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Gonna give you guys a few quick blurbs. First, a chief of police was interviewed on CBS News a while back. He said there are thousands upon thousands of police

Gonna give you guys a few quick blurbs. First, a chief of police was interviewed on CBS News a while back. He said there are thousands upon thousands of police interactions with citizens every day but all anyone ever hears about is the one bad one that happened one time. Second, and this might sound off-topic but I hope you get my point. I was helping a guy move, a few months back, along with one of his friends who's a rookie cop. This took place over several days. Each day, we rode in a truck a coule of miles and, along the way, he would occasionally say, "Expired plates. Expired plates." cause we couldn't go a mile without him finding one. And not just by a month or so but, in one case it was almost a year. Which brought up racial profiling, as you could imagine. He said, "There is no race indicator on a radar gun." And "When I see something go wrong and I light it up, I can't tell who I'm pulling over, much less what race they are, until I get out of the car. And I don't care. You could look at my ticketing and arrests for the few months I've been on the job and say I do racial profiling cause most of them are [insert what you know it is] cause, from what I can tell, most of them do the things that get them tickets or arrested and put in jail." I think of that every time I see an article, here on HN, and the comments by people trying to blame the cops for everything as if they're against us. EDIT: As I pointed out, right away, the first two commenters entirely missed my point.

deleted 11y ago
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rosser 11y ago
We tend not to hear about the thousands of airline flights a day that don't crash, either. That doesn't mean for a second that we should just shrug and resign ourselves plane crashes. And even that analogy is flawed, because it's unambiguous that at least some of these "bad cop" interactions involve deliberate malfeasance on the part of the cop. When was the last time the pilot intentionally crashed their plane? It turns out, some cops are bad actors. They're the ones we should be hearing about. And we should also be hearing about it when their departments pull shit like TFA: firing the investigator who says their shoots were bad, for not altering his findings to suit their narrative.
- happyscrappy 11y ago
  >When was the last time the pilot intentionally crashed their plane? Germanwings not long ago.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    bad rhetorical question, but valid point.
dragontamer 11y ago
I've got cops in my Family... and any cop will tell you that bad cops exist. Only with proper independent review panels can justice be served against a bad cop. I'm not necessarily "anti-cop", but I know the importance of a robust cop investigation unit.
- mbrameld 11y ago
  If your cop family members are aware of bad cops but do nothing about it then they are bad cops too.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    What specifically should they do?
    - mbrameld 11y ago
      They should do exactly what they would do if it were a non-LEO breaking the law in front of them: arrest them.
    - ionised 11y ago
      Can't they report them? Investigate them? There's no reason to be loyal to corrupt and dangerous indiviuals that are supposed to be trusted public servants.
    - darkcube 11y ago
      ...band together with the other "good cops", quit their jobs, and create that "robust independent police review board" ?
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    Erm... like support a robust independent police review board? Did you even read my post?
- ossreality 11y ago
  Oh, so now your disgusting defense of cop pride as an excuse for them shooting us makes total sense.
deleted 11y ago
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mikeash 11y ago
What is your point, exactly? That we blow police misbehavior out of proportion? That systematic racial discrimination is OK because black people are the ones committing crimes anyway?
- dragontamer 11y ago
  Erm, no. He's making a pro-cop argument. You are the one bringing up the race card. The fact remains: cops (and cop supporters) are proud and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think if people portrayed the arguments and problems with cops in a way that cops (and cop supporters) can keep their pride... life is going to be a lot better. At the end of the day, Cops have more pride in their work than other government workers (compared to... say... Motor Vehicle Administrations or TSA Airport scanners). When you push on Cops, they push back because of their pride. But its not necessarily a bad thing. You just gotta keep the pride in mind when you propose police reform. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to get the individual officers to reform with the law.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    "You could look at my ticketing and arrests for the few months I've been on the job and say I do racial profiling cause most of them are [insert what you know it is] cause, from what I can tell, most of them do the things that get them tickets or arrested and put in jail." I am not the one who brought up race.
    - dragontamer 11y ago
      Point. But in any case, Police pride is a real thing and you need to account for it in your arguments. Otherwise, actual police reform becomes impossible.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        I don't really care to coddle the people we entrust with the guns. If their feelings are so easily hurt, then we should fire the lot of them and find new ones who can withstand some words. I don't think the police actually are this way, not most of them. But if they were, then the answer would be to start over from a clean slate, not try to work around their delicate feelings.
colechristensen 11y ago
Police profile cars. That is, in edge cases like a bit of swerving, 10 over the limit, newly expired tags, etc; police will look at the car and what they can tell about who is driving it and where they are to determine if they pull over or not. A cop told me this directly. I don't remember his exact conditions – but they included things like a young guy driving a real nice car or a car that seem like maybe it was his mother's or a really beat up car. You're a lot less likely to get pulled over if you're driving a mid-priced sedan. --- In America police kill about 1000 people per year. There's no hard number because there are no official statistics kept – that's telling in itself. Thousands and thousands of police interactions each day, and each day about three of those ends up with somebody dead. The police in this country are undertrained and underpaid. The stupidity of the populace drives them to be statistics driven, and the environment attracts hot heads who want power to the career. Once on the job the complete lack of negative feedback from internal investigations and the courts gives them god complexes and their culture becomes a cesspool of corruption and us vs. them mentality.
- justwannasing 11y ago
  Of the thousand killed by cop, how many were holding a gun to the head of someone, or came out shooting before that happened?
  - rosser 11y ago
    I'll bet you the cash I have on my person that there were more unarmed people in that thousand than had a gun to someone's head.
    - justwannasing 11y ago
      I'll bet you cash on my person that there were more people doing bad things to innocent people during these events.
      - rosser 11y ago
        ...which means they should get shot by a cop? I don't think that's how "criminal justice" is supposed to work.
shkkmo 11y ago
Yes, there are certainly good cops. Is anyone disputing that? The guy who was fired seem like he was one of them. However, there are also problems with the ways in which cops are help responsible for their actions. This allows the bad and not-so-good cops to keep being cops. The article is pointing out a problem with how this accountability is implemented in Chicago. So what is your point exactly?
jsight 11y ago
> EDIT: As I pointed out, right away, the first two commenters entirely missed my point. Could you clarify what that point is exactly? As written, you seem to be saying that identifying bad actors from good actors is extremely difficult due to other factors. I agree with that if that is the point you are making. I think there is something else here too, though?
fweespeech 11y ago
> I think of that every time I see an article, here on HN, and the comments by people trying to blame the cops for everything as if they're against us. You are aware this is an article where the cops fired someone specifically because he said cops were at fault in numerous incidents? This is basically a case of the police firing the auditor who found their mistakes because "he found too many".
serge2k 11y ago
There is no race indicator on a radar gun, but you can still let the white guy or the pretty girl off easy.
projectileboy 11y ago
I don't think anyone would deny that being a police officer is a difficult job. But I'm not sure how you can deny that there exists a serious problem when you compare the number of people who are killed by police in the U.S. every year against the number of police in the U.S. that are convicted of a crime for their actions. Doesn't it make you curious that the police in other western countries don't seem to have anywhere near the same number of killings per capita?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

rosser 11y ago

We tend not to hear about the thousands of airline flights a day that don't crash, either. That doesn't mean for a second that we should just shrug and resign ourselves plane crashes. And even that analogy is flawed, because it's unambiguous that at least some of these "bad cop" interactions involve deliberate malfeasance on the part of the cop. When was the last time the pilot intentionally crashed their plane? It turns out, some cops are bad actors. They're the ones we should be hearing about. And we should also be hearing about it when their departments pull shit like TFA: firing the investigator who says their shoots were bad, for not altering his findings to suit their narrative.

happyscrappy 11y ago
>When was the last time the pilot intentionally crashed their plane? Germanwings not long ago.
- knodi123 11y ago
  bad rhetorical question, but valid point.

dragontamer 11y ago

I've got cops in my Family... and any cop will tell you that bad cops exist. Only with proper independent review panels can justice be served against a bad cop. I'm not necessarily "anti-cop", but I know the importance of a robust cop investigation unit.

mbrameld 11y ago
If your cop family members are aware of bad cops but do nothing about it then they are bad cops too.
- afarrell 11y ago
  What specifically should they do?
  - mbrameld 11y ago
    They should do exactly what they would do if it were a non-LEO breaking the law in front of them: arrest them.
  - ionised 11y ago
    Can't they report them? Investigate them? There's no reason to be loyal to corrupt and dangerous indiviuals that are supposed to be trusted public servants.
  - darkcube 11y ago
    ...band together with the other "good cops", quit their jobs, and create that "robust independent police review board" ?
- dragontamer 11y ago
  Erm... like support a robust independent police review board? Did you even read my post?
ossreality 11y ago
Oh, so now your disgusting defense of cop pride as an excuse for them shooting us makes total sense.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mikeash 11y ago

What is your point, exactly? That we blow police misbehavior out of proportion? That systematic racial discrimination is OK because black people are the ones committing crimes anyway?

dragontamer 11y ago
Erm, no. He's making a pro-cop argument. You are the one bringing up the race card. The fact remains: cops (and cop supporters) are proud and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think if people portrayed the arguments and problems with cops in a way that cops (and cop supporters) can keep their pride... life is going to be a lot better. At the end of the day, Cops have more pride in their work than other government workers (compared to... say... Motor Vehicle Administrations or TSA Airport scanners). When you push on Cops, they push back because of their pride. But its not necessarily a bad thing. You just gotta keep the pride in mind when you propose police reform. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to get the individual officers to reform with the law.
- mikeash 11y ago
  "You could look at my ticketing and arrests for the few months I've been on the job and say I do racial profiling cause most of them are [insert what you know it is] cause, from what I can tell, most of them do the things that get them tickets or arrested and put in jail." I am not the one who brought up race.
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    Point. But in any case, Police pride is a real thing and you need to account for it in your arguments. Otherwise, actual police reform becomes impossible.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      I don't really care to coddle the people we entrust with the guns. If their feelings are so easily hurt, then we should fire the lot of them and find new ones who can withstand some words. I don't think the police actually are this way, not most of them. But if they were, then the answer would be to start over from a clean slate, not try to work around their delicate feelings.

colechristensen 11y ago

Police profile cars. That is, in edge cases like a bit of swerving, 10 over the limit, newly expired tags, etc; police will look at the car and what they can tell about who is driving it and where they are to determine if they pull over or not. A cop told me this directly. I don't remember his exact conditions – but they included things like a young guy driving a real nice car or a car that seem like maybe it was his mother's or a really beat up car. You're a lot less likely to get pulled over if you're driving a mid-priced sedan. --- In America police kill about 1000 people per year. There's no hard number because there are no official statistics kept – that's telling in itself. Thousands and thousands of police interactions each day, and each day about three of those ends up with somebody dead. The police in this country are undertrained and underpaid. The stupidity of the populace drives them to be statistics driven, and the environment attracts hot heads who want power to the career. Once on the job the complete lack of negative feedback from internal investigations and the courts gives them god complexes and their culture becomes a cesspool of corruption and us vs. them mentality.

justwannasing 11y ago
Of the thousand killed by cop, how many were holding a gun to the head of someone, or came out shooting before that happened?
- rosser 11y ago
  I'll bet you the cash I have on my person that there were more unarmed people in that thousand than had a gun to someone's head.
  - justwannasing 11y ago
    I'll bet you cash on my person that there were more people doing bad things to innocent people during these events.
    - rosser 11y ago
      ...which means they should get shot by a cop? I don't think that's how "criminal justice" is supposed to work.

shkkmo 11y ago

Yes, there are certainly good cops. Is anyone disputing that? The guy who was fired seem like he was one of them. However, there are also problems with the ways in which cops are help responsible for their actions. This allows the bad and not-so-good cops to keep being cops. The article is pointing out a problem with how this accountability is implemented in Chicago. So what is your point exactly?

jsight 11y ago

> EDIT: As I pointed out, right away, the first two commenters entirely missed my point. Could you clarify what that point is exactly? As written, you seem to be saying that identifying bad actors from good actors is extremely difficult due to other factors. I agree with that if that is the point you are making. I think there is something else here too, though?

fweespeech 11y ago

> I think of that every time I see an article, here on HN, and the comments by people trying to blame the cops for everything as if they're against us. You are aware this is an article where the cops fired someone specifically because he said cops were at fault in numerous incidents? This is basically a case of the police firing the auditor who found their mistakes because "he found too many".

serge2k 11y ago

There is no race indicator on a radar gun, but you can still let the white guy or the pretty girl off easy.

projectileboy 11y ago

I don't think anyone would deny that being a police officer is a difficult job. But I'm not sure how you can deny that there exists a serious problem when you compare the number of people who are killed by police in the U.S. every year against the number of police in the U.S. that are convicted of a crime for their actions. Doesn't it make you curious that the police in other western countries don't seem to have anywhere near the same number of killings per capita?