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Dr. Arbitrary posted:It depends on the job. Just guessing, but I think a cop who does mostly drug busts is probably going to have a pretty low mortality rate compared to highway patrol. There are a ton of statistics. Cops are completely safe, but some of them face dangerous situations everyday. We need to get past this idea that cops are completely safe or cops are loving going to die every time they blink, idea. It isn't that easy.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:35
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Requiring police to have a body camera enabled in order to use any police power is an idea whose time has long come. Obviously, certain mysterious organizations oppose this (http://nypost.com/2013/08/14/nypd-in-a-snap-judgment-pba-and-brass-resist-order-to-carry-cameras/) and cops in general are not afraid of intimidating people who record them on their own initiative (http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/11/dallas-police-union-recording-cops-creat et al). But it needs to happen as the very first step towards reining in police abuse.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:38
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Pohl posted:There are a ton of statistics. Cops are completely safe, but some of them face dangerous situations everyday.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:38
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meat sweats posted:Requiring police to have a body camera enabled in order to use any police power is an idea whose time has long come. Obviously, certain mysterious organizations oppose this (http://nypost.com/2013/08/14/nypd-in-a-snap-judgment-pba-and-brass-resist-order-to-carry-cameras/) and cops in general are not afraid of intimidating people who record them on their own initiative (http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/11/dallas-police-union-recording-cops-creat et al). But it needs to happen as the very first step towards reining in police abuse. Absolutely. By the way, one of the considerations guiding ACLU's policy on body cameras is the need to protect union activists from retaliation: quote:Purely from an accountability perspective, the ideal policy for body-worn cameras would be for continuous recording throughout a police officer's shift, eliminating any possibility that an officer could evade the recording of abuses committed on duty. Of course, just as body cameras can invade the privacy of many innocent citizens, continuous deployment would similarly impinge on police officers when they are sitting in a station house or patrol car shooting the breeze — getting to know each other as humans, discussing precinct politics, etc. We have some sympathy for police on this; continuous recording might feel as stressful and oppressive in those situations as it would for any employee subject to constant recording by their supervisor. True, police officers with their extraordinary powers are not regular employees, and in theory officers' privacy, like citizens', could be protected by appropriate policies (as outlined below) that ensure that 99% of video would be deleted in relatively short order without ever being reviewed. But on a psychological level, such assurances are rarely enough. There is also the danger that the technology would be misused by police supervisors against whistleblowers or union activists — for example, by scrutinizing video records to find minor violations to use against an officer.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:43
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Samurai Sanders posted:One thing I've never known is, how are cop jobs doled out? How is it decided who gets the dangerous jobs/areas and who gets the safe jobs/areas? Volunteering? The say-so of their boss? Dumb luck? It has mostly to do with job status, but that doesn't matter. The thing to understand is, as a cop, you are not going to die today. When you wake up, put on your uniform and gun, you are not going to die. The statistics show that, what they don't show is the toll that cops experience day in and day out thinking they may die. Because they might. I mean, we all might, but cops have a job that puts them at a supposedly higher risk than everybody else. It doesn't matter if they are going to die, they all actually believe they might. That is how we train them, because we train them like soldiers. Never let your guard down, everyone is a scumbag.
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Jun 30, 2014 02:51
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:It depends on the job. Just guessing, but I think a cop who does mostly drug busts is probably going to have a pretty low mortality rate compared to highway patrol. It's mostly due to traffic accidents, with a large proportion of those being motorcycle accidents.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:05
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 at the thought of a police officer in the US making $200k.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:22
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Pohl posted:It has mostly to do with job status, but that doesn't matter.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:27
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Mr. Nice! posted:
Most NYPD cops make more than this when you put valuation on their benefits -- the base salary at 5 years service is six figures automatically before adding in the overtime rate and the endless benefit packages. I don't really care if some idiot in a rural county only makes $35K, though. It doesn't give him any more right to oppress people than the New York cops have.
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Jun 30, 2014 03:28
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meat sweats posted:Most NYPD cops make more than this when you put valuation on their benefits -- the base salary at 5 years service is six figures automatically before adding in the overtime rate and the endless benefit packages. I don't really care if some idiot in a rural county only makes $35K, though. It doesn't give him any more right to oppress people than the New York cops have. You aren't fooling anybody by throwing out things like "It doesn't give him any more right to oppress people than the New York cops have." Except maybe yourself?
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Jun 30, 2014 03:29
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I think cops are overpaid for a job mostly staffed by washed-out high school jocks with community college degrees in a fake field, whose daily workload is mostly writing traffic tickets and bullshitting with each other at coffee shops. I don't know why you think I would hide this, based on my previous posts in the thread. It is a fact that many cops make 3 or 4 times the rate of professions requiring comparable skills. Some don't. None of them should abuse their police power. Is there something you disagree with here?
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Jun 30, 2014 03:41
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meat sweats posted:Most NYPD cops make more than this when you put valuation on their benefits -- the base salary at 5 years service is six figures automatically before adding in the overtime rate and the endless benefit packages. I don't really care if some idiot in a rural county only makes $35K, though. It doesn't give him any more right to oppress people than the New York cops have. By "most" do you mean "white shirts who claim a ton of overtime"?
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Jun 30, 2014 03:46
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Accretionist posted:You tell him his rhetoric's incompetent, his poo poo's all retarded and he talks like a fag. I'll go ahead and volunteer myself as tribute. I'm a retired cop (due to injury) and completely support body cameras. I'm against civilian oversight boards because in my experience they're nothing more than a chance for "community activists" to exert their own authority on people they view as oppressors. Feel free to ask away and I'll respond to whatever I can. Obviously I can only give my opinions and my answers shouldn't be taken as anything more.
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Jun 30, 2014 04:07
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wixard posted:If I remember right you pass 1 weigh station driving from Philadelphia to Baltimore on 95, and I'm pretty sure the one I'm thinking of is south of Baltimore so it might be 0. Do you really think it's possible to regulate all the trucks and drivers that drive on that corridor in a parking lot at that weigh station? They need a place for overweight trucks to park. Not to mention most weigh stations aren't open 24/7 and night-time is generally when both safety equipment and driver fatigue are most important to regulate. A lot of the weigh stations out here are shut down these days, too. The USDOT can't afford to run 'em.
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Jun 30, 2014 04:17
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SrgMagnum posted:I'll go ahead and volunteer myself as tribute. You say that like those community activists don't have good reason to view cops as oppressors. Can you expand on this?
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Jun 30, 2014 04:23
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SrgMagnum posted:I'll go ahead and volunteer myself as tribute. Ha ha, yeah why should the people you're "protecting" have any say in how rigorously you "protect" them? Typical cop think, since you utilize authority as power to subvert others to your will, you automatically assume anyone with authority will do the same.
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Jun 30, 2014 04:23
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SrgMagnum posted:I'll go ahead and volunteer myself as tribute. Who do you mean by "community activists"?
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Jun 30, 2014 04:25
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SrgMagnum posted:I'll go ahead and volunteer myself as tribute. Thanks for posting. So what's your solution? Do you think police don't need civilian oversight, or is there some way to make the membership of oversight boards acceptable to you?
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Jun 30, 2014 04:32
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SedanChair posted:Thanks for posting. So what's your solution? Do you think police don't need civilian oversight, or is there some way to make the membership of oversight boards acceptable to you? I'm very curious what his solution is, as there needs to be a reliable answer who 'who watches the watchers' that isn't 'they watch themselves and we assume they are always going to be 100% honest and accurate'. We've tried that. It doesn't work.
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Jun 30, 2014 04:43
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I want cameras on police, but I also want those cameras to be hooked up to a centralized facial scanning database to find wanted criminals.
JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 05:03
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SrgMagnum posted:I'll go ahead and volunteer myself as tribute. If civilians aren't suitable for oversight and if you think that oversight is needed, who or what should be doing oversight? Expanded FBI investigations into state and muni departments? Personally I'd be more worried that the local civilian oversight would be corruptible by lovely people. I wouldn't want the local KKK chapter or tea party to decide what is or isn't racial profiling.
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Jun 30, 2014 05:13
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I am not a police officer. I am a lawyer (probate) and I think I can see why a civilian oversight board would not be the answer, and would understand why you say this. There are reasonable grievances that people have against the police. Hell I get livid every time I hear of a dog jumping over a fence and plugging some family's golden retriever with a few bullets because he felt threatened. That said, the average person's ability to cope with and understand the legal system, and maybe particular aspects of the legal system, is often dismal. Emotions run high when dealing with the legal system. People believe life is supposed to be fair and it isn't. People lie and omit important facts regularly when they describe their situations to garner support, and probably far far far more in the criminal law arena than in my field, and my field is a pain in the rear end. These folks are often the most emotional and are usually the "community activists." I think that any civilian oversight board would end up being a waste of typically limited resources. All that said there are some very very honest and understanding people in my field, even in the face of incredibly emotional and trying situations. I have plenty of clients I have incredible respect for. But, they are probably not the people that you would see at these civilian boards. I also think that people understate how difficult it is to be a police officer. Being in the heart of conflict 40 hours a week, dealing with folks lying regularly, and dealing with general public animosity is tough. You have significant restrictions as cops that probably make it hard for you to feel like you can provide actual justice, at least at times. Cops probably get jaded very quickly. I'm sure it can be very frustrating. You get tons of poo poo too. Even the replies in this thread are hostile when all he did was offer to add his input as a retired cop, like this guy: ryonguy posted:Ha ha, yeah why should the people you're "protecting" have any say in how rigorously you "protect" them? Typical cop think, since you utilize authority as power to subvert others to your will, you automatically assume anyone with authority will do the same. There are also a LOT of problems in the legal arena caused simply by limited State resources. So all in all I understand SrgMagnum's hesitancy to agreeing that a civilian oversight board is the answer.
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Jun 30, 2014 05:43
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Runaktla posted:I am not a police officer. I am a lawyer (probate) and I think I can see why a civilian oversight board would not be the answer, and would understand why you say this. This whole post is nothing but fascist horseshit masquerading as concern; the same old, "If you dealt with the public, you'd be distrustful of them too!" line all old cops use. Yeah, unless you're a public defender, go gently caress yourself.
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Jun 30, 2014 05:48
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SrgMagnum posted:I'm against civilian oversight boards because in my experience they're nothing more than a chance for "community activists" to exert their own authority on people they view as oppressors. How were the ones you dealt with set-up? Like, anything you remember about their powers, their purview, how was membership determined, etc. And if civilian oversight were non-optional, do you have opinions on how you'd want it set-up? Or at least on specific issues you'd like to avoid? Also, you mentioned being in support of officer-mounted cameras. Anything else immediately come to mind as Good Ideas?
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Jun 30, 2014 06:03
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ryonguy posted:This whole post is nothing but fascist horseshit masquerading as concern; the same old, "If you dealt with the public, you'd be distrustful of them too!" line all old cops use. Yeah, unless you're a public defender, go gently caress yourself.
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Jun 30, 2014 06:09
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Runaktla posted:Not even trying to have a discussion here... just whine whine whine whine whine. Well, focus on the less diatribe-y posts. What to you would be the ideal composition of a civilian oversight board? Who would get a seat at the table? The ACLU? Legal aid nonprofits? Representatives of minority communities? What if each board member had access to legal counsel and research staff? Would that make their questions and criticisms more substantive?
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Jun 30, 2014 06:18
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Honestly, I question the value of a civilian oversight council as well. Why would the same people who make criminal laws so bad in the first place (by voting for "tough on crime" local politicians over and over again) have anything different to say in that setting? The root problem seems elsewhere to me. Like, deep down, a majority of people in most communities WANT police to be an unassailable authority figure.
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Jun 30, 2014 06:23
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SedanChair posted:Well, focus on the less diatribe-y posts. What to you would be the ideal composition of a civilian oversight board? Who would get a seat at the table? The ACLU? Legal aid nonprofits? Representatives of minority communities? Among other reasons i stated, the police department is a potential defendant in civil rights suits. Giving the public facts, even if it wouldn't amount to a harm, may be enough to have a lawsuit filed. This means more legal costs for the departments, settlements of lawsuits just to wipe them away (there is a certain extortion element to some lawsuits), more funding necessary and of course it's either higher taxes or pulling resources from other areas of the department. Then you got the media that just never sensationalizes anything of course. The other option is to have the review board keep facts/investigations secret, but then that means placing trust in the board... and of course accusations will fly if they are not aggressive enough.
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Jun 30, 2014 06:38
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Samurai Sanders posted:Honestly, I question the value of a civilian oversight council as well. Why would the same people who make criminal laws so bad in the first place (by voting for "tough on crime" local politicians over and over again) have anything different to say in that setting? Possibly. But also, good people don't want to enforce bad laws. As long as cops are the foot soldiers of the ridiculous, racist war on drugs, no good person is ever going to become a cop. When you have to rely on constantly monitoring and threatening bad people to act good, you will achieve spotty results at best.
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Jun 30, 2014 06:47
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I'm of the mind that there needs to be a separate auditor office for not just peace officers but for records management as well. They would have three duties
I would think that they should be managed at the state or national level, their point of existence would be to improve and make government functions more transparent and accountable, they could go after everyone who has government mandated authority to charge others with crimes, this would mean everyone from traffic cops, IRS agents to military actions taken on domestic soil. But I'm a big socialist so my answer is more new government 
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Jun 30, 2014 06:51
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Samurai Sanders posted:Honestly, I question the value of a civilian oversight council as well. Why would the same people who make criminal laws so bad in the first place (by voting for "tough on crime" local politicians over and over again) have anything different to say in that setting? I don't think anyone is suggesting that citizen oversight is going to get at the root of the problem. Where it seems like it would be most useful is in obvious cases of abuse or negligence, where most of the community is united in deploring the cops' behavior in that particular instance. For the root of the problem, we'd need to address legislation, sentencing, inequality, and a bunch of other serious issues at the root of many problems other than those of law enforcement. (Aside: gently caress, I fell into the habit of saying "civilian oversight" rather than "citizen oversight." That's the pervasiveness of antagonistic cop language for you. Even the word "civilian" is problematic because I think undocumented persons should have representation on the boards as well.) Runaktla posted:Among other reasons i stated, the police department is a potential defendant in civil rights suits. Giving the public facts, even if it wouldn't amount to a harm, may be enough to have a lawsuit filed. This means more legal costs for the departments, settlements of lawsuits just to wipe them away (there is a certain extortion element to some lawsuits), more funding necessary and of course it's either higher taxes or pulling resources from other areas of the department. Then you got the media that just never sensationalizes anything of course. Can you give a few good examples of instances where the media sensationalized police misconduct beyond what was warranted?
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Jun 30, 2014 07:04
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SedanChair posted:Can you give a few good examples of instances where the media sensationalized police misconduct beyond what was warranted? I have heard my own share of law related media hype. There was a famous case where a burglar was injured and sued the landowner. What the story always left out was that the burglar was a minor, the structure he entered was a school after hours, and the harm was like falling through a skylight or something. We have specific laws that force people to lock up dangerous areas where kids regularly go called attractive nuisance laws because well, kids are dumb and go places they aren't supposed to be. If we did not have those laws landowners/schools could make their areas little death traps and grin as dumb kids injure and maim themselves while trespassing on the property. The headline for this event was like "Burglar injures himself while trespassing, sues owner and wins!!!" It's stuff like that that the media is all too willing to do, especially if it scores political points with whatever politics the media source has. I'm sure I could dig up dumb media hype on a daily basis. Maybe with some effort I can find some police-related media hype and poke holes at the perspectives they leave out or facts they gloss over to make cooler headlines.
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Jun 30, 2014 07:36
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meat sweats is *this* close to outright admitting that he is owed the labour of others because he voted for it.
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Jun 30, 2014 08:01
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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Runaktla posted:I have heard my own share of law related media hype. There was a famous case where a burglar was injured and sued the landowner. What the story always left out was that the burglar was a minor, the structure he entered was a school after hours, and the harm was like falling through a skylight or something. I could be totally wrong because this is such a hard story to research due to all the bullshit, but I heard that he was on the roof for some reason and walked over a skylight that had been covered over with tar. The kid probably shouldn't have been up there but the school didn't do much to stop curious kids with bad judgment from getting into an extremely dangerous area. As for oversight, I work in the casino industry and we've got something that might be comparable. The casino staff does their own thing but we have a regulatory agency that is employed by the tribe hat performs a regulatory role. I guess the general idea is that gambling has a history of corruption and a perception that things aren't fair can threaten the entire operation. It sucks when they're being dumb because they don't understand a technology or they just don't like someone, but I'd rather have that bullshit and a well regulated casino than have to deal with a totally unregulated mess where I might get put in a situation where I'm expected to do something unethical to help make the casino some extra money. Hopefully most police would be onboard for an external oversight process as long as it was designed intelligently and had people on it that had some understanding of how law enforcement works.
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Jun 30, 2014 09:42
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Meat Sweats, I know I'm a bit late to the party, but is there some reason you insist grouping police unions and police corruption and judicial cover-ups together, when they are in fact three separate (and, granted, very problematic) issues? One can be pro-union and realize that the police unions are hosed up, just like one could realize that the unions have little to do with bad cops being acquitted when compared to psycho judges and politicians.
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Jun 30, 2014 09:55
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The answer then should be to stock the community oversight board or whatever with randomly selected people, or at least put some protections in place so you get a broad sample of the population. You can talk about adding technology and so on, but it's fundamentally a problem of power structures; Power serves its own interests, and a lack of accountability will, over time, always lead to parochial relations and corruption. It's easy to wax poetic about the inherent nobility (or vice) of law enforcement as a profession, but they're just human beings like the rest of us. So while adding cameras is good, lacking actual human beings to audit and use them for oversight, it's just a wasted opportunity. And who should commit that oversight? The only reasonable solution is 'the public'.
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Jun 30, 2014 09:58
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How about punishing cops? Instead of sending them on vacation fire them, bar them from being a police officer, or throw them in jail.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:23
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rudatron posted:The answer then should be to stock the community oversight board or whatever with randomly selected people, or at least put some protections in place so you get a broad sample of the population.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:28
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Provided such an agency really IS impartial. We finally got an "independent" agency for handling complaints against the police here in Denmark, and still only about 2% of complaints go to complainants favour (and that is not because we have an ethical, rule-abiding force, believe you me). To no one's surprise, it turns out it is stacked with former cops and DAs.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:39
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Tias posted:Provided such an agency really IS impartial. We finally got an "independent" agency for handling complaints against the police here in Denmark, and still only about 2% of complaints go to complainants favour (and that is not because we have an ethical, rule-abiding force, believe you me). Excuse me, but I believe the term is "Qualified Experts".
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Jun 30, 2014 13:48
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