Police and Society in America

I apologise in advance for vanity and that this not being as organized as it could be. For the past several days I've been adding things to this, starting with a comment I made on another thread so it's a little disjointed.

We've all seen a lot of noise in the news about 'police brutality'. Some of it is legitmate, some of it is just rabble-rousing by professional agitators and racists. Many discussions have been held here on FR about the validity and lack of same on each of the various situations. I've been trying to think about what is really going on behind everything we are seeing in the news, and in discussion forums such as this. I'd like to state up front that some of this may very well come off as an anti-police screed. That is honestly not what is intended, although I'll mention up front that I'm more concered about what I'm seeing than not. I'm trying to step back and look at this from a little further back than the day-to-day stories.

I think that what we're actually seeing is the result of several policies and circumstances that are all coming together at once.

First, The vast majority of cops have become not much more than tax collectors for the police/welfare state. For most of us, the only interactions we have with police is when they pull us over for some alleged driving violation . In those situations, because they often use them as the pretext for more revenue generation against a soft, safe target, our perception of police has become more and more averse to having any interaction at all with them. The mantra of "don't talk to police" is not just a good idea, it is excellent advise. The fact that it is such good advise is something that does not bode us well as a country.

Second, you have the ever-increasing militarization of the police. The proliferation of "SWAT" teams with military hardware helps to reinforce the "us vs. them" perceptions amongst both the police and the citizens. Of course, once you have a swat team with all their fun toys to play with, you have to actually use them or people will question the legitimacy of the need. What the police tend to forget is that if you dress up and equip yourself like an occupying army, people will begin to percieve you as an occupying army, and rightfully so. On a personal note, anyone who invades my home wearing a mask is a target, I don't care what logo they have on their jackets.

We've seen many, many times that these SWAT raids were based on really flimsy evidence of either wrongdoing or danger, and in many of these situations not even the bare minumum of what we all probably think of as basic police work is done beforehand, such as actually verifying that they are about to storm into the wrong address in an adreneline-infused cloud of smoke and sound. One question seldom actually asked by the media is "why the heck do you need a bunch of people breaking into someone's house at 3AM to serve a warrant?" I think that most people would agree that in a civilized country, a warrant is served by a knock on the door at a reasonable hour by officers in proper uniforms. These ninja raids all the flash-bangs and screaming is not what I, or many others expect out of our civilian police forces.

Let's also look at the word 'civilian' for a second. I believe this is one of the terms that has been introduced at some time in the past by some training organization used to train new recruits. I'd really love to know where it started, because it has become a tool to divide the citizens of this country from the police that are supposed to be working for them and their welfare. The fact is, unless you're under the authority of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, you are a civilian. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a shiny badge. If you'd like to be under the UCMJ, I'd suggest a visit to your local Army/Navy/Marine/Airforce/Coast Guard recruiting station. Perhaps they can hook you up.

It is this artificial division between police officers and the rest of the civilian population is a source of friction, and as most will be aware, any time you have friction, it generates heat. Attempts on the part of the police to divide themselves from the community they serve means there is one less bit of connection between the two whereby we can work together.

Third, there is the issue of the proliferation of video cameras. It hasn't quite sunk into the powers that be yet, that these things are a double-edged sword. Yes, they are very useful for the police state to keep their supposed subjects in line. On the other hand, it is providing those same subjects with the ability to expose the actions of the state to a world-wide audience almost immediately. Gone are the days when it will be easy for an officer to cover his actions by saying he was attacked, then the video clearly shows this was not the case. On the other hand, it's going to make it a lot more difficult for someone to claim an officer violated his rights in some way, when the camera clearly shows that it is not true.

A related thing I believe we'll be seeing in legal proceedings in the future is that lack of video evidence is going to hurt prosecution in some cases. This is especially true in those circumstances that video evidence is routinely collected. Saying "I forgot to turn the camera on", is going to be as good as an admission of guilt to some jurors. I know that for myself, any such admission will make anything the officer says be viewed with suspicion. In such a circumstance, if it is a "he said she said" situation between the cop and a citizen, I'll believe the citizen over a cop, all else being equal. I believe this particular stance will become more prevalent as time goes on. Officers beware: the days of 'testilying' without consequence are coming to an end.

Another aspect is that people are really bad about taking a few datapoints and extrapolating risks from them. For instance, if you ask your average person about paedophiles. Are they more prevalent today than in, say the 50s? Most people would instinctively say that it is much worse today than 60 or so years ago. The problem with that perception is that it is simply not true. People think the same thing about violence in general and murder in particular, and again, both are dramatically down in both overall and relative numbers.

Why this perception then? I think it's the 24-hour news cycle. Both the evening news (who actually watches that these days?), and the rest of the news-gathering apparatus has a voracious hunger for stuff to fill time, pages, and websites. So, what would have just been a local story 50 years ago is a national one today. You take all those local-now-national stories and add them together and it leads to a misperception that these things are happening much more often than they used to.

The societal implications of this are almost uniformly bad IMO. Because people think there is an epidemic of crime paedophilia, or whatever, they are willing to let the powers that be use much more coercive methods to 'deal' with it than they migt otherwise.

The same thing goes to a great degree with the whole 'police violence' meme, in that things that would have been a local story are now national, thus confounding people's perceptions of reality. On the other hand, this drumbeat affects police in the same way. They are led to believe that their job is much more dangerous than it actually is, (if they want actual danger, they could try being a lumberjack or commercial fisherman) and react to that situation in a way that seems appropriate to them. Unfortunately this reaction sets up a feedback loop when dealing with citizens that is definitely not positive. Now, you add in 'policing for profit', and the general up-arming of police forces (even little podunk ones) nationwide, and you have a recipe for increasingly negative confrontations with citizens, which will in turn reinforce any negative attitudes they may have.

I'd be really interested in seeing stats on police killing dogs over the past 40-50 years to see if it really is something that is increasing (seemingly) exponentially, or if it's that local-to-national thing. I've never seen numbers on this, so I just really don't know, but it concerns me because it points to an unnecessary escalation of force that will ultimately end badly for us all.

One interesting thing I've noticed is that government in general is completely besotted with the idea of gathering statistical data about just about everything. Everything, that is, except those things that could somehow embarass them. With all the data government demands of us, I find it hard to believe that noone in the government is interested in collecting and classifying incidents where an officer fires a gun. I know that in most departments there is a fair amount of paperwork to file when a shot is fired. Why do they seem not to then care to make use of that information?

Fourth, you have what appears to be an absolute institutional failure of police organizations to police themselves. We often hear about the 1% that makes the rest look bad, but then we see that even in the most obviously egregious circumstances, that the "thin blue line" closes ranks to protect their own despite the massive damage this kind of stuff does to the perceptions of the public.

For years, your average American was fed a steady diet of the propaganda about 'officer friendly'. He's just here to help, and spends the majority of his days rescuing kittens from trees. For some areas, that had the benefit of being largely true, but it has never been true universally, nor for all people. A black man passing through some parts of the country could find himself running afoul of 'officer friendly' just for being who he was, and where he happened to be at the moment. For that matter, so could a white kid who happens to do something that rubs the officer the wrong way. This is not just a black/white thing, though the historic record on such things isn't good. While this historical record may not really have as much relevance to the here and now, it does provide a backdrop to folk's perceptions.

In times past, each of these interactions were isolated incidents that rarely were brought to the attention of the population at large, who figured, based on their own experiences with these same officers, that the 'miscreant' had done something to bring down the ire of the police upon him. It always came down to essentially the officer's word against a citizen's. Nowdays, we have cameras that are able to record the incident, and show where the fault really lies. This tends to undercut that whole 'officer friendly' meme, because one bad interaction can counteract a whole handful of positive ones. Couple that, with the fact that these kinds of incidents are quckly available to a worldwide audience, and you'll find that the erosion to the meme has reached a point that it is going to be really difficult to sell it to the populace at large again. Retail establishments know how quickly years of efforts in building goodwill can be lost quickly. They see it in their balance sheets, and have seen how once incident, that may very well have not even really been their fault, can cause a lot of goodwill to evaporate overnight.

Goodwill is actually an interesting item on a corporate balance sheet. I ran into it years ago when the company I worked for was in the process of a merger with another company. It is something that is hard-won, and apparently can actually be calculated, at least in some measures. It is certainly not something that can be taken for granted. Right now, police organizations around the country have a great deal of inherited goodwill. Whether rightfully earned or not, it's a bankable asset, that once spent is hard to regain. At the same time, there has also been a fair amount of bad will that is crowing like a cancer, and is as hard to deal with, which is something I know of by personal experience.

Sometimes it doesn't take much to generate goodwill in a community. In the police department for the town in which I live, until he retired, the police chief would run a class for folks interested in getting a concealed carry license that was completely free for local residents. He did this because he believes very stronly that the citizens of his town are his backup, and his officer's backup. He believed in the 2nd Amendment (obviously-though he and I had differences as to its limits), and that self-defense was also an inalienable right of all citizens. We had local organizations that had some training in emergency response, so that as citizens we would be involved and available to help both them and ourselves. I really like the guy, and the vast majority of his officers. His philosophy was very much based around the community and its citizens, not as subjects, but as working parners to help everyone in case something came up that needed it. Personally, I the way he ran his department was a credit to him and the community as well. Folks who got hired on, who thought revenue generation and confrontation was a big part of their job, were counseled, and if they couldn't adjust their thinking, they were encouraged to apply elsewhere.

They say 'the fish rots from the top', well the opposite is true as well, and he generated quite a lot of local goodwill that came to his aid when local politicos had some stupid ideas about outsourcing police functions to a bigger town in the area. Unfortunately for us, he has retired, and was replaced by someone I do not yet know that had roots in a three-letter agency that shall, for now, remain nameless. I'll be interested in seeing if he's able to maintain the goodwill he inherited.

Fifth, you also have current police training methods which (IMO) overly emphasise "officer safety" to the point that in any interaction with the public, the officer in question will often be perceived as being overly jumpy and confrontational for a situation that simply does not warrant it. If you want to experience this really up close and personal yourself, the next time you're pulled over by a cop as politely as you can, inform him that you will be taking full advantage of the 4th and 5th amendments rights guaranteed you under the Constitution, and you'll see how well that plays. Unless you are very, very lucky, it will probably work out well for you, and I'm not just talking about the hassle of getting a ticket, which is really just nothing more than a tax on those unlucky enough to have been pulled over.

Into this, I'd probably roll in the apparent and very real problem of use of anabolic steroids amongst police. Much of the evidence for this appears to me to be largely anecdotal, but though enough conversations about it folks who I both trust, and should know leads me to believe that it is a bigger problem than most folks are aware of. Many folks on steroids have serious anger management issues as a side effect. This is a dangerous thing to have for someone in this profession. It's a contributing factor in how quickly incidencts that could have been handled civilly had cooler heads prevailed can escalate into confrontations involving unnecessary force.

You take all of the above, and throw in the fact that there are folks out there whose entire existance is based on their ability to stir people up and rabble-rouse and you have an interesting mixture that ultimately will not end well. Then, as the icing on the cake, you have the globalists who hate the idea of local control of anything, who are pushing the idea of nationalizing police forces. These people are truely dangerous. Even more so than professional racists like Sharpton and company.

Personally, I think the police are generally walking down a road that they can ill afford to travel, because it is much more difficult to re-establish trust once the perception that it has been broken sets in. As tension mounts between police and your average citizens, they find that it greatly affects their ability to do their jobs. Right now, working as a cop in some areas can be difficult because of that lack of trust that exists, for whatever historical reasons. Extrapolate that to the entire population, and you have a real problem. Those who will make any excuse for cops behaving badly are really doing them no favors at all.

I say this because ultimately, those involved in the administration of justice in this nation depend very heavily on the cooperation and assistance of your average citizen to do their job. When that cooperation ceases, the situation can quickly go from bad to worse for both sides.

We already see gross examples of how "justice" is administered differently to cops than it is to anyone else. The article referenced in this thread is an excellent example of this. If you think that your average Joe Citizen would just walk after threatening someone with a firearm and then assaulting them, you are delusional. At the very least, he'd be charged with assault, and have to deal with the entire legal process that surrounds that. He might possibly beat the rap, but wouldn't be able to beat the ride.

It is this exact kind of circumstance that leads to people to see that "some animals are more equal than others", and they resent it. Justifiably so. Many of us understand the concept that with great power comes great responsibility. What we are seeing, howerver is that there is no accountability for your actions if you're a part of one of the protected classes, like cops, politicians, or other agent of the state.

Acton was wrong when he said that "power corrupts". What is corrupting is power without accountability. This idea can be traced back to the Magna Carta. We reject the nothing that the King and his men are above the law. In fact, they should be held to even higher standards because of the power they are granted. Sadly, this Rrepublic has devolved way past those ideals. Instead, we have unaccountable politicians surrounded by unaccountable bureaucrats, all being protected by an unaccountable law enforcement and legal establishment.

Police organizations nationwide really need to take a look at this lack of accountability, and start making changes, so maybe they can start turning back the perceptions people have about it.

Someday, and it might not even be all that far off, the wheels are going to come off this train the Powers That Be have been driving and it's not going to be very pretty for anyone.

One additional thought that I'd like to bring into this. I do know some of the policemen from my area. As I said before, these follks were hired under a chief who's philosophy was primarily centered on being there for the community, and involving the community itself in policing, so they are mostly pretty good guys. However, they really don't see how bad things are getting out here amongst the citizenry from a perception perspective. What is really bad about this is that the us-vs-them mentality (on both sides) is bleeding over on to them. Ultimately, it is going to make their jobs harder and less enjoyable, and more dangerous.

I largely agree with the sentiment. It's beginning to look like bikers are the new Fedgov target of the day. The "war on drugs" has so massively expanded the power of government in general, that all accountability has disappeared. Unless that accountability for their actions returns, it's only going to get worse.

EIGHT freaking responses...?! There should be 200, by now.

This was a brilliant essay.

Like you, I suspect, I was once very much a law-and-order kind of guy, and in certain narrow respects I still am. But after all the kooky ninjya wrong-address raids, dog shootings and vet slammings, nope, somehow I just can’t feel the same about cops.

A garrison-state mentality has taken over among Our Finest, and with it a tidal wave of tacticool, hi-speed nomex kook gear. Like an actor donning a costume, their thinking changes at a visceral level as they go through the ritual of putting on all this make-up and finery. Drop thigh holster, tac-vest, knuckled gloves, layer by layer they are more and more actively LOOKING for a fight.

Even or especially where there is NONE.

And, I mean, keep in mind, this is coming from an NRA guy who gets choked up at the sound of the national anthem, etc. I have zero tattoos, have never smoked pot or dyed my hair, always linger to keep the door open for the next stranger, avoid bars and keep regular, civilized hours.

I hated Ice-Tea and when Charlton Heston bravely denounced him, I was delighted. Yet years later I heard and felt an eery familiarity with the lyrics, “Remember when the cops came and got your cat down from a tree..? Well in South Central SH*T AIN’T LIKE THAT..!”

Yes indeed, even out in the sticks, where people still go to church regularly and kids call people sir, increasingly shit ain’t like that there, either.

Cops see two types of “civilians” (to violate a major part of your essay): those whom they’ve arrested and those they have yet to arrest.

And FINALLY in turn in spite of myself I have come to see them that way, too —there are those cops on the one hand who are brutal and have been corrupted and then there are those on the other having just begun to go down that sordid path.

In extremis, multiculturalism (especially as bolstered by the patient forces of collectivism) has atomized people, eroding their senses of being somehow bound together. And with the ever-expanding forces of The State cops manners have eroded. They see the citizenry as an amorphous, unknown “THEY”, to be handled as little as possible, and then only gruffly and often in the form of legal robbery.

What this means is even though I despise the highly-orchestrated forces that conspire against the Baltimore PD, now I simply roll my eyes and fold my arms when I hear cop jobs there are becoming difficult.

“The cops are US..!” Meh, I can’t get there.

It’s very hard for me to feel for Revenue Officers in the same way I once felt for real patrol officers.

For me I see a tide of credulous, violent suckers actually BELIEVING the rot of hip-hop music, and then another, shorter-haired group of miscreants, inking themselves similarly and listening to the same violent bilge, but wearing badges.

EIGHT freaking responses...?! There should be 200, by now.

You never can tell with FR. I posted it in Chat because it really is a vanity more than anything else, Probably would get more if I'd put it in News.

Absolutely. I don't think the agents of the state (that would include everything from police, to FBI, to the faggots at BATF). really understand how much goodwill they've already lost. When the folks at FR can't and won't trust them, they lose a lot more than they think, because we, the responsible God fearing folks of this country are a real force-multiplier for them. We are eyes and ears for them, and are helpful when they ask for assistance or information. What happens as more and more people come to the conclusion that the only thing it is safe to talk to any representative of the state about is football?

Officer: Did you see what happened here?

Citizen: How 'bout them Cowboys?

They depend upon our willing cooperation in ways that they don't even think about.

This is something they really need to start thinking about.

because we, the responsible God fearing folks of this country are a real force-multiplier for them.

Wow, you've said something very important, there. For a long time I lived in Japan and in very many ways that place polices ITSELF --you don't think twice about turning in bad guys, even guys who really aren't so bad.

The trust of the average Japanese person in the cops is strong, even to a fault, from a democratic perspective. A little-known fact is that Jap cops can pick you up on the street and hold you up to TWENTY THREE DAYS, interrogating you the whole time, even before charging you with a crime.

That's hair-raising, but on the whole this unusual trust goes unabused. Some of the reasons for that I do know, but some (as with many Japanese) I can only guess at.

But the main point is there is very, very high trust between J cops and the people.

Quick example --I have curly blonde hair and sometimes drove a motorcycle. I had wet hair still, and 0.5 km or so I rode with my helmet hanging down somewhat, off of my head in an improper manner, the better to dry my hair. A taxi began FOLLOWING me, honking the whole time...!

Yeah, normal people often ENFORCE laws..! For that reason I think Japan is probably cop paradise, but I digress:

I came back to the US with this same view of "Cops are our partners and one should take pride in turning in bad guys..."

I quickly discovered that if you approach cops with good, detailed information on local crimes often you are in for a huge surprise --they will often react by INVESTIGATING *YOU*.

I think this is mostly laziness, and they were hoping to deter future reports.

Another example:

Japan in many respects is a paragon of good organization, but strangely the address system of cities is hugely, hugely screwed-up and non-intuitive. Finding new places is HARD, and many people commonly pop into tiny police sub-stations to inquire for directions. J cops are hugely familiar with this and indulge nearly every request for directions.

I brought back this habit to the USA, but got a huge shock:

I was either treated with extravagant disdain or even physically THREATENED.

I couldn't believe it, but later after some very much worse American cop experiences I banished all my surprise and doubt.

I loathe criminals, but I'm not so big on cops, either, I discovered.

Having 30 years in law enforcement, my input is your article is largely hyperbole.

Actually, it's not.

Disclaimer: I frequently criticize the police on Free Republic.

That being said, I'm not actually scared of the police, because I'm a Very Large Person. So, I'm not afraid to interact with them.

However, it is becoming dangerous to interact with them. Of the last four encounters I've had with them, two of them were loaded with weird "vibes".

One, the officer pulled me over on a sleepy residential street (blew a Yield sign right in front of him - LOL! I was taking a piece of floorsanding equipment back after pulling an all-nighter, and was 3/4 awake. I was on autopilot, and looked right instead of left, like I should have). He walks up to my vehicle, which I parked immediately, and accused me of "moving my vehicle toward him", which I had done, at 1.5 mph, after realizing that I had blocked another peasant's driveway by pulling over so abruptly.

Weird vibe, but I talked him down.

Second one, I went down to the local shop and attempted to re-unite a young lad with his pilfered bicycle. With the assistance of a helpful young police officer, we got the situation squared away within the hour.

Next one was an intoxicated young lady who roached her vehicle's steering in my back alley. I was attempting to assist her when the police arrived.

She was too young to understand she needed to keep her mouth shut, and I was attempting to assist her by observing. I got threatened with an obstruction charge, but I don't think the sergeant was out of line with that comment, since I wasn't being shy.

Last one was at the gas station. I was fueling up, and I typically am loaded with "dollar off" gasoline coupons, and when I'm in a good mood, I'll offer one to the driver at the next pump.

Well, I did so, and suddenly realized it was a couple of the local gendarmerie. Well, I wasn't going to clam up just because they were police, so I continued to press the neighborly offer, but the friendly one declined politely.

The other one was standing there with his arms folded, looking at me with some sort of strange controntational expression on his face (a stare?), because he didn't know what to make of me. Weird vibe, but I brushed it off, being as how I had him by 3 inches and 15 pounds. I realized in a minute or two that the polite one was the guy from the bicycle incident, and he must have remembered me from the previous encounter last year.

At no point in history has any government ever wanted its people to be defenseless for any good reason ~ nully's son

The biggest killer of mankind

Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!

To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Barack Hussein Obama, 7/2/2008

They don’t call it a Civil Defense force, that would imply we need (or perhaps that we deserve) defense. The official name is National Civilian Community Corps.

I think of it as the NatCCC, or more simply, as the NatCs...

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