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You are here: Home / Open Threads / All the peacemaker turn war officer

All the peacemaker turn war officer

by DougJ|  November 20, 20114:06 pm| 64 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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I’m going to put on my northeastern, ethnic, my-uncle-fixes-my-traffic-tickets hat for a minute here and ask a question: are there a lot more ridiculous police brutality actions out west than here in the northeast? I don’t mean cops fucking with people like that asshole who ran Henry Louis Gates in, I mean pepper spraying people in the face, shooting people in the back on the BART, and so on.

My sister lives in Portland and wrote me last year:

According to the Oregonian, of the 29 murders in Portland last year, 4 were committed by police. I looked up those stats for NYC, and it was 8 out of 532. Is that not completely crazy? I feel like this should be national news. It’s outrageous.

I’ve always got the feeling that police culture was different on the west coast, more cowboy, less community connection (which bleeds into graft, I admit). Has anyone ever seen comprehensive stats about police misconduct by region?

Update. Here’a link for those stats.

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Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    Napoleon

    November 20, 2011 at 4:09 pm

    Remember the LA police were a nation wide recognized cesspool of stuff like that for years and years.

  2. 2.

    scav

    November 20, 2011 at 4:11 pm

    But there is Philly too, no? And let’s not forget the flyover coast in Chicago.

  3. 3.

    DougJ

    November 20, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    @scav:

    I don’t know Philly and Chicago so well.

  4. 4.

    Rathskeller

    November 20, 2011 at 4:15 pm

    A friend of mine was a police buff, and he always contended that the NYPD was usually quite professional, especially when compared with other police forces.

    But if we’re discussing lunatic cops in the west, definitely put Joe Arpaio up on the board.

  5. 5.

    Mnemosyne

    November 20, 2011 at 4:18 pm

    The whole idea of “police force as occupying army” was pioneered by William H. Parker right here in Los Angeles. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Parker’s methods were more influential in the West since it didn’t have the established bureaucracies that you do in the East.

    ETA: Plus I suspect our milder climate gives police and criminals more time to fuck around getting into trouble. When it’s 40 below in Chicago, you’re not gonna be driving around looking for suspicious characters to stop and question.

  6. 6.

    scav

    November 20, 2011 at 4:18 pm

    @DougJ: Chicago’s pretty much torture (or at least brutality) if I remember what’s been coming out (wasn’t following it obsessively). Philly is one of those obscure dusty neuronal links that one has lurking about the brainstem. Input-Police to Avoid Output=Philly. No idea what burned that connection.

  7. 7.

    Mino

    November 20, 2011 at 4:20 pm

    We had a rash of suicide by cop here in Texas a few years ago. Do you know if that applied in these cases?

  8. 8.

    BGinCHI

    November 20, 2011 at 4:26 pm

    @scav: Cops don’t torture here anymore. That’s what we have baseball for.

    Also, too, I hope the UC Davis Chancellor loses her fucking job. Just a pathetic response to what happened there.

  9. 9.

    scav

    November 20, 2011 at 4:26 pm

    Here’s a Chicago link that is at least recent: ChiTrib. Former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge seems a good name to use to hunt for more.

  10. 10.

    Triassic Sands

    November 20, 2011 at 4:27 pm

    I’ve lived in the West for more than forty years now, but the worst police I’ve seen have been in the East and Midwest — but that was a long time ago. I can’t speak for the present day.

    Still, I think the problem is less geographical location than the type of person who is attracted to becoming a police officer.

  11. 11.

    scav

    November 20, 2011 at 4:28 pm

    @BGinCHI: We’ve always had baseball for that, indeed. We can hope the cop thing was just a passing phase.

  12. 12.

    Loneoak

    November 20, 2011 at 4:29 pm

    @scav:

    Well, there’s always the time the Philly police literally bombed and burned down an entire block to get rid of some black vegans (see also Democracy Now on the topic).

    I think there might be some relevant cultural distinctions between East Coast, West Coast, Midwestern, and Southern police brutality and corruption. But it’s hard to say that the New Orleans, Chicago, and New York don’t have just as much police militarization as SF, Oakland, Seattle, and LA.

  13. 13.

    BGinCHI

    November 20, 2011 at 4:30 pm

    @scav: That was the guy who did lots and lots of bad shit. I get the sense that they’re trying to clean up their act, but it could only get better. Used to be a real crazy racist bunch (think ’68).

  14. 14.

    scav

    November 20, 2011 at 4:32 pm

    @Loneoak: That would undoubtedly burn a link and probably did.

  15. 15.

    MikeJ

    November 20, 2011 at 4:38 pm

    Seattle has pretty thugish cops. You should really read what they write in their newsletter.

    “The city, using its Race and Social Justice Initiative, continues its assault on traditional and constitutional American values such as self-reliance, equal justice, and individual liberty,” Pomper begins. “But more to our concern, the city is inflicting its soçialist policies directly on the Seattle Police Department.”

  16. 16.

    BGinCHI

    November 20, 2011 at 4:38 pm

    David Brooks Cop Psychology page:

    Midwest: nice cops, good people. Hippy score: 4/10

    NE: pushy people, but lots of Ivy League, cops not evident at the black tie spots. Hippy score: 6/10

    South: racist cops, bigots in every shotgun shack, balanced by widespread conservative values. Hippy score: 3/10

    West: swimmin’ pools, movie stars, Hollywood values. Hippy score: 8/10

    Summary: if the cops beat you, ask yourself how your permissible lifestyle is paying off. If a large newspaper pays you to write whatever you feel like, take the money as confirmation of your genius.

  17. 17.

    Brian S

    November 20, 2011 at 4:39 pm

    @Triassic Sands:

    Still, I think the problem is less geographical location than the type of person who is attracted to becoming a police officer.

    This. But to add, I wonder, as a native southerner, how the south’s numbers stack up against the other regions. I suspect that the numbers would be the equal, at least, of the west.

  18. 18.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    November 20, 2011 at 4:43 pm

    @scav:

    Input-Police to Avoid Output=Philly. No idea what burned that connection.

    Frank Rizzo?

    A biography of Rizzo, with an introduction written by future police commissioner John Timoney, recounted: “Of one group of anti-police demonstrators, he is reported to have said, ‘When I’m finished with them, I’ll make Attila the Hun look like a f*g.'” A female reporter who covered the Rizzo years, Andrea Mitchell (now of NBC News), recounted routine brutish behavior as part of a broad pattern of bravado.[5]

  19. 19.

    WM Rine

    November 20, 2011 at 4:45 pm

    I wouldn’t make a big deal out of the quantity. The videotaped pepper-spray incident in NYC doesn’t look any less brutal or inhuman than what we saw the past few days in Davis, or in the many examples before that. The NYPD actions in dismantling the Zucotti encampment seem on par with what happened the same week in Oakland.

    When I lived in NYC, briefly, there was a sense that you didn’t screw with hostile cops because they were a racket. Out west, people routinely get in trouble for what we call contempt-of-cop, but mostly because who would expect such a thing?

  20. 20.

    worn

    November 20, 2011 at 4:45 pm

    Yo Doug –

    Writing in from Stumptown…

    I am completely on board with the idea of holding the police accountable for their actions – especially the excessive and/or reckless use of deadly force. Even so, I’m a little confused about the origins of the blockquote. I take it that it is an excerpt of correspondence with your sister, but the OregonLive link no where states that there were 4 murders committed by the police. I guess am a little wary of throwing around the word “murder” short of convictions.

    But then again I’ve lived out here for close to 20 years now and quite honestly, the number of suspects that have been killed by the police for actions that didn’t seem to warrant shooting makes my mind stagger. The most egregious example is the death of James Chasse, for which I would’ve loved to see officer Chris Humphreys indicted (the story is ugly, Google it if you want to get your rage on). At minimum his ass should’ve been fired, pronto. This past year was especially bad, wherein it seemed like for a spell the Portland Police were killing a mentally ill person about once a week.

    Honestly, there’s been so much seeming unaccountability regarding officer shootings that it’s really given my natural cynicism a lot more depth. As in: “What exact circumstances would have to exist for an officer to be held accountable for their actions?”

    Interestingly enough that question was answered for me yesterday upon reading the news that officer Dane Reister was just indicted by the Multnomah County Grand Jury. The basic contours of the story is that there was a report of a man acting erratically (i.e., threatening) and when officer Reister responded he mistakenly loaded regular shotgun shells into his ‘bean bag’ shotgun. The officer claimed the man was threatening a father and his daughter (their testimony to the GJ was in conflict). Ultimately Reister shot the suspect who was attempting to flee the scene.

    As the linked story states:

    The indictment marked the first time in the county’s history of a grand jury bringing criminal charges against a Portland officer for the officer’s use of force in the line of duty. It also comes as the police bureau’s use of force is under federal review.

    Aw hell, now that I’ve written all this out, maybe you should just strike that first paragraph…

  21. 21.

    Pavlov's Dog

    November 20, 2011 at 4:45 pm

    Brilliant – UC Davis students make Chancellor walk three blocks of shame in total silence as she passes. She don’t look so smug now (sorry if someone has already posted):

    http://www.americablog.com/2011/11/two-uc-davis-cops-placed-on-admin-leave.html

  22. 22.

    My Truth Hurts

    November 20, 2011 at 4:46 pm

    I’ve lived in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles and my impression is that California is the real police state with out of control cowboy cops. Cops in Chicago and Boston are just another street gang of thugs maintaining the business as usual status quo, but the Cali cops are full on fascists with a huge dose of racism.

    California is just crazy as far as law and order goes. Three times convicted for petty theft and you are in jail for the rest of your life but if you can afford the doctors note you can buy and smoke all the marijuana you want from any of the hundreds of store front marijuana retail outlets? Some towns have outlawed plastic bags being given out at stores meanwhile it’s easier to get a gun and concealed carry license than it is to adopt a pet?

    California is so far left it’s right and so far right it’s loony. Meanwhile the cops get away with assault and literally murder, even when it’s captured on video.

  23. 23.

    Wag

    November 20, 2011 at 4:46 pm

    @Brian S:

    I wonder, as a native southerner, how the south’s numbers stack up against the other regions. I suspect that the numbers would be the equal, at least, of the west.

    I think the Sun Belting of America has moved previously Southern values out West. An intended or unintended consequence of Nixon”s Southern Strategy? Discuss.

  24. 24.

    Joel

    November 20, 2011 at 4:48 pm

    ♫ Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition ♫

  25. 25.

    dan

    November 20, 2011 at 4:53 pm

    Places I’ve lived:
    New York – police very professional.
    Seattle – dicks.
    Seattle cops taking a moderately drunk idiot out of a bar: “We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way” meaning if you don’t make it easy for us, we are going to make it hard on you.

  26. 26.

    rageahol

    November 20, 2011 at 4:55 pm

    I’ve always thought that someone should do an epidemiological study of taser deaths/overuse-by-department. it hasnt, to my knowledge, been done, but it would also require wrangling a hell of a lot of data from places that dont keep records of this kind of shit.

    FWIW, east coast police, in my experience, have been generally dickish, west coast police generally less so. sometimes theyve even been helpful.
    however, on the west coast i have only lived in SF and portland, so there’s that. I can’t speak to the assholery of LA cops because you couldnt pay me enough to get me to live there.

  27. 27.

    worn

    November 20, 2011 at 5:10 pm

    @worn: Oops, re-reading I realize I was most unclear: by “strike that first paragraph” I was referring to mine, not yours

  28. 28.

    Roy G.

    November 20, 2011 at 5:20 pm

    Police and Thieves in the streets
    Looting the nation, teargassing #Occupation.

  29. 29.

    Ron Beasley

    November 20, 2011 at 5:26 pm

    I too live in the Portland area. The Portland police have had problems for years. The cites around Portland not so much and the same can be said for the county sheriffs.

  30. 30.

    Bmaccnm

    November 20, 2011 at 5:33 pm

    @worn: I’ve lived here in Stumptown just over 20 years, after living in New Orleans and Boston. PDX police have a reputation as trigger-happy thugs. James Chasse is the most prominent and egregious example. The young mother who didn’t move fast enough, the schizophrenic guy on the bus, the old blind lady they tazed 50 times. Endless examples. I raised 2 young men in the Peoples Republic of Southeast. Most people in this neighborhood have a basic operating principal not to engage the police under any circumstances.

  31. 31.

    karen marie

    November 20, 2011 at 5:33 pm

    It all keeps coming back to this.

  32. 32.

    Cacti

    November 20, 2011 at 5:35 pm

    Here in Arizona, the biggest screws in law enforcement are East Coast transplants who ran for sheriff to live out their fantasies of “frontier justice” (Joe Arpaio, Paul Babeu).

    On the other hand, Arizona-lifer Clarence Dupnik is a respected public servant.

  33. 33.

    RSA

    November 20, 2011 at 5:35 pm

    Has anyone ever seen comprehensive stats about police misconduct by region?

    I don’t see anything in a quick perusal of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, but I found this map, which suggests that your intuitions are right. (I have no idea about how accurate their data are, though.)

  34. 34.

    Ruckus

    November 20, 2011 at 6:09 pm

    @RSA:
    The map is interesting but it would be more interesting to have “incidents” per capita, with poverty levels superimposed. Maybe some historical data as well.

    We know that overall crime is down, I’ll bet cops think it’s because they are more “vigilant”. You know those 84 yr old grandmoms getting their crimes on got sprayed and so didn’t do any damage. Compliance is Paramount, see cops are preventing future crimes that may or may not happen.

  35. 35.

    DougJ

    November 20, 2011 at 6:13 pm

    @Pavlov’s Dog:

    Yeah, I checked and I can’t find the numbers in the linked article either. My sister is very reliable though so I’m sure she got her figures somewhere.

  36. 36.

    Sarah Loving

    November 20, 2011 at 6:15 pm

    Has anyone ever seen comprehensive stats about police misconduct by region?

    That, sir, is a question for Nate Silver and I wish he’d bust out an article on it.

  37. 37.

    Ruckus

    November 20, 2011 at 6:19 pm

    @RSA:
    One other thing to add.
    We know that people have a much greater chance of recording police BS today. I’ll bet(know) that much police misconduct used to happen but no one would believe it when the only 2 witnesses were the cops and the victims. I know of one incident that I witnessed, nothing physical, just a cop admitted illegal search. I know of other incidents that were thrown out of court because of knowingly illegal searches. Many cops don’t think they are above the law, they think they ARE the law. And I’m pretty sure that hasn’t changed in my lifetime.

  38. 38.

    PurpleGirl

    November 20, 2011 at 6:19 pm

    NYC police are for the most part “professional”. But every so often there is someone (or a group) who harken back to earlier times when they were more thuggish. Names/incidents to remember: Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Abner Louima, I forget the guy’s name but a cop insisted on trying to buy drugs from him (he wasn’t selling) and ended up shooting him.

  39. 39.

    My Truth Hurts

    November 20, 2011 at 6:24 pm

    I believe overall crime is down because there is more to do in the home than ever before. Cable, satellite, internet, video games, home theaters… and all affordable at some level for most people down to a hand held device.

    Way back when you people were young you roamed the streets making trouble. Now your type stays home and plays Grand Theft Auto.

  40. 40.

    Brandon

    November 20, 2011 at 6:42 pm

    I’ve now lived in Seattle, East Bay, DC and New Haven. Far and away the DC cops are the most relaxed and easy going. I wouldn’t say “professional”, but at the same time I do trust them to do their job and I am not fearful of them. But if one just drives across the border into Prince Georges County, MD, it is an entirely different story. The police force there is under a DOJ consent decree for a litany of monumental abuses that pale in comparison to anything I’ve ever seen or heard elsewhere.

    Similar to DC cops, New Haven police were generally pretty friendly and the best thing about them is that they were mostly in the background. Some police forces though strive to be noticed and that I think is part of the attitude problem with some police forces that leads to abuse.

    As mentioned previously, the Seattle PD are all dicks. Just awful people that take sadistic pleasure in screwing with people. I have countless stories of pretexting, DWB and other nasty things. I grew up in Seattle and never had a single positive interaction with them in 18 years and went out of my way to avoid SPD cops as much as possible. But Berkeley cops were the worst. I was more fearful of them than I ever was of Seattle cops and the Berkeley cops went out of their way to be noticed, and were nearly impossible to avoid. Just obnoxious.

    My general theory though as to whether or not a police force tend towards abuse has nothing to do with geography and I think has much more to do with how central traffic stops are to their policing, either by necessity or as a matter of choice. I would posit from my general experience that police forces that rely heavily on traffic stops are more likely to be abusive than those who don’t.

  41. 41.

    worn

    November 20, 2011 at 6:45 pm

    @Bmaccnm: Aw man, don’t get me started. I used to live down in Brooklyn neighborhood and we had a meth house across the street. The occupants were deaf. They were cooking in the house, had babies living there, broke down cars taking up every inch of their curbs so that the customers were forced to take the spots on our side of the street, etc. It was a helluva 24 hr scene. And loud, too, given pretty much all the participants were deaf.*

    The house was owned outright and so there wasn’t much that could be done to dislodge these folks. So we started a logbook – as suggested by the city – towards the end of getting the property declared a “nuisance house”. In said logbook you are supposed to log all comings & goings, license plates, etc. Including visits by the police – these came about every 2 weeks on average.

    One morning, while brewing up the morning joe, I see two cops come running by our house in the black robocop get up, each holding shotgun. Since I know where they’re headed I step to the front window to observe what’s going on. This turns out to be nothing dramatic: the cops (including other officers who had arrived from other directions) go inside for 15 minutes or so, reassemble in front of the house to chat for a bit, and then break up. Except for the guy who looks to be in charge. He turns and walks up our steps to ring the doorbell. I answer, assuming he going to ask if I’ve seen something. But no, what I am told is that he watched me watching him, claimed I was naked when doing so and that he could drag my ass out of the house right then and there and throw me in jail.

    It was clear I was getting the “don’t you dare exercise your right to observe us doing our duties” admonition. God Lord, he’s telling this to a citizen who was on their fucking side! I don’t even have words to describe how livid I was at this exchange.

    I decided then and there that that was the last time I would voluntarily open my door for the Portland police. In other words, if they ever enter my residence there would at least be a splintered door frame involved. It should be noted that this was also when they were in the thick of their “knock and talk” phase, which if I recall correctly wound up with a dead officer somewhere in outer SE when they pulled a paramilitary storm in.

    So in reply, yeah, bud, you’re preaching to the choir here.

    *Prior to that experience if you had asked me what percentage of the metro area’s population was deaf, what subset of that population was white trash, and furthermore how many of these folks were meth heads I certainly wouldn’t have thought there were as many as I documented. The end of a certain sort of naivety I suppose…

  42. 42.

    LarryB

    November 20, 2011 at 6:48 pm

    When I was growing up in San Diego, the police had a very trigger-happy rep. Everyone just knew that you moved and spoke very carefully in any encounter with the S.D.P.D.

  43. 43.

    worn

    November 20, 2011 at 6:51 pm

    @DougJ: Doug, I think you may have been replying to me. I’m guessing she got her figures via considering certain recent police shootings (or hard shovings and then standing around joking while the suspect writhed on the ground dying) as tantamount to murder. In the case of James Chasse, if Humphreys wasn’t guilty of it, in my opinion he was right up there sweeping his toe on the backside of the line. Like I said I am sympathetic to her view. All I was pointing out was that the linked article didn’t at all say what was implied it said – for I truly would be shocked if our little Newhouse-owned rag had stated such an incendiary thing.

  44. 44.

    G

    November 20, 2011 at 6:51 pm

    if you plot crime rates with demograpic shifts, you’ll probably see reasons for the reduction that have nothing to do with police. Prime crime-years are 18-25 males, when that demo goes down, the crime rate goes down.

    as for California cops? first get the image of “governor moonbeam” out of your head, this state brought you Nixon, Reagan, and just recently Governor Arnold.

    Parker in LA figured out you could do policing with fewer cops by essentially militarize them, last I looked it up LA had far fewr cops per capita than NYC, and everything here is further apart.
    SO the recipie is fewer cops, more people to police over a wider area with paramilitary training and mindeset from the academy.
    Sure we coud raise taxes to have more cops, but see the ultra conservative prop 13 and the essential inability to raise taxes. If you take San Francisco and the West side of LA out of California, you are not far from a state that would elect MItch McConnel

  45. 45.

    worn

    November 20, 2011 at 6:56 pm

    @Brandon: Ta-Nehisi Coates has had a little something to say about the peacemakers of Prince George’s county…

  46. 46.

    worn

    November 20, 2011 at 7:00 pm

    @RSA: There was a local story I saw within the last month or so about the question of deadly force incidents as regards Portland’s police. If I’m not misremembering, the short answer was something along the lines of ‘we don’t keep records in such a way that this is really possible’.

  47. 47.

    worn

    November 20, 2011 at 7:04 pm

    @worn: Sure enough, I misremembered.

  48. 48.

    RSA

    November 20, 2011 at 7:12 pm

    @Ruckus:

    The map is interesting but it would be more interesting to have “incidents” per capita, with poverty levels superimposed. Maybe some historical data as well.

    Exactly right. The map is also a bit misleading in that colors in entire counties to represent the information, which means that the same absolute number in two differently-sized counties will look worse for the larger one, where it actually probably depends more on population and other factors. (I have a colleague who does research on multi-dimensional visualization; he’s lately done work on election results, but the structure in the data is very similar.)

    @worn:

    If I’m not misremembering, the short answer was something along the lines of ‘we don’t keep records in such a way that this is really possible’.

    I thought the same thing, looking briefly through the data. People don’t collect data that make them look bad unless they’re forced to. I imagine we’d see something similar if, for example, we were interested in the distribution of corporate misconduct among Fortune 500 companies.

  49. 49.

    Rome Again

    November 20, 2011 at 7:16 pm

    I would think that cops would be perfect candidates for what Altemeyer calls The Authoritarians, yes?

    Aren’t these cops just people who want to take a hit at the left because they listen to Rush Limbaugh on their lunch hour?

  50. 50.

    Ruckus

    November 20, 2011 at 7:23 pm

    LA. The sheriffs. Don’t know today but 60-70s’… The other cops knew them to be hardcore. Especially the SEB. Special Enforcement Bureau. In their car back window shelf they had little plexiglass signs, SEB. Those assholes you did not mess with. I believe they would rather thump your ass with a nightstick or blackjack than talk to you. And yes I said blackjack, that small leather bag full of lead shot. The one’s I knew of carried as weapons, a razor sharp 4-5 inch quick blade, blackjack, backup weapon, sidearm (357 usually) and nightstick.

  51. 51.

    Ruckus

    November 20, 2011 at 7:26 pm

    In mod for a reason that baffles me. I’ll have to review the bad WP words to see where I screwed up.

  52. 52.

    Name

    November 20, 2011 at 7:57 pm

    One time the Philadelphia police caught my brother buying heroin in north Philly. They took him in an alley and beat the crap out of him, but they let him keep his heroin. He really appreciated that, actually.

    If you do a Google news search of the Philadelphia police department, you’ll notice that an awful lot of handcuffed suspects manage to get themselves shot while resisting arrest, somehow.

  53. 53.

    OzoneR

    November 20, 2011 at 8:25 pm

    The way cops are idolized as “can do no wrong,” I’m surprised its not worse.

  54. 54.

    Jive_Teej

    November 20, 2011 at 8:41 pm

    Has anyone ever seen comprehensive stats about police misconduct by region?

    Perhaps this will help:
    http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?page_id=4135

    Unfortunately I don’t think the types of misconduct are broken down by region, just the amount; still its always a great and depressing resource for tracking police brutality.

  55. 55.

    chrismealy

    November 20, 2011 at 8:49 pm

    It’s the land use. West coast cops never get out of their cars except to deal with a problem. They’re cut off from ordinary people.

  56. 56.

    Brandon

    November 20, 2011 at 8:50 pm

    @worn: It is interesting to note that TNC’s article was from 10 years ago. I note the date because it came out at about the same time that the WaPo did this remarkable investigative series on the PGPD that revealed serious abuses, particulalry related to interrogations and forced confessions. But we have this episode from just last year. And in-between we have had a number of other incidents as well.

  57. 57.

    Robert

    November 20, 2011 at 9:00 pm

    When I lived in NYC, I learned quickly that cops do not take lightly to violations that impede pedestrian and vehicular traffic. It was later explained to me that if they made sure people didn’t do stupid things, like get themselves killed by standing in an intersection to protest traffic (it’s happened), they made their lives a lot easier. Death and accidents means doubleshifts and overtime, which the NYPD higher ups have a bad habit of rounding down on overtime (by 5+ hours) or writing in after the fact that the officer/s was/were scheduled for a double shift and don’t get overtime.

    As it’s been explained to me by NYPD officers: just don’t fuck with them. If you do something wrong, don’t fight them because they will resent you. Keep your mouth shut, cooperate, and then deny everything you’re accused of if forced to make a statement. If you genuinely did nothing wrong, that will get you off. If you did do something wrong, your cooperation makes a happier less stabby cop and makes the process go a lot better for you in the end. However, if in the process of trying to defend your innocence, you start throwing punches, cursing out cops, or resisting arrest, they will go for as many write-ups as they can to meet their quotas. There’s enough real crime in NYC that you don’t need to add to the workload by fucking over the cops.

  58. 58.

    Jamie

    November 20, 2011 at 9:32 pm

    @Loneoak:

    There are differences. I’ve lived in NYC, San Francisco, Cleveland, OH and Bumfuck, TN.

    As a white male professional, if I had to, I’d rather deal with NYC cops. There’s graft, and if I were not white, I’d feel differently, but they do their job. Lots of the Cleveland cops are decent folk, but there are some psychopaths. Tennessee good ole boys, well, if you’re from the right family, you’ll do just fine. San Francisco, and more so, Oakland cops, stay away.

    I’ve interacted with them twice. Once, my car was stolen, they came to take a statement. It was a funky apartment with no doorbell and an exterior gate, so I waited outside for them, and saw no reason to let them in (4 floor walk up, not like the car was there, why would they want to?) they were absurdly insistent about wanting to come in, and had very little interest in my car, to the point that they didn’t ask about the plate number until I suggested it. They didn’t even file a report, and I had to go down in person to get a report filed, which was a hassle, and they quizzed me up and down because it was a couple of weeks later.

    Second time, I was mugged half a block from home. Got home, got some ice for my face, called the cops. Since it had been 5 minutes, they didn’t bother to send anyone out, but could I please come down and file a report for their statistics? Fuck that.

    I’m living in SF again, and see very few circumstances under which I would ever contact the police.

  59. 59.

    smintheus

    November 20, 2011 at 9:34 pm

    Have lived for extensive periods in 8 states. The cops in CA were easily the most thuggish, esp. in southern Cal. But there are cesspools scattered all around the country. For ex. I recall the Providence police were for decades really scummy in virtually every respect.

  60. 60.

    iriedc

    November 20, 2011 at 11:04 pm

    @Brandon just a couple observations about DC cop — they ate much better now than they were in the 1990s when their thuggery and corruption matched anything LA & NOLA had to offer. Today though they have vastly improved, it’s still true that predominantly African-American neighborhoods would not recognize this laidback cop of which you speak.

    Personally, I teach my young Af-Am children to treat all police cautiously no matter where we are, even if they have arrived to help you. My daughter understands why I say this because unfortunately one of her vivid memories of Obama’s inauguration day was a DC policeman screaming uncontrollably at someone who had approached him to ask for help.

  61. 61.

    heckblazer

    November 20, 2011 at 11:09 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    Yeah, the whole militaristic “just the facts, ma’am” style was instituted by Parker. Not coincidentally, his protege Daryl Gates was the guy who invented the SWAT team in 1967.

    However, the reason Parker distanced the police from the community was precisely because previous closeness led to graft. Before Parker the LAPD was almost comically corrupt. Parker’s three predecessors all resigned because of corruption. Some scandals you had then was the revelation that the head of the vice squad was the partner and lover of a local madam, and the cops committing a woman to an insane asylum when she insisted the police gave her the wrong boy when they “returned” her missing son. My favorite for flavor was when a witness in front of a grand jury investigating official corruption testified that the grand jury’s foreman was an ally of the corrupt mayor. The witness was subsequently beaten in his home in the presence of both said foreman and the district attorney. With that background it’s easy to see why Parker’s reforms were popular.

  62. 62.

    hoosierspud

    November 20, 2011 at 11:57 pm

    Spokane police and even the county sheriff’s deputies have a reputation of shooting first and asking questions later.

    One of the local writers wrote in his column that the police shootings will stop because the city is broke and there won’t be any money to pay for more bullets. What actually has happened is that 95% of the property crimes division staff was laid off (burglars are having a field day). The city has had to pay off several of the lawsuits it has lost, including a recent one where a homeless schizophrenic was beaten to death by a Spokane cop and the department covered it up.

  63. 63.

    William Hurley

    November 21, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Portland’s police, the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), is and has been lethally inept and harbors a well documented hostility to the area’s non-white residents. It’s not only the police in the employ of the largest city in the Willamette Valley, the police forces of the surrounding suburbs are equally horrifying.

    PPB, from top to bottom, has been so atrocious in performing its duties that the Justice Dpt began a civil rights driven investigation into the Bureau’s many failings – from beatings, “lethal and excessive” force over-use, corruption and on, and on.

    Portland, you may remember, was the location of the where the so-called “Christmas Tree Lighting” terrorist was arrested with little spared by the PPB, Mayor’s office the City Council, local FBI offices or the DoJ’s presence in the way of propagandizing the “cracking of the plot.” The plot of the story behind the “terrorist plot” was that the lone individual the combined paramilitary forces “captured” had been induced to the role of would-be terrorist by local cops and FBI agents spying on the local Islamic community. The “terrorist”, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was courted by law enforcement for a period of over a month with the intent of placing him at the center of an “attack” they had conceived.

    The sub-plot behind the headline narrative is that the Mayor’s office and PPB were negotiating with DHS and the FBI, on one hand, and with the city’s residents, over the standing of the city vis-a-vis the DoJ’s “combined terrorism task force”. The scoop, for the uninitiated, is that the Mayor prior to Adams, the current “lame duck” Mayor, Tom Potter, had refused to merge Portland’s constabulary with that of the Feds. Potter, a former PPB Chief himself, distrusted the Feds as much as he yearned for PPB autonomy. Adams, a young “up & comer” with ambition saw “repairing” the relationship with the Feds as a means to upward mobility and potential future employment stability. The problem Adams faced, as still faces, is that the residents of Portland – business community excepted – are strongly and vocally against “repairing” something that in their (our) eyes isn’t broken. Unfortunate, on this front, Adams has “reintegrated” Portland law enforcement with the JTT.

    Yes, the same band of lawless enforcers who are now being investigated by the DoJ for being lethally incompetent and racist.

    Remember too that Portland is home to Brandon Mayfield. Mayfield, a convert to Islam and defense attorney, was wrongly charged with participating in the bombing of Madrid’s central train station by the Bush DHS/DoJ. Mayfield’s Portland area home was invaded by DHS/JTT storm troopers as if he lived in Mosul. The “no-knock” raid was conducted in the middle of the night and Mayfield was spirited away in cuffs with no information about the event given to his wife or children.

    The matter came to a conclusion some time later when, in a rare reversal (court ordered, or course), the Bush Administration admitted its many errors and paid restitution to Mayfield for their brutality. The Mayfield matter was primarily a DHS/JTT action, but Portland’s “finest” were instrumental in tracking and spying on Mayfield from the time DHS invented evidence in the wake of Madrid until the day he was exonerated.

    I know many readers here are KOS-phobic, but I hope you can put aside your dislike of that site for the sake of one essay. The essay is a more well developed and documented commentary on the militarization of local police forces, the rampant use of military/intelligence styled tactics and the brazen use of spying in concert with Federal agencies against citizens across the nation. The role of the Obama Administration as both participant in and defender of this strategic revision to the practice of community safety and crime control are criticized in the piece – along with Obama’s predecessors also.

    Here’s the link to that KOS essay.

    Lastly, coming full-circle back to Portland, the current Chief of the PPB has been loudly hinting of a Mayoral run (since Adams is not seeking reelection). Chief Reece, the same guy who unleashed his hounds and who lied on tape to a local TV news reporter about his Bureau and OWS, has strong support from Portland’s business community. It’s still an open question as to whether he’ll run, now that he’s unmasked himself in very public ways. But, as is said about politics, the public’s memory is short and, via Churchill, in politics you can die a thousands deaths and still be viable.

  64. 64.

    Paul in KY

    November 21, 2011 at 10:05 am

    @Robert: That is generally the rules for whenever you interact with a cop, anywhere.

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