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Police Complaints Drop 93 Percent After Deploying Body Cameras (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes:A study from Cambridge University documents an immense drop in complaints against police officers when their departments began using body cameras. But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not. The data was collected in seven police departments, and represents over 1.4 million hours logged by 1,847 officers in 2014 and 2015; the researchers published their data last week in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior. Officers were randomly assigned to wear or not wear cameras week by week (about half would be wearing them any given week), and had to keep them on during all encounters. The authors used complaints against police as a metric because they're easy to measure, an established practice in most police forces and give a good ballpark of the frequency of problematic behavior. In the year before the study, 1,539 complaints in total were filed against officers; at the end of the body camera experiment, the year had only yielded 113 complaints.
So you don't think that just perhaps the officers wearing cameras were behaving better knowing they were being recorded?
It seems to me that to place all of the blame on one side is rather narrow minded of you.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
This whole police brutality bullshit is simply bullshit.
The brutality part isn't but the racial aspect is. Just to gin up the black vote and rile the lefty base. We won't hear anymore about it in the news after the election.
When I saw this earlier, I wondered if it's A) the small group of inherently bad cops curbing their bad behavior now that they are being monitored; or B) fewer [perceived] opportunities for dishonestly reported complaints. I imagine it is some combination of the two.
...when everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal.
- Stupid behavior by the public
- Stupid behavior by the police force
- Stupid and frivolous complaints
- Random appearances of Big Foot
- Slowing down the implementation of police state where all activity is monitored
- Non-compliance with Privacy Laws
Police don't want to be filmed doing dumb shit.
Citizens stop acting like jackasses when they too are being filmed.
Situations don't escalate as frequently.
While I'll grant you that the data can be explained by competing theories, in this case only half the officers had cameras on. That certainly suggests that it's not limited to officer behavior.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
In fact, that would be the simplest way.
In order to believe that those not filed would have been mostly frivolous, it would mean that the would-be complainers would be very aware of the body cameras. I'd wager that the only party that is very aware of the body camera most of the time is the officer.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Pretty much what I was thinking. Fewer complaints because they know they would be in the wrong....
Keep the politicians, treasurers, citizens and media happy at a fraction of the cost.
I think you mean "Oh, Science..."
The majority of studies show that accident rates go up, not down, when red-light cameras are put in place. Eliminating red-light cameras is the logical response.
This study shows that complaints go down, not up, when police use body cameras. The logical response would be to continue using body cameras and continue studying the results to verify that the effect isn't temporary or isolated.
Convictions and and plea deals change A LOT with body cameras. Before, you put someone in a suit and train them to say "Yes Sir/No Sir" in front of the judge. Then give the judge and everyone else the dog and pony show of how he's an A student and wants to start a business taking care of puppies. This trick doesn't work so well when there is video of a raving lunatic high on drugs taking swings at the cops.
Easy to verify: give randomly fake cameras to policemen where they know it's fake but people could not see it. If you still see the drop, then it's people stopping stupid behavior, if not then it's policemen behaving better.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Like others have said, it is hard to tell if the reduction in complaints come from the police officers being on their best behavior when they wear body cameras or if it's simply harder for the complainants to fake an accusation. It's very possible that both of these are significant factors.
It seems that body cameras are a hit, though one possible snag immediately comes to mind. Cameras are replacing trust in police officers, and trust in the servants of the law is a very good thing. It correlates directly to trust in the other branches of government and a healthy democracy.
That is not to say that body cameras are bad, I think they are an absolutely positive step. Just keep in mind that building respect for the judicial institution is also a worthwhile goal.
Too many folks are treating this problem as though it were binary; it's all the cops fault, or it's all the suspect's faults.
The problem is more nuanced than that. In part it's an ignorant and entitled public who think they can act like little shits and endanger others because of feelings. On the other, you have officers trained in what seem to be brutal methods but are, in fact are designed to minimize harm by controlling the situation. This works out mostly in the public's favor, although they'll never realize it.
You do have a few bad eggs, as with any profession. The untrained, the illsuited or the downright malicious. However, I'd suggest that these folks account for a small percentage of officers.
If it were just the first two factors, the problem could be relatively simply solved. The problem is that politicians get involved, folks who have a vested interest in making sure that the problem never gets solved. Thus, we end up where we are.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
We've put cameras everywhere. People now routinely carry them in their pockets. We have not photographed Bigfoot. We have no video of aliens. The existence of the Loch Ness monster is not a proven fact.
We have hours and hours of video of corrupt cops. We have video of cops shooting unarmed people. We have video of cops beating unarmed people. We have video of people being arrested and phones being smashed simply because cops believed they were being filmed.
Yes, when cops carry cameras, and their activities are recorded, and they know this, and they can not turn them off, their behavior changes. For the better.
Why not? The officer on an "off" week is simply performing the habituated alternate behavior. Perhaps even the officers cognizant of things and simply applied what they learned, that is, when they're not being a douche they have a better day at work.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Politicians.
...when everything is a crime, everyone is a criminal.
..but would 90+% of the population realize this before filing a complaint?
Usually it is brutality causing a feedback of intensity. The police man stops a guy, he is tense, that makes the policeman tense, which makes the guy defensive, which make the policeman to be more aggressive, that makes the guy feeling like he will need to fight to protect himself, which causes the policeman to fight back... With this feedback loop someone will cross the line first.
Having the camera, makes the guy less defensive, as he knows if something does happen to him there will be evidence, and the same with the policeman. Which desculates the feedback loop, as it puts a gap in the emotional response, knowing whoever crosses the line first will be the one who loses.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Agreed, easy to verify. Not something I can do....I assume not something you can do.
My main point was, don't assume it is the bad officers stopped being bad like a lot of people might assume these days. Article says, say drop, but don't know reason. Current political climate makes it likely a lot of people would go to the bad officers stop thing. Maybe it is, but I know quite a few police officers and so I don't tend to look at them as bad people.
I did then offer my opinion on why, but that is why I put the I would guess (not scientific).
I would also guess (again, just my opinion and a guess) that this study will probably not go any further. They realize whatever the affect is it happens so the cameras are worth it, even if just half the time wearing them, that it justifies the expense and they don't care to determine why.
So you don't think that just perhaps the officers wearing cameras were behaving better
Did you read TFA? Or the summary? Complaints against the police went down. So the police were behaving better, or perhaps there were fewer false complaints.
It seems to me that to place all of the blame on one side is rather narrow minded of you.
The summary says "everyone" behaved better, and does specifically blame either side. TFA implies that police behavior changed.
Specifics on how exactly this is happening are unclear. Is the officer less confrontational to begin with, avoiding escalation? Or are suspects and complainants more wary of their conduct? Is it some combination of the two, or are even more factors involved? To determine these things would be a far more complex and subtle piece of research, but the study does suggest that officer behavior is probably the most affected, and that other effects flow from that.
It's a possibility. However, it goes against everything we know about how people work. Implied habitual behaviors, shared by a dept, radically changing virtually overnight is unlikely. In the extreme.
Even if you had one or two statistical outliers who did modify their behaviors in such a way, you'd have far more who get tripped up and shit would get on camera.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
see http://www.wral.com/new-nc-bod...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Red-light cameras are a tool for revenue generation with a growing body of evidence of their abuse. Police body cams however are supposed to be an impartial witness.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Whose to say behavior changing during the interaction is the main reason for the difference. Maybe people are less likely to file BS complaints when they know the interaction is on video.
While I'll grant you that the data can be explained by competing theories, in this case only half the officers had cameras on. That certainly suggests that it's not limited to officer behavior.
Assuming that officers worked in pairs and given that the cameras were randomly assigned, any given team will not have a camera only 25% of the time.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Citation missing.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Another officer on the scene might have a camera.
The behavior already changed radically and virtually overnight. The only matter up for debate is why.
The software is available and it does work.
In some environments, access to your servers might happen only from a jump box where everything is recorded.
This sucks when someone wants to fire you, and it's great when the people who implement it know humans make mistakes and want to be able to fix fuckups because we have visual records of changes.
Wanna blow a conservative's mind?
Most Police are Union members.
As is yours.
I find it difficult to attribute a preponderance of the change onto the public. The individuals who might have normally filed a complaint would have no inclination to not file a complaint when the officer in question was not wearing a camera.
If the reduction in complaints matched the likely hood that a camera was involved, sure, I'd agree that the numbers track. I find it far more likely that the officers, knowing there's a chance that someone is recording (themselves, their partner, or another unit that shows up) are acting on their best behavior in all cases and thsi have a larger impact on the overall results.
The two factors together are likely what is influencing the outcomes.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
The behavior change stays when off camera for a simple reason: knowledge that data comparison can be used against you.
Officer john wears the camera one week and gets 3 complaints. Next week he doesn't wear the camera and gets 30 complaints. It's safe to infer he behaves like an asshole when off-camera, so, to counter that, he is NOT an asshole even when not wearing the camera.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Anecdotally, they tend to reduce the yellow light time to maximize revenue.
And that's the thing: one item is put in place for fundraising, the other is for having an unbiased (or less biased anyways) account of what happened when someone complains about police behavior.
Easy to verify: give randomly fake cameras to policemen where they know it's fake but people could not see it. If you still see the drop, then it's people stopping stupid behavior, if not then it's policemen behaving better.
Sounds great until you have a sensitive case where bystanders saw the cop had a camera but guess what, no footage. Conspiracy theorists will love that one, if you're wearing a camera it better be filming. If it's defective or off it's better that you phsyically remove it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The majority of studies show that accident rates go up, not down, when red-light cameras are put in place.
Accident rates may go up (or stay the same) but death rates go down.
The increase in accidents is less dangerous relatively slow speed rear end collisions, while
side on higher speed, and so more deadly, rates go down.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/public...
While we're basking in the glow of the decrease in complaints against police, let's not lose sight of the fact that the paternalistic hand of body-cam surveillance is simply treating a symptom, not the disease that causes it. If our society's overall psychological health were such that citizens weren't routinely afraid of and/or abusive of police, and police didn't routinely brutalize minor criminals and even innocent citizens, then body cameras wouldn't be necessary. When good behaviour, respect, and mutual tolerance can only be guaranteed when "someone's watching", then we live in an immature and ailing culture. We need to address that problem; police body cameras are a dirty band-aid on a wound that ultimately requires disinfectant, stitches, antibiotics, and time to heal.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
unlike the police who keep getting caught in lies about what actually happened by bystander cameras?
Pretty much what I was thinking. Fewer complaints because they know they would be in the wrong....
Or MUCH more likely, the police behaved themselves better because they were being watched. The police know they have cameras. It's unlikely most people interacting with police were aware of the cameras. Most logical conclusion is that the police started minding their manners when on camera. Better behaved police = fewer complaints.
Up yours. Which of my claims do wish to see substantiated with a citation?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Blacks are shot by police in excess when compared to their % of population, but less than would be expected based on their % of violent criminal population.
Now is where SJWs yell that % of criminal population is a 'racist statistic'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The first time this statistic was calculated (for some rich CA coastal town) the 'cop suckers' claimed the same thing. Problem was: they hadn't told anybody but the cops.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Citation? start here. While not being particularly effective at modifying driver behavior (see aforementioned link), they are also not impartial. While they may capture a vehicle and it's operator (maybe) in the middle of a crossing, they do not provide the context. They do not make the observation that the city rigged the yellow lights to be impractically short, they do not even make the observation that the light was in fact red prior to the driver entering the intersection.
This is in contrast to a police body cam which records the video and audio of a police encounter from start to conclusion providing full and usually easy to understand context.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
[maybe it's] Fewer [bogus] complaints because they know they would be [detected to be] in the wrong....
Or MUCH more likely, the police behaved themselves better because they were being watched [and knew the cameras were there even if the people they interacted with did not].
I don't really care how much of it is formerly bad-behaving policemen avoiding the harassment of civilians and how much is bad-behaving civilians avoiding the filing fake harassment reports to inconvenience and deflect the attention of properly-behaving officers. BOTH are improvements.
And a 93% improvement of the aggregate is FANTASTIC!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I would say it's a mix of all of the above. Not all cops are assholes and the public are angels. Each has it's share of bad apples. I've seen my fare share of videos where people antagonize police for a reaction.
Your implicit claim that accident rates remain the same or go down when red light cameras are used.
Not the OP, but here is a citation.
However, I would say the jury is still out as this is a small effect and is one study. It looks like they reduce head on and head to side crashes that are caused when a car runs a red light, but they increase or do not effect rear end crashes when a lead car stops, but a following car does not stop. The head on and head to side crashes are deadlier than the rear end crashes (insert pinto, corsair and Kardashian jokes here).
You can also find studies, on the sites of red-light camera suppliers, that say red light cameras reduce accidents and that tax payers should support the red light camera industry with unlimited funding. Think of the children.
I just read that due to fear of the police, and a belief they won't help you anyhow --- calls to 911 are down drastically too.
Apparently being nice is good for business. Or being really brutal.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
Want to blow a SJW's mind?
All the police departments with the BLM-related accusations and riots are run by Democrats, who also run the mayor's office, etc.. Most are also heavily black police forces, which is why it keeps being black cops being accused of racist behavior in some of these BLM "incidents".
The reason most police are union members is also related... their bosses love their union political contributors/supporters and the police are required to join in order to work in left-wing run cities.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Are you kidding, the escalation was planned from the day of application to the academy. Only the crafty ones get through with that agenda in mind, though - there are actually psych profiles that filter out the worst of the "gonna crack me some heads" abused children looking for payback.
Agreed. Very few people (police included) wake up and say "I want to be a jerk today, escalate lots of situations, get complaints filed against me, and be in a bad mood all day 'cos I didn't abuse someone enough."
Once they see being reasonable, and taking the professional stance, works as well or better than abusing the other person, they internalize the new behavior pretty fast. They probably go home feeling more professional and happier, camera or no camera.
I can help with that:
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/s...
And here are links to the actual studies (11 of which are peer-reviewed).
https://www.motorists.org/issu...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Troll alert. This is apples and rotten oranges...
These body cameras are intrusive and over the top when it comes to personal privacy, but if you believe the news reports coming out of police departments, cops actually like them after having to wear them for a while. No more BS, "he said/she said" issues; And I'm sure that cops love not having to deal with paperwork over unfounded cop complaints.
OTOH, red light cameras (and speed cameras) were put in place as a "sin tax" revenue grab by government officials/councilmen/legislators that usually had personal vendettas against rude/aggressive drivers. Those naive officials were easy prey for the real bandits - companies like ATS and Redflex, whose CEO was bribing city officials to get the revenue generators installed in as many places as possible.
Body cameras: Enormous drop in police complaints, and both sides like the extra clarity they provide to litigious and/or life or death situations. Red light cameras: mixed safety results, bogged-down municipal courts, confusion, outright corruption, and even murder generation.
Of course these days, who cares about facts. Perception is reality...
The increase in accidents is less dangerous relatively slow speed rear end collisions, while
side on higher speed, and so more deadly, rates go down.
While can't you people on your side of the pond keep your distance with the person in front of you ?
Most driving code/law require the driver to keep enough braking distance in front.
(If you can't stop suddenly, then it's your fault than you didn't leave enough distance to be able to / weren't attentive enough).
---
Said as someone who drives mostly in northern Europe
---
Yes, I know, the situation is quite different in southern France or Italy.
---
And anyway the whole point is quickly becoming moot as most European car constructors are not only providing anti-collision assisting technology, but even putting them in standard configuration (the *whole* VW fleets is equipped with there beast. Even the punny little "Up!" has a LIDAR).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I would guess (not scientific) that most of the drop in complaints are because people realize they might be caught on camera and acting better or not lieing to try and get a lawsuit. I am certain there are some police that are acting better as there are bad apples, but I would guess the drop is probably 10%/90% with the 90% being the people changing behavior as opposed to the police office.
This does not track
If there's a 50% chance that encounters had a camera present, then -at most-, the public could have seen cameras and behaved better in half of the cases. This could not cause the 93% drop.
It is far more likely that police, being the only ones who definitely knew that recordings are happening (themselves, their partner, other officers on the scene) rose to the occasion and acted in a manner that led to less escalation and antagonism.
I think your guess at the 90/10 split is actually the reverse.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not.
Sounds like this is less about the cameras reducing shenanigans and more about the two parties not wanting to become the next "officer shot an unarmed suspect" news story. So it's more a change in behavior due to current political climate.
Your implied assertion ("A") that it's a small group of inherently bad cops is both flawed and wholly unsubstantiated.
The fact that there are *daily* reports from all over the country of cops abusing their authority in various ways and being caught engaging in criminal acts themselves debunks your assumption.
Policing problems in the USA are institutional. The personnel issues are symptoms of the larger sickness. Body camera deployments here bear out my contention: how many incidents of violent police behaviors have we seen recently where the cop "forgot" to turn on his recorder? How many incidents where recordings were captured, but the police refuse to release the raw footage to the public?
Anyone actually interested in providing police accountability through these would have mandated that individual officers have no control over the recorder's operation, and stipulated that failure to wear the device properly would have resulted in suspension or termination depending on what was "missed." They also would have demanded that raw footage be held securely in escrow by a non-LE third-party. That neither of these very basic parameters were even discussed, much less required, should tell you all you need to know about what a charade this truly is.
Alternately: while being polite for the week with the camera on, he realized there is a better way to interact with people, and it gets better results.
I doubt many police like getting tons of complaints, so he was happier when his complaint count went down.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We've put cameras everywhere. People now routinely carry them in their pockets. We have not photographed Bigfoot. We have no video of aliens. The existence of the Loch Ness monster is not a proven fact.
On the other hand there was convincing evidence of Bishopville South Carolina's lizard man caught on camera in the last couple of years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If we take your approach towards the burden of proof, any defendant rejecting his guilt would have to present evidence of his innocence.
Thus your approach is incorrect. Fail.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Politicians.
Electronic records of politicians committing felonies is proven not to work.
They'd just get their ex-President husband to meet with the Attorney General who then gets the FBI to ignore all kinds of evidence.
The whole thing is a ginned up controversy created to get black people to go out and vote in the same numbers they did for Obama. The side effects are a significantly increased murder rate and rates of violent crime in urban areas...and the reduction in 911 calls that you point out.
The interesting part is that I am not sure that it is going to accomplish its intended goal. But we'll have the blowback for years to come.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
You forgot the /sarc
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
This makes no sense. The most dangerous red light violations are the ones where the runner is totally oblivious to the traffic light (sleeping, drunk, talking to a passenger, etc). A camera wouldn't help under those circumstances. Red light cameras only change behavior in those cases where the driver sees running as a choice - during the first few seconds or when there is obviously no one coming on the cross street. These aren't the dangerous cases.
On the other hand, red light cameras increase rear-end collisions at lights. http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
This isn't a criminal trial.
I'm guessing you have no evidence whatsoever to support your side. You may even know it.
From your link:
In other words, the cameras reduced the number of violations they were meant to reduce by 15%.
They also made a different violation — failure to keep safe distance — more dangerous. But they didn't cause anybody to drive too close — I'm not sure, it is fair to blame cameras for that. People would hit the breaks (increasing the danger of being rear-ended) by seeing a live officer just as well, there is nothing camera-specific about these findings.
Once again, if running a red light is something worth fighting, then we should be fighting it. If such fights ought to be weighted against the risk of other problems — let's acknowledge that and adjust our laws to reflect it.
All appear to suffer from the same problem — blaming cameras for consequences of drivers' behavior...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Now is where SJWs yell that % of criminal population is a 'racist statistic'."
What about the statistic that minorities are stopped, ticketes or incarcerated at much higher rates for the same non-violent offenses?
Is that racist? Against whom?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
This makes no sense at all. Red light cameras don't fight rudeness or aggressiveness, whoever (dis)likes it. They fight illegal activity.
That's exactly why I blame Democracy. Although objectively traffic cameras aren't any worse than an equal number of police officers would've been, we the people hate them for their efficiency and wanted them removed so that we don't get caught quite so often. We do like police body-cameras, hence those get wider and wider spread.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why not? The officer on an "off" week is simply performing the habituated alternate behavior.
Unless they also received nicotine as a result of wearing the camera, I'm going to vote for successful operant conditioning.
Otherwise, no one would swear in the vicinity of a visible "swear jar".
Nothing to do with violent crime rates. Unless you believe cops under investigate violent crimes with white victims.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Officer john wears the camera one week and gets 3 complaints. Next week he doesn't wear the camera and gets 30 complaints. It's safe to infer he behaves like an asshole when off-camera, so, to counter that, he is NOT an asshole even when not wearing the camera.
An alternate explanation would be that people don't make as many false complaints when there's video evidence available.
Yes, and increased the number of rear-end accidents by 22% which is what this entire argument is about.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The rules of the debate are the same — whoever is making an affirmative statement is "on the hook" to substantiate it, when challenged. Here is an example of this common-sense rule codified.
I carefully craft my posts to avoid making statements that may require substantiation I would be too lazy to provide. I wish, more people followed that principle...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Do try — in the future — to finish reading the earlier post before replying to it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
My only claim is that he didn't provide a cite. Look at the names on the posts. My citation is this very thread :-)
On the other hand there was convincing evidence of Bishopville South Carolina's lizard man caught on camera in the last couple of years.
Ummm...that was Hillary on the campaign trail...
"Nothing to do with violent crime rates"
So? It have everything to do with incarceration rates. And many, of any race, who were locked up for non-violent crimes go on to commit violent ones.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Officer john wears the camera one week and gets 3 complaints. Next week he doesn't wear the camera and gets 30 complaints. It's safe to infer he behaves like an asshole when off-camera, so, to counter that, he is NOT an asshole even when not wearing the camera.
An alternate explanation would be that people don't make as many false complaints when there's video evidence available.
Likely, but complaints dropped even when the officer wasn't wearing a camera: "But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not... Officers were randomly assigned to wear or not wear cameras week by week (about half would be wearing them any given week), and had to keep them on during all encounters."
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
And the affirmative claim (implied) is that there is some sort of hypocracy to supporting police body cameras but opposing red light cameras.
So it is your burden to show that they are substantially similar in effect such that one should support both or neither.
The police also know that they're participating in a study involving wearing these cameras and may have been on their best behavior because they knew that they were being observed. Maybe their superiors told them to be on their best behavior because the number of complaints against them was being closely investigated.
Maybe they were on their best behavior when not wearing the cameras because they wanted to spoil any correlation between their good behavior and wearing the cameras, but it was instead interpreted as the cameras having a more pervasive influence.
It's hard to properly blind the participants in this study, so it's hard to account for all of the unexpected influences.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I'm sure there's a fair amount of people out there who also made spurious complaints against the police, and if recorded wouldn't make that complaint as well.
I don't think the bad behaviour leading to complaints is entirely on one side - I'm fairly certain that the cameras cut down on naughty police behaviour and also on false claims by the non-police.
To be honest - there are some pretty strong arguments to wear the camera by "good" cops, in that it serves to protect them from bad people.
..........FULL STOP.
I think you mean "Oh, Science..."
The majority of studies show that accident rates go up, not down, when red-light cameras are put in place. Eliminating red-light cameras is the logical response.
This study shows that complaints go down, not up, when police use body cameras. The logical response would be to continue using body cameras and continue studying the results to verify that the effect isn't temporary or isolated.
True, and those same studies show that the kind of accidents change when red-light cameras are introduced. We've gone over this many times.
When red-light cameras are emplaced the number of rear-end accidents go up and T-bone accidents go down. The net effect is that the number of crashes with injuries goes down and especially down is the number of deaths. So it matters what number you pick from the study to look at. I happen to think the number of serious injuries and deaths is more important than the number of broken tail-lights.
http://www.iihs.org/frontend/i...
As for the complaints against police, the actual study is at http://cjb.sagepub.com/content... and it contains many self-criticisms. It should be mentioned that the police are required (in these studies) to tell the person they are confronting that they are being recorded.
There is clearly a Hawthorne effect going on here.
One of the things the study's authors want to know, but there is no data, is whether the kinds of interactions change. That is, are the police doing fewer stop-n-frisk type interactions, that is, are they avoiding interactions where there is a greater likelihood of civilian resistance?
This is a study that is well worth reading.
http://cjb.sagepub.com/content...
I bet this is where the "hate the sin, not the sinner" cliche comes from. :-)
Likely, but complaints dropped even when the officer wasn't wearing a camera: "But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not... Officers were randomly assigned to wear or not wear cameras week by week (about half would be wearing them any given week), and had to keep them on during all encounters."
It is also possible that even though an officer was not wearing a camera, they were on their best behavior for fear that another officer who was wearing a camera might show up to assist and capture their bad behavior.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Likely, but complaints dropped even when the officer wasn't wearing a camera: "But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not... Officers were randomly assigned to wear or not wear cameras week by week (about half would be wearing them any given week), and had to keep them on during all encounters."
So... how exactly does the average perp (who isn't exactly a cyberpunk hacker-type dude) actually know if there was or wasn't a camera present? Probably wouldn't.
It's also highly likely that once reaching jail, said perp would likely try to lodge a complaint, whereupon the jailer would simply say "you know they're wearing body cameras nowadays, right?" This would cause said perp to drop the complaint, knowing that if it were all recorded, his story would most likely carry little-to-no water.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Irrelevant. If they fight what needs fighting — and do it cheaper than other methods — than we should be using them.
Very relevant. There IS a proven cheaper method. Longer (~+1sec) yellow lights have been demonstrated to greatly reduce red light violations (to the point where one town removed their cameras since they were costing more than they made) without the increase in rear-end collisions. Why isn't this adopted everywhere? Because revenue. Google yourself, this is readily available and has been reported in the media multiple times.
Citation missing.
If someone makes some odd, esoteric, or strange claim, then a citation is relevant. Asking for one when there's a huge body of evidence? Lame. But sure: http://bfy.tw/81id
All cameras are impartial.
Functionally true. As a practical matter, certainly not. A camera is not omnipresent. A camera only see's what it's pointed at. You can shove someone off-camera and then turn and film them (apparently) attacking you out of the blue. While they're a HUGE benefit, camera's are not the only thing needed.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
While it's true that yellow light times could be adjusted without cameras, doing so would be wholly counterproductive - it's long been established that shorter yellow light times lead to more accidents. The only benefit of shortening them is to increase revenue generation, which requires cheap automated monitoring of red-light violations - having an officer monitoring the intersection would almost certainly cost more than the revenue generated.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Shrug. Driving too close can lead to accidents when unanticipated braking occurs.
Red light cameras cause unanticipated braking. This demonstrably causes accidents. Ergo red light cameras are dangerous, irrespective of other causes or factors.
One resolution is to eliminate driving too closely to the vehicle in front. Given the impracticality of this a more pragmatic option would be to eliminate red light cameras. Same outcome.
Why not? The officer on an "off" week is simply performing the habituated alternate behavior. Perhaps even the officers cognizant of things and simply applied what they learned, that is, when they're not being a douche they have a better day at work.
Or people see the body cam (and know the cars have front cameras) and know they can't file a bullshit complaint against an officer.
The police also know that they're participating in a study involving wearing these cameras and may have been on their best behavior because they knew that they were being observed. Maybe their superiors told them to be on their best behavior because the number of complaints against them was being closely investigated.
Maybe they were on their best behavior when not wearing the cameras because they wanted to spoil any correlation between their good behavior and wearing the cameras, but it was instead interpreted as the cameras having a more pervasive influence.
It's hard to properly blind the participants in this study, so it's hard to account for all of the unexpected influences.
Superiors? I'd say a notice went out to the entire country to stop being assholes or your name will be in the news. This study also occurred long before all these riots and BLM.
In fact, that would be the simplest way.
In order to believe that those not filed would have been mostly frivolous, it would mean that the would-be complainers would be very aware of the body cameras. I'd wager that the only party that is very aware of the body camera most of the time is the officer.
Most people aren't aware that a good portion of cops don't have body and dashboard cameras. People are starting to assume everyone is equipped with one.
Does this really matter? Isn't it good enough that using body cameras results in a 93% drop in complaints? The only people who care why are those sensitive about having their pre-conceived notions invalidated (that police officers are bad, or that certain citizens like to file false complaints).
Why should we conduct an experiment which risks more police abuse or false complaints resulting in possible unjust deaths or unjust suspensions, just so people with a political axe to grind can say "I told you so"?
Ahhh... sometimes I like to believe in the good of humanity as well.
"Now is where SJWs yell that % of criminal population is a 'racist statistic'."
What about the statistic that minorities are stopped, ticketes or incarcerated at much higher rates for the same non-violent offenses? Is that racist? Against whom?
If the city, town or state is a majority of minorities you're going to be hard pressed to find statistics that show Caucasians being stopped more than minorities. When they did the Ferguson study that said the Police department was targeting AA's they forget to include that African Americans were 70% of the town's population.
Tell that to the dead
What a timeline to live in where fighting for social justice is frowned on.
We've put cameras everywhere. People now routinely carry them in their pockets. We have not photographed Bigfoot. We have no video of aliens. The existence of the Loch Ness monster is not a proven fact.
Yeah, it's scared me and my buddies to much that we've become shut-ins and our alien friends took their prankster probing over to the next inhabited world.
Thanks a lot,
Mr. Foot
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
we the people hate them for their efficiency and wanted them removed so that we don't get caught quite so often.
Nobody wants a ticket, but this false statement fits exactly into the marketing photo radar companies love to use when selling their wares to naive city and state governments.
This makes no sense at all. Red light cameras don't fight rudeness or aggressiveness, whoever (dis)likes it. They fight illegal activity.
Illegal or not, most photo radar advocates like cameras are not concerned with curtailing "illegal activity". They are instead motivated by irrational fear ("that guy needs to slow down until I am comfortable with what they're doing,"), jealousy ("that guy needs to slow down like I do,") or their personal desire for vengeance ("I want to get even with those jerks that cut me off all the time!")
Don't think so? You need to be honest with yourself. State legislators here have been voting for photo enforcement for personal reasons since the beginning of the programs here. While I can't link to either of these resources as citations (my state's legislators debate photo radar bans on CCTV and discussing the issue via email with various legislators), they would talk about their own feelings of "being scared to drive on the freeway", needing to "enforce the laws on the books to get dangerous drivers off the road", etc. The speaker of our state house himself personally refused to allow any photo radar ban to come up for a vote because he "personally approved of the cameras" and thought "they were a good thing for the state," regardless of statistics.
Their candid, honest comments are something all photo radar advocates should be willing to admit to themselves - before they start judging anti-photo advocates. And they shouldn't be trying to automatically fine people for "sin taxes" to make their budgeting jobs (and subsequent re-election) easier.
I think that is the point. The officers are in know enough know exactly when they are being recorded. And yet we do not see any statistical anomalies that show that they act differently. But all the criminals likely know is that some big body-cam roll out happened last year and everything is not being recorded. It is likely how everyone drives slower because their might be a cop around the next corner. In this situation, it is exactly because their is never any change that outcome that primary change must of been in the behavior of the criminals.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Filtering out the psychos during application would work, except that the Stanford prison experiment showed us that even if you put psychologically healthy people in police roles, they get abusive.
You don't have to believe, you just have to draw eyes on the wall...
Wired
New Scientist
Scientific American
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
The vast majority of officers are doing their jobs with no illegal behavior. There is always going to be those bad actors in any department. The majority of the complaints against officers though is very likely to drop for a few simple reasons. The fact that the smarter bad actor officers that were skirting the law are cognizant of the chance of getting caught by said camera now modifying their behavior. The public, now aware that their interactions with officers as well are also being recorded, are not willing to take the chance that they will be found out to be reporting behavior by the officer that simply didn't happen. This is an almost daily happening for departments that have patrolling officers in the inner cities. Most are unfounded and are simply an attempt to get out of a ticket or an arrest. IE: They are trying to game the system. A third reason is that it is very likely that the officers are being far less proactive in their policing duties preferring to be dressed down for being less productive to being beefed, sued, or fired for even a minor infraction at this point. A fourth reason is that the public in these areas is initiating contact with law enforcement less often due to the irrational fear of possible police brutality now instilled in them by the press and their community leaders. Someone once said that "God made man, Samuel Colt made them equal" In this present day it is now the cameras making us equal.
Police stop beating the shit out of innocent people when they are wearing cameras, so complaints go down.
But if you want to blame that on the innocent people being "fucking out of control" that's fine. Blaming the victim is standard for some people.
Learn to love Alaska
The people already knew dash cams are there, and there's not a good correlation between those and civilian behavior, and the body cameras are not as obtrusive as you imply. Most people wouldn't see or notice them. They are just another bulge/lump on an officer's uniform.
Learn to love Alaska
Milgram was the best, all it takes is an authority figure telling someone to be a monster and 9/10 will comply. The Blue Line is a logical extension - it's better to be a monster than to rat out your buddies, especially those in charge.
Likewise, UFO sightings also dropped by over 93% now that virtually everyone is carrying a camera in their phone.
It is amazing what real evidence can do.
How does that suggest a shift away from the officers when the officers are the ones most cognizant of the change in the state of affairs?
Except the complaints still went down when there was no camera. Also, the police officer would be the one most aware there was a camera at any given time.
Except the behavior of everyone else changing is even more unlikely.
which could be solved very quickly with a simple reg that no city would have the stones to make.
In any and all cases where a camera has been issued to the officer
1 the officer shall do a functional check of said camera before each shift and shall get the camera replaced if it does not function (to include a check of any and all storage devices) before leaving the issuing area.
2 if any complaints are filed or a reportable incident occurs and the resulting recording is missing or otherwise corrupt then the courts shall find for the civilian (and all materials belonging to the civilian shall be returned intact or replaced).
Im not sure if the language is correct exactly but no vid then
A the officer loses any case
B Free GOJF card for somebody that gets arrested
Agreed. Very few people (police included) wake up and say "I want to be a jerk today, escalate lots of situations, get complaints filed against me, and be in a bad mood all day 'cos I didn't abuse someone enough."
Judging by US schools, I disagree. There are tens of thousands of people who do precisely that. I strongly doubt all of them stopped when they got a little older, either.
I see an AC has already responded to you but let me add a comment since I've recently found some reports about New York City's stop & frisk.
Data archives for 2003 - 2015 are at http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/h...
Out of 5 MILLION stops in ~12 years, 25% were young black men but they make up NOT EVEN TWO PERCENT of NYC's population.
The percentage of stops annually where the suspect was found to be innocent was never below 75% and usually above 85%
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The cameras work both ways.
If the cops are being brutal, the camera catches it, and they're screwed, Now if people false report the cops, the cameras also catches it, and the false reporter is screwed.
It's kinda a Win-Win scenario here.
So... how exactly does the average perp (who isn't exactly a cyberpunk hacker-type dude) actually know if there was or wasn't a camera present? Probably wouldn't.
The University of Cambridge press release (read that instead of the Techcrunch report) says:
Many people have difficulty "doing the right thing" while nobody is watching. This is why we invented God and body-cams, no behaviour change required, just make them believe they are being watched by someone more powerful than themselves and they will act accordingly.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
While I'll grant you that the data can be explained by competing theories, in this case only half the officers had cameras on. That certainly suggests that it's not limited to officer behavior.
Police rarely go into situations alone. If 50% of police are wearing cameras it often means that the situation in question is being recorded by someone. That may be enough of a deterrent to greatly reduce routine beatings and the resulting 'cover charges' at the very least. Those guys are addicted to violence but it isn't a literal addiction. They can go without it for a while until their little masochistic brains can figure out a way to continue their behavior with less risk. Never forget that police are mostly cowards. So it is not that hard to deter them with simple measures.
Very few people have the balls or are crazy enough to actively confront a police officer, especially in the US. Very, very few. And for that tiny percentage of crazy/violent people I don't think body cams are going to be a much greater discouragement than batons, tazers, pepper spray and a Glock with a hair trigger. I think we need a little common sense here.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Maybe they are reacting to their coworkers having cameras even when they don't.
The summary says "everyone" behaved better
Like when a rapist decides not to rape the girl wearing sexy clothes because he knows he will be recorded helps everyone 'behave better'.
Like when a lion is caged or tied up so he cannot chase the gazelle helps both the lion and the gazelle 'behave better'.
On the one hand you have a heavily armed, body armored group trained in the use of violence. On the other hand you often have a single individual with no weapons or training. A pack of wolves versus a single sheep. Hmm. Who should we give the credit to if the expected violence does not occur? I wonder.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
However, now the suspects also cannot just claim mishandling/brutality/unprofessional behavior by the cops every time they are arrested. Until now, a great amount of claims were simply made up or grossly exaggerated.
Citation? How do you know this? It seems implausible to me.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Apparently recording the encounter encourage BOTH sides to be on their best behavior. Would having everybody wear google glasses make everybody in a society more polite?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It not that cops hate blacks. It's that, all other things being equal, people with dark faces are considered more threatening than people with light faces. There is another problem with all white cops working all ethnic neighborhoods; after a while an "us versus them" mentality evolves where everybody they see on the street is assumed to be a perp, but that's not just a white/black phenomenom. If all the people you saw committing crimes were black, and all the people busting them for committing crimes were white, what assumptions would you tend to make after observing this behavior for years?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Having the camera, makes the guy less defensive, as he knows if something does happen to him there will be evidence
Yeah. I am thinking this is not such a strong motivation for anyone who has had dealings with the police. Maybe he will get suspension with pay for shooting you in the face. Maybe if you are lucky it will be without pay. Although that seems unlikely.
Even if you are not killed all it really means is you may have a defense against false accusations and cover charges. People not afraid of the police usually haven't had much experience with them. Everyone else gives them a wide berth at all times. For good reason. They are dangerous. I'd sooner approach an angry rattlesnake than a cop in the US.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Evidence suggests that even black cops are prone to assuming black men are more dangerous than whites. Is that racism, inaccurate threat assessment, or accurate threat assessment?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The vast majority of officers are doing their jobs with no illegal behavior.
Do you personally know the 'vast majority of officers'? Or are you pulling that out of your ass?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
When we start seeing videos on YouTube of white people being tased to death, or shot way too many times or in the back or both, or being choked to death while being unarmed and non-hostile, then you can claim this has no racial component to it.
Actually most of the youtube videos I've seen have been of white people getting beaten or tazed. Like that 12 year old girl in Arizona or New Mexico or something getting tazered in the head a while back. The point actually penetrated her skull and punctured her brain.Just googled for it but there are so many similar cases it has been buried.
I did find an 8 year old girl who was tazered though and she wasn't black. But the most recent preteen tazered by our courageous police force is apparently a 12 year old black girl from St. Louis. Lucky our police have weapons or they would surely get wasted by preteen girls on a daily basis. In some places there just aren't enough black people to beat and murder. So they have to resort to beating/murdering white people too. Presumably not their first choice I'll admit, but I'm sure it still satisfies their bloodlust well enough and they go home well sated.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I think it comes down to emotions. People want to feel safe from violent cops. So they simply choose to believe that only a tiny percentage of them are violent or dangerous without really knowing either way. Most of them have had zero contact with real life police and only know what they see on TV and in movies which has almost nothing to do with how cops behave in the real world. This is also one reason jurists tend to choose the word of a cop over their victim when there is no evidence either way. They want to believe that most cops will not lie in court. So they do believe it. It's like magic.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I was told by a defense attorney that my state or maybe the city I was in used to have cruiser dashcams (which would have helped greatly in my case), but they were removed because statistically in court it tended to hurt the prosecution more than it did the defense. I guess someone did an analysis. Police routinely lie on the stand and any audio or video footage makes that much harder to do.
To anyone living in the real world this shouldn't be very surprising of course, but most people probably have had too little contact with real police officers to know this. There is a strong tendency for people to believe in the police image as portrayed in TV and film. But those people are actors who themselves don't really know what it is like to actually be a cop.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Actually, it's "that guy needs to slow down to the point where a collision between us won't be so likely kill me." Not an irrational fear at all given the millions of people who've died in high speed crashes.
This space intentionally left blank
So why, when membership becomes no longer legally mandated by the government, public service union members stop paying dues and quit, resulting in dramatically lower membership?
Is that also because they find their union so useful to them?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
That's because it's not social justice, it's social "justice" based on the Oppression Olympics, a victimhood mentality, and identity politics. It's not based in facts or true justice.
Another possibility is that the public unsure as to whether the police were camered or not decided not to risk further jail time and behave themselves. I'm not saying that it's not the police's behavior just that it takes two to tango also these were British cops and though they by no means have a spotless record they are amongst the most highly regarded and reputable police forces in the world.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Shrug. Driving too close can lead to accidents when unanticipated braking occurs.
Red light cameras cause unanticipated braking. This demonstrably causes accidents. Ergo red light cameras are dangerous, irrespective of other causes or factors.
One resolution is to eliminate driving too closely to the vehicle in front. Given the impracticality of this a more pragmatic option would be to eliminate red light cameras. Same outcome.
And that is the point. If a driver isn't driving too fast in the first place, there wouldn't be "unanticipated braking" when seeing a red-light camera. Why would one brakes when seeing a camera? Well the one feels being caught from the guilt of his/her own speed. Thus, the camera should not to be blamed but the driver behavior...
There are conflicting statistics. I'm suggesting that the parent poster cherry picked a study that shows what he wanted to say, while ignoring other studies that show that red light cameras don't improve safety at all. The nonsense argument was presented as an argument that, even if the statistics were sound, perhaps it was more of a correlation than a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study cited also makes the mistake of considering the red light program as free. Taxpayers, who bear the cost in the form of tickets, would disagree that red light cameras "pay for themselves". Since a portion goes to the vendor, at best, it turns out to be a very inefficient way of paying for marginal safety. At worst, it's a cash-grab.
Regardless of the results, stop & frisk is blatantly unconstitutional. Same with DUI checkpoints.
Very "In Soviet Russia" of them.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Vampires wouldn't show up on camera. So, maybe the reason we don't see big foot is a vampire, feeling bad about feeding on humans, fed on big foot and turned him into a vampire.
Just sayin'...
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Even for an AC this comment is stupid. Deciding that someone is "more guilty" based on their appearance or ethnicity is the FUCKING DEFINITION OF RACAIL PROFILING. ......wait...for...it..RACIST
Which is
Also
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Wanna blow a conservative's mind?
Most Police are Union members.
Doesn't blow *my* conservative mind; I was in AFL-CIO (AFSCME), Teamsters and an independent group for twenty years as a correctional officer. But, of course, I'm only *one* anecdote. YMMV.
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
UK installed 1 million CCTVs for 62 million citizens
Casteism
So you don't think that just perhaps the officers wearing cameras were behaving better knowing they were being recorded?
It seems to me that to place all of the blame on one side is rather narrow minded of you.
Perhaps the public were better behaved, too. Knowing they were on camera.
No sig today...
GAH, I let my passion overwhelm my proofreading. Should be RACIAL not RACAIL
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
What you're describing might just be the best kind of fornication.
By that argument; Police shouldn't stop white bread suburban kids going into bad neighborhoods to buy drugs?
That is racial profiling too.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Having both family and friends in law enforcement as well as having worked in law enforcement for a short while I had extensive interaction with all manner of officers. There were a couple of sketchy officers but every other was a good man or woman and did a conscientious job. I have also been on the receiving end of the cops more times than I care to remember as a young man and not but a couple of times did they stray from the letter of the law in their dealings with me. So I would say that I have a better than average view into those doing the job, from both sides. So no that is not from "my ass" The tone of your response would lead me to believe that you think that the vast majority of those in law enforcement are on the take and out to do illegal stuff. If that is your assertion are you simply pulling that out of your ass?
By that argument; Police shouldn't stop white bread suburban kids going into bad neighborhoods to buy drugs?
That is racial profiling too.
What year are you living in? There have been drug dealers in the suburbs and even upscale areas of every city I've lived in since 1985.
Are there no black, brown or Asian kids going into your drug-fueled bad 'hoods to buy dope or are the cops simply assuming that the non-white kids all live there?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I hadn't had much contact with US law enforcement (just speeding tickets) until I got stopped at a DUI roadblock one night. I was not drunk. I rarely drink. Scored 0.00% 5 times in a row when they tested me at the station. So they had to drop that charge at least.
Basically I made some comment about it being a violation of my rights to have to be detained by them etc. That it was wrong. That they were bad people for doing it. I was polite about it though just speaking conversationally as if they were human beings like me. A cop swore at me for this and I swore back at him. Then he proceeded to beat me and choke me nearly to death in front of at least 10-15 other officers. The only reason I am alive is because one of the 'not so bad apples' pulled the maniac off of me so that I could breathe again. After I had been saved from death and was lying in a bloody mess with my face smashed into the gravel the cop who beat me started going over his 'story' with another cop. They did this not in whispers, but in loud voices that not only I could hear but the other 15 or so cops who were there including the guy in charge of the whole operation. So I guess making up stories to back 'cover charges' and justify beatings and attempted murder were routine to most of them. They charged me with assault and battery against a police officer, assault with a deadly weapon (what weapon?) and many other so called 'cover charges'. I guess I was lucky they didn't actually plant a gun or knife in my car or something to make the 'deadly weapon' more plausible..
It is true that one of those cops saved my life (the only time a cop has ever done something helpful for me in any way), but he and all those other guys went along with the "bad" cop and not a single cop there questioned what happened in any way or seemed at all disturbed by the situation. I was badly injured and nearly killed for saying, "fuck you" and then falsely charged with serious crimes and not a single one of the 20-30 officers made any attempt to amend the situation or cared even the slightest about what happened. I think most cops would be on the side of the cop who beat me because I disrespected him.
They are just evil people. I remember a Star Trek: TNG episode with this black blob that was supposed to be all of the condensed bad/evil from an entire society that was sloughed off and made into a separate thing. That is like what American cops are for our species: the lowest and most evil of all human beings. They would have become criminals except that they are too cowardly, too afraid of going to jail for their thirst for violence if they had no badge to hide behind. Some also have parents who were cops. So they choose that path.
I know the way bullies think very well because I grew up with one as a child. I have a kind of bullydar. It's like some combination of anger, sadism, sociopathy, and deep cruelty. My own bully as a child used to put firecrackers in frogs asses or mouths and blow them up. Great fun for that kind of person. Every cop that *I* have met in my life were bullies. Every single one. In the US they always seem to have that personality type: tough guy / thug / bully. Cops in most other countries are often just normal people doing a job to make money. They aren't out there to prove how tough they are or to satisfy their bloodlust. It's just a job to them. In the US being a cop is like a whole lifestyle that has a lot more in common with being a gang member than anything else, but unlike those gang members there are no limits at all on their actions. They are not only above the law, but they have no sense of right or wrong, no moral center. No compassion or empathy. And a deep hatred of all 'civilians'. Most of them are very stupid too. Luckily the cop who attacked me was too stupid to invent a coherent and consistent story. I don't even really see them as human beings anymore.
Now probably most cops would not go as far as that crazy one who flipped out and tried to kill a person because they dared to say 'fuck you' to him, but at
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
And once in awhile, to keep up price, the supply 'runs out' in the burbs. They all run to the street dealers in the ghetto, where 'the market' is healthy.
Stopping the drug traffic is still a common request of actual people who have to live in bad neighborhoods. In practice that means stopping cars from outside the neighborhood, particularly dumb ass, white bread kids.
'White bread' comes in all colors these days, even if black or tan, the peer group is mostly white.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Interesting how you are able to recall this with such clarity after getting your ass kicked. I suspect that you recall this through more than a little bit of bias and have twisted it to suit your point of the argument. It is also interesting that you, like so many others stopped at sobriety check points, question the legal validity of said stops. Also, I doubt that you were "conversational" in your protestations. Having been through more than a few of these check points the cops were never assholes. The cops simply did what they needed to do because morons can't get it through their heads that drinking and then driving kills others and that they are basically selfish fucking assholes for doing it. I have met more than a few bad cops in my many interactions with them. Every time I remained calm and respectful regardless of their inappropriate attitude or actions. Two things happened in all the interactions. One, they calmed down and started to act more rationally. Two, they generally either reduced the infraction or charges or outright let me go with a simple warning or admonishment to deal with my issues ASAP or suffer the consequences if they stopped me again. In a number of cases I was in the car with cuffs on. NEVER EVER did I get pissed or mouthy with them. He escalated, you responded and escalated, you got your ass kicked and charged. Cause and effect. What happened to you is totally fucked up and wrong but it happened. The sad part is that all interactions you have with cops now and in the future are tainted by this and all cops are bad no mater what. Good luck with that in the future, it will not serve you to well. This will all be academic in the future as police departments and police unions are forced to implement body cams.
>I suspect that you recall this through more than a little bit of bias and have twisted it to suit your point of the argument
Yes you do. For emotional reasons rather than logical ones. This is what you *want* to believe because it makes you feel better to not think badly of American police. Makes you feel safer and less in danger for your life when you have interactions with them.
Of course it already seems like in interactions with them you treat them as if they are dangerous and mentally unstable gang members with itchy trigger fingers. That's good. Because that is indeed exactly what they are.
>It is also interesting that you, like so many others stopped at sobriety check points, question the legal validity of said stops.
They *are* illegal in 5 US states, but I don't and have not questioned their *legality*. What I questioned was their morality and their constitutionality and indeed such a violation of human rights is consistent with neither.
>Also, I doubt that you were "conversational" in your protestations.
Yes I know. I've met a lot of people like you over the years. It's why I took a plea bargain despite badly wanting to tear apart the cops ridiculous, illogical, and inconsistent story at least some of which I could *prove* was a lie. In any account of events people like you will *always* choose to believe the cops side of the story. Why? Again for emotional reasons. It makes you feel better. Safer. Otherwise you'd have to accept that there are a significant number of cops who are liars and very bad people.
>Having been through more than a few of these check points the cops were never assholes.
Because in your view *no* cops are assholes. Am I right?
>Every time I remained calm and respectful regardless of their inappropriate attitude or actions.
What inappropriate attitude or actions? I thought they weren't assholes.
>One, they calmed down and started to act more rationally.
So they were acting irrationally? Really. I find that so surprising. I thought cops were perfect human beings which is why you always choose to believe their story.
>Two, they generally either reduced the infraction or charges or outright let me go with a simple warning or admonishment to deal with my issues
Did you miss the part where I said, "Fuck you!" quietly but with an angry voice? He *was* provoked, but his overreaction (attempted murder and then false charges) was impressive. Good luck calming a cop down after saying 'fuck you' right to his face. Maybe you are talking about speeding tickets or something.
>NEVER EVER did I get pissed or mouthy with them.
You would not get angry if a cop swore at you for complaining about something? As far as being mouthy yes most people aren't mouthy with the police because they are afraid of them. I was afraid of them as well, but it just got me so mad that he could swear at me like that and that I was not allowed to swear back. Like he is a higher class of citizen. He can verbally abuse me, but I am not allowed to verbally abuse him back?
>He escalated, you responded and escalated
I was out driving to get a pizza. They stopped me and detained me for no reason other than the fact that I refused to answer their stupid questions. I was complaining about how wrong these roadblocks are and he escalated by saying something like, "Shut up you asshole. Then I escalated by saying, 'fuck you'. Then he escalated by attempting to kill me. That last escalation is what I have a problem with. Only a violent psychopath who thinks he can get away with anything would actually do that. It's just crazy. In fact it is so crazy that I think a lot of people would choose not to believe my story. Another reason I took a plea deal.
The whole system of beating + cover charges works quite well really. Otherwise I may have complained about getting beaten for swearing at the cop. Swearing is 100% legal. Beating people up is not. I say 'may have' because complaining about a cop who is
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Btw 'getting your ass kicked' seems to imply that it was some kind of fair fight and I lost it. Are you really thinking of it as a fight? Not that I don't think he could have won in a fair fight. He was like 6' 3" 250 lbs and had at least some fighting and combat experience and I was a 5' 6" 140 lb geek with almost no fighting experience. I think I had actually been writing code that night and was getting a pizza afterward. But calling it a fight is ridiculous. I *knew* I couldn't fight back. I wanted to but I knew that if I did I really would be charged with assault against a police officer and god knows what else. So I didn't try to defend myself or 'resist' until it was too late and I was pinned under a 250 lb guy unable to breath or even speak before being asphyxiated. And indeed that's how it would have probably ended if the other cop had not pulled him off of me. BTW if this were just a made up story to make cops look bad because I hate them why would I include that last part? That seems to show that at least some cops (say 1 out 15 or so) are willing to actually intervene to stop a murder.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Well it seems that you are the one person in all of the united states that has had nothing but bad interaction with every one the the cops you have been unfortunate enough to meet. Taking this into consideration I will form my opinions about your inter personal skills and leave it at that. On second thought I think it necessary that i spell it out for you. If every person you meet in a uniform is an asshole from the very start then guess what ASSHOLE! That's right ASSHOLE, you are the ASSHOLE!!! I on the other hand have had both good and bad interactions with cops over the years. I also recognize that the job they carry out involves interaction with the bottom 10% of the population. Generally those that would be referred to as the dregs of society. Persons that are criminals and/or just have bad attitudes when forced to act in a manner counter to their own selfish interest and comply to the laws in the state they live in. This I suspect is the category you may fall under if I am generous. I would challenge you to to spend one year in doing their job, dealing with the shit they have to take day in and day out from smart ass ASSHOLES just like you. Dealing with hardened criminals, child molesters, rapists, and spouse abusers. At the end of it come out with less of an attitude than most of them have after a decade or two of the job. Cops don't just up and out of the blue go all shit house crazy like you claim happened to you. In fact I am damned sure that you were not conversational with them before, during, or after. A man does not just go off like you said if you simply stated in a non confrontational manner that you think they are carrying out an illegal action. I call bullshit to your story and the lead up to you getting your ass handed to you. The one thing I am very sure of though is that you will not get in the face of a cop with that "Joe Q Public attitude" again.