Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Doc]

How cops really want to police.

An interesting (and entirely anecdotal) article on how some police would like to deal with problems on the street level.
I'm just interested to hear other people's take on this, on the one hand some flexibility and less conventional techniques seem like they may be more effective but then again our justice systems rely heavily on everyone getting equal treatment (even if this is often not the case). Coming from a place that had a pretty bad history of police corruption until a bit over a decade ago I instinctively shy away from the prospect of a cop being able to decide my fate on the spot with no appeal to higher authority.

One of the comments brought up an interesting (and unsourced, possibly unreliable) statistic: that in domestic abuse cases arrests increase the likelihood of re-offense  if the offender is unemployed and but decrease re-offense if the offender is employed. I don't think the thing to take away from that is that we shouldn't prosecute wife beaters just in case they do it again and without a source I don't really trust this kind of statistic but it did get me thinking about where we strike a balance between pragmatism and idealism.

[littlefallsmets]

My reflex is to distrust the fuck out of the police on the idea that... if you're of a personality where you want that kind of power over people and you'll devote your life to getting it, you're probably damaged in a way where you will want to misuse it and... will misuse it.

There are a lot of exceptions, of course, but in my experience... and I did work as a 911 operator for a while so I have a lot of experience in this matter... that's what they are.

Exceptions.

[Drygioni]

I can see the logic behind these ideas, but isn't a really bad thing to do things like this? Short-term you might more-or-less effectively stop one criminal, but A) It is going to breed a lot of hate and resentment within him towards the police and B) It really fuck*ng undermines the authority of the justice system. How the fuck is the situation going to improve in the judicial system if the police are sending out a message that the law system is fundamentally flawed?

Then again, I'm not a cop, and if they are happy with their methods then perhaps I'm wrong to disagree. Unless of course:

you're of a personality where you want that kind of power over people and you'll devote your life to getting it, you're probably damaged in a way where you will want to misuse it and... will misuse it.

There are a lot of exceptions, of course, but in my experience... and I did work as a 911 operator for a while so I have a lot of experience in this matter... that's what they are.

Exceptions.

Most Americans I know seem to feel that way, which is in fair contrast to Britain, generally. Although I'm not exposed often to police jaded and brutalised by their job, as I live in a relatively crime-free area, most people I know are fairly respectful towards police. It may just be the lack of gunnery; my natural instinct is to feel uncomfortable around a man with a weapon that could kill me with one squeeze of a trigger, police here are seen as having to deal with dangerous situations with on-the-spot logic and non-lethal force, but who's to say if they had a gun they wouldn't just go for the boomstick option? It would certainly be tempting. You do get armed police here but you never seem them on the street, they're highly specialist.

I bet it's 'Traffic Cop' programs. Is is true in America they show the policeman chasing down 'perps' and administering on-the-spot correction (beating)? Because that would be a job showcase for violent types, I'd think. In Britain we never get to see that, the crimes are rubbish (speeding, loitering, noisiness) and the punishments, at most, are just a night in the cells or a cheeky clip 'round the ear.

One of the comments brought up an interesting (and unsourced, possibly unreliable) statistic: that in domestic abuse cases arrests increase the likelihood of re-offense  if the offender is unemployed and but decrease re-offense if the offender is employed. I don't think the thing to take away from that is that we shouldn't prosecute wife beaters just in case they do it again and without a source I don't really trust this kind of statistic but it did get me thinking about where we strike a balance between pragmatism and idealism.

I think in most cases, crime is caused by social deprivation SOMETIMES curable by improving the prospects of the criminal. The difficulty is that the situation is not a blanket one; some criminals may be less tempted to re-offend if you can turn them to express themselves through art, some will paint the pretty pictures to get out of jail and then act the baddie again. Some will use a job and housing to settle down, some will see it as an opportunity for easy cash for drugs etc. Nonetheless I think it is a far better answer than cramming them into jails, if the jail is too soft they mayl come out re-criminalised, if it is too harsh it raises serious moral questions on society. 'Judge a society on how it treats its condemned' or some such.

Also, the problem of rehabilitation is that some people will misinterpret it as rewarding criminals for being bad.

I should probably spread my amount of posting over multiple posts.

[littlefallsmets]

I am entirely certain that the difference has a lot to do with American cops loudly brandishing pieces.

There is a huge difference, culturally, between getting to carry around a stick wherein if you are corrupted in your law enforcement it'll only take three people fighting back to stop you and... y'know... carrying an Instant Death Button prominently on your hip with the explicit knowledge that even if you kill someone for no reason, most of the time you'll get off for it because American juries are largely Bible-thumping uniform sniffers.

It's the difference between giving someone the legal ability to use force and the ability to wield a superpower in a showy fashion.

[littlefallsmets]

I'm not saying this about all firearms possession, though, Ash.

There's a huge gulf of difference between keeping a shotgun locked up in your closet to fend off a burglar or hunt turkey in a safe fashion and... walking around with a handgun designed specifically for punching large holes in humans strapped to the outside of your hip so prominently that you might as well have neon signs pointing to it.

The authority of the American police officer is often not bourne out of the consent of the community or the respect of the officer's training or impartiality or anything of the sort... it is quite often ONLY a function of their ability to flaunt the superpower of getting to walk around with a loaded pistol and no one can tell them that it is insane to walk around with a loaded pistol.

Authority that flows ONLY from explicit threat, living inside a culture of fear.

And... not for nothing... but the six or so months I worked 911 before I burned out on the stress, I wasn't just forwarding calls to proper dispatch... I was in a semi-rural area where there would be no budget or usefulness for that kind of redundancy.

We were working directly in the county sheriff's offices, some of the other dispatchers were local police or fire folks moonlighting for extra cash, etc, talking right to the people in the cars and so on. Sheriffs Dept, local polices, local fire depts, ambulance corps, the couple of state police in our area and so on.

My experience was sometimes frighteningly direct.

[Doc]

I'm not sure I get what you're getting at Ash. If cops aren't earning enough or don't have the respect of the community those are problems but they're not problems that are going to be helped by them more free reign in how they deal with cases day to day. Hell, bad pay and coping shit all the time sounds like a nice recipe to tempt someone to abuse power.

[Doc]

Nah, I'm with you on those points. Just misunderstood what you were getting at, I thought you were justifying cops who do abuse power by saying it's a reaction to the shit they cop from communities or some such which I wouldn't be able to get behind and didn't sound like you anyway (see: personal responsibility). I wasn't familiar with the OC thing so I didn't get the connection.