Nobody forgets that, it’s just that abuse and misconduct sour that. In many communities, people have to weigh the odds that reporting a crime will lead to more problems for them than it will help, with consequences ranging from lack of help to theft to rape or even being shot by mistake. American police departments have largely set themselves above the law, so the average person doesn’t know whether they’re getting a good cop who is genuinely trying to help them or the bad cop whose behavior has been covered up by their fellow officers for years. Anyone concerned about public opinion of police should be focused on accountability and oversight to rebuild public trust.
Let's be real. For all their flaws, US cops are some of the least corrupt in the world. There are places where you better be ready to fork over cash every time you encounter the police.
> US cops are some of the least corrupt in the world
I don't think that's a good metric to judge them by (I also don't think it's true if you compare to first world countries).
Sure, third world countries have police forces that are more corrupt. But US cops are corrupt in a wide variety of ways and we should be very clear about how unacceptable that is. It doesn't matter if someone somewhere else in the world is worse.
I've never understood the "be happy you're not in authoritarian Russia" type of argument for papering over the shortcomings of circumstances here in the US. Like, ok? Why are we comparing ourselves to places that are worse? Shouldn't we be striving to make things better relative to our own ideals and standards?
It's like any economic discussion I have when visiting my parents. I'll advocate for something every other developed nation has, like paid paternity leave or a sane healthcare system, and they immediately start talking about communist East Germany like that's somehow relevant.
Yeah, we know cops in Mexico are corrupt. Our police force has a very different problem set that we need to solve. Pointing out a different problem in a different country contributes nothing.
> I'll advocate for something every other developed nation has, like paid paternity leave or a sane healthcare system
Paid parental leave creates both deadweight loss and moral hazard. It also tends to reduce labor inversely proportional to labor's cost, with the largest reduction in labor hitting highly skilled, sub middle-aged females. This should be obvious as it lowers the expected productivity of workers, moreso when you extend parental leave to family leave and allow for the care of ailing elders. The argument for it seems to hinge on the dollars allowing greater workforce participation, but I'm not sold that greater participation with lower expected productivity is greater than fewer productive workers.
Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?
Regarding healthcare, it's well known that decreasing prices increase demand. While some healthcare demand is totally inelastic (injuries, cancer, etc.), the front line pcp interactions are elastic. Compound in people's willingness to decrease self care since they don't have to pay for future healthcare, and you've increased the rate of inelastic demand instances in the future, increasing demand. Now consider that prices would no longer be dictated by free markets, and now we have trouble with price discovery, with the power seemingly going to the single consumer, so it's likely treatments will be underpaid, which may lead to fewer practicioners and fewer innovations. Maybe I'm wrong... I haven't thought about heath economics in a long while. My preference would be to see a forced decoupling of healthcare provided as work benefits such that everyone had to purchase it on the open market (even if that loss of negotiating freedom between private parties irks me).
I can't speak for other first world countries, but Canada has its share of police misconduct. The most recent example is the mishandling of the 22-person killing spree in Nova Scotia[1], and the Toronto police are so famously bad at investigating sex crimes and protecting victims that an entire book was written on the subject[2].
If you define “corrupt” as not asking for bribes on duty, perhaps. If you use the common definition of the term to include things like being bound by the law the same as the average person, however, that’s tragically untrue. Officers routinely cover up the misconduct of their fellows and force rehiring of the few officers who are held accountable even for serious crimes.
But I'd prefer not to interact in their official capacity with them if possible because there is a non-zero chance that the specific officer I'm talking to is not one of the good ones.
I recently had a run in where I was photographing a duck on the roof of a house. A cop literally ran up to me and asked what I was doing with his hand on his gun, holster released. I was fortunate that he realized how nuts his behavior was when I pointed out that I was taking a picture of a crazy duck sitting on a chimney. I also realized that I probably would have been shot had I not been calm and polite.
i'm not a cop super fan or anything but i did make it a point to wave at and get to know the officers that patrol my neighborhood. I've had them stop by when walking my dogs to let me know that they got a call about a suspicious person and to keep an eye out. Maybe it comes from working in consulting but that level of relationship with police officers is very useful to me as an individual.
Not being injured or worse is always a good thing. I find the amount of violence in law enforcement is a little out of control. Too many news stories about an 89 year old lady being beat over a turn signal traffic stop, wanting to know why they are being detained or for having an opinion contrary to Officer Pepper Spray.
This has been down-voted a lot, but I actually kinda agree, at least with the second assertion. I've been going down to Baja, Mexico frequently for years, and, as an American (white dude), you quickly learn that you're a target for local police - you're basically their ATM. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. You just do your best to avoid them, like agents in The Matrix.
>> For all their flaws, US cops are some of the least corrupt
> I actually kinda agree,
It is my long and consistent experience (MI spouse) that the quality of police officers depends on the quality of the police chief.
We had good, experienced officers here a generation ago. A funding-addicted sheriff was elected. He fired cops w/ decades of exp and replaced them with just-graduated kids. The remaining cops were subject to some kind of dept environment that left them half-unhinged.
Addicted sheriff quit after a few terms and his replacement was pretty good for a while. Now he's average, so kind of crappy.
Germany, Finland, France, Sweden, Canada ... when you compare them to most corrupt states, you are not proving they are best. You are peoving they are not absolute bottom.
That being said, America is unique in officially allowing cops to kill people just because of how they feel, with no objective reason for it.
Speaking of Germany, can you think of other points in history where the public banded together to subvert police authority and hide their neighbors from the cops?
It's not that they're corrupt in the literal sense. It's that they have discretion of enforcement of laws so expansive with so many precedents in their favor that they basically have de-facto power to arrest anyone and that when they do want to do something stupid they're not "corrupt" so you can't just pay them off to be reasonable.
LA Police are a literal gang. There are places with police that are corrupt in more obvious ways such as places in Africa but to say US cops are some of the least corrupt is ridiculous.
This is a very sheltered take. Go south of the border to Mexico (you don't need to go anywhere as far as Africa) and you can experience getting pulled over for no reason by a cop looking for a payout. That's not to mention that cartels are allowed to run rampant and collect "protection" in Mexican cities because the cops either don't care, are in the cartel themselves, or are being paid off.
As I said to another commenter, "some of the least corrupt" != "not corrupt". I'm sure some countries are better, but there are not that many.
You don't need to go south of the border. You can get pulled over for no reason in the US and have drugs planted on you by a cop simply having a bad day. I'm not interpreting least corrupt as no corruption. I think least corrupt is still a ridiculous statement.
Credit where credit is due, American cops are considerably less corrupt than American politicians. Most people in America would never even dream of trying to pay off a cop to get out of a speeding ticket, that sort of thing just doesn't work and everybody knows it. On the other hand, bribing local politicians to get some land rezoned for your business, or some other similar crap? That's just standard operating procedure in small towns everywhere.
Funny story about the Pinkertons if you don't already know... if you skateboard or do similar shenanigans involving parking structures or industrial wasteland, you've probably been chased by their direct descendants.
> Dude, I paid to have stickers and "sheriff cards" to make it less likely cops are going to stop me cos i'm a "friend of the police".
In many states the FOP stickers and cards are almost like "registration". You get the sticker to put on your card and just like vehicle registration, a year to show you're current. The FOP will say that's just to "show your ongoing support", but it's rather hard not to see it as "are you paid up? you don't get to get a sticker ten years ago...".
Various FOPs have also sued or done eBay take downs of people selling the "year sticker".
You could try searching "police corruption in the US" before saying they're not literally corrupt.
They will literally grab a cop that was prosecuted and found guilty, hide the records and have them hired in some other police force in a nearby town. There's a whole mafia setup going on, organized by their unions, we're not far from having "police controlled neighborhoods" like in many LATAM countries.
Yeah, corruption happens but it's not endemic nor is it accessible to the everyman.
Yeah they'll bend the law for their buddies but we cannot just shove money in their face to make them be reasonable when they bother us like you can in Mexico. Instead we have to shove 10x as much into all manner of rent seeking systems to maintain an air of legitimacy (this last part is a gripe I have with most government stuff here, not just law enforcement related).
Corruption just doesn't have much to do with the kind of misconduct that comes up in the US. It's true, yes, that an American officer who's decided to mistreat you won't usually accept a bribe to stop.
If we're limiting 'corruption' to just be about bribes, then sure. Of course, in reality it also encompasses racism, nepotism, etc (i.e. anything that is a "corruption" of the impartial execution of their jobs).
I suspect many Black people would prefer paying a bribe to being killed by police at an outsize ratio, or paying a bribe to being charged more aggressively and sentenced more harshly.
Police brutality and incarceration is worse than bribes, my dude.
> Consider yourself lucky that you've never had to call the cops as a victim.
I have, multiple times. They don't give a shit. In my case, the only reason to reach out to them is to get documentation for insurance or to start the legal process for obtaining restraining orders through courts.
People forget that calling the cops as a victim also costs lives. There have been more than enough cases of someone calling in a wellness check on someone who ends up getting murdered by police instead of helped, or victims who call the police and end up getting shot or arrested by them.
The police as they are now in North America are not a good option, they're just the least worst option. You call them and they show up and you hope that they cause more problems for the offender than the victim, but that's never guaranteed.
I've only had to call the cops a few times, but they usually put me on hold. 50/50 if they actually do anything or just give me the law enforcement equivalent of this meme- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-aint-reading-all-that (aka "please don't file a report because it makes our metrics look bad)
I have not been unusually lucky in that way, though. I can think of half a dozen occasions when the kind of people who call the cops would have done so, but I didn't, because I expected they would do no good - if they bothered to show up at all - and might well have caused a lot of harm.
>Consider yourself lucky that you've never had to call the cops as a victim. People forget that cops also save lives.
I have. Several times. In the latter two cases (burglaries at my home and my brother's home -- one in NYC and the other in the Bay Area), the police were spectacularly inept and completely useless.
In the first case, the police arrested the perpetrators more by happenstance than design, despite the fact that these kids (all except the 22 year-old ringleader were 16 or younger) had been committing similar crimes for months.
As the old saw goes, "I don't hate the police, I just feel better when they're not around."
I called the cops as a victim of a violent crime. They put me in handcuffs because I was the person on the scene who best fit the profile of a perpetrator, despite the actual perpetrators standing there next to me. I gave them a video and audio recording of the crime being committed. I did not get my cellphone back. Later, I went to court with the perpetrators, and their only penalty was paying me a fine which was slightly less than what I paid in legal costs.
Cops are not your friends, even as a victim; neither are lawyers or judges. Treat the whole justice system more like a Linux server with an SQL injection: amoral, and can be made to do anything you want, if you're evil and happen to know how which levers to pull and how to not get caught.
I've dealt with the cops a handful of times, with responses anywhere from unhelpful to helpful. It helps to have the right expectations - can a given situation be improved by adding some readily-aggressive dudes, who at the very least will be a little annoyed at having to be there? Sometimes, that answer is yes. Police perform a necessary function in society, and I wouldn't want to have to do that role myself (despite DIYing most other things).
But that does not justify supporting unaccountability as if its some kind of team sport! In fact, if you respect the role of the police then you must support accountability - a cop breaking the law is just a criminal acting under the color of state authority.
Since we're throwing in personal experiences to shape skimmer's overall emotions on police- I had a great interaction with police after someone called a wellness check on elderly neighbors. They tried hard to assure they were safe without being invasive or annoying.
I have had positive experiences with American police, but not as many as the negative experiences, and the negative where great enough to sour me on authority. In fact whenever I had a positive experience it was just so weird to have a cop not ruining your day because they had the power to do so, that it seemed surreal.
You are missing the point if you think it is about shaping someones' emotions towards police. The point is that there are plenty of valid reasons to just want to avoid interactions with or areas with police.
I've been nearly killed with significant injuries caused by a repeat offender while in full compliance with the law myself and the police conspired to hide body camera evidence of a witness interview and took the side of the person who broke the law.
Could you please stop using HN primarily for political battle? This is not a valid use of HN, and you're well on the wrong side of the line. I had to go back a good two months before seeing anything else in your posts.
(This is not a comment on your politics. The moderation call here would be the same if you had the opposite politics, or any others.)
Edit: This has been a problem for a long time. I don't believe it's your intention to abuse HN, so I don't want to ban you, but if you don't fix this, we'll end up doing so.