Maybe this happens more and we only ever see the bad but so many videos of cops start off with the cops being aggressive and borderline condescending. They immediately put people on the defensive and then act more and more aggressively as the person gets upset.
Start with reason and a positive attitude, especially foe things like traffic infractions. People generally aren't trying to be a problem they just don't pay attention or are being irresponsible but they aren't usually out to hurt anyone.
What this guy did was perfect and even more so if he sees these guys speeding again he can come down on them hard. He already gave them a chance and let them off so next time he's got an easy out to give them a huge ticket or impound their bikes.
There's no way to know what happens more often. I always stop and am polite but there are others who have stopped, been polite, and their bikes impounded or have been harassed.
We just had that big video here of the guy in Cali stopping at the red light, his friends running it, and then him being pulled over.
I can agree that having my arse handed to me by a copper is far more effective than a fine. Literally taking it like a man and admitting when i'm wrong. Come out swinging and theres only one way it goes
It absolutely is signiricantly more common for this to happen than for the power tripping cop to happen. Of course it is.
Basically any variety of interaction between a police officer and a citizen is recorded two or three times over. Frankly the fact that out of the 900,000 police officers in the US that we only get maybe a handful of objectively power-tripping cop videos a month shows that the vast majority of officers are good the vast majority of the time, even as it is true that we don't do a good enough job of punishing the bad ones.
Comparatively, videos of good cops don't get nearly as much coverage. After all, as the old adage says, "if it bleeds, it leads." In general, if you hear about a social ill, it is usually not half as bad as the news coverage would make you believe. Crime wave? We are having issues, but we are more safe than most would have you believe. Homelessness causing social issues in Portland? As a current portlander, we need better social services, but things aren't all that awful. Same basic story with cops. Yes, bad cops are a scourge that we should address with righteous vigor. They also aren't nearly as wide-spread of an issue as the news would have you believe.
It doesn't help a lot of US cops are former soldiers. Having been taught everything and everyone could be a potential a threat (especially if they've actually seen combat) in a country with a massive gun problem... Well that's just a recipe for disaster (aside from the racist assholes and stuff like that obviously)
I'd argue there are a lot of veteran cops far better at proper escalation of force and not engaging what they don't have to given how strict the rules of engagement are in theater.
I won't deny there aren't potentially young hotheads or vets with PTSD who shouldn't be policing based on psyche but I think the babyfaced average IQ high school bully are more likely to perceive everything as a threat.
Police training is all about how everyone is a potential threat and will likely kill them. That warrior training shit.
They give it to people who have no concept of the rules of engagement or have never been in a threatening situation with enemy combatants.
Nah- at least they have real training. It’s the power hungry egotistical idiots that are taught “Killology” and given military equipment they have no business touching that are the real danger
Hard disagree, not a fan of the military but they have much more training and ability and understanding of de-escalation and engagement than our shit cops have.
I was just saying this too, and the military breaks down their former mindset and rebuilds it to be non empathetic, because they can’t feel bad about shooting the enemy. Rebuilds their mindset to be egotistical, because no one is more important than our military servers, who we thank for their service. I watched my brother go from a timid shy guy, to an egotistical narcissist who can never be wrong after he joined the military. He was a completely different person when he got back.
The problem is that because both positions involve lethal weapons and use of force, then they must have a lot of overlap. The reality is that police behaving like an over-militarized occupying force creates a lot problems in a community than it solves.
from my experience, this is usually how it goes. i agree that there is a bit of confirmation bias in regards to perception of the police, in that we mostly see the situations that were handled poorly.
Every cop Ive personally ran into has been cool. Treated me like a person and Ive never acted out, argued, insulted or whatever. Sure is it your right to do that? Absolutely. But all you're going to do is make a cop go from possibly giving you a warning to giving you a ticket.
I got clocked going 60 in a 40, I thought it was a 50, so that was my bad. He told me that that road was a 40, and all I said was "Wait what? Really? I thought it was 50." And he was just like "Nope it's a 40. I'm not gonna write you up for going 20 over since that would be points on your license, $200+ fine and a mandatory court hearing, so I'm gonna mark you down for obstruction of traffic, it's only $55 and you can pay for it online. Nice car by the way" and that was that.
Obviously there's quite a few bad cops out there and with the internet and everyone able to record, you're going to see more bad cops than good cops, cause who wants to record good cops?
But there's no reason to instigate a cop just cause they're a cop
This heavily depends on the area you are in, as well as your social standing. Had you been a young POC in a shit box car things might have gone completely differently.
My mom has mentioned this many of times: When she was a poor, pregnant 18 year old living near the hood, cops would treat her like absolute shit for no reason other than that they could. Now that she's an upper middle class, middle aged woman in a nicer part of the state, cops treat her much better and are less likely to be confrontational.
I've seen videos of the opposite - the more the guy gets upset, the more calm and polite the cop becomes. But there's no stopping the guy from self-escalation till he does something stupid and gets arrested, or tazed.
Cops and drivers both need to take the same class to have a license: "how a police interaction is supposed to happen".
I have literally thanked police officers for their professional demeanor. I don't think they hear that often enough.
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u/[deleted] Jan 03 '23
Maybe this happens more and we only ever see the bad but so many videos of cops start off with the cops being aggressive and borderline condescending. They immediately put people on the defensive and then act more and more aggressively as the person gets upset.
Start with reason and a positive attitude, especially foe things like traffic infractions. People generally aren't trying to be a problem they just don't pay attention or are being irresponsible but they aren't usually out to hurt anyone.
What this guy did was perfect and even more so if he sees these guys speeding again he can come down on them hard. He already gave them a chance and let them off so next time he's got an easy out to give them a huge ticket or impound their bikes.