[nearmuse]

Because of all of these news of arrests, cops shooting someone unarmed, or people getting easily labelled as felons or sex offenders, US has become synonymous with "trigger-happy" (literally & figuratively) for me. Are people (and specifically cops) in the US really that quick to judge? Does it depend on the state? Or do these cases make the news exactly because of how outrageous and rare they are?

[rmetzler]

From what I read online (and I can be very wrong) people are trained for 3 to 6 months in the US and then they are cops. It’s a least 2.5 years, 3 years, or 5 years (depending on your career choice) for police officers in Germany.

[leephillips]

I also hear that in Germany you actually require people to know how to drive before you give them licenses. We could learn a few things from you. Cops in the US frequently shoot themselves in the foot, shoot blindly into buildings, etc. Yes, hordes of untrained armed police with emotional problems are a big issue in the US. They are empowered by the knowledge that the legal system will almost never hold them accountable.

[rmetzler]

Wait, how do you get a drivers license in the US? Do you have a minimum of required training, a theoretical and a practical test?

[rr888]

I got my first drivers license in Utah in the 90s while I was a tourist. You did ~20? multiple choice questions then a 10 minute test drive - wasn't even on real roads. Looks like it hasn't changed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTUCmTbPQfo https://secure.utah.gov/exam-center/exam/bank/take-test.html

[leephillips]

Yes, but the tests are cursory. Just drive on the highways in the US and you’ll immediately see that the testing regime doesn’t work. Also, you just need to pass the meaningless tests once, and then can move from state to state and retain your license well into your oblivious years of senility.

[nicbou]

Yeah. The test is harsh, but you get really good drivers out of it. Driving in the US isn't bad, but it's noticeably worse than in Germany.

If you want to have fun, compare how many bullets are fired by cops in Germany to how many people are killed by cops in the US. Those numbers have no business being this close to each other.

[gpanders]

>Are people (and specifically cops) in US really that quick to judge? Or do these cases make the news exactly because of how outrageous and rare they are?

(With the obvious caveat that I do not claim to represent the entire American population) I think it is the latter. This kind of thing is newsworthy precisely because it gets people riled up (as it should). It is pretty shocking to me as someone who has lived in the US my entire life. As other commenters have said, I also walked to school alone as a kid with no issues.

[bnralt]

Kind of. I don't think this kind of thing is typical. However, when it does happen, it's astonishing how many people in the system are just fine with it and go along with it. One neighbor acting badly, or one police officer crossing his boundaries, wouldn't be an issue if the rest of the system (other officers, DA, CPS, representatives in government, etc.) worked and said "this is clearly ridiculous, stop bothering the woman." The crazy thing is to see how, once initiated, the entire system is happy to go along with the farce and the persecution of the hapless individual.

One case I always think about is when a 17 year old sent a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. Then the police went after him for child-pornography (his own penis), and demanded he either give them a picture of his erect penis or they'd inject him with something to force an erection and take it themselves[1]:

> Virginia police have obtained a search warrant to photograph the erect penis of a 17-year-old facing felony child-pornography charges for sexting an explicit video to his 15-year-old girlfriend, the boy's lawyer says.

> If he doesn't cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster toldThe Washington Post.

> Police already photographed the teen's genitals against his will when he was arrested in late January, she said.

Oh, and one of the main officers involved later killed himself after he was outed as a pedophile[2].

The authorities _eventually_ backed off after the media picked it up and there was general outrage. But it's insane that that's what needed to get people in these systems to stop clearly inappropriate behavior. The fact that the whole system is happy to go along with injustices unless there's a massive public outcry shows how broken things have become.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virgin... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/cop-who-wanted-t...

[savanaly]

>Or do these cases make the news exactly because of how outrageous and rare they are?

It's that. I've lived in the USA my whole life in a big city and don't ever think about this stuff except when I'm online. There have been shooting instances in my city, but they're rare enough that I've never been around for them, so again I only think about them when online. The only time I physically feared (a little bit) for my safety was the height of the BLM protests when folks started smashing storefronts in my neighborhood. But that can happen in any country, obviously, and is not especially worse in the USA as far as I know.