Comments | krinndnz: Grim Meathook Future Watch

krinndnz

Grim Meathook Future Watch

Aug 15, 2009 22:05

That's from a video called "The Largest Street Gang In America," which is making the rounds for a good reason. It was disturbing to watch: I had to pause many times while watching so that I would stop shaking. It has one of the things that make documentaries compelling: footage that speaks for itself. One clip after another shows police ( Read more... )

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Comments 22

paka August 16 2009, 06:06:56 UTC

Oh, yeah. I don't think you can quite blame the cops themselves as much as you want to do it at first ( ... )

krinndnz August 16 2009, 06:13:05 UTC

Those are very good points. My mind wandered before I was able to include that line of thinking in a good way: I only vaguely gestured at it by talking about self-reinforcing patterns. Thank you.

ceruleanst August 16 2009, 07:15:42 UTC

I think it must not be quite so inherent in the job as it seems, though, or it would be the same everywhere. I've read about the culture shock between Americans and Europeans where the former naturally think "oh shit, cops, hope they don't notice us," and the latter naturally think "oh good, a police officer, they can help me," and if they're at home they'll usually be right, and if not they will often be surprised.

Our cops are trained to be this way. The most emphatic part of their education tends to be the lesson that every civilian is potentially trying to kill them at every moment and that they have to be ready to protect themselves by every means at hand.

ff00ff August 16 2009, 08:03:51 UTC

Type TASER into digg.com and see what you get ( ... )

Thread 9

pseudomanitou August 16 2009, 14:46:47 UTC

I'll add to the sentiment that not all police are bad, but they are human.

It kinda follows the same brutality you see in war -- sure, you can train a soldier not to do certain things, but when you put people in situations that are actually beyond the human range of understanding -- the brutality that makes no sense is a natural reaction. (IE - no, I don't believe that humans are violent at their core, or else we'd be much more controlled at violence, wouldn't we?The obvious answer is to not cause war. But when it comes to police work... there's not much choice yet. We need police. And the frustration of their situation probably brings out the worst in them over time. The bond that police share with each other makes it worse -- they're isolating themselves. The little known secret is that those community outreach programs between the police and neighborhoods is that it's as much for the police as the public ( ... )

krinndnz August 16 2009, 15:42:53 UTC

And the frustration of their situation probably brings out the worst in them over time. The bond that police share with each other makes it worse -- they're isolating themselves.

I totally agree with this. I wish my uncle the police officer made it a bit easier to believe good things.

The point about the statistics is also well-taken, especially considered in light of the force multipliers that police officers are supplied with.

oby August 16 2009, 15:16:28 UTC

Personally, I found some cases in the video may be considered police brutality or abuse, but in others it was very much edited to make the police look worse than they are ( ... )

krinndnz August 16 2009, 15:47:05 UTC

I'd like to point out two things. One is that being a police officer comes with a heightened level of responsibility. The raised bar of responsibility must, must, must accompany the ability to carry dangerous weapons and legally use them. Police officers have a wide spectrum of options available to them, and escalating to the violent and dangerous options too quickly is, I feel, very irresponsible. It's understandable, for the reasons mentioned upthread, but it's still the wrong thing to do. In the same way that your Congresscritter should be focusing on the public good instead of their re-election, your police officers should be accepting a certain level of risk instead of escalating straight to violent options. Looking for things that the civilians in question were doing is straightforward victim-blaming. I recommend that you have a look at the video's sources.

Also, welcome to this journal, stranger.

ff00ff August 16 2009, 22:53:44 UTC

Law enforcement TASERs carry internal memory recordings that can objectively report when and how many times the TASER was discharged. I would imagine that the 19 figure was used in court, and derived from the officer's TASERs themselves.

kellyhusky August 17 2009, 04:23:47 UTC

I love the icon you used for this post.

krinndnz September 24 2009, 22:30:51 UTC

It turns out to be far too useful.

silveradept August 17 2009, 20:51:32 UTC

As the commenters above have noted about self-replicating patterns, I wonder how much of this could be averted by breaking police officers of the idea that there are only police officers and potential criminals in the world. On the citizenship end, we could use a lot more outreach - if we saw police officers doing other things that traffic violations and criminal apprehension while in uniform, then we might be able to get out of our mindset that the police are the largest street gang in America, interested only in abusing their power and arresting us for trivial things that somehow get blown up bigger if there's the slightest hint that we're not quivering in fear of them.

There's too much us versus them right now. How does that get fixed or solved?

krinndnz September 24 2009, 22:32:28 UTC

How does that get fixed or solved?

Buddha-nature in everyone?

I got nothin'. :(

silveradept September 24 2009, 22:36:12 UTC

Me neither, which is kind of the problem. All it takes is one messy and violent killing of a police officer or someone related for the whole thing to clam up and start treating everyone like they're hiding weapons that they will use to kill you if they feel like they can get away with it.