You know what's funny?

[MrScorpio]

When I was in my late teens and earlier twenties, I didn't have such the negative opinion of cops in general that I do today as a man in my fifties.

In my late teens and twenties I was never harassed by cops for no reason, the ones that I did interact... (with the exception of two racist suburban white cop motherfuckers who tried to arrest me for "stealing" my own bike) weren't insulting or abusive to me.

My opinion of the police began to change in the aftermath of the Rodney King incident and the exposé surround more suburban (Maryland) cops, this time around DC.

Then I went to Germany for four years. I considered it a palate cleanser. When I got back in 1999, I watched the TV show "COPS" with new eyes. I asked, "Why are these cops fucking with people for no good reason at all?"

Then the incidents with absusive police killings all over the country started pouring in. To the point today, where misconduct seems to be all too common and expected.

The kicker was checking out the PoliceOne.com website, where cops talk amongst themselves.

Today my opinion of the police in general has been completely poisoned. And I totally blame the police for this.

I know that this isn't about me. It never had to be about me. However, I do have empathy for others, for the victims of police abuse. I don't fear for myself today, as a man in my fifties. But I do fear for those young people in their teens and twenties today, who only know of the police as abusive and violent.

[hedgehog]

1. Count me in - especially over the last few weeks.

Too many bad apples are turning up.

[barbtries]

14. if the bad cops are a minority,

the vast majority are enablers and co-conspirators.

[hopemountain]

22. they have a "brotherhood" code

"no matter what" - they stick up for one another. if one breaks the code, the others give him/her shit, is fired and **"white" ** balled.

** it is wholly inappropriate to use the other color term. wholly.

[AlbertCat]

19. Too many bad apples are turning up.

I don't think they're just turning up....


what is happening is that it's being reported.... finally.

And I don't hate police departments... we need them.

But, y'know, presidents and VPs that look the other way while terroists attack us on our own soil and then lie us into unnecessary wars now paint little pictures and still get asked on Nat. TV for their take and advice.

Big bank CEOs knowingly sell toxic assets without telling the buyer they're toxic and destroy the economy and get bonuses.

Family value Senators and reps and governors dress up in diapers with whores, solicit sex in airports men's rooms, and "Hike the Appalachian Trail" and get reelected.


Why the hell should anyone follow the rules????? It's the zeitgeist.

[steve2470]

2. The cops need to clean house, badly

Way too many bullies and racists, imho.

[Nay]

3. My trajectory was yours. 10 years ago my son was a teen and was hassled

pretty often for no discernible reason. My attitude hardened then, and also after I worked for a police dept for a short while. I was done. I have never been overtly hassled or treated badly myself, but I look like a nice middle-aged mom/grandma, and we are the last people to get dragged out of our houses in handcuffs, so I don't give that any credence. My son is polite to police, but he wouldn't cross the road to piss on a cop who was on fire.

If I was taken to a police station for any reason, I wouldn't say a damn thing until my lawyer showed up.

[Shrike47]

6. My son, too. He opened at McDonald's and got hassled on the way to work many mornings.

Also, in graduate school I had one friend who was always being stopped for questioning by the police. He must have fit some profile they had. It became humorous after awhile, as the rest of the crowd would be saying no, he didn't do it!'

He later became a D.A.

[Rex]

4. I agree with you. Maybe it is all the negative stories we read here daily about cop abuse.

Dunno, but my respect meter for law enforcement in general is way way down. Maybe getting older and living long enough to see how the system really works does that to a person.

[brewens]

5. I'm starting to look at cops the way right-wingers look at Muslims. They expect the peaceful

Muslims to publicly denounce and do something about the radicals. I think the same thing about a good cop now. The need to pull together and do something about the assholes instead of covering for them. And they need to make us know it's happening if they want any respect or cooperation at all.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. That means they need to be able to go TO someone. A citizen's oversight group that isn't corrupt.

[steve2470]

11. +1 nt

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. The black uniforms need to go too....

As well as the entire mindset that goes with the phrase, "We have ways of making you talk."

[Enthusiast]

9. Kicked and recommended!

I'm with you, MrScorpio.

[Hekate]

10. KnR

[nevergiveup]

12. I am an old white man I have never liked cops.

The profession called "policing" attracts not your most desirable people. It is the nature of the beast. Those with poor self images needing power trips and those who have chips on their shoulders and those who hate minorities are automatically attracted to this profession. I am not saying there are not good cops because there are but a majority of them suck. I will never get the image of that New York cop bashing Eric Garners head into that pavement. To me that was more disturbing and telling than the choke hold and not one other cop in that group made any attempt to stop him. If I were a little younger I would be marching in the streets.

[lark]

13. Funny, I've hated and feared police as a young anti-war activist, later thought they were not bad.

In my early 60's, I'm back to where I started. P>I>G>S> is what I'm seeing these days. I know there are some good cops, no group is all bad (except hate groups like KKK), but I swear, today there are way too many out of control cops and the worst part is they get away with it. Prosecutors don't want to prosecute them and do everything humanly possible to get them off (see Ferguson). Giving them military weapons has really exacerbated the whole problem. It was insane what happened when a guy on my block had a psychotic break. Line of folks in camo with grenade launchers and auto rifles were running down the street, there were probably 50 heavily militarized cops that looked like military guys going to war with one guy who had a severe medical reaction to some drugs. It was a miracle no innocents got hurt that night, usually in situations like that they do.

These days, instead of protecting folks, too many cops rape women, hurt or kill gays and heartrendingly kill blacks and people with mental problems like my neighbor. Sometimes teenagers do get it right - P.I.G.S. again. It seems like this happens more when the country is very polarized, like during the Vietnam war and now. I hold Faux Snooze and the traitorous Repugs partially responsible for creating this climate of hating the other to the point where murder is just fine..

[bbgrunt]

15. well, there were always pockets of bad cops as

popularized by shows like LA Confidential and Serpico, but the reaction to them was more one of horror rather than glorification as seems to be the case today. Some base line trigger for outrage was overstepped with the institutionalized torture perpetrated and led by gov't during the Iraq war. Now the whole culture seems to revel in base brutality.

[Kber]

16. Dirty Harry

Then The Die Hard franchise glorified the "do what it takes" mind set and made cop vigilantism ok.

Even the Beverly Hills Cop series made it seem like following the rules was for goody two shoes, not real crime fighters.

Too many cops think they're Mel Gibson or something.

[LiberalLovinLug]

17. I also grew up with "Cops"

And I had the same reaction. I hear it is supposed to humanize the police to the public, but IMO it did the opposite. Sure there were some stories showing them break up a domestic fight which was nice. But too many times they'd pull someone over or harass someone on the street and find a small bag of marijuana on them which then gives them an excuse to treat them even worse. They just came across as a group of people that enjoyed their power trip over others. Taking someone in for having a small amount of pot on them, making them submit to orders like kneeling or lying on the ground, putting them in handcuffs, arresting them and making them go through all that. Who were they serving and protecting? It gave me a window into how often the police just shake people down for fun or to kill boredom in the hopes they find a small bag of drugs they can get a conviction star on their record.

[arcane1]

18. Have you seen how the show "COPS" is portrayed in the movie "Confederate States of America"?

Talk about eye-opening!

[Bluenorthwest]

20. The cops hasseled me in my teens and early 20's. To say the least.

By the time the Rodney King stuff went down, I was keenly aware of the problems with the LAPD in general and in specific in regard to the African American community for many, many reasons.
I was raised to be very skeptical of the police, so I have never had a very high opinion of them.

[XemaSab]

21. Question for anyone who accepts all or part of Wilson's testimony: Why the gun?

*He didn't have a taser.

*His baton was out of reach.

*Pepper spray would have incapacitated him, too.

*He wasn't trained to just roll up the window, drive 20 feet away, and chill out until backup arrived TWO MINUTES LATER.

I worked at a place for a while where we had a lot of clients who were in the oil and gas industry, and it was a culture that was obsessed with safety. Every time there was a safety incident, NO MATTER HOW MINOR, we had to fill out forms and meet with the safety officer.

It really drilled into me the fact that behind every "accident" there is a chain of decision making that led to that outcome.

And in the Ferguson non-accident, there was a chain of institutional and personal decision making which made the gun seem like the "only" choice and which resulted in a man being shot to death.

Why didn't he have a taser? Why was he sitting on the baton? If he was intimidated, why did he confront Michael Brown alone? WHY WAS A PISTOL INCHES FROM HIS RIGHT HAND BY DESIGN?

We need to ask these questions and we need to get real answers.

[treestar]

23. I've seen a lot of COPS shows

I don't think they are frequently harassing people for no reason. They get called.

In fact, most of the cops on that show are kind of matter of fact. Frequently they like the job because something different happens every day. The type of cop who would be abusive wouldn't want to be on that show.

And a lot of what happens is very minor. We hear about these cases because they make the news, but police don't end up in shootouts all the time.