Cops at it again, 'protecting and serving'

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First, the size of the country and population lead to a larger number of incidents and free press and keen pursuit of litigation correspondingly lead to a larger number of reported cases.

Second, there is the decentralised nature of US police and police training. I presume that there are vast differences in the level of training cops get in the US. In Germany the training of a street cop takes iirc two to two and a half years. San Diego Sheriff deputies for instance do a six month course (I presume for the sake of argument that's representative). They get guns and Tasers all the same.

Third, American law enforcement is, in a nutshell, comparably ham fisted. You go to jail for trivialities easily in the US. Far easier at least than in any other western country.

Fourth, there is an apparent propensity to overcome resistance or threats, real or imagined, with overwhelming force. "Overcoming" is the key word. For these cops here walking back, out of range of that dog, apparently was not an option. It had to be subdued, defeated, neutralised. That is a military style approach (thesis: too many military vets from combat units among cops?). Tasers fit in here as well, to the extent that as a 'less lethal tool' their effect is underestimated, leading to these incidents of excessive force.

Fifth, compared to the German system, there is rather limited recourse to some police actions, leading to a zone of impunity. That problem is being exacerbated by the decentralisation.

Sixth, America has 'policed' a number of functions that have been 'de-policed' in other western countries and are handled there by ordinary municipal authorities. Police faced with such mundane tasks still has at its disposal the full quiver of tools that a cop has, with the potential for escalation.

 

I've never personally experienced police brutality in the US nor have any of my friends experienced such things. However, in my travels (which were admittedly focused in the Pacific rim) I've seen police are much quicker to resort to violence in other countries than in the US. We would get briefed on it all the time and see it in action during port visits. I've witnessed far more physical confrontations by police in foreign countries (Japan, Korea, Phillipines, Austrailia, Mexico, etc.) than I've personally witnessed in the US.

Fine. Germany is a wonderful place to live where the police would never use excessive force and are trained to handle every possible circumstance in the least violent manner. But the rest of the world is not like that and I feel far safer wih US police than anywhere else I've every visited (except perhaps Canada).

 

T2,
I have seen French police in action and have an idea of what you mean with 'quick to resort to force'. And I have seen Mexican police, and I am still sure they only didn't rob us because we filed report that part of our luggage had been stolen.

Germany, like any other country, has its problems but it is a good enough place. We do a few things right, and giving people at the receiving end of police or administrative action recourse is one of them. Lessons of the past, some rather fresh. It's only two decades that we re-unified with a highly intrusive totalitarian state, and extensive domestic surveillance. Another thing we do right is police restraint.

In a sense, America goes to work with a fresh mind, untainted by such sordid memories of a bad past. Twenty years? That would be ancient history anyway.

 

Sometimes, you just don't know who you can trust:

http://jonathanturley.org/2010/10/0...-allegedly-robbing-fellow-officer/#more-27071

"Free" Crime:

http://jonathanturley.org/2010/07/1...s-like-burglary-grand-theft-and-other-crimes/

 

This sounds about right.

Not so much. Sure there will be differences but, for example, if many police departments are dealing with a certain problem but the Chicago PD found a solution that has been working well for them, that solution will make it's way to every police force in the U.S..

This sounds a bit...speculative(at best). If there is any truth to it then I think it would be that our very LAWS themselves are in many ways draconian(prohibition laws for example) and lead to people being incarcerated fro non-crimes/victimless crimes. The cops do not have any real say in this. And cops here tend to be far less ham-fisted than they are characterized as being by movies, TV and anti-cop hellions. Their first actions when arriving on a scene tend to be talking and trying to defuse the situation. if someone decides they have no use for talking or listening and are Hell bent on violence then yeah, cops take the necessary measures to restrain that person and prevent anyone being killed. Sometimes this requires tasers and it is VERY VERY rare that tasers cause any significant physical damage to the *******s unless they are on PCP or have a heart condition but in the latter case I would suggest people with bad hearts NOT decide to try and fist fight or pull guns on cops when they are talking to you or arresting you for whatever crime you were committing or trying to commit.

This was not an instance of cops walking to a donut shop, seeing a dog in someone's yard and deciding to shoot it. They are pursuing a dangerous criminal and a vicious dog comes at them they HAVE to take the thing down. If an armed jackass gets away and kills some innocent family because the cops were backing up slowly and trying to talk a dog down, guess who gets the law suit?
The alleged propensity for excessive force is largely a myth. Sure it happens on rare occasions but even most so called testimonies of such turn out to be not quite as honest and clear cut as the person claiming police abuse makes it sound.

Tasers are not perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect tool that can never result in someone being hurt or killed. But they are a damned sight better than the previous "unload the clip when confronted by an attacker" protocol.

This does not sound right either. here in America the police are getting sued for millions of dollars all the freaking time! Which would be fine if it only happened when the cops actually did something wrong but people like Rodney King and such get away with this nonsense too often(especially easy when some kid turns on a camera 15 minutes late and catches a misleading small portion of what the police did to restrain someone).

Perhaps.

 

No surprises:

If it had been reversed they would have executed the guy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40031882/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

 

I remember hearing about that case. It was guaranteed to cause near-riots no matter what. The officer's defense was that he thought he was pulling out his taser and tasing the man (who was on the ground, but still struggling). Iirc, there's apparently bit of cell-phone clip that shows him pull the gun without looking at it, shoot the guy, and then kind of pause. Maybe he was pausing in shock of what he had just done, maybe he was pausing to make sure the guy was 'down'.

In the end, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and only a gun-enhancement charge could have put the prison term over 4 years.

 

The sentence is a disgrace to our justice system.

 

Without agreeing with the late mordea's punchline at all, this is an apparently gross case: Man charged with resisting arrest for covering head during police beating

 

Well, assuming that everything is as it seems, I'd like to see the officers charged with attempted murder or the like.