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And yet your reply condones the violence and abuse of authority. Why is that? Here's the basic rule: as a police officer, you must be polite, fair, kind, and

And yet your reply condones the violence and abuse of authority. Why is that? Here's the basic rule: as a police officer, you must be polite, fair, kind, and law-abiding, even if the public you deal with is rude, nasty, entitled, somewhat drunk, and otherwise unpleasant. Period. If you can't do that, you're in the wrong profession. And if the profession permits people who can't do that, the profession has systemic issues that need to be corrected.

rayiner 13y ago
Asserting that the reaction was predictable and in some sense understandable isn't the same as condoning it. This is the real world, and it's unavoidable that the sorts of people who are going to sign up to police the streets in the face of aggressive hobos and violent gang-bangers aren't going to be the most staid and self-controlled.
diminoten 13y ago
I disagree. As a police officer, you must be fair and law-abiding. Why must they be kind and polite?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Because one of the key challenges of law enforcement is securing community cooperation. Law enforcement cannot be effective when hey are seen by the community as a hostile gang of thugs, and politeness is just a name for adherence to social standards than signal that you are part of the community and not a hostile outsider.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    Sometimes, yes. Other times, such as when a robbery is in progress, or when an accident has just occurred and you've arrived on the scene, polite and kind aren't very important. Fair and law-abiding become much more important in these situations. Once the danger has passed, kind and polite can be important again.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
nemo 13y ago
If you walk in the street you might get hit by a car. I don't condone a driver hitting you, but reality is what it is. Cops have to constantly deal with the worst elements of society doing the worst things imaginable. It'd be great if they didn't get hardened, but the reality is they often do. Expecting cops to be polite and kind to the drug addicted guy beating his wife because she isn't turning enough tricks to support his habit is probably an unreasonable expectation. Until we've fixed society, cops aren't going to change.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  > It'd be great if they didn't get hardened "Hardened" suggests the officers are immune to bullshit. The officers' behavior suggests the exact opposite.
  - nemo 13y ago
    Hardened has nothing to do with being immune to BS. It means that they adopt the mindset needed to do a job that involves potentially getting killed, potentially dealing with murders, murderers, rapists, and similar things that require hardening psychologically to handle working with. That mindset doesn't make them immune to BS, it makes them able to do their job. It also makes them the kind of person you don't want to have interactions with professionally, so if they tell you to leave an area, you leave the area and don't linger and piss them off pointlessly. Hanging out and obstructing/distracting them from their work is the kind of BS they have no tolerance for, which is what the guy in this article was doing out of mind-bogglingly profound ignorance.
    - jjoonathan 13y ago
      Then how about we call it "oversensitized" or "embrittled" instead of "hardened"? They are far more fitting terms for what you just described. Not only is the "Colonel Jessup hypothesis" total baloney (note how the deputy at the end saw what happened as the mark of a rookie), but accepting it glorifies moral failure and belittles the efforts of officers who have managed to develop a thick hide along with the integrity to judiciously wield the authority they have been given.

rayiner 13y ago

Asserting that the reaction was predictable and in some sense understandable isn't the same as condoning it. This is the real world, and it's unavoidable that the sorts of people who are going to sign up to police the streets in the face of aggressive hobos and violent gang-bangers aren't going to be the most staid and self-controlled.

diminoten 13y ago

I disagree. As a police officer, you must be fair and law-abiding. Why must they be kind and polite?

dragonwriter 13y ago
Because one of the key challenges of law enforcement is securing community cooperation. Law enforcement cannot be effective when hey are seen by the community as a hostile gang of thugs, and politeness is just a name for adherence to social standards than signal that you are part of the community and not a hostile outsider.
- diminoten 13y ago
  Sometimes, yes. Other times, such as when a robbery is in progress, or when an accident has just occurred and you've arrived on the scene, polite and kind aren't very important. Fair and law-abiding become much more important in these situations. Once the danger has passed, kind and polite can be important again.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

nemo 13y ago

If you walk in the street you might get hit by a car. I don't condone a driver hitting you, but reality is what it is. Cops have to constantly deal with the worst elements of society doing the worst things imaginable. It'd be great if they didn't get hardened, but the reality is they often do. Expecting cops to be polite and kind to the drug addicted guy beating his wife because she isn't turning enough tricks to support his habit is probably an unreasonable expectation. Until we've fixed society, cops aren't going to change.

jjoonathan 13y ago
> It'd be great if they didn't get hardened "Hardened" suggests the officers are immune to bullshit. The officers' behavior suggests the exact opposite.
- nemo 13y ago
  Hardened has nothing to do with being immune to BS. It means that they adopt the mindset needed to do a job that involves potentially getting killed, potentially dealing with murders, murderers, rapists, and similar things that require hardening psychologically to handle working with. That mindset doesn't make them immune to BS, it makes them able to do their job. It also makes them the kind of person you don't want to have interactions with professionally, so if they tell you to leave an area, you leave the area and don't linger and piss them off pointlessly. Hanging out and obstructing/distracting them from their work is the kind of BS they have no tolerance for, which is what the guy in this article was doing out of mind-bogglingly profound ignorance.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    Then how about we call it "oversensitized" or "embrittled" instead of "hardened"? They are far more fitting terms for what you just described. Not only is the "Colonel Jessup hypothesis" total baloney (note how the deputy at the end saw what happened as the mark of a rookie), but accepting it glorifies moral failure and belittles the efforts of officers who have managed to develop a thick hide along with the integrity to judiciously wield the authority they have been given.