Cops have hard, tough jobs. We don't know the facts. They really do care about protecting us.

After all, if they didn't do anything wrong, they would not have been detained and locked in a van for 15 hours in sub freezing temperatures. That house party is a serious offenses and deserves a sentence of hypothermia and frostbite, as well as racial attacks for being Korean (or Asian, since we all know Asians look the same and there is no difference between them anyway. Just ask my Chinese national wife that.) {SARCASM}

Besides, they are young. They are tough. Nothing more to see here.

If so, you're painting with quite a broad brush. That said, there needs to be some accountability. Were the teens left in the van overnight intentionally? It seems that they were, since one officer told them to "shut up" rather than taking them inside the station and "processing" them. But even if it wasn't intentional, there is still no excuse for it.

OK, full disclosure - I work at the Sheriff's Office in a small county in Minnesota. I'm not a cop, I'm the I.T. guy. I suppose in your eyes that makes me a "badge sniffer". C'est la vie. I've found that the law enforcement officers I've met while on the job are not much different from the rest of the population.

It only takes a few bad experiences to make a person distrust cops in principle and I say this as a white man who looks like an office worker. Imagine how much worse my experience would have been if u were otherwise.

I think the most disgusting thing about cops is how solidarity prevents the good ones from turning in the corrupt ones.

I am someone who believes there is a need for a police force but has little faith in the ones we've got.

Well, who do you suggest we replace them with? Seriously. Cops are people and people are fallible. To expect perfection from any person or group of people is unrealistic. Should they be held to a higher standard? Yes, by all means - but they'll never be perfect. Perhaps the screening process for prospective law enforcement personnel needs to be changed, to weed-out those that would be more likely to behave badly. But that's not likely to solve the problem, either. People change over time, whether they want to or not. Who of us is the same person we were 10, 20 or 30 years ago?

I don't live in a major metropolitan area - the closest is the Twin Cities and that's over an hour away. I'm pretty certain that the small size of the law enforcement community in our area permits better scrutiny both by the citizenry and by law enforcement administration. Because of this, bad cops get turned in by the good cops.

The teens in the story certainly didn't deserve to be treated the way they were - nobody deserves such treatment.

jail.

sniff, sniff.

no one expects perfection - but we better expect an incredibly high standard from those to whom we entrust the protection of our rights and the enforcement of our laws.

We expect them to act like humans, not over steroided robots.

but (given his advanced age) has undoubtedly covered up for other cops as part of the blue wall of silence?

I don't have to imply that all cops are "gobshites," whatever that is.

They are. Anyone with experience knows that. Even cops know that. They just don't care.

taints them all. ALL LEO's are dirty if they remain silent about the "few bad apples".

90% give the rest a bad name. Seriously, when good cops refuse to police their ranks and get rid of the bad apples then the good cops are not good, but complicit.

who did NOT have a badge would be facing some serious jail time. And since when has locking a suspect up in a van been considered good law enforcement? A hardened criminal would have been out of there in no time. A double fail for the police.

have badges, there's going to be a settlement for the families of these kids, and a quiet apology. Nothing is going to happen to the cops. They might ride a desk for a couple of weeks, but that's it.
And they wonder why people don't trust them.

If you left your kid overnight in a freezing car, you'd be jailed for child abuse.

But this is just "a simple mistake?"

Cops have a tough job. Don't you understand that? It's only a few bad apples.

who lock their kids overnight in the car.

if it happens to you or your own. No biggie. And, again, when the "majority of good cops" are silent about the "few bad apples" then there are NO good cops.


edited for grammar.

The rights of these kids was violated in so many ways, it's breathtaking.

perfection. They are not infallible. They makes mistakes. Mistakes were made. But they are good people and have a tough job.

Badge sniffers will not like what you posted.

...or the many, many similar examples we could grab daily.

However, simplistic diagnoses like "all cops are bad" are about as useful in solving problems as is, say, "all suspects are bad," when used by police to relieve their guilt.

If we want better policing, we'd better fund it and demand--and be--oversight. We can do better, but not by pretending that police are a different species, or that we would dare to do (statistically) better if given their same bleak, demanding row to hoe.

return to the original job of the police and that was to protect the citizens. We need to change the target from the military-style persecution of all citizens as it is now, and back to protection.

Their "Us versus Them" attitude as well as the mindset that they are somehow superior than the rest of the citizenry, has come about and need to squashed ASAP. This won't eliminate the problem, but it just might be a start.

or maybe just a truck load of apples, many of which are rotten to the core.

What we have here is another example of how sad is our situation vis a vis our own police. They are not sufficiently screened, so potential bad apples get in and get badges and guns. They are not properly trained, so it becomes easy -- too easy -- for many of them to consider society as divided between "citizens" and "police." And they are hardly ever properly disciplined because even the bad apples are regarded as "brother" and "sister" members of the family.

The result is a divided society. "Citizens" when they are not involved in police brutality situations, remain relatively uninterested. Citizens who have been victimized -- or who know people, including youngsters, who have been victimized -- sense that the police are all potential bullies who are neither to be trusted or respected -- but feared, of course. The police, on the other side, will often put their lives and well being on the line to catch and bring to justice actual bad guys. They also put their lives at risk patroling higheays and maintaining adherence to speed limits and traffic rules. So when a few sadists behave as did the Fort Lee police in the matter at hand, most police will prepare to react defensively, even to accepting lame excuses for the brutality these kids suffered, insisting that was unfortunate but just one of those things that happens during the busy and dangerous daily routine.

In Poland, before the fall of the Iron Curtain, the State maintained an internal police force (called "Zomos", I think) who were trained to be brutal and to regard the citizens at large as potential problems to be kept in line. The police were, effectively, segregated from the at-large communities they policed. They didn't feel connected to -- or even friendly with -- the citenzry; and the citizenry reciprocated. That was a set-up deliberately created and maintained by the police-state assholes running Poland.

In many -- maybe most -- parts of America, the same dichotomy of citizens (the police on the one side, the rest of us on the other) has been effectively allowed to grow and even flourish.

Sad situation. So many reasons police and citizens should work together and respect each other; so many more reasons why it won't happen.

Or, we can just bitch feckleslly about the police brutality outrage du jour.

I think Sen. Jim Webb tried to get something like this passed a couple of years ago. Time to try again.

that involves both those on the beat and the admins.