Obligatory ACAB
I know several cops and they are all great people. I live in Europe though, and hating all cops isn’t luckily considered normal here.
You’re just being foolish to trust them… I’m Canadian and always heard how our cops weren’t as bad as American cops, then we had protests in my city and the Canadian police proved they can be every bit as sadistic and psychotic as American cops. So can European cops. Don’t let your guards down
I live in Canada and also know several cops who are great people;however, even they would not raise a finger to expose fellow cops who are indeed bastards
That’s the problem, it’s not a few bad apples, it’s a shit ton of them and the few remaining good apples are too afraid or just not care to do anything about the rest
That’s the problem, it’s not a few bad apples
The whole “a few bad apples” excuse ignores the rest of the saying. In its entirety it says “A few bad apples spoil the whole bushel.”
(This is because as apples rot they release ethylene gas, which causes the rest of the apples to ripen more quickly and then start rotting.)
It probably helps that in most European countries police training is in the thousands of hours and in America it’s under 6 months.
I know several cops and they are all great people.
No, they aren’t. Even if they are kind and friendly to you, they are still cops. They are still the state sanctioned users of violence whose primary job is to keep the status quo in which the rich own everything, and the workers don’t. Where people live on the streets and children go hungry.
Just a few days ago in my country cops arrested several rich bastards for corruption. They took the Mayor of a big city, member of currently most supported (and populist) political party, in handcuffs. At least those I know believe they are making world better and safer, and I think that by catching criminals they are. That’s their actual job, and that’s what they do. And I’m glad that if I got robbed, I can call those “bad people” and they will try to find whoever robbed me. And they are not “state sanctioned user of violence”. If a cop shoots a person here, they are heavily investigated, even if the person was a criminal.
I get a different vibe from cops in Europe, and I wonder if it has to do with countries where they have mandatory military conscription / civil service.
I sometimes wonder if in the US, we had some kind of system where everyone was forced to serve as a police officer, say between the ages of 18 and 21, we would have an entirely different system. Instead of attracting power hungry psycho killers, you would have normal people who understood they were performing a required service for their community and society in general. You might then get more mutual respect between cops and civilians since everybody will have been on both sides.
Also, it’s almost as if anyone who wants to be a cop should be immediately disqualified. Same with politicians.
No, no. Many European countries don’t even have mandatory service. The real difference is we don’t have a gun fetish and we don’t view cops as warriors that need to be armed to the teeth with military surplus to be able to stand a chance against civilians criminals. We also don’t teach courses on how it’s us vs. them and how you should always have killing on your mind in encounters with the public.
Let’s arm and load power onto every 18-21 year old in the country! Genius idea!!
Here in Vic Australia too. They’re mostly legends
The only people I know who hate cops here hate them because they either didn’t solve their issue, or they are generally known to act like asses.
It probably also helps that nobody carries guns here so they can operate on a shoot last, ask questions first policy
Believe it or not, it’s possible to act on a shoot last, ask questions first policy even here in gun crazy Florida. Literally everyone other than police officers do it every day.
We’re hardly immune to bad policing
Victorian police beat climate protestors at mining conference
Victorian police kettle and pepper spray BLM protestors in Melbourne train station - I haven’t been able to find this one again but lots of references to Vic Pol using kettling as standard operating procedure.
Same. I’m in the US, and every cop I’ve personally interacted with has been reasonable and professional. But I’m pretty mainstream (not a minority, dress conservatively, etc), so generally not a target for police enforcement. So it’s hard for me to know whether my local police are better than average, or if our heavy demographic skew is the main contributor to our low crime rate (i.e. they could still be targeting minorities unfairly, it just wouldn’t be clear from general stats).
Regardless, even my local police have far too much power, so I’m absolutely in favor of ending qualified immunity and splitting the force into armed and unarmed officers. We’ve had some local incidents of police overstepping their bounds (e.g. I’m in Utah and remember this incident very clearly, though that was in another jurisdiction).
In my job, there is a concept called Attribute Based Access Control. I always do a little double take when I see it as an acronym, especially in a professional context.
Generalist bullshit. Well overplayed, always has been.
This idiot is more than a bastard. And other cops aren’t.
Notice how none of his cop co-workers are demanding his removal and refusing to work with him
This argument goes around and around every time someone says ACAB. There is a culture of protecting your own in police forces - it seems to happen all around the world. This culture causes otherwise good cops to overlook actions of their peers that shouldn’t be overlooked. If you let someone get away with something illegal, when your job is to uphold the law, then you are not doing your job and are really not a good cop after all - you’re just as bad as your peers. ACAB is a much simpler way of saying all that.
And other cops aren’t.
We have here, from this case alone:
- 1 absolutely insane individual who recklessly killed Jaahnavi Kandula, Kevin Dave.
- Daniel Auderer, who laughed at her death and said she was lower value anyway
- Mike Solan, who didn’t shut Daniel down the moment he said that, also coincidentally SPOG president
- Whomever is authorized to discharge all 3 of these
- Whomever gave any of these 3 their positions
- The Union that defends these guys
- The cops willingly giving money to that Union
We have more of such cases than Police Unions.
Whomever gave any of these 3 their positions
This one is unfair because it’s not necessarily evident at the time of hiring that an employee will act like th is.
The cops willingly giving money to that Union
Also unfair because you can’t just assume that a donor/member of an org agrees with every action of the group they donate/belong to.
I agree with the rest. Most of those involved should be spending time in jail, qualified immunity should not apply here, nor should it honestly ever apply. Cops should be treated like regular citizens, which means giving citizens more protection as well as cops less protection from the law.
Think of the system like a force field (the physics kind, not the scifi kind). It pulls bastards into it. If you’re not, you’re in its presence, and you’re susceptible to its effects. It’s more like “No Humans Are Immune To The Corrupting Influence Of Militarized Institutions” but ACAB is a lot easier to say.
All cops. No exceptions. They are raised by selfish parents to be a selfish person who sees others as beneath them. It’s how cops are found, look for the greediest person in the room who would hurt others for gain and make them a lap dog. Cops aren’t smart enough to know they are being used. All cops. No exceptions.
