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Who would have felt comfortable in these circumstances?
A Massachusetts man was driving in the town of Medford last Saturday night. He admits he took a wrong turn and ended up going the wrong way down a traffic circle. The angry man steps out of a truck and approaches him. Michael, seemingly -- and perhaps understandably -- frightened, reverses. The angry man follows him and Michael stops.
The angry man appears to show his badge and identifies himself as a police officer. Some, though, might be troubled by the officer's greeting: "I'll put a hole in your head." Michael is apologetic and explains to the officer -- now identified as Det. Stephen LeBert -- that he is being recorded. LeBert suggests that he will seize the camera.
"I'm a f***ing Medford detective and you went through that f***ing rotary," says LeBert. As Michael insists he didn't see a sign, LeBert demands his license. "You're lucky I'm a cop, otherwise I'd be beating the f***ing piss out of you right now," LeBert adds, shortly after calling the driver an a**hole. LeBert ultimately calls for on-duty cops who at least do a little to calm the situation. However, the fact that Michael posted his video to YouTube has led to an investigation.
Medford Police Chief Leo Sacco told MyFoxBoston: "It's not the proper behavior, but we only know about it when people tell us. And unfortunately, we had to get up this morning and see it on a YouTube video."
In the days before cameras proliferated, you had to rely on witnesses and hearsay. The police were more likely to be believed by those in authority. Cameras have begun to change that -- on both sides.
Sacco told the Medford Transcript: "The video is troubling enough, and it requires investigation just based on what we see here. The driver does not have to file his own complaint. He may, but he does not have to."
[...] Sacco told the Medford Transcript that LeBert was a good policeman. He added, perhaps unfortunately: "If you work hard you do step on people's toes, which generates complaints."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @06:41PM
Nowdays, even tech sites start reporting on police executing black people, and other things like this...
In those videos, the people getting executed does not seem threatening...
On Arstechnica, just the other day...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/body-cam-captures-cop-shooting-motorist-in-head-murders-charges-follow/ [arstechnica.com]
Can some US citizen leave a few words of explanation?
Is it poverty? To many guns? To much drugs? To much pressure on cops?
wtf?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @07:12PM
It is a cultural issue. All behavior issues are cultural issues. It has nothing to do with guns or drugs. Did we ban airplanes after 9/11? Did we ban fertilizer after Oklahoma city? How about backpacks after two bombings?
No it is cultural. In short: disenfranchisement, lack of life satisfaction, lack of dignity, and a culture of fear fueling a negative-reinforcement spiral. Granted the US isn't actually very dangerous at all when looking at all statistics. It is almost unheard of to ever get into a bar fight or be mugged or kidnapped in the US compared to other western nations. Still, things can go from calm to death pretty quick on occasion. Partially the problem has to do with how dangers are perceived.
The news agencies gobble up things like that and plaster it everywhere for views, even when nothing violent happened such as in this case. Do German newspapers have wall to wall coverage of "Crime almost happened"? Probably not. Politicians use it as their rallying cry here just like pedophile scares are the standard practice in the UK. So there are police and citizens out in the world that think there is a terrorist or an assault-rifle carrying maniac around every bush and tree. Unfortunately there is probably another citizen thinking the exact same thing on the other side.
The elephant in the room is that the US culture is one of protestant work ethic and justice. Work hard and be successful or else you are worthless. Punishment to the wicked should be swift and ferocious. Where does that leave the majority of citizens that do work hard and obey the law yet clearly never make it into the top 1%? They are treated like potential criminals, terrorists, and are clearly lazy, stupid, and fat. After all, if they weren't all those things they would be successfully in the 1% wouldn't they? It is even reinforced by stereotypes from abroad.
So there is this population that is obsessed with work, but rarely get the opportunity to succeed, a police force that believes nearly every one of them is out to murder, news organizations and politicians that pour kerosene over the whole situation for their own benefit, and overall low life satisfaction for all. I consider it a miracle the situation isn't any worse.
Nationally I have no idea what the solution is. Locally the solution has been made apparent to me via observational experimentation. People that don't pay attention to politics, government, or news tend to be happy and well adjusted. Local police that have no strong political or religious views are friendly and professional. Oddly what many people naturally do over time, become apathetic, seems to make the general population happier and safer. It took many years for me to accept that but have yet to do it myself.
If I was apathetic I would be fishing on a Saturday morning instead of reading the news and trying to convince a person I will never meet on several controversial and age old points in a futile attempt to make the world just a little more informed. I might even make the world just a little better. Nah, the truly wise people are completely ignorant of this news, line in a lake filled with bluegill, and a beer in their hand.
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Saturday August 01 2015, @08:52PM
Nationally I have no idea what the solution is. Locally the solution has been made apparent to me via observational experimentation. People that don't pay attention to politics, government, or news tend to be happy and well adjusted.
This is a disaster. There is no way a democracy can survive this.
The only solutions would be to try to get people stop consuming, but don't know how.
Most people I know consume content and merchandise to patch up a broken family.
Wife sad? Buy some shit or go to theatre.
Kids cry? Buys some shit or download disney or similar...
Seems, only genetics and longevity will save us from this.
Until then, just dig into the shit.
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @12:03PM
This is a disaster. There is no way a democracy can survive this.
This is true, but I think the ruling powers no longer want a democracy. They have moved things to the edge of a police state where law enforcement openly refers to citizens as "civilians" and "the enemy". It is not a democracy they seek.
More and more of these unwarranted killings by the police are coming to light. We are seeing a few a month now. Before you know it there will be too many to keep track of, the pubic will become desensitized to it, and the media will stop reporting on them because they don't get enough viewers or clicks. When faced with reality that is overwhelming the public tends to carry on so they will not become part of the next trending topic of oppression or violence by the State.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 01 2015, @08:57PM
Authority worshipers in positions with limited power, but few repercussions over misuse of that power. And it appears that "limited" includes the right to kill people because you feel like it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BK on Saturday August 01 2015, @10:43PM
1) American police have always harassed "outsiders". In their time Germans, Irish, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Cambodians, Japanese, and more have all been outsiders. Black people have been the ultimate outsiders having only escaped the system of 'separate but equal' around 1970. American police are not unique. European police do the same thing. Roma and transient people are treated badly everywhere. Migrants are forced to work their way through a stagnant class system that is seldom acknowledged and the police enforce "the rules".
2) The police have always behaved as though they were above the law. There are too many set asides and too many "rights" for police-persons. The law grants them the benefits of doubts even when there are no reasonable doubts.
3) The internal investigation _always_ says that the police did nothing wrong. The set-asides mentioned in the law grant huge leeway for an officer to make a judgement call -- even a _wrong_ judgement call. Internal investigations go further and establish that these legal but questionable actions are compatible with local policy. This is precedent setting! This is how it has become OK to electrocute a person who poses no danger if they do not follow a command. Don't taze me bro!
4) Police have been taught to put safety first -- their own personal safety is considered above the safety of those they interact with or the public at large. This has lead to police blindly throwing grenades into babys' cribs, botched no-knock raids with fatalities (sometimes at the wrong address), and to suspects being shot because "they might have been reaching for a weapon". Police consider the people disposable and the people increasingly know it.
5) Black people have started to be considered just "regular" people by the mainstream population but the police have been slow to adjust. This does not mean that racism is dead, but rather that public racism is no longer acceptable and that even private racism is finding a smaller audience. It will never end... there are still those that hate Italians out there, they just mostly keep it to themselves (except in Germany...).
6) Since 2001, the police and their related agencies (TSA, NSA, etc.) have increasingly alienated their traditional support bases. White people with jobs and kids are considered threats and have felt what it's like to be treated as guilty-until-innocent and disposable by them. There is new empathy for the outsiders...
7) Just as TV brought the war in Vietnam into living rooms and changed popular opinion, so the dash-cam and the go-pro and the smartphone have brought police behavior to the attention of the masses. The technology brings it to Ars. Maybe change will happen.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @01:33AM
In the US, the first police forces were slave patrols. They rounded up / killed escaped slaves for the wealthy land/slave owners. So, the police exclusively served the rich elite.
Modern US police exist to protect property, so they still primarily server the rich elite. Also, most modern police are racist assholes (a generalization born out by abundant evidence), so they still murder, torture and harass black people more than others. They also know they are more likely to get away with killing some black teenager in a hoodie than some white suburban kid, because most Americans are closet racists.
In the US, police rarely get charged, and almost never get convicted for their crimes. US police killed 3 people per day in the in the first two months of 2015 http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-killed-8-hours-2015-early-graves-day/ [thefreethoughtproject.com]. I am unaware of even one cop that was tried, let alone convicted during that same period.
They murder, torture and rape with impunity. The rich parasitic class that runs everything in the US provides (official and unofficial) immunity from prosecution to the police in exchange for the police (when not acting upon sadistic impulses) serving the interests of the rich elites to the exclusion of all others (whenever a conflict exists between the interests of the two). The rich parasitic class controls the US media, so most Americans believe the victims "deserved it" because of the character assassinations the US media engages in against the victims.
Really, the root of the problem is the class war that the rich parasites have been engaged in since the founding of the country. End that, and we can start putting cops away for their crimes-- jail 3 cops a day for murder, and 30 cops a day for accessory to murder, and they will start behaving themselves pretty quickly.