4 ms·

To me the bigger issue in this story is that the cops didn't use any common sense. I don't live in the US, but from abroad I can tell how messed up the police

To me the bigger issue in this story is that the cops didn't use any common sense. I don't live in the US, but from abroad I can tell how messed up the police are over there. The number of stories of brutality, deaths and upright bullying of every day citizens... It's really messed up, perhaps Americans are desensitised, but I can tell you from the other side of the world - it's nowhere like this in other countries, you guys have a BIG problem with how your cops are selected and trained.

bell-cot 3y ago
THIS. Hidebound and self-righteous idiots with badges would still be a massive problem, even if the most advanced tech they had was morse-code telegraphs and steel-tipped fountain pens.
hysan 3y ago
As an American, living abroad was one of the biggest eye opening experiences to seeing how messed up our law enforcement system is here. I don’t think it’s as much desensitization (which is part of it) as portraying law enforcement as “can do no wrong” heroes in our media and culture. It really skews public perception and results in a lot of people turning a blind eye… until they are the ones affected.
- pyuser583 3y ago
  As an American who lived abroad, I feel the opposite. Corruption is incredibly common overseas (yes, Europe too). Privacy laws regarding law enforcement are much worse. There’s a really good video on YouTube called “Never Talk To Police.” It’s a law professor and police officer explaining to law students why they should instruct their clients not to talk to police. The police officer compares American and foreign practices, and emphasizes US police use deception, but foreign police use force. I’m sure bad and good police agencies in America and abroad. The best PD I’ve interacted with is in a mid-sized UK city. The worst I’ve seen is in a major American city.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    > The police officer compares American and foreign practices, and emphasizes US police use deception, but foreign police use force. Semi automatic deception that ranks the US 30 in term of death by police, in the middle of third world countries, far away from any developed countries
  - simonjgreen 3y ago
    "American and foreign" - very binary isn't it?
    - semiquaver 3y ago
      Explicit comparisons between two things usually are.
- elliekelly 3y ago
  There are so many “copaganda” TV shows in the US it’s wild. I bet every American could easily name 10 off the top of their head and that wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
kneebonian 3y ago
> I don't live in the US, but from abroad I can tell how messed up the police are over there. Translation I get all of my information about American policing through highly politicized and charged news storied that become stories only because they are exceptional and then feel justified passing judgment on an entire country that has 3 times the people and land as my country.
- one_level_deep 3y ago
  [dead]
- locopati 3y ago
  Okay. I'm an American citizen living in the States. Our policing systems are incredibly messed up and militarized.
  - jimbob45 3y ago
    We have the most ethnically diverse population in the world. Blacks commit more than half of all US crime despite being a tenth of the population. We’re a gigantic state with both the least restrictive gun laws and the most permissive immigration laws in the world. No comparable nation not named China drives nearly as much as we do. To say our policing systems are bad is a smear on the hard-working men and women in those systems. The US simply has challenges that European nations do not have. You can (and maybe should) debate whether or not those challenges should be present in the first place but blaming those challenges on the police is just mean.
    - slater 3y ago
      > We have the most ethnically diverse population in the world Umm, no: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16...
- Two4 3y ago
  Translation translation: someone has leveled valid criticism about a nationwide problem in a country that propagandises itself to be the best in the world and I've drank the koolaid so now I need to be super touched about it
e40 3y ago
To me the bigger issue in this story is that the cops didn't use any common sense. I've read over and over again that intelligence is a disqualifying characteristic for being a LEO. They want people to follow orders and be a good partner (e.g., never go against what your partner says). My experience in CA since the 80's is that LEOs are very corrupt and really only care about their own. There are exceptions. I live in an unusual city, LEO-wise, but it is totally not the norm.
- semiquaver 3y ago
  This is unfortunately true. Police qualification tests have a maximum score above which you will not be selected (often this is unwritten). They actively select against intelligence above a certain level, probably for good reason: what’s wanted is people who will shut up and take orders.
  - simonjgreen 3y ago
    Do you have a source for that?
    - semiquaver 3y ago
      Not a written one, this is coming from personal acquaintances involved in the police recruitment process. It looks like a sibling comment provided a source for a documented policy, which corroborates what I’ve been told: that this is nearly universal, even if it’s only documented in some jurisdictions.
    - ftaghn 3y ago
      https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st... This went to court and the man who sued for discrimination lost his case. > -- A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city. > The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.
grecy 3y ago
> a BIG problem with how your cops are selected and trained. Police in the US have the least training of all Developed countries on Earth [1]. The results of less training are very clear. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733
brightlancer 3y ago
> I don't live in the US, but from abroad I can tell how messed up the police are over there. The number of stories of brutality, deaths and upright bullying of every day citizens... Yeah, you might not be getting a complete or accurate picture. The US is geographically huge and has a large, distributed, heterogeneous population. Be careful making broad generalizations about 330M people in 10s of thousands of cities, in 50 states across 3.5M square miles of land. Awful stuff happens sometimes. That doesn't mean it's the norm.
20after4 3y ago
The system is extremely corrupt and broken, from the very top (Supreme court, congress, president) all the way to the bottom.
dang 3y ago
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. I'm sure you didn't intend it, but that's exactly what this leads to. Generic putdowns of other countries always do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bell-cot 3y ago

THIS. Hidebound and self-righteous idiots with badges would still be a massive problem, even if the most advanced tech they had was morse-code telegraphs and steel-tipped fountain pens.

hysan 3y ago

As an American, living abroad was one of the biggest eye opening experiences to seeing how messed up our law enforcement system is here. I don’t think it’s as much desensitization (which is part of it) as portraying law enforcement as “can do no wrong” heroes in our media and culture. It really skews public perception and results in a lot of people turning a blind eye… until they are the ones affected.

pyuser583 3y ago
As an American who lived abroad, I feel the opposite. Corruption is incredibly common overseas (yes, Europe too). Privacy laws regarding law enforcement are much worse. There’s a really good video on YouTube called “Never Talk To Police.” It’s a law professor and police officer explaining to law students why they should instruct their clients not to talk to police. The police officer compares American and foreign practices, and emphasizes US police use deception, but foreign police use force. I’m sure bad and good police agencies in America and abroad. The best PD I’ve interacted with is in a mid-sized UK city. The worst I’ve seen is in a major American city.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > The police officer compares American and foreign practices, and emphasizes US police use deception, but foreign police use force. Semi automatic deception that ranks the US 30 in term of death by police, in the middle of third world countries, far away from any developed countries
- simonjgreen 3y ago
  "American and foreign" - very binary isn't it?
  - semiquaver 3y ago
    Explicit comparisons between two things usually are.
elliekelly 3y ago
There are so many “copaganda” TV shows in the US it’s wild. I bet every American could easily name 10 off the top of their head and that wouldn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

kneebonian 3y ago

> I don't live in the US, but from abroad I can tell how messed up the police are over there. Translation I get all of my information about American policing through highly politicized and charged news storied that become stories only because they are exceptional and then feel justified passing judgment on an entire country that has 3 times the people and land as my country.

one_level_deep 3y ago
[dead]
locopati 3y ago
Okay. I'm an American citizen living in the States. Our policing systems are incredibly messed up and militarized.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  We have the most ethnically diverse population in the world. Blacks commit more than half of all US crime despite being a tenth of the population. We’re a gigantic state with both the least restrictive gun laws and the most permissive immigration laws in the world. No comparable nation not named China drives nearly as much as we do. To say our policing systems are bad is a smear on the hard-working men and women in those systems. The US simply has challenges that European nations do not have. You can (and maybe should) debate whether or not those challenges should be present in the first place but blaming those challenges on the police is just mean.
  - slater 3y ago
    > We have the most ethnically diverse population in the world Umm, no: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16/a-revealing-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/16...
Two4 3y ago
Translation translation: someone has leveled valid criticism about a nationwide problem in a country that propagandises itself to be the best in the world and I've drank the koolaid so now I need to be super touched about it

e40 3y ago

To me the bigger issue in this story is that the cops didn't use any common sense. I've read over and over again that intelligence is a disqualifying characteristic for being a LEO. They want people to follow orders and be a good partner (e.g., never go against what your partner says). My experience in CA since the 80's is that LEOs are very corrupt and really only care about their own. There are exceptions. I live in an unusual city, LEO-wise, but it is totally not the norm.

semiquaver 3y ago
This is unfortunately true. Police qualification tests have a maximum score above which you will not be selected (often this is unwritten). They actively select against intelligence above a certain level, probably for good reason: what’s wanted is people who will shut up and take orders.
- simonjgreen 3y ago
  Do you have a source for that?
  - semiquaver 3y ago
    Not a written one, this is coming from personal acquaintances involved in the police recruitment process. It looks like a sibling comment provided a source for a documented policy, which corroborates what I’ve been told: that this is nearly universal, even if it’s only documented in some jurisdictions.
  - ftaghn 3y ago
    https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st... This went to court and the man who sued for discrimination lost his case. > -- A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city. > The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

grecy 3y ago

> a BIG problem with how your cops are selected and trained. Police in the US have the least training of all Developed countries on Earth [1]. The results of less training are very clear. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733

brightlancer 3y ago

> I don't live in the US, but from abroad I can tell how messed up the police are over there. The number of stories of brutality, deaths and upright bullying of every day citizens... Yeah, you might not be getting a complete or accurate picture. The US is geographically huge and has a large, distributed, heterogeneous population. Be careful making broad generalizations about 330M people in 10s of thousands of cities, in 50 states across 3.5M square miles of land. Awful stuff happens sometimes. That doesn't mean it's the norm.

20after4 3y ago

The system is extremely corrupt and broken, from the very top (Supreme court, congress, president) all the way to the bottom.

dang 3y ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. I'm sure you didn't intend it, but that's exactly what this leads to. Generic putdowns of other countries always do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html