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I know being a cop can be a tough job but I have concerns....
...that it's also the kind of job that would attract bullies who would enjoy getting paid to "rough people up" or even kill if they had the opportunity. For bullies that are also racists, it must be a dream job.
Police Departments MUST immediately find ways to screen out these types of people, for the sake of their communities and for their own sakes as these kinds of people will only further alienate the communities they are sworn to "protect and serve" and give cops in general a bad name.
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phil89
(1,043 posts)And no former military of any kind should be eligible for civilian police jobs.
Logical
(22,457 posts)clarice
(5,504 posts)Logical
(22,457 posts)That dangerous.
atreides1
(16,062 posts)Median salary for a police officer is $55,000.
Logical
(22,457 posts)atreides1
(16,062 posts)Police officer is number 9 out of 10.
clarice
(5,504 posts)
libodem
(19,288 posts)Our cop never finished high school and probably had an IQ of 98. Back then if you couldn't qualify for a real job LE was a perfect fit.
Now we have the mongrels, they let out of county jails, in return for signing up for the Army, coming back after being combat hardened, and then joining the police so they can go back to offering protection rackets and bullying minorities.
It takes one to know one and criminal enterprise is no different.
brush
(53,721 posts)and panic when confronted with what police work is all about — on the job sooner or later a policeman is going to be in a difficult situation and an officer needs to maintain his/her composure and use good judgement.
We need people on police forces whose first reaction is not to pull their gun and start firing.
Education requirements need to be boosted — alone with a commensurate increase in pay.
This would definitely help with the weeding process of getting.
RiffRandell
(5,909 posts)Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)Very well, may I ask a question? Do you believe that the abuses occur in a vacuum? Do you believe that the brutality, the racism, the lies and planting of evidence happen without anyones knowledge?
You've seen the videos. I won't bother posting them here. The tens of thousands of videos of police brutality and abuses online. In a vast majority of them, there are more than one cop involved. The one doing the beating, bashing, shooting, or excessive taser use. Yet nobody's reports ever diverge. If there are four police officers, all four reports match. That they don't match the video is a fact that comes out later, and is almost universally ignored when the video does go public. Oh there is a short investigation in which the cop gets a few days paid vacation, but nothing much happens after that.
But when someone complains about the "cops" beating the guy. The department, the police, and the defenders of the thin blue lie all use the same talking point. It was one bad cop who gave the rest a bad name. So why didn't the rest write in the report that the suspect made no motion before officer Bob blew him away? They all wrote that the suspect lunged, or made an aggressive move.
If we are neighbors, and you come to me and tell me you robbed a bank. I am required by law to inform the police right away that you told me you robbed a bank. If I do not, I am charged with withholding evidence, and conspiracy after the fact. Remember the Boston Bomber? His friends didn't know what he was up to. They didn't participate in the planning, or execution of the horrific crime. What they did was throw a backpack away, and not tell Police what they knew.
http://news.sky.com/story/1322794/boston-suspects-friend-admits-binning-evidence
So why aren't the police charged with the same crimes in similar circumstances? They lie on official reports to cover up the misdeeds of their fellow officers all the time. When they get caught, nobody even raises an eyebrow that four reports matched in every detail. They didn't sort out what they would write, they all knew. They use the routine lies every single day, which is how they can write the reports that match. They're trained to do that from the academy on. So it's no big deal to write that the suspect continued struggling as officer bob continued to use force in an effort to restrain the suspect.
Why aren't the cops prosecuted for false official statement? Because if we did that then we would have to society admit that the few bad apples are not so few. They are just about every single person wearing a badge. I admit that there may be a few who do not use the routine lie, but the overwhelming majority do. And they never get prosecuted, punished, or even reprimanded for this. While I would go to jail for a Felony if the roles were reversed.
These things don't happen in a vacuum. They happen in front of the other cops all the time. The other cops maintain the code of silence, and when one of them is caught, why they ask the public not to judge the entire force because of the actions of a few bad cops. It's the old game they play. The family must have known, there is no way they could have been ignorant that little Johnny was using and dealing drugs. But the cops profess absolute ignorance that one of the boys in blue was dirty.
We know that video cameras reduce police abuses. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/us/in-california-a-champion-for-police-cameras.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
An 80% reduction in use of force. A reduction in complaints against the officers by more than 60%. The Chief says this is because the public knows they are being recorded. I think it's because the cops are being recorded. What it tells me is that four out of five use of force incidents before the cameras were unjustified and excessive use of force incidents. Now, the cops can't lie. They can't say that they saw the bad guy reach for a weapon, because the camera shows what they actually saw. It renders the routine lies nearly obsolete. It destroys the environment in which people can get away with things.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)I'm don't think most police departments have a lot of non-bullies applying to choose for the job instead.
Ted Rall once wrote a column calling for drafting random people to be police officers.
The people who choose to become police officers are far too often people who like to bully others. So, we must have a police force made up of people who would NOT choose to be cops!
A lot of validity to his theory, imho.
ksoze
(2,068 posts)That may weed out *some* "bullies", but would be worse in most every other way. Anyone in many public service jobs like teachers, fireman and police have to have some desire to do the job.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)If filling police forces with people who want to be cops is dangerous for our communities, we could try the opposite.
ksoze
(2,068 posts)Drafting someone to kill others to stop the destruction of Europe and the homeland and drafting someone to respond to car accident fatalities, get drunk drivers off the road and deal with volatile domestic crises is different.
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)The British drafted people to stand on rooftops during the Battle of Britain to watch for fires during the bombing. While most of the people went to the shelters, some were drafted to go on the roofs with little more than a tin hat to protect them.
People were also drafted into volunteer fire brigades and fought those incendiary initiated fires valiantly.
We regularly draft people to serve on Juries. Are you suggesting that we would get better results if someone wanted to be a juror and volunteered?
The quality of the service depends on the quality of the individual. I'm sure that most of those people up on the rooftops in London were not hoping to be up there, but were scared to death that a bomb would kill them, but they did their duty. People who are drafted to serve on Juries don't want to be there. They have lives, and responsibilities to family and business. But they do their best to carry out their duties.
Why not make service as a police officer a one year thing. You're drafted for one year, or two if you prefer. Then you're done and off you go. We could treat it like national guard service. Your job would be protected and upon completion of your service you would return to your job with no lost seniority or benefits.
Drafting just means the body politic, the community, calls you on to serve.
TheKentuckian
(25,011 posts)They are what they want to be except in their deluded minds too limited in authority and too accountable.
