That is, to be an effective police officer, you have to have an ego the size of a small mountain, an almost obsessive need for others to "respect mah authoritay!", and an unswerving sense that you're always right, no matter what the other person is saying or how much sense it makes.
If you don't have those, you don't make a very effective cop.
But if you do have those, you're a #1 Grade-A prick.
There's not much in the way of middle ground, unfortunately.
Your best bet is to recruit people who have as many other tools to add to that core set as possible. For example, a lot of Mounties are not too bad, because the competition to get into the RCMP is such that you almost have to have a bachelor's degree to be accepted.
However, a lot of cops in other forces have nothing other than their police training, their military training and experience if it's there, and probably some serious experience of being a prick or a bully in high school.
I don't want to comment on this specific case much. On the one hand, I am quite ready to believe that this cop was more prick-like to Gates than he would've been to a white equivalent. On the other hand, I'm quite ready to believe that Gates got (understandably) upset and perhaps lost his cool a bit, which is usually A Bad Idea around cops.
I am always the picture of deference and respect when I'm dealing with cops (in a professional setting, anyhow; I've got Mountie friends back in YellowSnow that I'd regularly joke and bullshit with, but that was usually at the hockey rink or whatever). But then, I'm white and not poor. I've always been treated with respect by cops, even when I damn near got arrested for section 372(2) of the Criminal Code of Canada. So I have No Fucking Idea how bad it is for someone not white and not not-poor to have to deal with the police. Closest I can come is Ginny's stories about being pulled over more often than usual 'cause her last name is Sanchez.
But yeah. Primary responsibility for Not Being An Asshole lies with the cop. When the cop crosses that line, it's His/Her Fault, not the fault of the other person. Gates had every right to be upset. If he'd chosen to be more restrained, this probably wouldn't have hit the news. But that's not a blame thing at all; if someone's in my house being a prick and I don't want them there any more and they don't leave when I tell them, then I have some discretion there. Gates chose to exercise that discretion, he got in shit for it, and he shouldn't have. The only person who should get in shit is the cop.
On a side note, Obama was right on, and everyone shitting on him Isn't Getting It.
I wonder... I don't hear a lot of stories about Tulsa's cops powertripping like happened with Gates.
However, Tulsa requires a bachelor's degree to even apply for the police academy. I always thought that was kind of excessive, but perhaps they are on to something.
Could be. Bachelor's degree, even though many of them aren't worth what people think they're worth, at least shows that the recipient has demonstrated a certain level of cluefulness and self-restraint. Just jumping through four years' worth of hoops demonstrates that, really.
Now, there are asshole Mounties out there. (Google "Robert Dziekanski" for an example.) But in my experience, the rough hierarchy in terms of how reasonable Canadian police officers are has been something like:
RCMP > OPP > Sûreté du Québec > Average big-city police > average small-town police > average tiny-town bylaw enforcement officers
There are exceptions. For ex., in BC, Vancouver city police are generally seen as more assholish, on average, than Delta municipal police (city sizes 550k vs. 80k). But you get the idea.
I think I saw it mentioned on a blog last night that a judge in Canada decided for Dziekanski (well, his survivors, anyway) and against the Mountie who tased him.
There's a big friggin' inquiry going on. The judge in charge released a preliminary report saying "You guys should really change how you use Tasers, m'kay?" He would be releasing his full report soon, but the feds didn't disclose a very incriminating e-mail from one high-up Mountie to another high-up Mountie which makes it appear that the four Mounties involved in the case were lying through their teeth when they testified. This, of course, has put a bit of a spanner in the works.
It's a long, strange, twisted story, believe me. The reputation of the Mounties within Canada has never been lower than it is now, between this and a few other unsavoury incidents.
anyone from the Dallas/Fort Worth area maybe able to tell you that.
as i worked on an associates degree in CJ to become a cop I rode around with Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington cops. Dallas cops = pissed off incompetents seeking security of a goverement job; fort worth cops = wanna be cowboys that want to live out their racist fantasies of lynching; arlington cops = people who show up to work understanding their role in society and their duty to protect the constitution.
these broad statements are not wholly correct as i have met some very fine officers from both dallas and fort worth. but those men and women i met from those departments, ya know what they all had in common? a 4 year college degree. shocking huh?
and to be long winded i will share this. at 19 i worked with a fellow who was one of the most upstanding people I had ever known. as i past on applying for the FWPD to go on to university he joined the force. the last time i had lunch with him we sat across from a mother and son of latin descent. the boy was acting up and the mother told him that police man is going to arrest you for being bad. to which my friend muttered to me, "i might as well arrest him now since i will be doing it in a few years"
a month later i found that my girlfriend had cut things off with me becuase they started sleeping with each other and they got pregnant. after his wife divorced him she told me he began to smack her around after working in the department for two years.
None of what you write surprises me. Especially how a racist douchebag also thinks that he's entitled to slap "his woman" around. Also, if his wife had been the one to cheat on him, I'm sure he wouldn't have been fine with that.
I agree with most of your comment, but what the hell with this part?That is, to be an effective police officer, you have to have an ego the size of a small mountain, an almost obsessive need for others to "respect mah authoritay!", and an unswerving sense that you're always right, no matter what the other person is saying or how much sense it makes.
If you don't have those, you don't make a very effective cop. No. That mindset not only makes the situation worse for the people on the receiving end of it, but actually is detrimental to keeping the peace and enforcing the law in the long run. You really think that being feared and hated on the street makes cops safer? Or citizens more willing to share information with them? That's a load of right-wing authoritarian horseshit.
To be honest, I'm not sure that it's possible to be an effective police officer without those qualities.
Granted, there's some hyperbole there. But the essence is true.
Note that those things don't have to translate into "feared and hated on the street". In good cops, those things come out as solid self-confidence, a solid moral compass, and the kind of look in the eye that your best teachers had; you know, the ones who could shut the class up with one look not 'cause you feared them, but because you just respected them too damn much.*
The kind of guy** people might call "like the rock of Gibraltar"? That kind of guy, ideally, is the guy who becomes a cop.
The "problem" cops are the ones who don't have a solid moral compass and don't have good self-confidence/self-esteem, and try to fake it by pulling rank in every situation whether it's a good idea or not.
Cops have "dominion" over us. The good cops, for lack of better terms, exercise "righteous" dominion over us; the bad cops exercise "unrighteous" dominion.
But there's a very fine line there. There are a lot of people who couldn't be effective cops, yours truly being one. Cops deal with a lot of shit, and they have to be able to deal with shit as shit, and not try to treat it like Shinola. It takes a certain kind of personality to be able to do that, and that personality is only a hop, skip, and jump away from "asshole cop".
I've known a lot of cops, and the good ones are good guys. But they take no shit, and they think pretty highly of themselves (at least when anyone's looking), and the wrong trauma at the wrong time could easily push them over.
If you've never seen the 70's series "Police Story", see if you can find some old episodes. They dramatised this sort of thing very well in many episodes.
ObFootnotes: * Think McGonagall, not Snape.
** We need a better word than "guys" that's more gender-inclusive. I have no issues or problems with female cops. And, in fact, the female cops I've met match my above analysis as well as the male cops do, the good ones and the bad ones.
That is, to be an effective police officer, you have to have an ego the size of a small mountain, an almost obsessive need for others to "respect mah authoritay!", and an unswerving sense that you're always right, no matter what the other person is saying or how much sense it makes.
If you don't have those, you don't make a very effective cop.
But if you do have those, you're a #1 Grade-A prick.
There's not much in the way of middle ground, unfortunately.
Your best bet is to recruit people who have as many other tools to add to that core set as possible. For example, a lot of Mounties are not too bad, because the competition to get into the RCMP is such that you almost have to have a bachelor's degree to be accepted.
However, a lot of cops in other forces have nothing other than their police training, their military training and experience if it's there, and probably some serious experience of being a prick or a bully in high school.
I don't want to comment on this specific case much. On the one hand, I am quite ready to believe that this cop was more prick-like to Gates than he would've been to a white equivalent. On the other hand, I'm quite ready to believe that Gates got (understandably) upset and perhaps lost his cool a bit, which is usually A Bad Idea around cops.
I am always the picture of deference and respect when I'm dealing with cops (in a professional setting, anyhow; I've got Mountie friends back in YellowSnow that I'd regularly joke and bullshit with, but that was usually at the hockey rink or whatever). But then, I'm white and not poor. I've always been treated with respect by cops, even when I damn near got arrested for section 372(2) of the Criminal Code of Canada. So I have No Fucking Idea how bad it is for someone not white and not not-poor to have to deal with the police. Closest I can come is Ginny's stories about being pulled over more often than usual 'cause her last name is Sanchez.
But yeah. Primary responsibility for Not Being An Asshole lies with the cop. When the cop crosses that line, it's His/Her Fault, not the fault of the other person. Gates had every right to be upset. If he'd chosen to be more restrained, this probably wouldn't have hit the news. But that's not a blame thing at all; if someone's in my house being a prick and I don't want them there any more and they don't leave when I tell them, then I have some discretion there. Gates chose to exercise that discretion, he got in shit for it, and he shouldn't have. The only person who should get in shit is the cop.
On a side note, Obama was right on, and everyone shitting on him Isn't Getting It.
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However, Tulsa requires a bachelor's degree to even apply for the police academy. I always thought that was kind of excessive, but perhaps they are on to something.
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Now, there are asshole Mounties out there. (Google "Robert Dziekanski" for an example.) But in my experience, the rough hierarchy in terms of how reasonable Canadian police officers are has been something like:
RCMP > OPP > Sûreté du Québec > Average big-city police > average small-town police > average tiny-town bylaw enforcement officers
There are exceptions. For ex., in BC, Vancouver city police are generally seen as more assholish, on average, than Delta municipal police (city sizes 550k vs. 80k). But you get the idea.
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I think I saw it mentioned on a blog last night that a judge in Canada decided for Dziekanski (well, his survivors, anyway) and against the Mountie who tased him.
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It's a long, strange, twisted story, believe me. The reputation of the Mounties within Canada has never been lower than it is now, between this and a few other unsavoury incidents.
Reply
anyone from the Dallas/Fort Worth area maybe able to tell you that.
as i worked on an associates degree in CJ to become a cop I rode around with Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington cops. Dallas cops = pissed off incompetents seeking security of a goverement job; fort worth cops = wanna be cowboys that want to live out their racist fantasies of lynching; arlington cops = people who show up to work understanding their role in society and their duty to protect the constitution.
these broad statements are not wholly correct as i have met some very fine officers from both dallas and fort worth. but those men and women i met from those departments, ya know what they all had in common? a 4 year college degree. shocking huh?
and to be long winded i will share this. at 19 i worked with a fellow who was one of the most upstanding people I had ever known. as i past on applying for the FWPD to go on to university he joined the force. the last time i had lunch with him we sat across from a mother and son of latin descent. the boy was acting up and the mother told him that police man is going to arrest you for being bad. to which my friend muttered to me, "i might as well arrest him now since i will be doing it in a few years"
a month later i found that my girlfriend had cut things off with me becuase they started sleeping with each other and they got pregnant. after his wife divorced him she told me he began to smack her around after working in the department for two years.
digusting.
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If you don't have those, you don't make a very effective cop.
No. That mindset not only makes the situation worse for the people on the receiving end of it, but actually is detrimental to keeping the peace and enforcing the law in the long run. You really think that being feared and hated on the street makes cops safer? Or citizens more willing to share information with them? That's a load of right-wing authoritarian horseshit.
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Also it just feels a lot like "Cops will be cops. We can't get rid of them, so they'll have to just be like that."
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Granted, there's some hyperbole there. But the essence is true.
Note that those things don't have to translate into "feared and hated on the street". In good cops, those things come out as solid self-confidence, a solid moral compass, and the kind of look in the eye that your best teachers had; you know, the ones who could shut the class up with one look not 'cause you feared them, but because you just respected them too damn much.*
The kind of guy** people might call "like the rock of Gibraltar"? That kind of guy, ideally, is the guy who becomes a cop.
The "problem" cops are the ones who don't have a solid moral compass and don't have good self-confidence/self-esteem, and try to fake it by pulling rank in every situation whether it's a good idea or not.
As one of our best-known Mormon scriptures says, "We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion." [Doctrine and Covenants 121:39]
Cops have "dominion" over us. The good cops, for lack of better terms, exercise "righteous" dominion over us; the bad cops exercise "unrighteous" dominion.
But there's a very fine line there. There are a lot of people who couldn't be effective cops, yours truly being one. Cops deal with a lot of shit, and they have to be able to deal with shit as shit, and not try to treat it like Shinola. It takes a certain kind of personality to be able to do that, and that personality is only a hop, skip, and jump away from "asshole cop".
I've known a lot of cops, and the good ones are good guys. But they take no shit, and they think pretty highly of themselves (at least when anyone's looking), and the wrong trauma at the wrong time could easily push them over.
If you've never seen the 70's series "Police Story", see if you can find some old episodes. They dramatised this sort of thing very well in many episodes.
ObFootnotes: * Think McGonagall, not Snape.
** We need a better word than "guys" that's more gender-inclusive. I have no issues or problems with female cops. And, in fact, the female cops I've met match my above analysis as well as the male cops do, the good ones and the bad ones.
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