Society needs to keep an eye on police — Thoughtful commentary. This writer believes that the only way to deal with gross incompetence is to sue individual police one at a time — for all they are worth. When you sue entire departments you run into deep-pocket obstacles and a system designed to protect itself.
There’s also a video of police punching and kicking a man in New Orleans, police threatening and assaulting members of the press and witnesses, plus a police officer, trying to block the camera with a horse. I’ve witnessed a person who attempted to stand up for someone being roughed up by police get shoved and threatened with arrest.
A textbook widely used by criminal justice instructors titled “Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction,” by Frank Schmalleger (Prentice Hall 2002), says, “A 1999 Bureau of Justice Statistics Report found that 16 percent of state police agencies require a two-year college degree, and 4 percent require a four-year degree.”
Does that sound like a low percentage to you, too?
further, many departments now hire ex-military police.
Who are you going to get to do this job? You have to remember they deal with people daily that most of us would avoid like the plague. After a few years of shoveling out the gutters it changes attitudes. They have to follow rules, the criminals don’t. I’m not stating there’s no bad cops, but it’s called the thin blue line for a reason. Same thing with people criticizing teachers. How many of you want to teach in an inner city school for less than $40K. Many of you wouldn’t do it for $100K, not for long anyway. Public service isn’t for everyone, but we need to give those willing a break once and awhile.
Just a question what does that picture have anything to do with?
Isn’t the technology available and inexpensive enough to actually keep an eye on Police? Shouldn’t it be city policy to at least have an audio recording of everything their officers do while on-duty? A very small, inexpensive device could easily record every sound from an 8 hour shift. A reasonably expensive device could record the same amount of video with, say, a micro-camera mounted in the hat. Many complaints could be assessed by simply listening to the recording or looking at the tape.
If I were a police officer, I would welcome such a device – my fear would be that I would be accused of something I didn’t do. I would want the evidence that, yes, I did do everything by the book.
Think of how many times cops have been busted because (1) they forgot their dashboard camera was recording or (2) someone just happened to be taking a video nearby. That covers what? 1% of the time maybe? With full-time recording, we would be looking at hundreds of bad officers being identified every year.
Hey – I have a camera on me almost all day and what I do isn’t nearly as important.
While this may be bad, think about the education, training, and background of civilian security guards. Then, someone puts a loaded gun on heir hip.
Regarding the picture…the op-ed begins with a story about cops and hookers. It was the initial block quote I was going to use so I pulled up a generic pic of a street-walker. I then changed the block quote but still liked the pic and left it. It got your attention!
College has nothing to do with police work. You really don’t learn anything except how to drink and roll a good joint. If you saw how much training is required initially and while on the job, you might change your mind. You use the New Oreans example. You have to remember these cops got by on very little sleep, poor living conditions, hords or roaming scumbags who welcomed the disaster to further their own criminal life style. Now you have some drunk, probably giving the officers a hard time and officers over reacted due to the stress of the past month, add to that a over aggessive film crew and you have the makings of a all cops are bad story. What these officers did was wrong, but it is the exception, not the rule.
Also, John you mention there is a system in place to protect officers from these complaints. The reason for it is that most of these complaints are bullshit to begin with. The NJ State Police when they first started using in car cameras ended up charging numerous “police misconduct victims” with making false reports because the videos did not sustain their malicious charges.
The police are generally overworked & underpaid. No wonder many go off the deep end.
I treat officers, even when they may be rude, with respect & generally their demeanor changes. I’ve actually gotten apologies & admissions that it’s been a rough day or week or month or year or decade…
I usually try to remember that they may be taking out their bad day or stress on me because they can’t take it out on the person causing it.
They, like our military personnel, & many other Americans in hazardous occupations, deserve to be paid way more & get much more respect than we give them.
Some of this dispespect is caused by the bad apples & the amount of press they get, & they should be banished so as not to keep tainting those who actually serve & protect.
The constant bad news that beats us over the head is bad for the country’s morale, but since it seems to sell, we rarely hear stories about the good officers.
The media is “Fair & balanced?” Yeah, right. Anyone want to buy a bridge in Manhattan cheap or some land off the coast of Florida?
Most cops are for speed tickets and the such, NOT for actual police work – how much IQ can that take? Its not like every cop works Homicide.
I think most would admit that giving out tickets; which BTW aren’t given for safety but for revenue enhancement, is roughly equivlant to toll booth work.
> I treat officers, even when they may be rude, with respect & generally
> their demeanor changes.
You attract more bees with honey than attitutude. I’ve gotten out of many tickets this way. The shock of honesty prompts them to give a warning.
> Most cops are for speed tickets and the such, NOT for actual police work
> – how much IQ can that take?
Do you realize how elitist this sounds, Sounds the Alarm?
These people put their lives on the line everyday. You never know when that person you’re pulling over for speeding is going to do something crazy, whether they are a criminal or not. I think it happens more often than any of us realize.
IQ is mostly irrelevant to the job. It’s training and instincts honed through a lot of experience that cultivates good police work, whether on the beat, or investigating crime. Just because we’re smart doesn’t mean we would make good police officers.
We all depend on a lot of people just doing their job everyday. It doesn’t take a genius, but it has to be done or we can’t live in this society. Or else we can’t get paid what we do for pushing paper or bits around.
I was talking to the chef at my company’s cafeteria today, and he said it was nice how I came in smiling and chatting, instead of barking orders like most people do. It’s moments like that when I realize how priviledged I am, to not be yelled at or ignored by arrogant people everyday.
Perhaps there would be less yelling and noise if we stopped to think about that more often.
> tickets; which BTW aren’t given for safety but for revenue
> enhancement,
If there wasn’t the detterent effect of potentially getting caught, we would all be driving 100 MPH. Given our human reaction times, and stupidity of bad drivers, we would then be crashing and dying a lot more often. Sometime revenue and safety go hand-in-hand.