to be more police state rather than less. Of course, the media is not just The Media, it's also this. So write your Congress critters.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  > Nobody cares and they're not enforced until Something Bad happens, That's not my experience. I'm not claiming that it is never true just that as far as I can tell, in the UK and Norway, it is mostly not.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    I would certainly believe that this is different outside of the US. The US is very litigious and as a result the rule book is often long and complicated enough that nobody really understands it because it's written by lawyers to avoid liability rather than as a set of practical measures designed to improve real outcomes. Also, whenever Something Bad happens they generally add new rules to address it, even if the existing rules would have prevented it had people been following them. So the complexity grows over time and makes it less likely that anybody even reads the rules, much less implements them. This also differs by industry or even by which rule book it is. If you have reasonable policies for handling hazardous materials, people follow them because if they don't then they get hurt. But even in the same company, the company policy on other things only gets followed if it gets enforced, and only gets enforced if not doing so caused trouble in practice.
macspoofing 6y ago
>At some point governments will have to address the elephant in the room. Crime? If a community is suffering from a very high crime rate (and some American cities are amongst the most violent cities in the world) - why are we prioritizing one set of rights (right to privacy) over another (right to personal security, right to raise children in a safe environment)? In many cases, you can't have one with the other. Privacy or Personal security - pick one. And there is a class component to this. If you live in a nice safe (and affluent) neighborhood, I'm sure privacy is much more important to you because you don't have to worry about your children being hurt by or recruited into gangs on the way to school. You don't have to worry about getting mugged or assaulted walking to the store. If you live in a community with a high crime rate, are you sure you want to focus on privacy and rights of criminals?
- 8note 6y ago
  There's a much easier way? Remove access to weapons. It's not a 2 way balance. America has chosen that access to weapons to commit crimes with is more important than personal safety or privacy, and no amount of giving up privacy will make up for prioritizing weapons
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >There's a much easier way? Remove access to weapons. There are no simple solutions and to pretend that all you need to do is X and then therefore everything will work is naïve to the extreme. This kind of argumentation, where reality on the ground is ignored in favor of some pie-in-the-sky hypothetical policy, is not actually conducive to actually helping people suffering from crime (not just gun violence but crime).
- Falling3 6y ago
  >In many cases, you can't have one with the other. Privacy or Personal security - pick one. You have a lot of work ahead of you to demonstrate that empirical fact. I haven't seen any compelling evidence that infringing on our right to privacy makes use safer in any meaningful way - though I have seen evidence to indicate it, in fact, makes us less safe.
feralimal 6y ago
Lol - really??!? Governments will have to address the elephant in the room? Why on earth would they ever do that?! This system is working perfectly. They write the laws! The police (and army) are their force! That is what governments do! Perhaps, they could write a law and apply it retrospectively do square things off tidily, but why bother? But really, once you have total control over what is considered right or wrong, why would they change anything? You should take a listen to the Quash - a legal insider to gain a better understanding of how things work: https://the-quash.captivate.fm/episode/politicians-lie-its-that-simple https://the-quash.captivate.fm/episode/politicians-lie-its-t...
m463 6y ago
I still think about "no country for old men". And the busses of people in mexico.
cwkoss 6y ago
Law enforcement should not just be held to an equal standard as citizens, they should be held to a much higher one.
b0tzzzzzzman 6y ago
This will never happen with people being able to report authority similar too the people they 'police?'

rendall 6y ago

> we (civilians) I just want to remind everyone that police are civilians too. I also sometimes forget

qntty 6y ago
civilian noun 2a : one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  Why would firefighters not be civilians?
  - qntty 6y ago
    I don't know exactly, but it sounds like the word is context-dependent. During war, it means people who aren't in the military, but during peacetime it means people who aren't expected to risk their lives in more ordinary ways. [If the jobs of firefighters seems irreproachable or lacking authority compared to military or police, then maybe it would help to remember that firefighters turned their hoses on civil rights protesters in the 60s. No doubt there are many similar examples of firefighter's behavior being clearly outside of the what is thought to be typical of civilians.]
cannabis_sam 6y ago
Some dictionaries seem to disagree with you: – a person who is not a member of the police or the armed forces https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/civilian https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/civil... – one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civilian – a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/civilian https://www.dictionary.com/browse/civilian I’m a little curious, why should they be considered civilians?
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  > why should they be considered civilians? Because they are. Robert Peel was insistent on exactly that point when he set up the police force in the UK. See, for instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles Edit: corrected URL
  - cannabis_sam 6y ago
    No, they are not. They are literally instruments of the government’s monopoly on violence. I have no idea why you reference a dead politician’s antiquated analysis of the role of the police.. shit has happened since 1850, and I personally believe catholics should not be barred from parliament. Also, not everyone lives in the UK. Edit: as an example: what’s “sir” Robert Peel’s view on facial recognition...?
    - kwhitefoot 6y ago
      > Also, not everyone lives in the UK. Also quite a substantial number of people don't live in the US. So as I said in another comment, perhaps we should all annotate our comments with information regarding the jurisdiction in which the information applies.
    - Maha-pudma 6y ago
      Not everyone lives in America which is what most of this thread seems to be about. No idea why you're mentioning Catholics in the UK Parliament. Unless its an attempt at discrediting the previous commenters statement. We certainly refer to them as the civi-police in the military. Though we don't have the gun issues the US has, but that seems based on an antiquated amendment even older the Peels analysis.
ashtonkem 6y ago
As armed representatives of the state, I would argue that they are not. They’re not military, but they’re definitely not civilians.
8note 6y ago
Ah, so if they shoot me at all, it's assault with a deadly weapon, just like any other civilian
Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
Are you confusing it with the word "citizen"?

ashtonkem 6y ago

American police don’t feel institutionally above the law, for all intents and purposes they are. Qualified immunity, a doctrine made up out of whole cloth by the courts, means that cops often can’t be prosecuted or even sued for the most egregious of conduct. And the lengths the courts will go to protect cops are ridiculous, to the point where the courts have upheld the idea that a cop didn’t know that attacking a surrendering suspect in a “grassy ditch” was illegal, even though doing the same thing in a wooded area had precedent. And of course, since the cop was let off the hook, no new precedent was made. And even when cops do finally cross the line, they just move towns or states and get a new job. Police unions have fought long and hard to avoid even the slightest forms of accountability; in most states being fired for cause isn’t enough to get your license pulled. This protection for bad cops comes at the cost of us all, both in terms of settlements paid by our money, and by unnecessary deaths inflicted on the poor and vulnerable by the state.

gabereiser 6y ago
^ This. Cops aren’t your friends. They can and will use anything you say against you, never for you, in a court of law. I’m not saying we don’t need them. I’m saying they aren’t your friend. Never underestimate the ability of a cop to twist the truth. In court, a cop has the fullest faith of the courts even if they don’t show up. Defending yourself against what a cop says happened is almost impossible. It can be done though.
- wtetzner 6y ago
  > I’m not saying we don’t need them We need them, but we also need them to be held accountable for their actions.
  - gabereiser 6y ago
    Absolutely
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I have never seen a convincing argument that we don’t need cops, courts, and prisons (not that you’re making that argument). Every society seems to have them, and I have a very hard time imagining a society that wouldn’t lock up someone like, say, Anders Breivik. That being said, it’s pretty obvious that the American justice system is unnecessarily brutal and inefficient. We lock up a huge percentage of our population and have a pretty high recidivism rate compared to our peer nations. Well short of “defunding the police”, we desperately need to rethink the scope and responsibilities of our criminal justice system, and rethink the relationship between police and the citizens of this country.

rapind 6y ago

> This is unlikely to change until police are held to the exact same legal and prosecutorial rigors as those they police. Forget that! Police should be held to a “higher” standard. These are people we’ve trusted to walk around with guns and big sticks. Shit’s so backwards.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> In no other occupation, that I can think of, can so many rules and directives be flouted without losing ones job, as is the case with modern police. That isn't really true. Have you read half the corporate policies published by large companies? Neither have most of their employees. Nobody cares and they're not enforced until Something Bad happens, at which point it's time to open the book for the first time to see which rule the designated scapegoat can be found to have broken. The problem with the police is that the institutional Something Bad doesn't align with the actually bad things that happen when they break the rules. The institutional Something Bad is bad press. The actual bad thing is sending an innocent person to prison while a guilty one stays free to continue committing robberies and murders. Or the same sort of "bring me the man, I'll find you the crime" except used by the police against dissidents and anti-authoritarians instead of the people presiding over some corporate incompetence. But when that doesn't result in bad press, nobody gets punished and then it keeps happening. This is why it's important to have a media willing to hold any administration's feet to the fire. Ironically, getting the election results many of the people who care about this wanted is having the opposite effect, as now the pressure is off to actually do anything about the problem. Complaining about it when the other guy is in is rhetorically advantageous; actually doing something about it when you're in costs political capital. So now we get to see what they do. But based on the existing media rhetoric, the implication seems to be more police state rather than less. Of course, the media is not just The Media, it's also this. So write your Congress critters.

kwhitefoot 6y ago
> Nobody cares and they're not enforced until Something Bad happens, That's not my experience. I'm not claiming that it is never true just that as far as I can tell, in the UK and Norway, it is mostly not.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  I would certainly believe that this is different outside of the US. The US is very litigious and as a result the rule book is often long and complicated enough that nobody really understands it because it's written by lawyers to avoid liability rather than as a set of practical measures designed to improve real outcomes. Also, whenever Something Bad happens they generally add new rules to address it, even if the existing rules would have prevented it had people been following them. So the complexity grows over time and makes it less likely that anybody even reads the rules, much less implements them. This also differs by industry or even by which rule book it is. If you have reasonable policies for handling hazardous materials, people follow them because if they don't then they get hurt. But even in the same company, the company policy on other things only gets followed if it gets enforced, and only gets enforced if not doing so caused trouble in practice.

macspoofing 6y ago

>At some point governments will have to address the elephant in the room. Crime? If a community is suffering from a very high crime rate (and some American cities are amongst the most violent cities in the world) - why are we prioritizing one set of rights (right to privacy) over another (right to personal security, right to raise children in a safe environment)? In many cases, you can't have one with the other. Privacy or Personal security - pick one. And there is a class component to this. If you live in a nice safe (and affluent) neighborhood, I'm sure privacy is much more important to you because you don't have to worry about your children being hurt by or recruited into gangs on the way to school. You don't have to worry about getting mugged or assaulted walking to the store. If you live in a community with a high crime rate, are you sure you want to focus on privacy and rights of criminals?

8note 6y ago
There's a much easier way? Remove access to weapons. It's not a 2 way balance. America has chosen that access to weapons to commit crimes with is more important than personal safety or privacy, and no amount of giving up privacy will make up for prioritizing weapons
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >There's a much easier way? Remove access to weapons. There are no simple solutions and to pretend that all you need to do is X and then therefore everything will work is naïve to the extreme. This kind of argumentation, where reality on the ground is ignored in favor of some pie-in-the-sky hypothetical policy, is not actually conducive to actually helping people suffering from crime (not just gun violence but crime).
Falling3 6y ago
>In many cases, you can't have one with the other. Privacy or Personal security - pick one. You have a lot of work ahead of you to demonstrate that empirical fact. I haven't seen any compelling evidence that infringing on our right to privacy makes use safer in any meaningful way - though I have seen evidence to indicate it, in fact, makes us less safe.

feralimal 6y ago

Lol - really??!? Governments will have to address the elephant in the room? Why on earth would they ever do that?! This system is working perfectly. They write the laws! The police (and army) are their force! That is what governments do! Perhaps, they could write a law and apply it retrospectively do square things off tidily, but why bother? But really, once you have total control over what is considered right or wrong, why would they change anything? You should take a listen to the Quash - a legal insider to gain a better understanding of how things work: https://the-quash.captivate.fm/episode/politicians-lie-its-that-simple https://the-quash.captivate.fm/episode/politicians-lie-its-t...

m463 6y ago

I still think about "no country for old men". And the busses of people in mexico.

cwkoss 6y ago

Law enforcement should not just be held to an equal standard as citizens, they should be held to a much higher one.

b0tzzzzzzman 6y ago

This will never happen with people being able to report authority similar too the people they 'police?'