2 ms·

Police in the US are way too quick to handcuff people. It should be reserved for violent or aggressive suspects, or at least require formal justification as is

Police in the US are way too quick to handcuff people. It should be reserved for violent or aggressive suspects, or at least require formal justification as is required in much of Europe. Police here will take a calm and cooperative person and rob them of their most fundamental human right, merely as a convenience.

scotty79 1y ago
It's hard to tell if handling cooperative person in handcuffs is more convenient than without handcuffs.
- standardUser 1y ago
  No one is cooperating once they are cuffed if they have one iota of sense. Suddenly, the state is their enemy and their only concern should be contacting a lawyer.
toasted-subs 1y ago
[flagged]
14 1y ago
I do see there undoubtedly is a lot of crazy policing happening but I also am sure a lot of it is because those types of incidents are what get the views. I know there are countless police interactions where they are kind and chill but that is boring to watch. Not saying the violence should get a pass just that I believe there are many good officers out there that do address issues calmly and are not quick to jump someone.
flowerthoughts 1y ago
I saw a body cam video on Youtube yesterday (which wasn't outrageous, so I doubt it was one of the fake ones.) It might have been edited to seem more out-of-line than it was, but I don't think it matters. In it, a wife had died in the shower, and the husband and his father had been inside the house while the shower was on, but "had not talked to her." Naturally, suspicions arose and they wanted to talk more to the husband, but the way the officers continued to rile up the father, who was probably in chock after finding out his son might be a murderer, was just pure unprofessionalism. They could have taken a step back, or avoided being four officers against one father, or any other obvious technique to de-escalate, but nope. Just continue pushing, arguing and believing that "doing our job" never means re-assessing the approach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVo8PRRkWHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVo8PRRkWHc Edit: spelling
NooneAtAll3 1y ago
such procedures don't appear from thin air - they indicate low trust toward citizens (or at least the worst cases of them) whether in the present, or in the past
southernplaces7 1y ago
Be very careful to consider the possibility of selection bias at work. More interactions with police than ever gain media attention, social media virality and this especially applies to the cases where the encounter is recorded on video (increasingly common due to body and phone cams too). It's become more easy than ever to do such a thing and Of these, guess which ones get the most media exposure. The dramatic ones, either with police aggression or aggression from the civilian in the encounter. But even all of these that emerge in a given year taken together amount to only a minuscule fraction of the likely millions of times per year in which police talk to people or question them with nothing but boring civility all around. Even if we account for a certain percentage of police encounters with unwarranted police aggression not being reported or going viral, it would still be a tiny minority compared to the vast majority that go the other way. I mention this because just the other day in a YT documentary I saw about a woman who disappeared under an air of mystery (link below for the curious) and it incidentally showed body cam footage of her own interaction under unusual circumstances with a police officer who could have easily been much more suspicious considering how he found her shortly before she disappeared, for reasons unrelated to that cop. It was the picture of politeness. Because the focus of the documentary wasn't highlighting police aggression, it gave a glimpse into how many recorded police encounters go in situations where they don't later become the focus of social media threads about bad cops. None of the above is to excuse cops acting badly, or excuse how often they get used for shitty, pseudo-authoritarian social control, or to claim that they don't have too much authority to get away with it when it does happen, but it's useful for perspective on how often these things happen and how likely they really are for most normal contexts (you not being someone doing something notably obnoxious, not being in situations where you're likely to interact with especially suspicious cops, etc) Also, i'm sort of excluding ICE from the above. At least lately, those guys seem to be pervasive dicks by wide mandate in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r8txP3aqmQ&t=4346s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r8txP3aqmQ&t=4346s
- standardUser 1y ago
  I'm not reading that, but I know many people who have been handcuffed and detained for non-violent, non-aggressive transgressions. It is normal operating procedure in the US (but not the rest of the Western world).

scotty79 1y ago

It's hard to tell if handling cooperative person in handcuffs is more convenient than without handcuffs.

standardUser 1y ago
No one is cooperating once they are cuffed if they have one iota of sense. Suddenly, the state is their enemy and their only concern should be contacting a lawyer.

toasted-subs 1y ago

[flagged]

14 1y ago

I do see there undoubtedly is a lot of crazy policing happening but I also am sure a lot of it is because those types of incidents are what get the views. I know there are countless police interactions where they are kind and chill but that is boring to watch. Not saying the violence should get a pass just that I believe there are many good officers out there that do address issues calmly and are not quick to jump someone.

flowerthoughts 1y ago

I saw a body cam video on Youtube yesterday (which wasn't outrageous, so I doubt it was one of the fake ones.) It might have been edited to seem more out-of-line than it was, but I don't think it matters. In it, a wife had died in the shower, and the husband and his father had been inside the house while the shower was on, but "had not talked to her." Naturally, suspicions arose and they wanted to talk more to the husband, but the way the officers continued to rile up the father, who was probably in chock after finding out his son might be a murderer, was just pure unprofessionalism. They could have taken a step back, or avoided being four officers against one father, or any other obvious technique to de-escalate, but nope. Just continue pushing, arguing and believing that "doing our job" never means re-assessing the approach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVo8PRRkWHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVo8PRRkWHc Edit: spelling

NooneAtAll3 1y ago

such procedures don't appear from thin air - they indicate low trust toward citizens (or at least the worst cases of them) whether in the present, or in the past

southernplaces7 1y ago

Be very careful to consider the possibility of selection bias at work. More interactions with police than ever gain media attention, social media virality and this especially applies to the cases where the encounter is recorded on video (increasingly common due to body and phone cams too). It's become more easy than ever to do such a thing and Of these, guess which ones get the most media exposure. The dramatic ones, either with police aggression or aggression from the civilian in the encounter. But even all of these that emerge in a given year taken together amount to only a minuscule fraction of the likely millions of times per year in which police talk to people or question them with nothing but boring civility all around. Even if we account for a certain percentage of police encounters with unwarranted police aggression not being reported or going viral, it would still be a tiny minority compared to the vast majority that go the other way. I mention this because just the other day in a YT documentary I saw about a woman who disappeared under an air of mystery (link below for the curious) and it incidentally showed body cam footage of her own interaction under unusual circumstances with a police officer who could have easily been much more suspicious considering how he found her shortly before she disappeared, for reasons unrelated to that cop. It was the picture of politeness. Because the focus of the documentary wasn't highlighting police aggression, it gave a glimpse into how many recorded police encounters go in situations where they don't later become the focus of social media threads about bad cops. None of the above is to excuse cops acting badly, or excuse how often they get used for shitty, pseudo-authoritarian social control, or to claim that they don't have too much authority to get away with it when it does happen, but it's useful for perspective on how often these things happen and how likely they really are for most normal contexts (you not being someone doing something notably obnoxious, not being in situations where you're likely to interact with especially suspicious cops, etc) Also, i'm sort of excluding ICE from the above. At least lately, those guys seem to be pervasive dicks by wide mandate in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r8txP3aqmQ&t=4346s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r8txP3aqmQ&t=4346s

standardUser 1y ago
I'm not reading that, but I know many people who have been handcuffed and detained for non-violent, non-aggressive transgressions. It is normal operating procedure in the US (but not the rest of the Western world).