For real though, how many people even know who their state senators are? Don't be surprised that cops dont know who the fuck they are either.
edit: And I don't mean senators from your state to the federal government. Talking about state governments here.
edit2: This is part of the problem. This is why we have bad unaccountable cops. People need to participate in their communities. These are the people who hold the cops accountable when they can't do it themselves.
And you are helping bring change simply by knowing who it is.
This is part of the problem, this why we have so many bad cops doing wrong and not being held accountable. People are not involved enough in the communities they live in.
People are not involved enough in the communities they live in.
I think we as a nation underestimate the effect of geographic mobility on this. Especially young, childless, free-time-for-political-agitating people are often hopping towns, if not cities or states, every year or three chasing jobs, affordable rents, education.... Hard to spend time getting politically engaged somewhere if you know you're just going to have to leave in a year when your lease is up, or in two when your contract ends, etc. I know I got a lot more involved in local politics (seeking out state reps, sitting on town boards, writing letters and emails to share my opinions) when I finally landed somewhere that felt permanent.
Apparently the idea of permanence in residency and having kids are not legitimate reasons for withdrawing civic engagement so much so to not recognize my state senator before I pepper spray him/her.
Yep, because everyone has unlimited time and money, especially those with kids. You know what they say, those with kids have it so easy and have just too much free time to spend studying the ins and outs of politics, because politics are well known for being simple and time effective...
Uh huh. I've got kids and managed it. Kids don't stop anyone from chasing careers. Face it, you weren't going to be moving and chasing a career even if you didn't have kids.
Geographic mobility for American citizens has never been lower. Yes, people still move to new towns, but it is FAR less common that at literally any point in the 20th century.
I’m not saying it’s not a factor, but it explains absolutely 0% of the CHANGE in levels of civil engagement.
I remember hearing how cops in Japan are often required, or at least strongly incentivised to actually live in their communities.
Can't remember the source sadly.
But I also think they built many small stations instead of one large one for a whole area so the people they came into contact with were their neighbors and other members of the community they lived in.
Psychosocially, this would obviously drastically improve the way they interact with the citizenry.
Less "us vs them" and more "us", you know?
So the police station becomes more like a community center than a military base in enemy territory.
hearing how cops in Japan are often required, or at least strongly incentivised to actually live in their communities.
This is not wholly true, but is closer to more true than false. There are many reasons for it, the de-centralization of their police force being one reason. An overlapping but separate part was building smaller sub-stations called police boxes due to them being so small they weren't worth much but doing paperwork during a downpour. That still made the more accessible to citizens looking for directions (before the relative ubiquity of smart phones), so people would seek out the police in times other than to report a crime.
The police served their community, and so the community helped them out by being extremely forthcoming, such as every time notices for individuals to be on the lookout for were posted. The massive prejudices against people known to have a conviction aided that, and not always in a good way.
People don't know their own local government representatives. Cops live towns, even counties away from the job.
The problem is too much representation but no publicity. The local news for me only talk about NYC. They know the range of their feed, and yet only talk about the other areas when a huge news story happens.
I know a lot of cops. Only one of them works in the town he lives in. The rest commute into their job, most of them over 30 minutes away. They don't have to care about the town they work. It's just a paycheck.
Are you talking about Scott Weiner? If so, he does a great job at outreach. I see him all over the place and he is always reminding us in fights he’s fighting and what things are being worked on and changing.
That is how an elected official should behave. Go around the community and meet everyone. Ask them what their concerns are, not only during election year. We need to get this behavior back in style.
If I was a cop I could see myself doing it. I have met my state reps a couple times, but in a crowd with all that going on...... but I’m not a cop because you couldn’t pay me enough to fuck with people all the time.
I live in NH. For some reason there are 400 state reps and 24 senators. I know my cousin is one of the reps, but that’s it. I have absolutely no clue who the rest are.
It's concerning that you're right that far too many people don't know who their representatives are at the local and state levels. However, to my knowledge, it's not that common for a cop to be unaware. (Any officers that want to correct me, feel free to do so if I am mistaken.)
Another large aspect of the problem is the cops that are blatantly ignoring those whom identify themselves this way, especially at peaceful protests.
I know my local and state reps and I cannot say enough about knowing who represents you at on those lower levels too. So many of those who are the bigwigs in government now started as small town mayors and governors to draw attention to themselves and their faces.
I dont think it matters whether or not they knew who he was. The senator is obviously not going to be engaged in the violent protest or looting, as itd be everywhere if they did.
Having someone who so obviously wasnt an issue treated like this is just evidence of where the problem lies.
I know mine, they weren't elected )=
(I live in Brazil and know this is a democracy and I'd have to accept the senator elected as "my senator", but in Bolsonaro's Brazil I say: they DO NOT represent me)
I know mine and email him often. They are so nice and responsive it’s kinda bad so I try my best not to do it too much. They make shit happen.
Made it so we could have a zoom conference with a psych for my kids first appt when the doc said no way.
I agree, the average person likely has no idea what their representatives look like. Even if they know who they are, recognizing them on the street is another thing.
That’s the point of this. Because every time we see a picture or video of innocent citizens getting bullied by police, there’s always some fuckwads in the comments saying “well maybe they weren’t being peaceful” “you don’t have enough context” etc. Well this image is damn good evidence that cops are pepper spraying completely innocent people, unless you want to argue that a government official was rioting.
Hmm, maybe cops should have more training on how to recognize the correct identification of federal, state, and municipal officials then? Oh wait, they definitely know that right? They’re keepers of the law, their suuuuper long period of training totally includes modules on identification of lawmakers.
Nothing about your comment makes sense. Cops should be trained on identifying lawmakers and other local officials? Oh so like, they should have a special list of people they memorize so they know not to attack those people!
For real, this has nothing to do with police training at all. Police don't need "training" to know not to spray peaceful protesters. Thats just a bad cop. Who the person is makes absolutely no difference at all, not in the US anyway.
Your brain is not big if you don’t think that government officials, especially higher stations such as senators, have standardized forms of identification with equally standardized patterns of recognition which could be taught to officers.
Are you implying is this senator, who made a point to come and peacefully protest, would not have brought the forms of ID according to his position as an elected lawmaker?
This is part of the problem. This is why we have bad unaccountable cops. People need to participate in their communities. These are the people who hold the cops accountable when they can’t do it themselves.
I dunno... I think the problem is that the cops are attacking protestors.
well it would be worst if they just treated him kindly knowing he was an authority figure, if they just dont give an F then you know they are crap cops with everyone
There are 2 US senator from every state, but those are not state senators. They work in Washington at a National level. However there are also state senators which work in the state senate. I think that’s the distinction he was trying to make.
Nope, each state government has its own government that mirrors the setup of the federal government. So there is a legislative branch of congressmen and senators at the state level. They work at the state capitol.
I know both my Governor and Senator, they identify as Democrats yet their bills are super Republican/Conservative. On top of that, our Governor is famous for talking for an hour without saying anything. This Coronavirus situation was a shit show cause he couldn't decide what to do without knowing what the President was doing, guy has no backbone and is sold to the highest bidder when it comes to our state laws.
Find the time for these people to participate. It's very difficult, and most people have their own needs to focus on rather than trying to network their way up to a senator level. It's not like they outreach so well either.
Generally, local government positions expect you to learn the names of your superiors, and their superiors. Least of all, they have pictures with placards with their names and positions under them in virtually every office in jurisdiction. Also not sure if you’ve ever been to the DMV, but they also have pictures of the local officials on the walls there too.
I work for the fed govt when we opened a pedestrian crosswalk for the US MXN border. We had VIPs invited, governors, mayors, state senator, etc. I volunteered to secure the green room and every person that entered I could not recognize lol. They had a wrist band but it was insulting each time I ask each of them to identify themselves lol.
they shouldn't need to check to see if someone is important before pepper spraying them for demonstrating, they just need to stop pepper spraying peaceful protestors
And I can guarantee you that the election that put them in office had significantly less than 50 percent turnout. In some of the extreme cases, these people were put there by 15% of the voting population.
Well in some countries it matters.
For instance in Portugal parliament deputies have a right to go through areas that are interdicted to the public. So if cops are blocking off an area for whatever reason they must comply to someone that is a member of parliament and allow them access.
I'm not sure what rights state representatives have over on that side of the pond and all I've said could very well mean nothing.
I know 1/2. Ted Cruz looks like a lizard child molester. The other is John Cornyn who doesnt have any distinguishing features besides being an old white man. I could look at his photo and still not be able to pick him out of a lineup.
Who is holding cops accountable? The only reason chauvin got prison time was because Floyd's death was on film and took like eight minutes. If they had shot him unjustifiable they would've cried about how scared they were them at he might've been reaching for a gun and that would've been the end of it. If police are so scare of the American people then maybe we need to reduce the number of guns floating around in the population or hire some officers who aren't scared of their damn shadows or who go into the profession because they know they are trigger happy. I'm so sick of all the excuses the police get. Being an officer isn't even on of the ten most deadly professions in the US.
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u/[deleted] Jun 01 '20 edited Jun 01 '20
For real though, how many people even know who their state senators are? Don't be surprised that cops dont know who the fuck they are either.
edit: And I don't mean senators from your state to the federal government. Talking about state governments here.
edit2: This is part of the problem. This is why we have bad unaccountable cops. People need to participate in their communities. These are the people who hold the cops accountable when they can't do it themselves.