Some winger who works at the LAPD (via MY):
You may be tooling along on a Sunday drive in your 1932 Hupmobile when, quite unknown to you, someone else in a 1932 Hupmobile knocks off the nearby Piggly Wiggly. A passing police officer sees you and, asking himself how many 1932 Hupmobiles can there be around here, pulls you over. At that moment I can assure you the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you. He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.
Now, I’m confident that most police are good people. I’ve never had a bad experience with cops in my life. The one cop I know is a good, smart guy who is incensed by injustice when he sees it.
That said, I find this kind of arrogance stunning. Honestly, I hope these fuckers don’t expect people like me to vote them a pay increase anytime soon. And I say that as someone who knows that most cops aren’t fuckers. But whatever profession you’re in, you can’t have other members of your profession publicly state that they have the right to murder for no reason and not expect some kind of a backlash.
I’d like to see the Faternal Fraternal Order of Police or some such group condemn this kind of talk.
Update. And how is this different from “Cop Killer” in reverse? Only it’s worse, because he’s not talking about some violent fantasy, he’s talking about killing you as a professional matter of course.
Martin
This is a truly awesome sentence:
What he’s saying is that you could get shot if you don’t let the police officer break the law. He’s establishing a scenario where the police officer *will* break the law, either by conducting an unlawful search or by shooting you for failing to consent to it.
Nothing good can come from having people with this mindset carry a badge and gun.
JenJen
I really do think Digby covers this well in all of her recent posts on taser gun usage, and again in this particular piece about GatesGate:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gatesgate-by-digby-i-have-been.html
To me, this has always been about a police authority thing. I know enough to realize it’s smart too be cooperative, and quiet, when involved in a law enforcement encounter. But I also know that everyone should be permitted to engage an officer in a conversation, no matter how heated, without the risk of being handcuffed, arrested and detained.
They’re supposed to be better at their jobs than this. In my line of work, I’ve known a lot of cops who are really good at calming people down, especially people who are likely innocent and are emotional in expressing said innocence. I can’t express how much, through the years, I’ve witnessed cops getting me out of a sticky situation with a drunk or angry guest, without ever applying so much as handcuffs.
I’d like to see the Fraternal Order of Police and other groups not only condemn the kind of talk Doug pointed out, but also give a lot more credit to cops that are really, really good at what they do.
burnspbesq
That, my friends, is the LAPD mindset in a nutshell. A trigger-happy occupying army, completely divorced from the community. The polar opposite of the NYPD mind-set.
YMMV, but I have no doubt as to which approach is superior. The NYPD has had some bad incidents over the years, to be sure, but here in Los Angeles, the badness is endemic and impossible to root out. This is the easiest place on earth to commit “suicide by cop.”
General Winfield Stuck
Wish I could say the same. Though I have never had a bad experience with a criminal. And even if I had, the chances of a cop being there to help is very low. There are good cops, but there are far too many bad ones, and since it’s impossible to tell which during an encounter it makes me very nervous.
The deterrent mostly comes from investigating crimes after they occur, so the usefulness of your average patrol cop is limited unless in high crime areas of big cities. They drive around all day with fantasies of getting bad guys, so when they pull someone over for running a stop sign, anything can happen, with some of them.
DougJ
The NYPD has had some bad incidents over the years, to be sure, but here in Los Angeles, the badness is endemic and impossible to root out.
Yes, I think that’s right.
calipygian
Used to be that conservatives advised their peeps to aim for the head and the balls because the body armor doesn’t cover there. Now you need to lay back and let the cops walk all over you.
I’m confused.
General Winfield Stuck
@burnspbesq:
I would put Albuquerque somewhere hi on that list. I saw (on teevee) them gun down a drunken Indian waving a small pocket knife a 100 foot away from a crowd of officers with automatic weapons. And then have it deemed a righteous shoot. Fucking killers.
burnspbesq
@calipygian:
‘Low me to ‘splain.
The people you think are “conservatives?” They’re not, even though they may claim they are. They are authoritarians, to their rotten core. See John Dean’s “Conservatives Without Conscience” for a more complete and nuanced explanation.
Warren Terra
Don’t worry, the Roberts Court, with its fetishisation of law enforcement (and, basically, The Man generally, whether it’s law enforcement or some big corporation) is eroding these constitutional protections to the point where even the most principled among us won’t have any such rights, and this won’t have to risk our lives by insisting that they be protected. Eviscerating the whole concept of Unreasonable Search And Seizure has long been a particular target of the Roberts/Scalia/Thomas/Alito wing.
Martin
I could explain which conservative position applied to you, but I don’t know if you are black or white.
JenJen
@General Winfield Stuck:
This is very true. Crowley by all measures was experienced and educated, but there’s a larger issue here, which affects everyone. Being a cop is a pretty boring job in most areas. You really have to prove your grit to get on a big-city force, and a lot of guys work the small towns to get experience. I took an amazing conflict resolution course once where we had to spent two days at the County Comm Center (in my case, Hamilton County, Cincinnati) and observe/listen to 9/11 calls. I pulled a few night shifts to get my credits and I could hardly believe how mind-numbingly dull it all was. I do fondly remember one drunken call from a man who wanted law enforcement dispatched to retrieve a cell phone from his girlfriend, in the room, who wouldn’t give it back. He had minutes, he explained to the 9/11 operator, she didn’t and was really being a bitch about it.
And so it goes. But I’d like to see cops learn how to resolve conflicts without a handcuff or a taser. I know it’s possible, because I’ve learned a lot from those guys. I’ve seen it many times, and those cops never get any press… which, when you think about it, is how it should be.
Warren Terra
Eh, “this won’t” should be “thus won’t” and “protected” should be “respected” in my comment. I apologize for my sloppiness as I wistfully reminisce about the days when this blog had an edit function for its comments.
Jorge
We have the right to bear arms therefore the police reserve the right to be paranoid.
Hunter Thompson was right when he said the American concept of freedom died in the late 1960s*.
*Paraphrase
El Tiburon
I’ve had three experiences with cops – all bad.
I’m not saying all cops are a-holes, but their culture makes them think they can get away with anything. The level at which they are willing to lie is incredible.
There is a video on the Huffington Post where some cops are caught fabricating a story to get one cop off of a minor traffic incident. These 4 cops are willing to make up lies and implicate an innocent girl over something as minor as an accident.
The worse part is that the word of a cop is supposed to be sacrosanct.
burnspbesq
@Warren Terra:
Been going on for a lot longer than that. Rakas v. Illinois, the first major attack on the Fourth Amendment by activist right-wing judges (that would be Burger and Rehnquist if you’re keeping score at home) was decided in 1976.
Keith G
I blame CBS!
General Winfield Stuck
Yes, professional course, but I’d be surprised that somehow this sort of shit isn’t spawned by long standing unrequited violent fantasies.
JGabriel
Jack Dunphy @ NRO:
This is someone who is clearly NOT psychologically fit for the job of police officer and should be fired or found other duties within the force.
I’ll say this though – it certainly gives credence to the many horror stories regarding the LAPD.
.
B'Hommad
A lot of LA cops came to town intending to be movie stars, so they tend to act extra tough and are quick on the draw. That said, asking the Fraternal Order of Police to condemn standard operating bluster would be like asking the Fraternal Order of Easily Scandalized Bloggers to realize that a thug is a thug, whether he’s working for you or not.
KG
so, let me get this straight… asserting your constitutional rights, and asking questions of a uniformed police officer, is grounds for getting shot? Nice.
Also, a few slight problems with the example: assuming someone in a 1932 Hupmobile(1) robbed a Piggly Wiggly(2), and you get stopped for it(3).
(1) if someone was robbing a store, I doubt they would use a readily identifiable car such as a ’32 Hupmobile.
(2) I’m pretty sure we have no Piggly Wiggly’s here in Cali.
(3) what are the odds that the guy who actually committed the heist would stop?
I’ll let the first two go, because they are really beside the point. But the last one, really? You really think that the guy who just pulled off a daring daylight robbery is going to stop because a cop gets behind them and turns their lights on? Dude, this is southern California you’re talking about, we live for high speed chases on TV.
burnspbesq
@Keith G:
I blame Florentino Perez, who is the source of all that is evil in the universe.
Luke
The fraternal orders, brotherhoods and unions are part of the problem. When one of their own misbehaves, they all line up to defend the poor misunderstood officer who has a really hard job. I mean, people shoot at you and stuff. One can’t be blamed for losing one’s composure given the stresses of the job.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Based on this scenario, I’ve been trying to think of a scenario where asserting any Constitutional right (except #2) that would lead a cop to think he was in danger.
Cop: “Sir I need you to step out of the car so I can search your vehicle.”
“No.”
Sorry, I don’t see it. Unless the cop is a chicken shit who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
This from the original Corner article. Also:
(Egads, French!) In all fairness I have to wonder if “Jack Dunphy” officer with the LAPD is really “Jack Dunphy” Dispatcher for the LAPD.
Or even Confederate Yankee playing let’s pretend. It reads like the Yank.
The Grand Panjandrum
And to all of my friends, I do consider many of you my cyberfriends, this is exactly why I am a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. I do literally believe in protecting myself from the government and their henchman. Sheriff Andy Taylor was a fictional character on a TV show.
MikeJ
“We need to quarter some troops in your house.”
“No”
blam!
Just Some Fuckhead
Shoot first, aim for the head. Kill or be killed. It’s the law of the jungle.
Gex
Quite honestly this is a result of the war on drugs. You can’t wage a war on drugs, so instead it has become a war on the citizenry. It has led to the militarization of our police forces and has caused them to view the public as enemy combatants. Additionally, the negative side effects of the war on drugs (black markets and violent defense of their “business”) provide a positive feedback loop, making the police feel at war with “the bad guys” whomever they may be. Once asset forfeiture was added, coupled with tax and budget cutting zealotry, we’ve managed to turn our police forces into a state sanctioned gang/mafia.
Mojotron
Faternal Order of Police
heh.
About 90% of my interactions with cops have been positive (with one major positive- wish I could remember the name of the cop in Houston who blocked the road for me to cross quickly so I didn’t muddy my trousers with diarrhea, at first he thought I was just trying to talk my way out of a speeding ticket:) but the 10% that weren’t are the ones that really stick with you. And while there are bad apples everywhere, the “barrels” in LA, Chicago, and PG county seem to be more rotten than most.
KG
I’ve known a lot of cops in my day, generally speaking, they’ve been good people. And those particular individuals, I trust. But the institutions they work for, not so much. Power does a lot of crazy things to people, and ultimately, that’s what being a cop is: a grant of power. A wise man once said, “with great power comes great responsibility.” We, as a society, have been rather lax the last few decades on the responsibility side of things.
Comrade Darkness
@JGabriel: Don’t shoot the messenger. The man is making statements of fact as he sees them. The problem is far bigger than him, and pinning it on him runs the risk of scapegoating one guy when the wood of the apple barrel itself is infused with the spores of the rot.
Martin
And this is before the Obama Medicare Euthanasia Stormtroopers start showing up at your house for your age 62 1/2 lethal injection.
burnspbesq
@MikeJ:
“Do you have a warrant?”
“I have the only warrant I need. It’s from Judge Glock.”
MikeJ
You joke, but look what the Obama Navy did just today:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_jjuzPKR1lcM/SnDy4q-uxYI/AAAAAAAAAuU/u99XYwDoeH8/DSC_0137-2.JPG
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
That will be the job of Obama’s Youth Corp.
The Grand Panjandrum
Here is a link to the racist Boston cops email. Think these fuckers have your best interest at heart? What a vile piece of shit this guy is, but he is not alone on police forces around this country. Not all are racist, but many of authoritarian cocksuckers who I have little sympathy for.
BTW what profession has the most per capita domestic violence problems? You get one guess. Anyone getting the wrong answer will be forced to toe the thin blue line.
Comrade Darkness
And this is before the Obama Medicare Euthanasia Stormtroopers start showing up at your house for your age 62 1/2 lethal injection.
On the upside, this new policy makes planning for retirement a breeze.
General Winfield Stuck
@MikeJ:
My Gawd!!. Anythang but the Space Needle. It’s a national Icon fer christ sakes.
Andre
Hee hee. Heeeee.
/nothing constructive to add
Martin
For years I’ve had beer, bacon cheeseburgers and chili cheese fritos as a regular component of my retirement plan. I might even get in under the lethal injection deadline.
Roger Moore
You have the right not to be killed. Murder is a crime.
jenniebee
@KG:
You really think that the guy who just pulled off a daring daylight robbery is going to stop because a cop gets behind them and turns their lights on?
The fact that he pulled over is evidence that he is guilty because running would be the surest sign of guilt and he must know that so we can clearly not choose the wine in front of him. And if the money from the robbery isn’t visible in the car, that’s just evidence that it must be hidden. Plus if the driver does not commit an arrestable offense he is objectively evading arrest. Also.
/wingnut
The Moar You Know
You are very, very lucky. As I’ve stated here earlier, I have a grandfather who was ATF and later state police. His advice on how to deal with cops has kept me out of cuffs more than once – and it would have been for no other reason than Driving While Longhaired.
I hate to generalize, but Gramps is with me on this one; most people who become cops do so not out of a sense of obligation to the community, but do it to gain some personal power that they’d never have otherwise. And that’s a very dangerous kind of person, under the right (wrong) circumstances.
The Grand Panjandrum
@General Winfield Stuck: I just moved away from that area last year and I can attest to the fact that most of them are fucking authoritarian pricks. It was always amazing to me that they were allowed to get away with the shootings.
MikeJ
@jenniebee: Anyone that runs, is a VC. Anyone that stands still, is a well-disciplined VC!
Just Some Fuckhead
They should send all the cops in America over to Iraq and Afghanistan and make all our social workers be cops. If some of our social workers die doing the cop job, well hell, that’s just another win.
Jordan
I’m not sure you guys are reading this right, or rather, the cop didn’t express himself very well and you’re going with the worst possible reading.
I don’t think he’s saying a cop might shoot you for asserting your rights. I think he’s trying to impress on people that a cop pulling over a suspected armed robber is in something like mortal fear. It’s a high-adrenaline, high-volume situation where cops can make deadly mistakes, and might interpret innocent gestures as life-threatening. Staying calm, acting rational, keeping your hands in sight are generally good ideas when a frightened person is pointing or thinking of pointing a gun at you. Disobeying lawful orders, attempting to leave the scene, acting erratically in ways that could be perceived as threatening would be bad.
I.e. if you’re going to challenge a search/detention/arrest in a situation like that, it would be a good idea to do it in a very calm, clearly communicated kind of way.
General Winfield Stuck
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I moved away also soon after that, to the SW corner of the state. Peaceful here, not like The Warzone I lived next to in SE Albuquerque.
Comrade Darkness
@Martin: For years I’ve had beer, bacon cheeseburgers and chili cheese fritos as a regular component of my retirement plan. I might even get in under the lethal injection deadline.
See, I went with the red wine, in substantial quantities.
… But, I didn’t know!
So, my backup plan is to make the house look abandoned when they come to the door. An idea I got watching the latest Potter film.
jenniebee
Yow – googling “Jack Dunphy” brings up this article lamenting “the Constitutional right to be a bum.”
This, from a publication trumpeting to the four winds the theory that the freedom that matters most is the “freedom to fail.” I guess they were for it before they were against it.
KCinDC
A second, unrelated 1932 Hupmobile would be quite a coincidence. Is the idea that finding a second, unrelated black man in the area near where a crime was committed by a black man is supposed to be an equivalent level of coincidence, leading to a similar level of justified suspicion?
Roger Moore
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
It’s not a new nom de plume. “Jack Dunphy” has been writing the same kind of editorial defending all kinds of police misconduct for the LA Times for years.
Mike G
Used to be that conservatives advised their peeps to aim for the head and the balls because the body armor doesn’t cover there. Now you need to lay back and let the cops walk all over you.
I’m confused.
The first applies to righteous freedumb-lovin’ gun owners, “people like them”. The second applies to everyone else; they love to see the cops beat down people they hate and fear.
Max Renn
Sadly, I have yet to have a good experience with a non-University cop. I have never been arrested or ticketed, but I have been intimidated, illegally searched, falsely accused (my lawyer took care of it before an arrest was made), and harassed by police. I have seen County Sheriff’s officers ignore and lose evidence. I have had to defend a friend from a DWB stop. So anecdotally, I’m super underwhelmed. That’s not a blanket condemnation, but it does not fill me with joy when encountering cops.
Evolved Deep Southerner
I see all the comments about the LAPD here and have no basis upon which to say whether those perceptions are accurate or not. I’ve never been west of the Mississippi River.
But I can tell you that in my (admittedly limited) experience, the “bad cop” phenomenon gets worse, not better, as the size of the municipality shrinks. This is the case in the deep South, at least. I wish I could share DougJ’s good-cop-experience-to-bad-cop-experience ratio with him, but I can’t. And in those rare instances where I depart from my law-abiding-citizen statuses, my departures are indeed minor.
The smaller the municipality, the crappier the pay, the crappier the training, and thus the crappier the quality of the officer. There’s nothing worse than a small-town guy with a big hole in his ego who chooses to fill it with a uniform and a badge. What other reward could one derive from police work in a small town other than the chance to wear a gun and a badge and lord them over your fellow citizens? The pay fucking sucks. You get no respect from the citizenry, whether they’re “predator” or “prey.” The only good cops in rural areas are those who see it as a kind of ministry, for lack of a better word – and there aren’t many of those down here.
geg6
I have actual good friends who are cops. Quite a few, as a matter of fact, and at every level: federal, state, county, and municipal. And, to a man/woman, every one of them will tell you that a rather large minority of their compatriots in blue are racist, sadistic, violent mysogynists who should be locked up in a facility for the crimanally insane and intellectually deficient. They will also tell you that only very small percentage of LEOs will ever have a legitimate need to fire a gun on duty. Personally, I have had two instances in my life during which I had to interact with a cop where I was suspected of breaking the law. Both times (a speeding ticket and a suspicion of DUI), the cops were complete assholes. In both cases, I started out polite and completely cooperative, and in both cases, I ended up exchanging heated words with the assholes. The second time, I was hauled to the station in handcuffs just like Prof. Gates despite having passed the roadside test because he didn’t like my attitude and decided I needed to come in for a breatholizer (which I subsequently passed, mainly because I hadn’t been drinking). And I’m a white middle aged woman who some consider attractive and professional in apearance. So, I sympathize with not just Professor Gates, all who have to encounter these assholes and with their fellow cops who not only have to battle criminals, but their fellow LEOs who give them such a bad name.
lafndog
Just trying to see if this adds a new cookie to change the funky set up I get when I log on…..Sorry for the interruption (sp?) thread on, my brothers and sisters….
Martin
Fuck him.
Someone who has done nothing wrong, getting pulled over for reasons they don’t understand, guns drawn, is assuredly in something like mortal fear.
By comparison, the cop was trained for this job. If he’s in something like mortal fear, he’s in the wrong damn job. Hell, I’m a fucking office worker and have run into burning buildings and dealt with irate people with knives and guns before and didn’t experience mortal fear. Not every job is right for every person.
Seebach
I hate to generalize, but Gramps is with me on this one; most people who become cops do so not out of a sense of obligation to the community, but do it to gain some personal power that they’d never have otherwise.
Yes. My mother worked in a state prison. The guards were creepier than some of the inmates.
I also had no idea why people did not like police. Then I protested the Iraq war, peacefully. Having tear gas shot at me was eye-opening, ironically.
DarrenG
@Jordan:
Understood, but “Dunphy” seems to go well beyond your point and claims that anyone who isn’t 100% deferential to any request from a cop, legal or not, is at risk of being shot.
Radley Balko writes about the myriad problems with this attitude (and this specific post) here:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/135039.html
Josh Huaco
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
Also, there are a good number of small town cops who are just biding their time and trying to develop experience so they can get a more prestigious or better paying gig in a larger municipality. I think that seeing the municipality you patrol as just a stepping stone doesn’t help either.
latts
So basically the safest way to deal with a cop is the same as dealing with an armed thug demanding your valuables: don’t resist, talk back, move suddenly, attempt to negotiate, or even meet their eyes if you can help it. After all, in a delicate situation like facing an adrenaline-pumped, armed person, you’re better off just giving them whatever they want and hoping they don’t hurt you.
Right.
RedKitten
Unfortunately, yes, the job does tend to attract some people who are just power-hungry arseholes. And like tends to call to like, so they congregate wherever they can get away with the most shit.
It happens up here, too. We used to live next door to an RCMP officer, and he was an utter prick. He has this dog, a German Shepherd, who is poorly trained, and who he lets run loose all over the village. She’s not aggressive, but just dumb and not at all trained.
So one day, my husband lets our little, old, toothless Lhasa, Dreyfus, out for a piss. He’s tied, because otherwise, he’d take himself for a walk. Husband heads back downstairs for a second, and next thing you know, hears an awful barking:
Here’s the cop’s 2-year old German Shepherd, loose, teasing our 13-year-old toothless and tied-up Lhasa, who’s barking up a storm and scared out of his mind.
Hubby brings Dreyf inside just as the cop is running over, and the cop said something to him, but hubby just ignored him and went in the house. Next thing you know, the doorbell rings, and there’s the cop standing there, and the first thing out of his mouth isn’t “Sorry.” or “Is your dog okay?” No, no. It’s “When I speak to someone, I expect a response!”
So my husband tromped out in the yard, (in the snow, in his bare feet no less), and went nose to nose with him, and said “Here’s your response. Control your fucking dog!” Thank goodness the cop was out of uniform and not carrying his weapon, because I shudder to think what might have happened.
So douchey, power-trippy, “respect mah authoritah!” cops are universal, sadly enough.
Bootlegger
@Jordan: You are correct that police go into “danger mode” when they enter a situation with even the most remote possibility of facing someone dangerous. Frankly, its not unwarranted.
But,
@Martin: Martin is correct, there training should ensure that even though they are in danger mode their reactions are calm and measured, specifically they don’t let something else in the setting set them off and do something stupid.
As a professor at one of the top CJ programs in the US I can tell you that the data on this is unequivocal, the more education and training an officer has (particularly the former) the less likely they are to overreact (they also have much lower incidence of other forms of misconduct).
My colleagues and I hate the term “cop shop” to describe our programs because we go out of our way to avoid teaching “Baton Twirling 101”, and instead teach the young men and women about the social science and psychology behind their jobs. Our goal is turn out students who can think for themselves, see multiple sides of a situation, and develop the cognitive capacity to handle dynamic or unknown situations. We don’t teach policing, we teach them to think, and the data clearly demonstrates that it works. Most departments now require a bachelor’s degree and many require continuing education. As @Evolved Deep Southerner: EDS points out, that is not true for the rural police (except highway patrol which are highly selective).
Disclaimer: this doesn’t mean our graduates won’t become assholes, them you find everywhere.
Alan
Know Your Rights…
All three of them!
General Winfield Stuck
@RedKitten:
You realize you’ve now destroyed my ideal of the Canadian Mountie always riding a white horse to rescue damsels in distress. It ain’t right.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@The Moar You Know:
Your Gramps (via you) said it a helluva lot more concisely than I did. What he/you said.
Martin
Were they always named Dudley?
someguy
Man, you people are awful tough on NRO’s resident Blue Collar Winger. He’s only talking about murdering innocent people who ask questions. It’s not like he said the cops could get away with raping innocent people who refused to answer questions with a plunger or anything.
I guess that particular form of Enhanced Interrogation Technique is more of an NYPD specialty. Thanks, Uncle Rudy!
RedKitten
That fucker is so fat, I think he ATE his white horse.
But I have seen some pretty cute and fit Mounties, and when in dress reds, they do look quite fetching.
jenniebee
@Evolved Deep Southerner:
But I can tell you that in my (admittedly limited) experience, the “bad cop” phenomenon gets worse, not better, as the size of the municipality shrinks. This is the case in the deep South, at least… The smaller the municipality, the crappier the pay, the crappier the training, and thus the crappier the quality of the officer. There’s nothing worse than a small-town guy with a big hole in his ego who chooses to fill it with a uniform and a badge.
Meh. I’ve heard horror stories about my city’s police force from a friend who was on the force. He moved to a smaller town and joined the service there and is happy to report that where he works now is both more professional and more laid back than the big city. It really just depends. A small force, it’s easier to weed out the bad apples. Of course, it’s easier to weed out the good apples too, if that’s the way you’d rather play it.
General Winfield Stuck
To me they were. Until now.
DougJ
You have the right not to be killed. Murder is a crime.
Unless it was done by a policeman or aristocrat.
Bootlegger
@jenniebee: It depends on whether or not the smaller government entity can afford to hire educated cops or not, and pay them well enough to stay. Most small towns skimp on this part of the budget, but with police you definitely get what you pay for. But you are correct, small towns with lower rates of violence are prime jobs for cops as long as they can afford to raise their family on the salary the city/county pays.
General Winfield Stuck
@DougJ:
Or Bond. James Bond.
KG
@41: that was great, thank you… “we clearly can not choose the wine in front of me.”
Garibaldi
It’s like Dirty Harry meets the plot of My Cousin Vinny.
John Hamilton Farr
Well, that’s frickin’ amazing. If you ever do, it will change your life.
DougJ
Well, that’s frickin’ amazing. If you ever do, it will change your life.
I believe that.
conumbdrum
I hate to generalize, but Gramps is with me on this one; most people who become cops do so not out of a sense of obligation to the community, but do it to gain some personal power that they’d never have otherwise. And that’s a very dangerous kind of person, under the right (wrong) circumstances.
Seconded and thirded. I still remember a Theodore Sturgeon short story I read decades ago, in which a police chief asks a young rookie why he joined the police force.
The rookie’s answer: to help people.
The old chief gives the kid a withering glance and calls bullshit. “People who want to help,” he rumbles, his voice dripping contempt, “join the goddamn fire department.”
conumbdrum
Hmmm… the formatting isn’t working so well today, is it?
Interrobang
I’ve had more bad experiences with cops than good ones. The worst I ever had to deal with was calling the police after a rental agent for the new property company that had just bought the building in which I was living walked directly into my apartment without any notice whatsoever (which is illegal in this jurisdiction). All of a sudden, there was a key in the lock, and a man I’d never seen before coming into my apartment. I’d just gotten out of the shower and was basically naked. I’m female. I called the police and the bored-sounding cop on the other end said, “Was his name So-and-So? Yeah, he does that. What do you want us to do about it?” and then hung up on me.
I also keenly remember how the local police force, under the direction of the waste of skin who went on to be Toronto’s police chief and then the provincial safety officer, made the lives of pretty much all of my hometown’s gay men miserable because he was convinced there was a pedophile ring operating out of the local gay club. They came up with two guys in their early 20s who’d taken some naked pictures of a couple of 17 year olds. If those 17 year olds had been girls, nobody would have done anything.
I also lived for a year in Toronto, arguably the most multicultural city in the entire fucking world, and I observed a grand total of one non-white cop there, and she was pissed.
Besides all that, I had a friend in Baltimore spend the night in the pokey for reminding his neighbour of his Constitutional rights while the neighbour was being shaken down by the Baltimore cops. Friend was on his own front porch at the time, but apparently “telling your neighbour he has rights under the law in front of cops” is a criminal offence in Baltimore.
Jorge
Bad experience with a police officer?
When I was learning English I darned near gave a cop oral sex until I figured out he wanted me to take a breathalyzer…
Mnemosyne
@Jordan:
As others have said, if a cop is constantly operating in a blind state of fear where he can’t tell the difference between a 58-year-old college professor with a cane and an armed robber, he needs to find a new profession, pronto, because he’s not suited to the one he’s in. There’s nothing worse than a terrified person with a deadly weapon, especially if they know that if they make a mistake, they probably won’t even get suspended, much less fired. Prosecuted? Yeah, right.
General Winfield Stuck
@Jorge:
LMFAO You win the intertoobs today.
Matt
My last name is Hupp, and my family invented the Hupmobile! I don’t care how stupid the reference is, I can’t believe people know about it still!
Bob In Pacifica
The Grand Panjandrum, the news reports say that Officer Barrett was trained in racial-profiling prevention. Presumably, in Boston a “banana-eating jungle monkey” is an inclusive term for all citizens no matter what race or ethnic background.
Jordan
As Bootlegger says above (interesting handle for a CJ professor, incidentally), training helps cops, like soldiers, to avoid overreacting in deadly force situations. But no training in the world can teach you to read every situation and every person’s intentions correctly in a split second. I’m not here defending bad cops. I live in NYC and we’ve had more than our share. The point I’m making is, even with extremely well-trained, veteran cops without a chip on their shoulder or a sociopathic personality disorder, if you’re involved in a situation that might involve shooting, screaming insults, making violent, aggressive movements, refusing to obey lawful orders, etc. all tend to raise the danger level of that situation.
There are ways to assert your rights without presenting yourself as a threat.
Brachiator
@Jordan:
You mean a cop is not a trained professional, but something more like a nervous, frightened child barely in control of his or her emotions, with a gun? If this is the case, if this is what you believe, then we should disband police forces in the name of public safety.
Ah, there’s the rub. Who says that every order a cop gives is “lawful?” What if the cop is abusing his or her authority? But then again, it doesn’t really matter does it? Because we are back where we started, i.e., rationalization the need to meekly submit to the police because they are just a hair trigger away from losing control.
Once again, we have some cops asserting, and some citizens tacitly accepting, the baleful dictum: You have nothing to fear if you do what you’re told.
Jordan
Brachiator, see above. Even well-trained cops can mistake your intentions, especially if you’re acting in what looks like a threatening manner.
You don’t have to obey an unlawful order – depending quite a bit on jurisdiction of course. But it is a criminal offense most places to refuse to obey a lawful order, and you can be arrested, with force if you resist.
Either way, it’s aside from the simple point I’m making, which is that if you’re in a deadly situation that might involve shooting, don’t make yourself into a threat. You can have your day in court later.
asiangrrlMN
@Jordan: Whatever. They are the fucking professionals. If they can’t at least try to tamp down their control, then they should not be cops. I highly doubt that I would be calm, cool, and rational if someone with a gun pointed at me was screaming epithets at me and telling me to get on the fucking ground.
Full disclosure: I have had good experiences with cops during the daytime–when I speed. They catch me, they are polite, they give me a ticket. I am polite, I know I deserve the ticket, and I do nothing to provoke.
Fair enough. I have had bad experiences with cops at night. Once, when I was younger, I was in a car with a bunch of other Asian people, and we were just riding through downtown Minneapolis. Cops pulled us over. We were young, theatre people, and dressed a bit funky. The cop was a dick, and we all knew he had stopped us because we looked like an Asian gang. We were polite, but he wasn’t.
Second time: I was in a suburb of Philly with my boyfriend (also Asian) at the time. We were lost and his dome light was busted. We went to a church parking lot so we could look at the map. Not two minutes later, a cop came up and started grilling us on what we were doing. He was a big time asshole, and he made us leave. It was clear that we were not wanted in his suburb.
There was no difference in my demeanor during the day and during the night. I am very polite to cops. Their very divergent reactions to me in differing situations shows that context makes a big difference.
If, god forbid, I was ever driving with a bunch of Asians late at night, and we got pulled over by cops brandishing guns at us, I fear it might not end well no matter what I or my friends do.
My experiences were mild. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have to deal with ramped-up cop hostility on a daily basis.
asiangrrlMN
@Jordan: Easier said than done especially when it’s often times the cops who are exacerbating the situation. You are asking the person being stopped to act in a more professional manner than the cops. That’s not right.
P.S. It has been documented that female cops are better at talking down agitated suspects than are male cops. I think that shows that many times, it’s the cop who needs to adjust his behavior.
asiangrrlMN
P.P.S. This is the same advice given to rape victims.
latts said this:
Yup. That’s about it.
Jordan
Maybe not. There are definitely bad cops out there. There are even a few truly dangerous ones who don’t belong on any police force. That isn’t right either. It still doesn’t make it a good idea to provoke any cop in a dangerous situation (it’s not much of a good idea to provoke them in a normal situation either).
Again, that may well be true, but it won’t make you any less shot or tasered or joint-locked into arrest, will it? These are matters to decide in a court, or by pressuring a police department to improve its policies. Not out on the street.
Jordan
P.S. – not out on the street, unless of course you *want* to provoke some excessive reaction, in which case more power to you, but I’ll be in back of the squad car waiting to speak to my lawyer.
LongHairedWeirdo
You know… it’s vitally important to make sure a police officer can’t mistake you for making a threatening move. Just ask Amadou Diallo – make an innocent, but threatening-to-the-cop move, and it can ruin your whole day.
But that has nothing to do with bowing and scraping or doing whatever the cop asks. It has to do with keeping your hands in sight and not making any sudden moves or making any threats of violence.
Brachiator
@Jordan:
But this was not your original point. You wrote that cops are frightened, jumpy Barney Fife’s, barely in control of their emotions, and likely to shoot you if they misinterpret a twitch. You projected your own fantasies onto cop behavior to rationalize the absurd notion that citizens must meekly submit to a cop’s authority lest they cause a cop to do them harm.
You’re begging the question. Your scenarios don’t distinguish between lawful and arbitrary commands. And in any case, it really doesn’t matter since your main assertion is that it is up to civilians to adjust their behavior to make sure that a cop doesn’t go nuts.
If every situation in which a citizen is dealing with the cops is a potentially deadly situation, then we should disband police departments.
And if the cops lie, file false reports, give false testimony, or expect complacent, submissive citizens to excuse abuses of authority because of “frightened cop syndrome,” then your day in court isn’t worth a damn thing.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
You may be tooling along on a Sunday drive in your 1932 Hupmobile when, quite unknown to you, someone else in a 1932 Hupmobile knocks off the nearby Piggly Wiggly. A passing police officer sees you and, asking himself how many 1932 Hupmobiles can there be around here, pulls you over. At that moment I can assure you the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you. He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.
Oh, let’s be a bit more accurate, shall we?
There’s a report that someone was acting suspicious around a Piggly Wiggly and then took off in A CAR. A passing police officer stops you, a black man driving a 1932 Hupmobile, and asks you to prove where you were. When you do so, he decides he doesn’t like your attitude, and figures out a way to arrest you. He then lies about it on his report, stating that he was told to look out for a 1932 Hupmobile, and that’s why he was supicious of you. Only it turns out he wasn’t.
xaaronx
xaaronx
Sorry, there should be a quote there:
“if you’re involved in a situation that might involve shooting, screaming insults, making violent, aggressive movements, refusing to obey lawful orders, etc. all tend to raise the danger level of that situation.”
xaaronx
“P.S. – not out on the street, unless of course you want to provoke some excessive reaction, in which case more power to you, but I’ll be in back of the squad car waiting to speak to my lawyer.”
Who, if he’s honest, will advise you it’s not worth the time to prosecute, because the cop will just lie under oath and any other police–who may not have even been present–will back him up.
You may survive, but our liberties will not.
jenniebee
ht Berube – Cops put paramedic crew in chokeholds. The cop pulled over an ambulance, was told that there was a patient inside, but detained and roughed up the crew for contempt of cop.
iwantcssfile
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DougJ
@Jordan
No offense, dude, but I saw your blog and you’re a whack job.
kay
Here, our city police are sane and helpful and reasonable and our sheriff’s deputies are hot-headed thugs. The city and county had to cut 10% of the budget.
The sheriff, who is a completely political person, told the newspaper that he had to lay off 9 deputies, expecting public outrage, but they’re thugs, and a lot of people are frightened of them, so no one objected to having fewer of them, and the lay-offs happened. There were actually jokes regarding the relatve safety of the rural citizenry as a result of fewer sheriff’s deputies going around stopping them nearly at random based on a bad family reputation or an investigation an individual deputy launches casting a crazy-wide net that gets bigger and bigger to include all sorts of real and suspected illegality.
The non-political and completely professional police chief instead asked the city council to apply for stimulus funding, which they got, and he didn’t have to lay off anyone.
The difference in the quality of police agencies, in my very limited experience (two agencies) comes from the leadership of the respective force.
Incidentally, the sheriff is elected and the police chief is appointed, after a search process, which probably says something about our voters.
edmund dantes
Lol. If you’ve been paying attention to Balko’s website you know the day in court is a waste. The amount of lying, obfuscation, destroying of evidence, etc that cops and prosecutors get away with is absurd.
The worst that happens usually is the guy gets some unpaid leave. Unless you are lucky and are white and happen to be in a high profile case. Nifong is one of the few prosecutors to lose out on his power trip.
kay
@edmund dantes:
They do lie in police reports, it’s just a fact. Not all of them and not always, but this idea that the police report is the official record of the incident that can’t and shouldn’t be challenged is quite frankly, ridiculous.
I was disappointed in reporters deferring so much to the police account of what happened in the Gates incident, because print reporters read a lot of police reports, and know better.
timb
For a detailed examination of a) why you are wrong and that’s a cop’s job and b) why one should never visit or live in LA you can check out Jack Dunphy’s self-serving dreck and an LA prosecutor defend him as the epitome of virtue, wade in Patterico’s Pontifications. There you find an impassioned defense of authority, a declaration that a citizen’s duty is to defer and acquiesce to any search or seizure…..and coming next a defense of the cops who shot Amadou Diallo (one suspects).
Just disgusting. I’m glad I don’t live in a city where the prosecutors and cops loudly and bravely claim the citizens are THEIR servants
RememberNovember
The LAPD really doesn’t need any more of this to tarnish an already encrusted reputation.
Docrailgun
And this is why police groups don’t like concealed carry laws… because they have to treat every traffic stop as a potentially lethal situation.
Though, they probably do already.
kay
@timb:
It’s cowardly not to use names. If they’re presenting the other side to Professor Gates, well, Gates is out there.
Why are they hiding here?
If this is the policy of this agency, and they’re presenting it as if it is, I think they need to sign it and own it, and let the citizens who employ them decide if it’s acceptable.
timb
@kay: well, Patrick Frey is Patterico’s name and he doesn’t really hide it. He’s not elected. But, prosecutors are what they are. Everyone’s a criminal unless shown otherwise. To use the cliche: everything’s a nail when you’re a hammer.
kay
@timb:
It’s not true of all prosecutors. We had a conservative, law and order prosecutor who went on to judge and he was and is a good lawyer, really faithful to the big ideas behind the laws and a solid technician, although his sentencing is extreme, but not unlawful or biased.
We have a political hack now who is in over his head and he’s arbitrary and sloppy, so, as in all else, quality matters.
Blue Neponset
You can say that about any profession. The real question is, what % of cops are not good people?
For argument’s sake let’s say 10% of cops are not good people. At 10%, 1 out of 10 times you are getting pulled over by a cop that isn’t good people. That is bad.
Gus
I’ve generally had good experiences with cops when I was a crime victim, also when I worked jobs where I came in contact with them. Not so good in other situations, for example at the Republican convention in St. Paul last summer. Some real assholes. Put them in that paramilitary gear with the plastic shields and truncheons and they go even crazier than usual.
Nerf
Isn’t that the plot of “My Cousin Vinny” ?
Jordan
I’m not sure why I’m catching so much flack here for making a simple point. Let’s say you get pulled over by a crooked cop. The fifth store robbery in a month just went down, and the cop hasn’t managed to solve any of them. Guess what? You’re his guy. He’s decided he doesn’t like your looks, and he’s going to make the robbery case against you. Once you get to court, you can challenge the bogus charge. But out on the street, you have basically two options.
a) Make a huge fuss, scream insults at the cop, resist arrest, refuse orders, and generally increase the chances that the situation will become violent. This might be a valid choice in some cases, but do this only knowing that you might provoke a confrontation, and be ready for the consequences. Ready to become a police brutality martyr? If it’s important enough to you or those you care about, it may be called for.
b) Be polite and cooperative, but also politely refuse to give any incriminating information beyond what the law requires (photo ID, proof of insurance). You’ll get arrested, processed & arraigned, but probably not shot. Which is important to some people.
In short, the only point I’m making is that a traffic stop is not the time & place to fight police corruption & brutality *unless* your aim is to become a victim of police corruption & brutality. Civil disobedience can be extremely powerful. Also extremely risky, and you have to be able to prove your case later.
kay
@Jordan:
“a) Make a huge fuss, scream insults at the cop, resist arrest, refuse orders, and generally increase the chances that the situation will become violent.”
You’re spinning this. There aren’t “two choices”. There’s a third choice. The police officer quoted at the top of the page orders the citizen to shut up and comply without question, based on a situation the citizen knows nothing about, then the police officer delivers a threat, basically.
There’s nothing at the top of the page about “insults” or “screaming” or any of that. The police officer blandly states that if you plan on standing on your right NOT to submit without question he may murder you.
It doesn’t have to be this stupid. The police officer has a goddamn duty to act like a professional and inform the person why’s he’s stopping him, instead of the citizen trying to figure out what’s running through the police officer’ s head. The citizen has the option of addressing the officer as “sir” and being polite, but “polite” doesn’t mean ” be immediately compliant or get shot”. The officer here says he’s “asking”, not ordering, and I have only to comply with lawful orders. I don’t have to make his job easier, or worry about his innermost motives, or any of that. He’s on the job, I’m not. He’s the one with a duty.
mclaren
Most police are not good people. Most police are former bullies. Most police are the guys in high school who set cats on fire and beat puppies to death with baseball bats and slammed their classmates’ heads into the toilets during recess.
There’s no such thing as a “good cop.” They’re thugs. They’re liars. They’re scum.
We need to disarm American police. They’re cowards, bullies, wife-beaters (the stats on domestic violence by male police officers are off the charts), thugs and gutless punks. An American police officer is the last person in the world who should ever be given any kind of weapon. Ever.
America the Great…Police State
Jordan
Look, I’m not defending Officer Dunphy, who seems to be a bit of a jerk. But I think folks are misreading him. He says
He’s not saying “don’t assert your constitutional right” or “asserting your rights can get you shot,” he’s saying don’t make yourself into a threat in the process of doing those things. He recognizes the 4th Amendment right there in that statement, but he’s also asking people to recognize that traffic stops can turn dangerous very quickly. So if a cop says something like “Show me your hands!” or “Freeze!” and you don’t cooperate, you’re running a pretty big risk.
Sad_Dem
I’ve lived in LA for a long time and had many encounters or witnessed encounters with the LAPD. Most often, they have impressed me with their professionalism and patience (for example, one time they spent a very, very patient 15 minutes convincing a drunk to stop pounding on a neighbor’s door that the drunk mistakenly thought was that of a friend, stop yelling at them, etc., and walk home). Once in a while, however, I have seen them act more like the toughest gang in the hood. A number of authors sum the institution up pretty well: Wambaugh, Corwin, Rothmiller, etc.