The country needs the good cops to make a stand. They swore, just like I did, to protect and serve.


Until then nothing will change.

But, uncomfortable with the fact that life is a crap shoot, the apologists will still push the idea that "compliance" lowers the risk, even if it cannot eliminate it.

And they will never quite absorb the reality that it is the person holding the firearm who has the sole power to determine life or death.

Kinda reminds me of all the "how to survive a mugging" advice that was given in years past -- which amounted to the person with a firearm pointed at their faces telling the person who held the weapon to stay calm -- which, oddly enough, led to all those "Stand Your Ground" laws that have cropped up since.

-- Mal

They "put their lives on the line". I want to know for who if not for that innocent they just shot dead?

You don't get bragging rights for bravery when you are killing people for a "perceived", not actual, threat.

In a country where people are considered innocent until proven guilty... our LE has managed to turn that on its head to shoot 1st determine innocence or guilt never.

...or those that go beyond even that, but the numbers don't lie, and this is as troubling AS HELL.

Last year, both the CDC and FBI statistics showed that toddlers are more likely to be shot to death than an on-duty cop. 3 times more likely.

front of the high school by a borough cop an hour after the kids had been dismissed. I don't remember what he was carrying (maybe a broom), but I lived close by and had just returned from substitute teaching in the same building when police and television 'copters were hovering everywhere overhead. The man was obviously mentally disturbed, but had never caused problems to anyone. The saddest result of the situation was that the victim had a reputable family elsewhere in the state who were embarrassed by him and had totally written him off. They never caused so much as a raised eyebrow and the local cop (don't get me started as to some of their training) was just given a pass. This episode will always stick with me.

if you're black....just stop!

being black

then you have 10 bad cops.

for the culture to begin to change.

Earlier in my HR career, I worked for a company that had a "cover-up" culture. After a couple of investigations where I could clearly demonstrate that witnesses lied or intentional withheld information to frustrate the investigation, I went to the company's top leadership and I convinced them to institute a policy/practice of terminating anyone who (it can be determined) lied or, intentionally, withheld material information during an investigation ... even if the offense being investigated did not merit the subject of the investigation being terminated.

The policy/practice was announced via company email to each employee (who had to click on the email and click an acknowledgement that they read it).

It only took one termination to change the company's "cover up" culture.

This is the answer, but no one has the fortitude to do it.

that's where the public relations part of the roll out comes in. Cultural change comes from internal, as well as external forces.

Police are the one the ones that need to change.

No politician will stand up and say that for fear of backlash from police, but until that happens nothing is going to change.

a public announcing of a "punish the cover-upers" policy is exactly what a politician would do ... the louder the better. How is the police union and its membership going to oppose that publically? ...

"No. Ms. Politician We need/want the ability to go unpunished when we lie and/or withhold information from in investigators!"

Not trying to be flip ... but setting these type of policies and making them stick, in a very political environment, is what I do for a living.

He blew the whistle on dirty cops. Later, he got shot in the face when fellow cops didn't support him going through a door. And then his fellow cops did not even call for medical assistance. Another resident of the building called it in, and saved his life.

but, there was no institutional support for honesty ... where everyone faces firing for lying or withholding material information, that changes.

I think you misunderstand what I am talking about ... I'm not talking about punishing officers for failing to whistleblow; but rather, for lying/withholding information when asked. In reality, there will be very few that would come forward and volunteer information; but, in most cases, investigators know who was there ... and the sanctions for lying would be imposed for those asked (and who lie).

Bottom-line, no one is easily willing to lose their livelihood for someone else's wrong ... when the institution is committed to supporting them.

That's a terrible truth to swallow, but I sadly agree with you.

After you do it the 1st time.

After that time. Try to keep all lights, etc in order, I work second shift and try not to attract any attention. So far not another incident.

When I walk around the car to check it, it goes back on. Friends driving behind me never see it out, only our local small town police. Never the county sheriffs, just the city police.

Odd, isn't it?

Out of 4 stops in recent yrs, the only polite cop was the one who stopped me the a legitimate reason.

Again, odd.

So, I built a tag light out of 10 ultrabright LED's. The kind you can't stare at directly. Bright enough that I can see it from the side view mirror, I mean this thing just lights up the road.

I dare them to tell me the damn thing is out

inherent in being a cop, in which you could be killed at ANY moment, what sort of a person buys into that sort of an existence?

dunno what sort of psychological profiles have been done via mass studies, or the like, but, in my limited exposure to cops (even the ones who worked at the jr. highs where I was for 9 years), every single one of them was on some sort of a weird power trip or other (despite projecting a usually benign outward countenance), not accepting disagreement on any subject, and always having to be in charge, even when dealing with administrators. you can imagine what that sort of mindset would be like in a more hostile environment than a school setting

just sayin.....others' thoughts on this?

Being a cop doesn't even break the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America. It's safer than being a taxi driver.

I totally agree that a lot of the issues that we're seeing with bad cops stem from authoritarian personalities drawn to the job, and feel that abuse of authority should be more severely punished in lower stakes cases, so that it doesn't escalate to the degree that we're seeing today.

http://time.com/4326676/dangerous-jobs-america/

in the US is......PRESIDENT. if you're unfortunate enough to be roped into that dangerous job, you can look forward to a one in 9 chance of leaving office in a box, not counting the one or two who croaked on their own

beyond that, I don't think the dangerous jobs you mention, afaik, carry the risk of being MURDERED at any moment, not to mention other instances generated by the inherent risk of being a cop

Suppose I should go up to the customers at Burger King, put on my best Dirty Harry sneer, and say, "I put my life on the line for that burger!"

Far more cab drivers are the victims of violent crime than a reasonable person could expect.

Time magazine recently listed "police/sheriff's officers" as 15th in U.S. dangerous jobs. They were way behind everything from fishermen to garbage collectors. You don't see fisherman and garbage collectors having paranoid meltdowns and blowing people away.

And do you know (at least in my neck of the woods) that they count things like traffic accidents and other incidental misadventures while on the job as "killed in line of duty"? I could understand counting traffic accidents if you were, say, a truck driver, but cops record every "casualty" just like they were shot to death. Really skews the numbers.

But I agree with you, cop-types do seem to be on pathological superiority trips. Makes me wonder, how many of them do you think were bullies in school?

prospective cops undergo, but I do know that the three cops from my HS graduating class were the lowlifes of our grade: drugs, theft, general aholishness, but none of them were big enough to be physical bullies. wiseass intimidators, when they could get away with it

one of them got busted for selling the dope he confiscated. that was the last I heard of him.

I understand about the stats side of things, but, as I said in one of my other posts, other circumstances of the nature of the job don't account for the mindset inherent in copness....much more similar to that of a soldier than anything else I can think of. and we all know how much more militarized the police have become in this age of terror

I gotta go, but a quick gagagoogle yields this> when I get a chance, I'll check it out.

I think it's relevant to differentiate the origins of the danger.

The fisherman, logger or roofer's dangers (I've done two of the three in my past) are predicated mainly on safety issues rather than other people.

Granted, a dangerous job is a dangerous job, yet the death of co-workers from nature or an accident or a safety issue doesn't instill in us a hard heart as would death from another person would.

The logger (my grandfather) lost friends (and family) from accidents, but never perceived an unknown tree as his enemy. The policeman who loses friends from a willful shooting may have his perception altered, and begin to see anyone around him as an enemy.

DON'T have their perception altered, and they carry guns and are under the same threat from criminals and psychos. The problem, it seems to me, is therefore not because of the inherent nature of the job, but Anerican police culture.

As a 911 dispatcher I work with cops every day. I know not one has ever come into work thinking, "I'm gonna kill someone today". A quick google search shows 24.6 million traffic stops occurred in 2011.

I don't make excuses for any officer actions. Incidents will be investigated and determinations made based on the law.

Calling people 'apologists' shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the serious issues we have in this country. It's not just cop culture, it's our culture and all the idiosyncrasies that go along with it.

Respectfully,
TSP

cannot provide an adequate answer to a potentially life threatening situation, for PoC mainly, just shows me how "frayed the fabric of this society" has become. And the holes are getting larger..............

Is our media that afraid of the NRA and Reich Wing to print stories like this?

Unfortunately that's a rhetorical question my friends....

Yes

It is time for police to stop doing things like quitting their OT security gigs at Minnesota Lynx games in a fit of pique over the T-shirts the team wore in support of the victims, BLM AND the Dallas PD, or whining vociferously like they did in St. Louis after the Rams WRs came out for pre-game introductions in a symbolic "Hands up, Don't Shoot" pose.

The police in these cases are fueling discord by making a public show of how "disrespected" they feel and how they feel "targeted" by protests. They SHOULD be singling out the officers in their midst that are CAUSING the protests in the first place. Attacking the aggrieved and demanding that they stop hurting your feelings is a losing move, period.

First, it ignores the video tape evidence seen, and first hand experiences of those protesting, by making it seem super-duper unfair to police that they would face discord for the actions of some in their ranks.

Second, it fails to acknowledge that there IS a problem with the things we have clearly seen....Tamir Rice, gunned down in SECONDS....Walter Scott, shot in the back while fleeing AND suspicious actions of the officer in regards to planting an object near his body BEFORE he was even dead....Eric Garner, illegally choked to death by police on camera....the names and victims list goes on and on and on.

Finally, there is no greater outrage than to sit silently and allow the actions of a minority of officers to tar and feather the profession out of some misplaced loyalty or code that exists across all police forces. The fellow officers racially profiling drivers for traffic stops, the brutish abusers who look for ways to dehumanize people during questioning, the ones who DO plant evidence, who DO abuse their authority, who DO besmirch the profession....THESE should be the ones that the police call out in angry new conferences and in statements to the press.

The least popular members of every police department are the Internal Affairs officers. Until that is no longer the case, there will remain a problem in the police departments across the nation...regardless of how many media-assisted blow-jobs they get from the Fox News crowd.

I don't mean the ones that do the shooting; I mean the ones that cover it up.
Why do they hate America?

Which is why the paranoia among some on the right is so dangerous. If you think someone is coming to kill you, you tend to do very irrational things as that adrenaline is pumping and you believe you need to survive by putting down a perceived deadly threat.

If cops hear on the police radio that a Costco was just robbed by an armed and dangerous couple with thin pointy noses wearing yoga pants, Crocs with socks, driving a Prius with a Democratic Underground bumper sticker and a vegan pit bull in the back seat, some of the colorblind DUers here might start to see color. It doesn't matter if you're a good person. The cops think you look like someone else who did a bad thing. They don't know you.

Having cops from the communities they serve can go a long way towards less killings. Back in the day, people were concerned that cops would be corrupt if they were from their communities, and they used this as a racist excuse to keep out the Irish and Italians from serving in police for example. But once those communities started to trust the police and see their own people become patrol officers then organized crime actually decreased in those communities.

This is your brain on hugs

oops! sorry bout that.

and why didn't Fred Hampton get out of bed and answer the door, anyway?

not very neighborly of him

Perry Tarrant has 34 years of experience in law enforcement, and he's tackled assignments that include the SWAT team, anti-gang initiatives and the bomb squad.

Despite all of that, the veteran African-American officer admits that his heart pounds a bit faster when he's pulled over by a fellow cop, particularly if they're white.

"I get anxious in those situations, even more so because I'm legally carrying a gun," says Tarrant, an assistant police chief in Seattle, who heads the Special Operations Bureau, which includes Homeland Security. "The potential for things to go sideways makes you well aware of who you are. And I don't think my situation is unique."

For the nation's African-American police officers, being both black and "blue" can mean being caught in the midst of a cultural crossfire.

Full Ariticle

Thought provoking.

cops, wanna-be military, and / or ex-military. They've been rejected from these occupations for various reasons. It's part of the psych profile of these guys; the obsession with being in a position of aggression and authority. You'll find similar psych profiles among bouncers, security guards, private military, etc.

So, it begs the question of how many of the unstable men are getting into the policing and military jobs?

I have to say that a cop who panics at just seeing a black man up close and in person and shoots him point blank, isn't entirely stable.

Clearly more in-depth vetting during the recruitment process and during training is in order, and consistent psychological evaluation over the course of their occupation.

That being said, I had to undergo a psych evaluation at a place of work, due to a string of circumstances not necessarily within my control, including a car accident, a workplace accident and an upper echelon boss who was determined to rid the workplace of me. She just had it in for me and literally was the workplace bully. At any rate, I was under a huge amount of stress, and utterly miserable, but daily put on my best face. Now, I'm not a normal person, but I have no rage, no acting out, no bizarre behavior, but I don't have what the average person would consider to be the normal thought process and I can make people uncomfortable. I have learned to adapt and do well enough and in polite company keep my mouth shut and go with the flow and have good control of my self-editor. (I'm FINE!)

My psych eval turned out to be with an official LAPD Psychologist whose speciality was dealing with cops in stressful situations and deciding if they were fit for duty. Granted, I didn't have any weapons and have never posed or made a threat to anyone or anything ever, but figured out pretty quick that my neck was on the line there. I sure as shit knew better than to reveal too much about my paranoia with this boss of mine, and literally just played dumb, sweet, intelligent and kind, with few cares in the world other than the chronic pain I was enduring due to my accidents.

Had I revealed the depths of my paranoia and how utterly tormented I was by this boss, nearly to the breaking point, I would have been in a deeper world of hurt than I was already in at the office. I passed the eval with flying colors, so that was all fine.

She won ultimately in the end, I took a long leave of absence and eventually quit, but on my terms, not hers. She was a pox on the workplace and bullied several of us, very specifically until her retirement. I met up with a fellow co-worked a couple years back who was also one of her victims, and we both cried about our treatment.... a bit cathartic being justified in my paranoia. That boss was the one who needed the psych eval, not me!

My point is that if I could fool a police psych evaluation then other people can too. More stringent standards need to be employed by any agencies issuing weapons that can result in death or harm, and who have the public safety in their hands. Regular strict evaluations, regular training, and more stringent upper management oversight of agencies with a history of cover up and obstruction of justice within the ranks. You know that shit rolls uphill too.

Is this a factor with wanting to reach for your gun, or expecting a citizen to immediately follow, or obey any order without any hesitation.

The role of the costume and props compels the person to act the way the trappings compel him or her.

This is an issue of "hearts and minds" about who will the police really serve -- the bosses or The People.

The role with all its trappings of power and 'good guy' service-protection -- THAT is the thin, blue line.

I say they serve The Money. Directly it seems like they serve their bosses who pay it. Bosses who get all the costumes and props of power which all of them use to validate themselves with. How? By using those props to display power regularly and randomly.

Give a human a gun, and the feelings of power enter them. Add to that the trappings of a paid role on another's stochastic stage, and these costumed players get to force them into roles that validate their own.

The psyops done on cops as powerful enforcers, is part of the wide range of psyops that makes larger population into the bad guys, all. Race has driven the script for millennia, but raw jungle prey-predator hunting practices can bring it all out, as well. Killing for the sheer joy of feeling powerful. Protecting gets no credit. Killing gets attention, even when pulled from a show for 'stealing the limelight,' the "thin blue line" keeper still gets paid, like members of a repertory.

Doesn't matter who directs, it's who writes, controls and pays for this script. The money and the thrall of the roles trap the players. Who wants to walk off the stage and out of this theater. If the enthralled audience walks out on such a bad story, refuses to pay for it, will the actors perhaps walk out of the theater with them.

But, as Twain said, it's easier to continue fooling someone than to convince them they have been fooled.

People more often want "the story" more than they want the truth.

... usually is the ones who allow for the most covering.

For instance , we know damn well the probability of BOTH body cams coming off in BRLA at the same time is really low... and... the audio from those body cams and the video from the store camera that are in police possession have NOT been shown.

How are people in that community supposed to trust the police?

Transparency and accountability are lacking from the LEADERSHIP of these depts. so trust is lowered in the community... that's a natural human reaction.

A non LE citizen would NOT get that kind of benefit of the doubt if the audio or video showed the citizen in a bad light, the leadership in the depts would "leak" or just give evidence that showed the citizen in negative light as soon as possible to the media

Same thing

1) when lighted up, put turn signal on, and pull over at first safe place to do so (the cop probably waited to light you up until there was one)

2) turn on dome light if at night, take off sun glasses if during day

3) turn off engine, pull keys out of ignition

4) driver window down, have hands on wheel - ask permission before reaching for anything

5) whatever you do, don't make eye contact while reaching for anything

you're helping the officer determine

1) that you're not going to run

2) that you're not going to attack

which allows him to back off the adrenaline he/she needs to deal with either of the two issues above - your judgment in helping in the safety of the stop doesn't guarantee you a warning instead of a ticket, but it helps make you a candidate for a warning

(he didn't say this, it's my own observation, but a dome light can be seen for about a block at night (by witnesses) - harder to justify force on a subject that turns on the dome light, it's a highly visible sign of cooperation - both my cop friend and I are white, and he thought a white friend should know this)

I'm a white guy, but I have no idea what advice to give either. Since leaving the force, I did work as an EMT and firefighter, but some of the most rewarding was to help some groups like Cop Block. I wanted to shine a light on the bad cops cause there are a lot of good cops out there. I ended up losing a lot of friends and family in that process because they didn't agree, but too bad. Kinda goes with a lot of other work I've done in my life.