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I don't understand why officers always ignore people when they ask for medical help. If someone says they can't breath, that's a clue that you should do something different, not leave them on the floor handcuffed.
How is it that police are still trained to respond to situations this way? The negligence is obvious. This isn't the same as what happened with George Floyd, but nonetheless very negligent.
It's because they don't see them as people, they see them as violent criminals that the world would be better off without.
If you step into their shoes for a minute, and one of the criminals you just successfully took off of the streets said they can't breathe, your first thought might be "good. Maybe that'll teach you a lesson about doing crimes in my neighborhood." Your second might be "I wish I could shoot you right now and get this over with, but maybe I'll get lucky and I can say I didn't hear you."
Note that the second one is inherently a stupid thought, there's body cams. That kind of logic didn't stop my 5-year-old from telling me she cleaned her room when I could easily check and find out she didn't, and it won't stop cops from fantasizing about everything working out here.
That's exactly why they do things that way. They're living out a fantasy world where there are no real rules and there are no consequences, and they have to live a balancing act between indulging in that and dealing with reality. Sometimes cops fail to balance that, and that's what we see here.
As for who trains them, it's their fellow cops. This isn't a bunch of individual fantasies, these men work and train and talk together about how it'd be so much better if they had less restrictions and just talk about that hypothetical world. New cops who have any kind of racism or similar "My group is best" can join the conversation and add in their own unique version to the group fantasy. New cops who aren't already racist, though, won't hear blatant racism. No, they will just hear about crime stats and reoffending rates, about cops that died trying to deal with all the supposed crime, and about how stopping them is justice and will help everyone, not just cops. In time they'll share the group fantasy, too, and stop seeing their victims as people. Occasionally someone just doesn't join in the fantasy and they get bullied until they quit.
This is why the easiest way to move forward from this kind of thing is to gut the police departments and start over, or we at least need bodycams that can't be turned off so easily.
Conservatives in general think this way. That's why there was a desperate need to find something to blame Trayvon Martin for to justify Zimmerman's killing him. It's why they bring up the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse killed a registered sex offender as if Rittenhouse was somehow aware of that. It's why they bring up the fact that Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes, as if that should have been a death sentence.
And so on and so on.
Maybe, but it didn't used to be this way even as recently as the 80s. And it isn't like this in most other countries (at least the European ones km aware of).
It's a cultural thing, and training, and it can be fixed, we just have to want to fix it bad enough. No idea what will be the tipping point. George Floyd wasn't enough, so I'm not sure what if anything will be. Or if we'll just go deeper I to this police state mentality where everything is an us vs them situation.
What talking about cops Always been this way. Especially in the 80's and 90's when we didn't have recordings devices. Remember Rodney King?
Are you too young to remember the Rodney King protests? They literally had to call in the Marines and the Army to quell them. That was in 1991, and a result of police brutality against an unarmed Black man.
Edit: Wanted to add that police in general came from slave patrols. It was a racist institution designed to instill terror into people of color from the very beginning. It was never about "serving and protecting."
I was a kid back then, but even i had no idea of the background leading to the riots. Like how the group that beat King were part of a gang that was on a mission to beat black men, or the unrelated (except by racism) widely publicized trial verdicts where multiple white citizens were found not guilty or given light sentences for killing black kids (I've forgotten a lot of the details of the documentary, but ill never forget the shocked faces of the parents of a kid shot by a convenience store clerk after her community service verdict). The righteous anger had been boiling over all year, and King was just the final straw.
And nothing has changed for the better in all this time
Yes, I was a baby in 1991. I don't have data, but I've heard anecdotes from former police officers that police training has changed significantly since the 80s.
It's definitely become much more militarized.
I don't disagree with that, but it would be false to say that police brutality directed at people of color is a new thing. That's always been there.
I never said police violence directed at people of color was a new thing.
My point, which I think wasn't very clear bcz I worded it poorly is that police are trained to draw their guns immediately today and shoot to kill. That didn't used to be the case.
That, I do agree with. It's been militarized in the last 20-30 years for sure.
The militarization accelerated due to events where the police took an ass whoopin like the North Hollywood bank robbery.
Maybe don't believe police officer anecdotes?
Warrior training has taken like wildfire, they’re trained to do anything to survive and put into the mindset that if they don’t kill they will be killed.
Thanks to that shitbag Grossman they get all the violence with none of the rules of engagement
There just wasn't high definition evidence from the time youre thinking of. Give this 20 years and I bet any video recordings of average police behavior will be "deepfakes".
Nothing to see here citizen. Now pick up this can...
It’s always happened. There just used to not be cameras all around all the time.
Rodney King was the 90s George Floyd.
Training for police has changed. I don't have the data but i read that many police are often trained by ex-military who are more skilled at (and therefore focus on) training soldiers to be an occupying force rather than as citizens policing each other
I used to be an EMT (am going to be working as one again soon) and where I worked we had some good cops and some real shitty cops who had no business being cops, but one thing that they all had in common was that the rules were if someone asked for medical help, they had to call the ambulance. Didn't matter if it looked like obvious bullshit, all the departments in the area I worked had a blanket policy that they weren't medical professionals and they couldn't make that decision. You could have a tiny little cut on your finger and ask for medical help and even the shittiest cops would sigh and call for EMS. These cops infuriate me. How many more people have to get murdered? If someone asks for help fucking help them and sort out the details later.
Because cruelty is the point.
I don't think it's negligence.
This reminds me of how California recently brought back police officers for "school security".
Did they remove the officers? No, the officers left in a hissy fit because the govt had the temerity to outlaw the use of this killer position on the kids (I believe enacted in the wake of George Floyd).
Why leave for something like that? It makes sense. These are kids, right? It's a position that kills, right? That's what this article is showing us, again.
You might assume the police relented because they like the govt money, right? I did too, but it was the govt who backed of, removing the law restricting the killer positions use.
To me, the police depts collective action in California show that it is not negligence. In this case, it just doesn't make... sense. The position is dangerous. The job is ostensibly protecting children, in a state sponsored school! It makes no sense that cops would care about one position so much...
Seriously, I've been turning it over and over in my mind, it must be they care more about the precedent being set (and thus the possible loss of this power) than the safety of kids. And that's the best motive i can think of.
I don't want people like that anywhere near kids or with the power to influence govt so much. This latest murder shows they care nothing for the people they "protect and serve" only for the power they're allowed to wield.
Did you even read the article? This was a case of very clear negligent.
Yes, there's literally a Supreme Court case stating that police have no obligation to protect and serve. Why are you ranting at me about something very off topic?
I understand people are just overall frustrated, but this entire comment you made has nothing to do with the article, or this particular police interaction.
Because the power of inflicting pain without consequences is the main reason why most people become cops.
I don't believe that for a second. People get into policing for all kinds of reasons. But the common denominator is that the barrier to entry is very low these days, and they expect to be hiring people with intelligence below a certain level. It has been explicitly stated as such by a number of police departments around the country.
When your entire workforce is filled with grunts just following orders they don't generally have the best critical thinking skills.
Are there some people who get into it for the reason you mentioned, probably. But, if you think everybody joining the police is doing it for that reason, you're sorely mistaken.
Totally agree police departments need better candidates but that intelligence thing is not true at all. The one case that started that rumor was just a police department doing age discrimination against a candidate, and covering their asses in the lawsuit by using intelligence because it's not a protected class. It was never about intelligence - it was age discrimination.
What police departments need is better training, a smaller mandate (i.e., mental health professionals need to be called to those types of events), and a big enough cultural change that normal people at least consider doing the job, like firefighters.
Not to appear to be defending the cops, but I would expect a lot of people who are being arrested for legitimate reasons (and again, I'm not talking about this specific case) are motivated to lie to the police in an attempt to get out of the situation.
Also they clearly didn't take this guy seriously since he was yelling, "They want to kill me!" before they even touched him. They probably thought he was crying wolf. Better training would mean they wouldn't have used an illegal hold and killed him, they'd probably have taken him seriously if they knew the dangers at that particular moment in time...plus with better training over a long enough period of time people wouldn't be as scared of the cops in the first place so there wouldn't be any miscommunication. It's still clearly the fault of modern policing but you can understand why it happened at least. Super tragic.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wh2spkbaARA
Just ... jump to some random parts of that video. Or this...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3WPNj3IuOOE
Or even this...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=863aE25HQ5M
It's because plenty of people in the general public lie, take advantage, abuse any angle they can.
I don't agree with officers delaying CPR and pulse checks, they absolutely should be looking for genuine signs of distress or injury... But, I get why their faith in humanity is trashed to the point they don't actually expect to find anything.
Police are cowards and bullies. They treat everyone as a suspect rather than a human.
They really don't. My cousin married a cop, my brother is a volunteer fire fighter that regularly has to interact with them, a good friend of mine is an ex-cop turned IT guy, the guy who lives across the street from me is a cop, I've also had interactions with random officers at coffee shops here in Akron and at a few events.
My hot take is most of them would rather live and let live unless you're doing something monumentally stupid or they get a call.
And yeah, I've also met some douchebags on power trips, but "ACAB" is a failed and ridiculously confrontational movement. You're never going to get anywhere near the reforms we need to see in policing with the ACAB or "fuck the police" mentality.
Sure, they're nice until they're on the job, having a bad day, decide you're a "bad guy" due to whatever biases or circumstances they find you in, get angry or frightened and snap and kill you as we've seen over and over and over again.
Fuck the police unions? ACUAB? It's the protection of the unions that allow cops to behave badly and kill people. The unions support the untouchable status of cops for almost every criminal act they commit while on duty. They hide behind the badge while allowing so many bad actors to tarnish it daily.
I can get behind attacking the police unions and demanding they be reformed (particularly the ones that have a history of protecting abuse of power and excessive force serial offenders). That is more constructive but less catchy (as constructive points usually are).
We've had very different experiences with police officers. It's my personal interactions with police over the years that's given me a very low opinion of them. Then I saw someone get fired from a job a few years ago, and he decided instead to go into policing (he's a former marine), which is when I realized police aren't some magical cabal of highly trained individuals. Most people go into policing in the U.S. these days bcz they can't do anything else.
That's a sorry state of policing in my opinion, and much of our issues with police culture stem from that.
Unfortunately, there's scientifci data and statistics to back up what I'm saying, and there's very little data to back up your viewpoint.
I hate lynch mobs. ACAB and "fuck the police" are lynch mobs based on broad generalizations.
There is scientific data and statistics to show that black people and others are disproportionately targeted by the police. It's immediately obvious the police unions protects their own including some folks they likely shouldn't.
These are problems we should strive to understand and fix.
There is not scientific data showing that all cops (or even more than a minority of cops) are bullies out to treat everyone as a suspect or fetishize their next opportunity to beat the crap out of someone. That is an opinion and one that immediately shuts down any hope of a reasonable discussion about how two parties might move forward. Show me one scientific study where someone went "you're a bastard and you can go fuck yourself" and then got a constructive response... It doesn't exist, because people do not like being put into groups and told what their own individual opinions must be.
ACAB is an earned generalization from day-to-day experience, actual statistics, and media coverage. We're long past "make nice." Police need to go. So fuck their feelings.
Why do you keep bringing up lynch mobs? We're talking about police reform here, it's necessary. The policing system is rotten to the core. It's not a few bad apples, or we wouldn't be having this conversation even.
Look at your behavior. There's nothing constructive here. There's no constructive talk about reforms. There's no proposal for what to do better. There's no new take or new information. There's literally nothing of value.
It's just "police bad" and I'm not here for it. I'm talking about lynch mobs because the ACAB crowd is not contributing anything more than a lynch mob would.
Would you like me to make a three page proposal of police reforms in a lemmy comment? There have been a number of reforms proposed. I'm a fan personally of abolishing the dipshit union that protects all police officers. But that's probably only part what needs to be done.
I'd like you and everyone else to stop name calling and start voting. That's what I'd like.
Here's the problem, I agree with you on the actual policy you just said you'd like change and I'm pissed off by the name calling. How do you think someone that disagrees with you is going to feel?
Ya'll aren't winning anyone over running around generalizing a population of nearly a million police officers as "bastards." (EDIT: in this case "cowards and bullies"). It's detrimental to the cause and serious discussions and it's childish.
When did I call you any names? Also really presumptuous of you to assume I don't vote on these issues. I take this stuff very seriously, and vote in every election in my town that I'm aware of. Buy, I don't think voting alone is going to solve this issue. If it did, we'd have already solved the problem. We have to demand change.
The government wants this bcz the police don't work for the people, they enforce the laws that keep people rich, and make them richer. (Whether those officers realize it or not)
I don't have time for this nonsense.
I responded to a guy that said police are cowards and bullies because I don't like generalizations and lynch mobs. Your response was "I agree with the other guy, police are cowards and bullies in my experience." That's not constructive, it's more of your own bias and it's contributing to the name calling. If you've got something constructive to say, go for it. If you don't, don't.
Clearly you don't get that or you don't actually care.
I'd guess there are a lot of people who make excuses when getting arrested, and saying you are having a medical emergency is an easy one. If you're a cop who sees this a lot, you would eventually start assuming everything people say was just an attempt to get pity or leniency.
The other possibility is that all cops are bastards.. But I'm guessing its a mix of the two.