So I'm writing a brief, and had to do something to put it off for a bit. I'm still not posting regularly again.
Aren't all police everywhere unfriendly?
A crime? For picking up abandoned property?
Appalling! I left my wallet in a taxi in NYC two weeks ago, and a courteous gentlemen returned it to me via Fedex, with all contents intact. Before I knew it had been found, I called 311 and reported it lost. The lady at the other end courteously took all my information, but left little doubt that I had about a snowball's chance in hell of ever finding my wallet through the police lost & found system.
Particularly galling is that those actions aren't even technically illegal.
In dismissing one case, a Brooklyn judge noted that the law gives people 10 days to turn in property they find...
And speaking of grievous miscarriages of justice.
That is so fucking stupid. Ugh.
I had thought that theft requires taking property from another person, not picking up random shit laying around. But even if that's not the case (like 7 suggests), surely there's no requirement that the first officer you see must be the one you hand it to.
Now seriously, people. If I found something good that someone had lost, I would never give it to a cop. The cop would just keep the damn thing, most likely. I return stuff, or turn it in to whoever seems likeliest to get things back to people, but cops keep stuff. Everyone knows that. If you, er, get arrested at a protest...well, don't count on getting your cash back when you're turned loose, is all I'm saying.
Now obviously, the cops aren't going to "keep" a decoy bag, but I'd be doing a downright disservice to my fellow citizens if I made a practice of turning in nice bags full of money and gadgets to the ol' gendarmerie.
A spokesman for the Police Department took questions yesterday about the revived decoy operations, but did not provide any answers.
NYPD: Because we can.
The last time I found a wallet on the street, I think I mailed it back to the address on the drivers' license. Turning it into a cop strikes me as batshit insane.
"Turning it in to a cop", rather than "turning it into a cop", which suggests that either I really am batshit insane or I have the Blue Fairy's magic wand.
This is deeply stupid, and a waste of time, money and resources that would be better spent waterboarding Ashcroft.
I've turned in lost items to the NYU Campus police a couple of times.
I once forgot a card at an ATM on a busy street. Before I had realized it was missing, the young woman who had discovered had left a message on my home phone saying she'd meet me at the local coffee place in an hour, or she'd slip the card under the door of the bank (it was a weekend, so it was closed) next to the ATM. I met her, and it was very cute; she asked to see my driver's license before she'd give me my card back.
This slipping real credit cards in the bag so they can hit someone with a felony is ridiculous.
13: Yeah, turning it into a frog is hard enough...
One partner at our company loses his wallet about once every four months, and someone always returns it -- usually the next passenger in the cab. They return it by finding his business card and calling the office. New York is full of extremely decent people; I have to keep reminding myself that some cops are among that number.
Finally someone is fighting the basic laws of economics! I sure as hell hope they're not letting people pick up hundred dollar bills off the ground without a stern talking to.
What kills me is that I'd really like to live in a city where I felt comfortable asking police for advice, or directions, or minor assistance like help returning a wallet -- that seems like a pleasant and appropriate way to run a police force. But it's not what the NYPD is like, and expecting people to guess that the same cop who will stare blankly at you if you ask him what direction the nearest subway station is will not only be happy to assist you with returning lost property, but that he'll arrest you if you don't ask him for help, is just so weird. It's like setting up a sting where a policeman asks you 'what number am I thinking of?' and arrests you if you get it wrong.
8 - Hella, hella weak. Bad form, Tube bureaucrats.
20 - Don't be silly. Efficient market theory tells us that nobody ever finds hundred dollar bills lying on the sidewalk.
21:The cops are quite nice if you act like a clueless tourist, I've found. In Manhattan at least.
23: Thanks to the NYPD, no-one will.
21, 24: I must look look and act like a clueless tourist, because I've always found the NYC cops to be friendly and helpful.
Don't They Have Real Work To Do?
I suggest launching Unfogged: The NYPD Edition so they can expend their idle energy in a more productive pointless harmless manner.
Why the fuck would they do this? God, this stuff makes me angry.
Two very nice young women once found and returned my whole entire messenger bag, which I had left on the curb while packing stuff into my car...my messenger bag which contained my wallet, cell, some bills, assorted minor yet important items and my passport. When I realized that I'd left the bag, I drove back and it was of course not there and I just about decided to run away to sea rather than deal with the consequences, but by the time I got home, my housemate told me that they'd called and they drove it over! I gave them each $20, which was all I could afford at the time, but I would gladly have given them substantially more.
24, 26: Hrm. Maybe I've just had bad luck, but occasions when I've asked a police officer anything, I've usually gotten a blank stare and no attempt at a helpful response -- most recently a couple of weeks ago.
30: LB, they're on duty. Do you really expect them to respond to your crude come-ons?
You're saying that admiring a man's truncheon might be taken the wrong way?
LB's come-ons are rather sophisticated, you see. No admiring of billy-clubs for her.
28: I'm willing to cut individuals slack for a lot of stupid things, having done a lot of stupid things individually myself. But you simply can't have idiocy on this level without the active collaboration of a lot of people. I hate it.
Like LB, I'm not posting regularly either right now, but egads, this is ludicrous. I guess I should applaud the Manhattan DAs who are refusing to prosecute some of these cases, but seriously, it's difficult to see how these actions constitute a crime. Maybe the surreptitious behavior of the one guy described in the article could form some evidence of intent, and maybe it's somehow different if the purse is picked up inside a retail store instead of on the sidewalk, but even still, this prosecutor's mind boggles. Like the post title says, the NYPD should have MUCH bigger fish to fry.
PS -- Originally, I planned to respond to Frowner's extremely cynical comment at 11, but after reading the linked article, I can't seem to muster up any outrage at her description of sticky-fingered law enforcement officers.
You're saying that admiring a man's truncheon might be taken the wrong way?
"I bet you've beaten up LOTS of hippies and freaks with that [bats eyelashes]."
33: No admiring of billy-clubs
Only when I'm slumming.
32: Well, these days they aren't made of material you're supposed to wax, so your offers in that direction sort of lack alternative interpretations.
could form some evidence of intent
And even then, what's the charge? Conspiracy?
Do they station cops at every construction project? In the city,that might almost make sense, I suppose. Out near my folks' place, if a guy is retiling his roof, they'll have a statie outside, just to make sure it goes ok. Adding onto your garage? You'll need a statie for that, too. Any kind of work that needs heavy equipment comes with a police officer out here. They don't call it irish welfare for nothing.
They should attach a string to the purse, and pull it away when someone tries to pick it up. That would be a better use of time.
BTW, the comments to the linked article over at NYTimes.com are pretty much the same as here (with a few very sweet and very naive comments thrown in).
39: Arguably, intent to steal. From whom, I cannot determine -- ergo, my boggling mind.
I heard that internal affairs have a parallel sting going where they leave a plunger lying around, and if a cop doesn't use it to sodomize some minority suspect they get docked a month's pay.
If there is any justice in the world, 44 should win the thread.
My mom arrived at her local Curves one day for her daily workout to find the staff and customers cooing over a small Westie puppy with a bow on its collar. The little dog had appeared at the door sometime during the early afternoon, and the staff took it in, intending to take it into the police after they were done with their shift.
My mom finished her workout and went to pick up my sister from her job at the local mom & pop grocery store. She began to recount the story of the cute puppy when my sister interrupted her, squealing that someone had just been in with a homemade sign about a lost puppy. And so began a series of frantic calls to the gym, the owner, and my mother and sister returned the puppy to an elderly grandmother. They refused a reward, it was very cute, and everyone was happy.
Two days later, a card from the old woman arrived in the mail with $200 inside.
35: Cynical? Not cynical! Practical! It sounds cynical coming from me because I'm white and not a young punk any more, so we all know that I'd actually have to go out of my way for the cops to hassle me. But honestly, when the police do something to you, there's no recourse. Whether it's the five dollars and change that went missing from my bag at the jail lo these many years ago or them working over some homeless guy or groping some women driver or taking a bribe or godforbid really hurting someone, there's no accountability. Review boards are weak and slow; civil suits are weaker and slower.
Some time ago (60s?) a commission (Knapp?) on NYPD corruption conducted a sting operation in which wallets were turned into random police officers. In a majority of cases the money contained within was stolen. I think the proper response to this new story is to demand that this old sting operation be repeated until all the thieves are removed from the NYPD.
Ooh, another one. A friend from college went on a drunken pub crawl in Philadelphia one snowy night, and on the way home, he took off his glove and his class ring went flying into a snow drift. The drunken search did not prove to be successful. He drunkenly messaged me about losing his 'precious', and we all figured that was likely the end of it.
Sometime later he got a letter in the mail that said "I have your ring" and listed a phone number. Apparently once the street had been cleaned, someone picked it up, noted the school, the initials and year of graduation, engraved on the inside of the band, and searched through the alumni club's website to find my friend's address.
Policemen have had a reputation for petty theft since the first days of organised police forces. The music hall song "If You Want To Know The Time, Ask A Policeman" is about the tendency of the Victorian constabulary to steal people's watches.
So silly, what possible justification could there be:
Arthur Silber:A Nation on the Edge of the Final Descent,Pts 3 & 4
A Country Ready to Follow Orders -- Even into Hell ...this is where AS quotes Alice Miller on the origins of authoritarianism in child abuse
If they got you on the little quotidian stuff, if they can get us obedient and/or scared all the time, with economic insecurity and fear of police, they got us on the big stuff. Taser a dude for nothing, ain't no one gonna protest the next war, or get really serious after suspended elections. This is how totalitarianism works. Stalin could have been easily overthrown, but the millions couldn't storm the Kremlin. They had been tamed.
As we have been tamed. With a nuclear attack on Iran in the middle of a recession, I expect the A-list bloggers to fall into line. If not, making a couple examples will do it.
You all are far too cynical. I'm sure if I wasn't a white man this would not be the case, but in all my long years of [running up against/asking directions from] the cops they've all been fine. Some have been surlier than necessary, others cooler. I know I'm jinxing myself, but all of my cops have been more or less cool. They broke one of my pipes once, but I'm willing to let that slide.
35: That's not cynical, really. It exactly matches my somewhat broad experience of interactions with police in many cities and several countries. This can be hard to understand if you are (particularly) white and relatively affluent, but it's pretty much standard practice.
things like this make me receptive to the libertarians who say we should get rid of the police and give everyone weapons
53: I'm pretty obviously caucasian, and I could write you a list of illegal things police officers have done to or near me as long as your arm. Granted, most of this was long ago, but that reinforces the idea that if you are in the `right' socio-economic groups, you won't see it. If you are in the `wrong' ones, you can't avoid it.
48: the problem is the respect for authority most people have, not the downstream things like review boards or whatnaught
55: The problem with that is there is no reason trust random citizens any more than I do random policemen. They would just have less training and inferior checks & balances.
Review boards are weak and slow; civil suits are weaker and slower.
You forgot to mention leave you subject to retaliation unless they have strong anonymity protections. Nevertheless, review boards and law suits do exist, which undercuts the claim that there is no recourse or accountability.
59: In a lot of cases there is no effective review of accountability. If one other cop is willing to stonewall, and you have the wrong sort of backgroung (wrong skin, a record, bad address) it's laughable to think anyone will be likely to take up your complaint.
The problem with that is there is no reason trust random citizens any more than I do random policemen. They would just have less training and inferior checks & balances.
The sad part is I think I would trust random people more. And since police have qualified immunity that seems to be interpreted very broadly there is probably less checks and balances on their actions then on other private citizens.
Don't read what I'm saying as a claim that all police are goons, or anything. I'm saying that there is a significant percentage who play outside the rules regularly, and they are institutionally accepted. Even if we're only talking 10% or lower, that's a lot of police. And they profile very effectively.
61: I would trust random citizens more for certain things. However, police, particularly bad police, had a good sense of self preservation. If it's going to end up with a lot of paperwork and/or an internal review board, they'll try hard to avoid it. A cop may empty your wallet, but random people are far more likely to screw up and shoot you, for example (assuming profilgate weapons and no police).
Besides, we already know what happens in that situation. History gives a very good review on what personal safetly looks like if you don't have independent police forces.
nobody ever finds hundred dollar bills lying on the sidewalk.
I found $100 in twenties once, on the floor of a train station. I turned it in to the police. I thought they were insane for asking for my name and phone number (like I was going to get this back), but I honestly felt way too guilty to keep it.
That was a long time ago.
62:I'm saying that there is a significant percentage who play outside the rules regularly
These cops weren't playing outside the rules. This was policy, initiated higher up and maintained without justification in the face of public protest and prosecutorial contempt. I don't know much about NY politics, but looks like an extension of "Zero Tolerance." Or was it "Broken Windows?" Whatever, NY right now looks like a canary in a coalmine. And Giuliani as the experienced authoritarian, whom I still expect to be our next President. Bush wouldn't have his heart in it. Lazy.
Yes, I am crazy, but I see such a huge plan. Housing crash & recession in the most liberal areas of the country? This was so predictable it is hard to imagine as an accident.
62 is right.
I was subject to minor police harassment a couple of times as a teenager including one half-hearted attempt to intimidate a friend and me into admitting some crime we knew nothing about.
I've seen or heard of much worse, however. A friend was run over by a drunk policeman and was left with a severely broken leg, lost his job and was in callipers for about a year. First, all of the cops who turned up on the scene went out of their way to protect the cop involved, then blood-alcohol and breathalyser samples were lost, witness statements went missing, etc. This guy eventually died [of something entirely unrelated 15 years later] at which point he was still waiting for his compensation payout.
I trust random people more. The one thing I know about a cop is that he or she wanted to be a cop....or rather, I know several things about cops--that they want to be cops and that they've been through the rather heavy-duty socialization process involved in becoming cops. Granted, I could always end up with a random citizen who wanted to be a cop but was too stupid and vindictive to make it, but the odds seem small.
And for most things, a review board isn't really accountability. Am I going to the review board over $5? Is the random hippie activist whose ID was stolen by a cop going to be believed at the review board? Now, as I've said before, I witnessed this theft. But random activist was truculent and had no people skills, and I was a college punk who didn't even live in the city. Would we go to some review hearing in a year or two? Not likely; she would have had to replace her ID long before that just to get by.
A cop may empty your wallet, but random people are far more likely to screw up and shoot you, for example (assuming profilgate weapons and no police).
I am not arguing for no police and lots of guns, but at least when someone else screws up and shoots me they are probably going to go to jail and if I am alive I can sue for damages. A cop on the other hand probably won't even be fired.
65: Oh, I agree, this `sting' was stupid but on the books. I was commenting on the other claims in the thread.
66 doesn't surprise me at all. That's more of a covering for a buddy situation, but pretty common when cops screw up. The amount of violence/threat/intimidation a cop is comfortable using on you scales with how likely they think you are to a) file a complaint and b) be taken seriously.
re: 69
The key thing is that while cops may care about protecting the general public from crime, they care more about protecting other cops from ... everything.
68: I was commenting strictly on the situation in 55, not on the relative likelihood of your being shot by police vs. random person (numbers probably vary by state)
This reminds me very much of discussions of pedophile/abusive priests back before the scandal really broke. Everyone knew about it; everyone had a story. Many of the stories were quite horrifying, but there somehow wasn't the momentum for the whole thing to become political.
If anything, it would be a lot more difficult to really get any action on police corruption/brutality because the problem is more universal, but surely there could be something done.
Has anyone here ever read any oral histories of law enforcement? I read a number of them in the mid-90s. Because I didn't know a lot of police officers personally, I found them to be immensely helpful in understanding the socialization and thought process that are the law enforcement mentality.
It didn't always make me more sympathetic, but it made it easier to understand why situations that did not need to spiral into conflict might do so.
I am not arguing for no police and lots of guns, but at least when someone else screws up and shoots me they are probably going to go to jail and if I am alive I can sue for damages. A cop on the other hand probably won't even be fired.
I agree.
Compare Corey Maye to Salvatore Culosi. http://www.justiceforsal.com/
68: You know, I've had an awful lot of interactions with random people in my time, both as a miserable social outcast in the suburbs and in my beloved but rather dodgy neighborhood. Random people have, in fact, done some rather awful things to me. But none of them have shot me yet, and I'd take all those awful things over police brutality any day.
It's hardly as though the choice (even the radical hippie-dippie anarcho-commie choice) is between unaccountable, thuggish cops and random heavily-armed gangs of freebooting libertarians.
72: The best you can hope for is leadership pressure on police forces to be on the better side of the distribution, and people at the top who take seriously the idea that everybody matters, not just the economically successful. In any country with deeply institutionalized racism (e.g. everwhere I've lived) you have additional problems.
You're not going to get rid of corruption entirely in any job. A lot of it has to do with incentives though. Lots of people will engage in petty theft at work if they don't believe there is any likely repercussion, etc.
75: But none of them have shot me yet
So you haven't been to Florida, then?
I was commenting strictly on the situation in 55, not on the relative likelihood of your being shot by police vs. random person
My original point was that I think cops actually have fewer checks and balances overall than regular citizens do. Which was in response to your 58. This isn't saying we should get rid of police, but that the current set of safeguards is not good.
75: Random people have shot at & near me, for what it's worth.
Look, I was just reacting to the (stupid) idea of getting rid of police and arming everyone, as sketched in 55. Do you honestly think that would be better? I've got shares in a bridge for you if so.
I'm obviously not suggesting those are the only two possibilities, and would love to see serious police reform.
75: Huh. I'm reasonably far over to the instinctive distrust of the police side, for someone as upper-middle-class and dull as I am, but I have to think that the choice is between cops and "random heavily-armed gangs of freebooting libertarians". The random heavily-armed gangs don't exist now, at least in most neighborhoods, but they don't exist because the police are filling their ecological niche -- they'd get shut down by the cops if they tried tio start up. I'm all for better police, but netting everything out I'm glad they exist.
78: You're comparing apples and oranges again. Cops have more checks and balances than random people would have under the proposed free for all. As it is now, sure, you are more likely to be shot by a cop without them going to jail than you are likely to be shot by a random person without them going to jail.
80: The point is you don't have to have thuggish cops. You do have to have independent cops.
"55: The problem with that is there is no reason trust random citizens any more than I do random policemen. They would just have less training and inferior checks & balances."
I think there are reasons to trust average people more, most especially that police view themselves as the 'good guys' and whoever they are beating on, the 'bad guys'
You're comparing apples and oranges again. Cops have more checks and balances than random people would have under the proposed free for all
OK, I thought you were arguing about the current situation not the hypothetical one. So no disagreement.
also, for what it's worth I don't think the biggest problem we have right now is thuggish cops, or criminal behaviour by cops. I think the biggest problem we have is institutional militarization of police forces, which is an incredibly stupid idea.
83: Which is exactly the same way most groups of people feel in a violent situation. Remove the police, and just as has happened throughout history, a significant percentage of your fellow citizens will become a serious threat to you.
Lots of people will engage in petty theft at work if they don't believe there is any likely repercussion, etc.
well, thats usually from some corporation, not from actual people. you have to a much bigger prick to steal from some normal person with a face.
86: most people don't have the mythologizing of 'good guys', the uniforms that say they're awesome, dno't seem to select lower-education people who are really into being higher status, etc.
oh i never said libertarian udystopia would be better.
87: Then we just call it banking.
Seriously though, I'm not saying that without a police presence, all of a sudden everyone would turn into a career criminal. However, a significant percentage of people would, in fact, rip you off given half a chance. Enough that it would quickly become a problem.
66 is right. I had a friend lose his business once because he broke his leg and totalled his truck running into a police car which was parked on a blind corner. He couldn't even get the insurance paid out.
8. I remember hearing a platform announcer on the Tube saying: "I would like to remind you that this is a non-smoking station. Would passengers please extinguish all cigarettes, cigars, pipes, spliffs, bongs..."
FWIW, My eulogizing of cops wasn't trying to claim that all or most cops are saints. It was just that I started with the assumption that they're all bastards, and so far every single one has proven me wrong. That tells me two things : a(they're not all bastards and b(I've been lucky.
Also, I'm tired and read LB as positing a choice between cops and "random heavily-armed gangs of freebooting librarians" If they'll really do the trick, then the latter, please. I'll just stash my better books in the basement and await a safer, quieter society.
If they'll really do the trick
The probability of that is 0.
As it is now, sure, you are more likely to be shot by a cop without them going to jail than you are likely to be shot by a random person without them going to jail.
That depends on where you are. In some cities more than half of murders don't lead to anyone being prosecuted. And if we relied on vigilante justice instead of police, only the powerful could get justice or revenge.
No admiring of billy-clubs
Only when I'm slumming.
Threesomes with Mickey Kaus?
One of the issues of the "cop mentality" is "the thin blue line" that has been alluded to above. Remember that most of the people that cops deal with really are scummy predators. I think one would have to be a saint to not have one's view of humanity tainted by daily dealings with such. The "us vs. the world" is a problem, but is further reinforced by the majority of opinions voiced in this forum.
Remember that most of the people that cops deal with really are scummy predators.
This is just really laughably untrue. In fact, it's basically backwards. The average day for the average cop will involve zero scummy predators.
I have to agree, that the piling-on against cops as it were collectively, despite the facts and anecdotes upthread which I don't deny, leaves me feeling queasy.
I've got one of those unpleasant police interaction stories. As a tourist in a U.S. city, I was trying to photograph three cops roughing up a civilian. I ended spending the night in jail.
I learned that police procedure was to arrest any witnesses to police crimes. I ended up cuffed to the guy who was roughed up, and that guy's brother was arrested when he asked where he needed to go to bail out his brother.
I complained to internal affairs, and the cop was eventually sanctioned for, I think, "discourtesy" or something like that. By the time of my trial (I was charged with "interfering with police"), the arresting officer had been thrown off the force for a different infraction.
Now I'm a white guy with some social capital - and the arresting officer had a pretty good idea of this when he busted me. I raised hell. Not only did I go to internal affairs, but the day I got out of jail, I was on the local 6 o'clock news, and CNN picked up the story. There was a little item in the next day's newspaper.
But the fact is, that cop was right when he decided that he could pull me off the street with impunity. It was a real eye-opener.
Prosecutors offered to drop charges if I signed a paper saying I wouldn't sue. My lawyer told me that I must must must take that deal. I did.
The average day for the average cop will involve zero scummy predators.
I suppose it depends on where you live. If Deputy Fife is writing the occasional traffic ticket, then I would have to agree. Officer Pete Malloy cruising South Central L.A. less so.
If I were a black man living in New York I expect I'd think twice before approaching a cop while brandishing a wallet.
98: Well, I had hoped there was a clear deliniation being made. For the record though, the majority of police officers are ok, and they are working a difficult job. Some (but not enough, for various reasons) are truly excellent. The majority of police forces though, have problems, and in some cases this is pretty extreme. Typically, police behave poorly towards certain segments of our society, and this is a natural process of the way the job is structured (which is getting wors) which must be actively
worked against if you want to avoid it. Most departments don't really try.
Militariztion is a really big mistake, but has become a negative feedback situation. Training and recruitment is a problem, made worse by insufficient funding. The result is systemic, but lowish levels of both corruption and incompetence. Typically the effects are played out primarily on certain economic and education demographics.
98: I see where you're coming from - I'm all for lawnorder minus the institutionalized racism etc. - but I think respect for the police as a valuable institution can peacefully coexist with a fierce determination to protect one's legal rights and be treated as a free person.
the cops become a collective when they value protecting each other over protecting everyone else
96: This gets it backwards, TLL. The average cop's day probably doesn't have many scummy predators at all. But a large part of their training, for obvious reasons, focuses on scummy predators, ways to take down scummy predators, and dealing with the victims of scummy predators. Between that focus and what they personally see (which doesn't have to be much to give a lasting impression), they're pretty much primed to see anyone who isn't advertising their social acceptability as a threat.
Lest I get to repetative, I must say that I have always been suspicious of giving a gun and a badge to a guy who wants a job where he gets a gun and a badge. But I want to relate the parable of the sheepdog. This parable posits that there are three kinds of people: wolves, sheep and sheepdogs. The wolves would prey upon the sheep, but for the the intervention of the sheepdogs. But the sheep do not like the sheepdogs, because the sheepdogs look way too much like wolves for the sheep to be comfortable.
100: I just looked up my local crime statistics (in a reportedly bad area.) Count up all the crimes and divide them by the number of cops and it's about 15 incidents per cop per annum. This is a bad way to do statistics, but it illustrates my point. The average cop isn't spending his time steeping in the absolute sludge of humanity.
107: This situation is clearly fixable via the introduction of adorable baby sheep-pigs.
People aren't wolves, sheep and sheepdogs, TLL. They are all dogs; dogs of different sizes and different levels of aggression, but all dogs.
I have to agree, that the piling-on against cops as it were collectively, despite the facts and anecdotes upthread which I don't deny, leaves me feeling queasy.
I'm surprised to hear this from someone who lives in Chicago.
100 Is depressingly naive; depressing in that it demonstrates the effectivness of an ongoing misinformation campaign.
First off, even if you were correct (and you are not), police forces are overwhelmingly populated by the `fifes' of your example, not the `malloys'. There are a few speciial task forces on organized crime and gangs who spend a lot more percentage of their time dealing with `scummy predators', than the average cop (although, even then on a given day maybe not) but there numbers are vanishingly small in the total numbers of police.
Secondly, while there has been both a strong and effective marketing campaign over the last few decades to play up urban (proxy for black) violent crime, and also increasing amounts of fabulist TV like `cops', it is a really, really distorted view of reality. Unless South Central is vastly different than similar demographically/crime stat areas I know better, the average police cruiser there in most places, most days is dealing with regular folk who are poor. Not scummy predators however much some racist fuck on a network would like you believe that the entire place is a write off.
110. Dude, it's a parable, and I would venture to say that it is repeated in squad rooms across the country on a daily basis. And I totally concur with 102.
"wherever there's a cop beating a guy up, I'll be there" Tom Joad
I would venture to say that it is repeated in squad rooms across the country on a daily basis. And I totally concur with 102.
If so, that would partially explain the fucked-up attitude of the police toward the insufficiently submissive.
Uh Oh ...Peter Dorman at Econospeak on the total collapse of private purchasing of US Debt instruments
"Still, the risk of a rupture is real. My advice: progressive people need to start thinking systematically about the political environment we are likely to find ourselves in if all hell breaks loose. What narratives, based in reality or fantasy, will make sense of this catastrophe for the general public? Who will step forward to manage the crisis? How can we minimize the risk of an authoritarian surge?" ...PD (I am not that crazy.)
Believe me, the right is aware & calculating, and the police are being prepared. The wallet scenario is just a step away from stopping politically suspicious charcters. This is practice.
The A-List liberal bloggers are utterly oblivious, worrying about Romney Muslim-bashing and Clinton's war vote. Village people. Yeccch. It's the economy, you stupid mudders.
I'll stop trolling. What's the point?
104: Indeed. At worst they can become almost their own street gang. NYTM, 10/1/00:
When the investigators asked Perez about the cocaine thefts that had ultimately led them to him, the Crash officer told them that he had started dealing drugs in 1997. That year, he and Durden had arrested a suspect and found a bag containing a pound of powder cocaine. They kept the drugs -- along with the suspect's pager. When the pager went off, Perez pretended to be a dealer and took an order for a quarter-pound of cocaine. According to Perez, the officers went out to make the arrest, but Durden said: " 'Screw it. Let's just sell to him.' And I completely agreed."
The two men kept the pager and made two more deals, netting $10,000.
A friend of mine and I were driving in the Canadian Rockies, coming down from north of Jasper back towards Edmonton. We'd just come back from our last hike of the trip. Then I noticed he had three ticks on his sleeve. So we stopped the car and did a quick check over--he had one inside his shirt and got a bit panicky about it, sort of phobic. We got back in the car and drove for about three hours. Then suddenly he realized that his wallet had fallen out when he'd been all panicky about the ticks. So we went and cancelled his cards, I fronted him some money, he got replacement cards.
Three weeks later he got his wallet back in the mail, with all the cash in it and his cards all there. Some trucker with a big load of logs had happened to see it by the side of the road--we're talking on a long stretch of mountain road, with heavy vegetation coming up to the shoulder--pulled over, picked it up, mailed it as soon as he was able.
I think that's often what happens when you lose a wallet. It's quintessentially what should happen: a person-to-person social relation. We don't need the cops to be insisting that they're the only legitimate avenue for this. It's such a stupid operation on almost every level imaginable.
117 seem irrelevant
118 is exactly correct
119. You wanted to know if South Central had similar crime statistics. I don't know what you are comparing it to, but four aggrevated assaults, three burglaries, one violent robbery and two rapes within the last three days in a one mile radius makes me think that the police in that particular precinct are not just harassing law abiding poor folk.
118 is so right on. This is the standard conservative critique of paternalistic government, that it impoverishes civil society. This is just such a nasty case of it, when you add on the actually locking people up factor.
120: Oh, I see. I knew what that stats were like, and they aren't that different than places I've been. I just didn't want to seem to claim particular knowledge about south la, as I haven't been there.
I never said that there weren't high crime areas (also high density, usually, so factor that in). I'm saying a) police work there is so atypical as to make it stupid to hold up as a model of what police work is --- even though that's exactly what many people do these days and b) most police interaction , most days, *even* in these areas are with basically `law abiding poor folk', not `scummy predators'.
The idea that this is true should be obvious, but careful misinformation has made an awful lot of people believe some pretty stupid things about particular parts of the country. It's sad how effective fear-mongering can be.
I happened to be at Dodger Stadium on the first day of the 1992 civil disturbances and saw firsthand what can happen when the bad guys take over. Not a pretty sight. But I agree that the amount of crime depicted on the various Law & Order, Cops, etc. is for dramatic purposes only, and not a reflection of reality.
123: Sure, we need police forces because the alternative is worse for us; whether the `bad guys' are a rioting mob or toughs hired out by the rich.
The reason that I was harping on the point was that the role of police is being reconstructed as an adversarial one, which is unnatural. Nonsense like Remember that most of the people that cops deal with really are scummy predators. Only plays into that game. It's a very stupid game, and it is makeing things worse for everyone, not better.
115 is today's essential McManus comment.
further to 123, you should also recall about the 1992 events a) the majority of the people caught up in the riots were not `bad guys' in any useful sense of the word (not that rioting is a good idea), and b) the riots were pretty much directly incurred due to police brutality, so not the best example.
The Tube announcer story linked in 8 reminds me of the scene in Wings of Desire when the angels are reading from their observations of people's spontaneous departures from wearying routine, and one notes how a train conductor announced the Zoo U-Bahn station as "Tierra del Fuego;" the other replies, "nice."
Next stop: a still more miserable, humorless world. All Aboard.
Some of the spoof announcements are pretty funny.
117 completely ignores the fact that 99% of those occur when no cops are around
existance of crime doesn't mean cops are there
in fact, i would guess that most people committing crimes go out of their way to avoid instances where cops would see them in action
124. I modify my statement to read "cops have to sometimes deal with people who really are scummy predators, and this will tend to cloud their judgement on the rest of humanity. They deal with these scummy predators in the hopes that we the citizens don't have to."
129: That still isn't very good, because it really isn't indicative of the job the police do. For the overwhelming majority of police officers [*], the overwhelming majority of the people that they will interact with are regular citizens, some who are drunk, some who've had a fight with their partner, some who witnessed a crime, some who commited a minor crime or misdemeaner, some who just were in the wrong place --- none of them anything like `scummy predators'.
The job of the police officer is characterized by these other interactions. Interactions with people. It's true that the police officer has to be trained and ready for the very unusual event that they might actually be dealing with a dangerous predator directly -- that is part of their job, after all. But mostly it just doesn't happen. If the police officer lets this possibility cloud their judgement and adversly affect there interactions with everybody else , this is a failing on the part of the police officer and/or their training and emphatically not a natural consequence of the job, period. It is not something we, or they, should accept.
There are clearly some unusual corner cases, like long term embedded undercover gang investigations.
in 130, the last sentence was to be a footnote for *. Such situations are so unusual as to be completely irrelevant in a discussion of general practice.
a train conductor announced the Zoo U-Bahn station as "Tierra del Fuego;"
I was once in the Greyhound station in Boston, and there was a really cheerful ticket agent who joked with me about the obscure destination I was travelling to. A few minutes later, I heard her announcing the departure of a cross-country bus: "Now departing, Greyhound service XYZ to Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Minneapolis, Fargo North Dakota, Missoula Montana, Spokane Washington, and Seattle..."
Then, without stopping for breath, she continued "...Honolulu Hawaii, Midway Island, Okinawa, Nagasaki, and Tokyo, Japan.
130
This is dependent on your definition of "scummy predator". By my definition 5-10% of the population would qualify. What percent would you so label?
130. what further chaps my ass is the way that we have turned those sworn to "protect and serve" into revenue enhancement for the various municipalities. What would happen to the city's budget if by some miracle there were no parking violations for a year?
My city has the pernicious practise of no street parking allowed between 2 am and 6 am. This is not for street sweeping, but to allow the patrol to quickly see that something is amiss. One used to be able to call the PD if parking on the street was needed temporarily. But now one must purchase an overnight pass for such situations. So public safety takes a back seat to revenue enhancement. Next up, sales of "indulgences" for misdemeanors.
133: Depends ... how many investment bankers, politicians, corporate lawyers, brokers, etc. are you including?
Seriously: regardless of your definition, and whether you believe it's 0.05% or 5%, or 50% do you really think it correlates well with the people most police officers spent most time interacting with?
For most cops, isn't having to draw, much less fire, their weapon so rare that most cops remember every time in their career they had to do so? I guess less so now if you consider tasers- everyone loves a good jolt.
adorable baby sheep-pigs
Babe Pig in the City is a really lovely film for adults and older or slightly jaded kids (there's graphic animal distress, though all is OK at the end) with an interesting cinematic take on crime, virtue, and police. A reformed assassin becomes a force for good in the struggle against corruption, but brutality even in the service of good turns out to be less important than cleverness. It's one of my favorite movies now, and I've seen it more than a dozen times.
134- Quotas suck. They suggest that there is always a certain amount of violation going on (speeding, failure to come to a complete stop, parking violation.) If for some reason a cop hasn't given out enough tickets in a month, it means the cop isn't doing his job, not that more people are obeying the law. Lovely.
130:
For the overwhelming majority of police officers, the overwhelming majority of the people that they will interact with are regular citizens, some who are drunk, some who've had a fight with their partner, some who witnessed a crime, some who commited a minor crime or misdemeaner, some who just were in the wrong place --- none of them anything like `scummy predators'.
This also describes 99% of all criminal defendants, in my personal experience. That's why it always makes sense to be respectful and courteous as a prosecutor -- the defendants you're dealing with aren't some alien other. They are, by and large, your neighbors.
As for the dialogue being carried on between TLL and SB, as much as I'd like to root for TLL, soup biscuit has the better of it, IMHO. Good cops will tell you much the same. One thing to add: as unlikely as it is that any given officer "might actually be dealing with a dangerous predator directly," an officer nonetheless needs to be prepared for any given person to be such a "dangerous predator" (if for no other reason than for the safety of the officer). Obviously, little old ladies and small children pose less of a potential risk, but you see what I'm saying.
134: Oh, that's maddening. Here the latest issue like that was overly broad interpretation of a law about maintaining a clearly visible licence plate. A few of the cities `finest' set themselves up in shop ticketing anyone who had a licence plate holder (you konw, like those little plastic frames pretty much any dealer puts on). The city seemed happy with the revenue. A court eventually forced them to stop.
139: Of course, the officer must be ready. This is a difficult thing, and I fully empathize that it's a difficult thing for training and managing a department too.
However, `being ready' does not include treating everyone like a problem, in case they are. It doesn't include forcing people to take subservient attitudes. It doesn't involve a lot of things that are pretty common ---- and there is no reason that the police or anyone should accept that it does.
I like to think I've got a fairly objective view of these things. I certainly try. I've had far more interactions with police than most people I know, and some of them were really not ok (at least a couple would almost certainly have resulted in jail time for the officer if prosecuted). However, I'm aware that these were anomalous situations, and I am really careful not to paint other officers with a broad brush because of it. On the other hand, unlike most people I meet in similar socio-economic situation to my own today, I have a very good idea of how different things can be in different situations.
141: Yo, I was simply adding a caveat, not questioning your objectivity.
NCProsecutor gets it right. Most criminal defendants are fairly normal, relatively harmless people.
Even most murderers are unlikely to cause you harm unless you steal from them, date them, or are a rival drug dealer.
I would much rather hang with or represent criminal defendants than with low end car finance people. Those are some scummy people.
Sell the bad car at an outrageous price on credit with an outlandish interest rate. Repossess the car. Sell it at auction to your buddy for a pittance. Sue the original car buyer. Make lots of money.
142: Sorry, that last bit wasn't meant as a direct response to your post; I agreed with your caveat. I was just trying to say this is somethign I have though about a fair bit.
143: It's true that some of the scummiest practices around aren't illegal at all. Just barely.
The worst criminals are up in the boardrooms, where the police will never, ever catch them because what they do to people isn't even illegal, though it destroys more lives than crack does.
Even socalled white collar crime is barely punished, while again doing more harm than crack.
The job of the police is not to solve crime, not to protect you from the criminals, it's to protect those in power from you.
In everyday life, how often have you really needed the police and how often were they there? I've been shot at twice; never seen the police at either time.
Society doesn't need police, certainly not professionalised police as we have now.
I said above that 44 should win the thread, but Martin has come pretty close with 145. Especially that last sentence.
145:
I wouldnt tell that to Chalana McFarland or Jamie Olis.
In everyday life, how often have you really needed the police and how often were they there? I've been shot at twice; never seen the police at either time.
Society doesn't need police, certainly not professionalised police as we have now.
Martin's a closet gun nut or something.
I think if police didn't exist, the number of situations in which I needed their help would go up by a huge amount.
Do what they do in Egypt - employ Tourist Police.
Their job apparently is to protect you from the regular police..........