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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 w

by 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.
    - nemo 13y ago
      "Hardened" was the first term that jumped to mind, though the more I thought about this, and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response (it might be they were too harsh physically, but they had good reason to be physical, and the guy fully deserved to be arrested). While I feel bad for the guy for getting himself into trouble, we had a situation where a guy called 911, the first responders showed up, and the guy had such a sense of entitlement that he acted like he was still in charge of the situation, and because of that misbehaved in a few serious ways. Probably the fact that he was drunk played into his foolishness, but by his own account and the account of the police report, the cops had a drunk guy and his friend interfering with the first responders' work, the police asked them to step back, they were belligerent to the police about it and refused to step back, when the police tried to move him he resisted physically, so the cop put a lock on him, cuffed him, and arrested him. When a drunk is interfering with first responders, disobeying lawful orders, and physically resisting efforts to move out of the scene what else are they going to do? They ordered him to leave, he was belligerent, they pulled him away, he resisted, so they pinned him, cuffed him, and off to jail he went. Maybe they were too forceful, but all we have are the memories of the angry drunk guy prone to fits of screaming by his own account - no medical records or corroboration, and the cops actually made sure there was surveillance of the incident preserved. They treated him pretty harshly in the jail, but by his own account he was screaming and acting out. It's not a real shocker that the drunk screaming guy misbehaving in jail is going to suffer for it. There are legitimate cases of serious police abuses. This is more a case of a drunk fool getting himself in trouble by acting like an entitled clown and not complying with the officers' requests to give the first responders space to work. Even with his annotations, the police report shows what was missing from the story: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/779439/police_report_annotated.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/779439/police_report_ann...
      - jjoonathan 13y ago
        > and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response Wow. Are you and I reading the same report? I'm able to understand the police's motives, but that's the problem. It was reasonable for them to clear bystanders away from the EMTs, but it was unreasonable for them to resort to physical force so quickly after encountering hesitation that a) posed no threat to the EMTs and b) could have been easily addressed without violence. I don't think police SOP should be "1) make demand, 2) attack civilian that hesitates due to objections with demand." Some situations allow time for rational conversation, this was one of them, and the police rejected that possibility (which had a lower likelihood of resulting in bodies flying into the EMT's workspace) in favor of using force. Sgt. Espinoza used Woosley's passive insistence on getting his phone back, which explicitly did not interfere with the wellbeing of the patient or the actions of the EMTs, as a justification for employing violent compliance techniques. If Sgt E doubted W's ability to get his phone back without interfering (not unreasonable), he should have volunteered to do it on W's behalf rather than violently subduing him for what to me looks like entirely reasonable hesitation (reasonable in the moral sense, not in the maximize-probability-of-avoiding-arrest sense). Partensky's case is more difficult to assess without a video recording. It's conceivable that P's hesitation justified violent escalation (as opposed to a more rational but slower approach with higher P(success)) but I doubt it. > This is more a case of a drunk fool getting himself in trouble by acting like an entitled clown and not complying with the officers' requests to give the first responders space to work. It took two to tangle, and I believe the police were unambiguously in the wrong, whatever you think of W and P.
tptacek 13y ago
What you're saying about the pressures on police officers is true, but the conclusion you draw from it is not. It is not actually the case that police officers must be managed in such a way that their professionalism is degraded by contact with the worst parts of society. One can think of many kinds of management interventions that could mitigate this problem --- or, for that matter, read books about modern police patrolling and the day-to-day work life of police officers to see good ones already written down.
- cpach 13y ago
  I'm not sure what you're hinting at. Do you have any specific articles/books to recommend on this subject?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I liked Moskos "Cop In The Hood", as a quick easy read; a lot of the rest of what I've read are cop blog posts or policy papers. Two good example of problematic management techniques: * All-car patrols, where police officers are either locked into their squad cars or, if out of the car and not eating lunch, in some kind of scuffle, so that their only contact with the locals is bad. * Triage coverage, where units from all around the city are swung to hotspot areas in the city (in Chicago, for instance, alternately the west side or the south side), so nobody puts down roots with the community. There are others. A theme to all the recommendations I've heard is that they cost money. It costs money to allocate patrols so that officers can take the time to be on foot and retain the same neighborhood coverage they had before. It costs a lot of money to allocate enough officers to simultaneously and permanently cover the hotspot neighborhoods.
    - cpach 13y ago
      Interesting! Apparently I don’t read enough police blogs :) I’ve put the book on my ”to read” list.

by nemo 13y ago

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.
  - nemo 13y ago
    "Hardened" was the first term that jumped to mind, though the more I thought about this, and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response (it might be they were too harsh physically, but they had good reason to be physical, and the guy fully deserved to be arrested). While I feel bad for the guy for getting himself into trouble, we had a situation where a guy called 911, the first responders showed up, and the guy had such a sense of entitlement that he acted like he was still in charge of the situation, and because of that misbehaved in a few serious ways. Probably the fact that he was drunk played into his foolishness, but by his own account and the account of the police report, the cops had a drunk guy and his friend interfering with the first responders' work, the police asked them to step back, they were belligerent to the police about it and refused to step back, when the police tried to move him he resisted physically, so the cop put a lock on him, cuffed him, and arrested him. When a drunk is interfering with first responders, disobeying lawful orders, and physically resisting efforts to move out of the scene what else are they going to do? They ordered him to leave, he was belligerent, they pulled him away, he resisted, so they pinned him, cuffed him, and off to jail he went. Maybe they were too forceful, but all we have are the memories of the angry drunk guy prone to fits of screaming by his own account - no medical records or corroboration, and the cops actually made sure there was surveillance of the incident preserved. They treated him pretty harshly in the jail, but by his own account he was screaming and acting out. It's not a real shocker that the drunk screaming guy misbehaving in jail is going to suffer for it. There are legitimate cases of serious police abuses. This is more a case of a drunk fool getting himself in trouble by acting like an entitled clown and not complying with the officers' requests to give the first responders space to work. Even with his annotations, the police report shows what was missing from the story: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/779439/police_report_annotated.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/779439/police_report_ann...
    - jjoonathan 13y ago
      > and after reading the police report, the more I understand the police's motives and generally agree with their response Wow. Are you and I reading the same report? I'm able to understand the police's motives, but that's the problem. It was reasonable for them to clear bystanders away from the EMTs, but it was unreasonable for them to resort to physical force so quickly after encountering hesitation that a) posed no threat to the EMTs and b) could have been easily addressed without violence. I don't think police SOP should be "1) make demand, 2) attack civilian that hesitates due to objections with demand." Some situations allow time for rational conversation, this was one of them, and the police rejected that possibility (which had a lower likelihood of resulting in bodies flying into the EMT's workspace) in favor of using force. Sgt. Espinoza used Woosley's passive insistence on getting his phone back, which explicitly did not interfere with the wellbeing of the patient or the actions of the EMTs, as a justification for employing violent compliance techniques. If Sgt E doubted W's ability to get his phone back without interfering (not unreasonable), he should have volunteered to do it on W's behalf rather than violently subduing him for what to me looks like entirely reasonable hesitation (reasonable in the moral sense, not in the maximize-probability-of-avoiding-arrest sense). Partensky's case is more difficult to assess without a video recording. It's conceivable that P's hesitation justified violent escalation (as opposed to a more rational but slower approach with higher P(success)) but I doubt it. > This is more a case of a drunk fool getting himself in trouble by acting like an entitled clown and not complying with the officers' requests to give the first responders space to work. It took two to tangle, and I believe the police were unambiguously in the wrong, whatever you think of W and P.

tptacek 13y ago

What you're saying about the pressures on police officers is true, but the conclusion you draw from it is not. It is not actually the case that police officers must be managed in such a way that their professionalism is degraded by contact with the worst parts of society. One can think of many kinds of management interventions that could mitigate this problem --- or, for that matter, read books about modern police patrolling and the day-to-day work life of police officers to see good ones already written down.

cpach 13y ago
I'm not sure what you're hinting at. Do you have any specific articles/books to recommend on this subject?
- tptacek 13y ago
  I liked Moskos "Cop In The Hood", as a quick easy read; a lot of the rest of what I've read are cop blog posts or policy papers. Two good example of problematic management techniques: * All-car patrols, where police officers are either locked into their squad cars or, if out of the car and not eating lunch, in some kind of scuffle, so that their only contact with the locals is bad. * Triage coverage, where units from all around the city are swung to hotspot areas in the city (in Chicago, for instance, alternately the west side or the south side), so nobody puts down roots with the community. There are others. A theme to all the recommendations I've heard is that they cost money. It costs money to allocate patrols so that officers can take the time to be on foot and retain the same neighborhood coverage they had before. It costs a lot of money to allocate enough officers to simultaneously and permanently cover the hotspot neighborhoods.
  - cpach 13y ago
    Interesting! Apparently I don’t read enough police blogs :) I’ve put the book on my ”to read” list.