Injured kid with broken back and broken foot tased 19 times for refusing to get up and stand against the wall. He either fell or jumped off an overpass. As he lay on the ground unable to move, the cops arrived and ordered him to stand against the wall. When he "refused" to comply, the cops tased him 19 times until the kid passed out from the pain and they realized they were tasing dead meat and maybe, just maybe, they ought to get an ambulance out there.
I swear, who trains these cops nowdays? Tomas de Torquemada? Jesus effin' kee-ryste, what a bunch of weak sisters we got in our police forces nowdays. Six cops can't handle a skinny 16 year old kid with a broken back without tasering the shit out of him? Sheesh. Cops when I was growing up had friggin' cast-iron balls. Clanked when they walked, I tell ya. Nowdays... not so much, apparently. Not so much. You fuckin' sneeze at them, they're tasering your ass like it's 1489 while shakin' like Barney Fife tryin' to put his one bullet in his gun...
-- Badtux the Not-surprised Penguin
More arguments for either an armed society or a disarmed police force. I remember when I was in London, and some dude was making a scene on the metro. Two "bobbies" walked up, and I swear they had to be six-and-a-half feet and an easy two-and-a-half bucks each, carrying only their truncheons. One said, in this marvelously polite and quiet voice, "Is there a problem here, sir?" Dude immediately said "No, sir," and went on his way with nary a peep.
ReplyDeleteOne problem is political correctness which sez that women must be allowed to be cops and thus shrimpy guys built like Barney Fife must be allowed to be cops or that'd be, like, discrimination, dig? Problem is, Barney Fife Syndrome (where a shrimpy guy acts all belligerent and stuff because he wants you to think he's all manly and shit) means that these cops are prone to use their one bullet. Meanwhile, female cops generally don't care whether you think they're all manly and shit (duh!), and they know they're not going to overpower the perp, so they're more likely to talk the perp down and into cuffs than to get all macho and use their one (taser) bullet.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem is that police forces have gotten watered down by the War on (some) Drugs. Probably as much as a quarter of the cops on the force probably shouldn't be there, but police forces had to drop their hiring standards in order to staff up for the War on (some) Drugs. President William Jefferson Clinton was as guilty as any of this kinda shit, he gave police forces nationwide a ton of money to hire more cops, but they actually had to hire cops to get that money -- and hire them in a short amount of time. You do the math -- that means that the cops who came onboard were hired under more lax standards and received less training before hitting the streets. Huh. Just another reason why I cannot fathom the liberal liking for Bill Clinton. By all standards except comparison to George W. Bush, he was a mediocre President. Of course, compared to George W. Bush, my brain-dead cat would be twice the President, so I guess that's why Bill looks so good in retrospect...
- Badtux the Crime Penguin
Think of the mindset required to be a cop, Tux. You have to LIKE to push people around. Could you make a living with that mindset, if you weren't already an IT/motorcycle/cat husbandry genius? I couldn't do it because I don't like to be a stickler for the rules. And except for wrangling weak, demented hospital patients who are doing things like climbing out of bed while ignoring the fact that they've got IV tubes and urinary catheters stuck up them, I don't want to be physically aggro. I was on the receiving end of that enough as a kid.
ReplyDeleteBut there's a segment of society which enjoys brutality. If they're smart enough, they join the P.D. If they aren't, they become "security guards." And if you think it's bad now, wait until thousands of men and women who have actually killed human beings in the Babylon Oil and Afghan Heroin Colonies are mustered out and looking for work.
Meanwhile, the Christian war on liberals continues. It might be an isolated incident; not part of a trend my dark side fears. Time shall tell.
As you know, BT, I spent many years as a cop, many years ago. I look at the cops now and I just want to puke. Part of the problem is, as you say, the Barney Fife Syndrome, but part of it also is society's doing. Many cops have been sued for many things over the years, some justifiably, some not. The prevalence of suits against cops has gotten so bad that some figure, "screw it, I'm gonna be sued anyway, so I might as well administer a little justice now." The courts, of course, haven't administered true justice in decades.
ReplyDeleteAnd with all due respect to Bukko, not all cops -- even today -- join for the pleasure of beating the crap out of 16-year-olds. I suspect many still join for the same reason I did: to try to improve society, to get the dirtbags off the streets, and to make life safer for everybody.
But I have to admit, you read the news these days, and you'd never think that.
One thing to remember, though: like blacks, teenagers, Latinos, and Muslims, the 5% that are assholes ruin everything for the other 95%. You just never read about the 95%, because the media doesn't report good news. They don't write about the cop who found a lost child at the county fair and reunited him with his parents. They don't write about the cop who helped an old woman by changing a flat tire for her rather than making her wait for a wrecker.
Maybe I'm naive, but I prefer to think that the vast majority of the cops in this country are like the ones in NYC, DC and PA, who donated countless hours after 9-11, searching for victims, or the ones who jump into frigid water to save a drowning child.
After all, there are about 820,000 people in law enforcement (see http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf, page 14, under Protective Services), yet we only hear about a few hundred bad apples each year.
Would I become a cop now, if I had the chance? Hell, no. I think too many of todays cops shouldn't be there in the first place. But am I ashamed of my service? Hell no again. I saved one little girl from drowning and two others from a burning house and I like to think I might have prevented a few crashes by getting certain people off the roads.
Cops certainly aren't what they were when we were kids -- people to be respected and emulated -- but I don't think they're as bad as they may seem these days.
Hell, maybe I'll just do one of my long, detailed, thought-provoking (ie, interminable) posts at my place on this. You'll have no one to blame but yourself!
Peace, brother.
618, I'm glad there are police officers like you. To flip things on their head, perhaps the 5% of bad cops queer it for the 95% of good ones, although I think the bad-apple percentage is higher than 5.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a newspaper reporter in the U.S., I spent a lot of time talking to police officers, I had them as neighbours at various places where I lived around the country, and I talked to them numerous times when I was driving my Fiero GT, '63 split-window Vette or even my pickup trucks. (Many speeding tickets; no accidents since 1985 though.) Needless to say, the interactions weren't usually pleasant.
I acknowledge that there are a lot of civvie arseholes out there, and that police have to regard everyone with suspicion. I think that in the U.S., the police attitude has tipped too far in the direction of viewing every civilian as a potential perp, so everyone is treated that way. It's a problem with American society -- it's getting to be a nastier and nastier country. Down here, they're not angels, especially when they've had a few, and then a few more, and that was after the "pre-drinks." Still, people in general are not as outta-control violent as they are in the U.S., so police officers can focus on being corrupted by mobsters, assisting the murder of informants, etc.