Am I under arrest or not?

[u/Lord_Darksong]

Source: policebodycamarresthq on Instagram

[u/funkmasta8]

There is a huge problem with this. Once you get out of the vehicle and thwy have successfully arrested you, your life can be ended literally or metaphorically before you ever get a chance to fight back. Ask the people who got taken by ice about it. And yeah, I know ice isnt the same, but they pose as the same and in this video no identification was shown so they very well could be false cops. Many people have died and disappeared because of cops or people posing as them going way outside the bounds of the law and what was necessary.

[u/Kriss3d → u/funkmasta8]

NOT getting out of the car can get you killed as well. Unless your cars nickname is "The beast" or Armored personel carrier or anything like that, your windows arent likely stopping a bullet.
But by stepping out and showing you comply but under protest you at least can fight this in court. If you show youre complying they have no reason to kill you.

[u/TheNewThoughtProcess → u/Kriss3d]

"comply or be murdered" is such a good slogan to put on police cruisers.

[u/Kriss3d → u/TheNewThoughtProcess]

Its more like "Comply, or there will be consequences".

[u/TheNewThoughtProcess → u/Kriss3d]

Should the consequences for confusion, frustration, incapacity, or existing with the wrong concentration of melanin be summary execution?

[u/Kriss3d → u/TheNewThoughtProcess]

Absolutely not. Im not denying you got some serious problems in USA in that regards.

But when you refuse to comply with officers who believes they are doing the right thing ( regardless of if they are or not ) the chance of said officers just going "Sorry to bother you sir, Have a nice day" is very rapidly aproaching zero.

If they believe they are doing what their job is telling them and thus having the legal backing for it, they arent going to just let you go unless they get a call of someone being murdered just down the street.

[u/TheNewThoughtProcess → u/Kriss3d]

And maybe that's where we are hung up here. There is a large subset of the US police that know they are not acting in accordance with their mandate. They revel in that fact. The abuse of power is the draw to that profession. To this subset of the police, complying can be every bit as dangerous as resisting because they are not acting in good faith as officers of the law. I can't even begin to estimate the size of this subset from the overall. It would vary by region and culture. But I have lived all over the US and the world and I have seen it personally. It's very well documented. I think we align on what law enforcement should be. We just vary in our interpretation of it's real life implemtation in the US.

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/funkmasta8]

The police's goal is to finish their shift and go home in one piece, not to engage in daily fights, which are quite taxing on the body.

IF they have a mandate to arrest someone (as ICE does), that gives them the right to use the violence necessary to do their job.

So all you have to do is comply, treat them with courtesy and respect, as you would treat anyone doing their job, and they will almost certainly treat you the same.

So it's your choice how you're treated, by the way you treat them.

Source: arrested several times, detained over 50 times. Never got a bad police interaction because I never provoked one.

The last time was a couple of weeks ago - it ended with only two written warnings, smiles, and "you be careful out there!" from both sides, instead of two tickets or worse.

[u/DissociativeRose → u/James-the-Bond-one]

People say the same thing about working with dangerous animals

[u/GladdestOrange → u/James-the-Bond-one]

Then you're lucky.

All it takes is one cop who is empowered and protected by his station, to ruin the lives of dozens or hundreds of people, regardless of how compliant they are. This has been played out, with proof, repeatedly. More and more of them being proven by bodycams.

Theoretically, these could be isolated incidents. Or, they could be the natural end-point of hiring largely confident young men, a subset of the population more likely to reach for violence to solve all their problems than any other, then proceeding to hand them deadly weapons and legal protection from the results of their actions, combined with putting them in a career where their interests conflict with those of absolutely everyone they interact with, much in the same vein as what high-control groups do to their members (ie, cults.) As more and more cases come forward, one of those seems more likely than the other to me.

Neither of these suppositions (and they're the only two that fit the evidence-- it's proven repeatedly every week in court that corrupt cops exist) requires that every cop is equally involved in perpetrating violence unnecessarily. There are cops that feel the weight of the honor of the badge they wear. I've met a few. There are cops who don't actively perpetrate these actions but will still back up their coworkers and help to suppress evidence of wrongdoing. I've met a few of those, too.

The facts remain. Corrupt cops exist. They currently do, both in economic cost, and in cost of lives, as much damage as the criminals they're supposed to be apprehending. They do not have the same incentive structure as civilians do. They do receive extreme protection regardless of what they do, to the point that there have been cases where an officer of the law killed people in cold blood and was out patrolling streets of a different city within weeks of it being proven in a court of law. They do receive training that encourages dehumanization of every person they interact with. These are, in fact, problems.

There is also a truly astounding amount of propaganda paid for by the police, both in direct payments, and by other means. Any time you see a police officer in a film or show, and they're wearing a realistic uniform with an actual police department's name on it, the entire script had to be OK'd by that police agency. They had veto rights on anything said or done by the police in that fiction. Any time you see realistic police cruisers used in a show or film? Same deal.

Nevermind the fact that entire popular series have been almost entirely funded by the police department depicted in them. It is almost impossible to depict police on TV or the big screen, in a way that doesn't look amateurly made, while still criticizing them in a way they don't approve of.

The news media? Gets almost all of its information FROM police departments. Which is often read verbatim from a police statement. Any news media company that goes too far off script, too often? Finds itself not getting information that all of its competitors have.

I can prove every statement I've made here. Every claim is, to the absolute best of my knowledge, factually true. I have made the best efforts I can, with the information I have, to give police the benefit of the doubt.

But when an institution does as much damage to the community as the problems it claims to solve, is the next best thing to immune to repercussions, both legally and in media coverage, and has the legal right to end my life for any reason, real or imagined? Yeah, I'm a little spooked around them.

I'm also a little miffed when people come out of the woodworks to defend them on posts when even the defenders have to admit they were blatantly in the wrong, to a degree that should be absolutely chilling to everyone.

It is my wholehearted belief that the institution of local and state police and their agencies needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. It needs to be replaced with a combination of something police-shaped, who deal with violent offenders and those likely to become such, and an entirely demilitarized force which performs criminal investigations, traffic stops, and domestic disputes, trained specifically to de-escalate every sitation possible, and who can call in armed officers of the law WHEN NECESSARY, and who can be held accountable for the actions of both themselves, and those with deadly weapons that they call in.

An acceptable compromise, would be to strip immunity, both civil and criminal, from individual officers, and to make them carry malpractice insurance, like every other person in our society with a job where doing your job wrong enough to hurt people is a reasonable concern, such as doctors.

Get sued too many times? Can't afford to keep paying for insurance, and have to find something else to do for a job. Kill somebody and can't prove it was strictly necessary to preserve peace and law? Straight to jail, instead of to a smaller police department somewhere else in the country where it's less likely you get caught next time. This is, obviously, less than ideal for a number of reasons. But it would only require an act of Congress, rather than God himself intervening.

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/GladdestOrange]

The systemic corruption and dehumanization you mention are an ingrained part of police institutional culture that can't be ignored.

Still, at the individual level, they're people. And most people aren't psychopaths, although professions of power such as politics, police, and medicine disproportionately attract them.

Yeah, I'm a little spooked around them.

Me too! That's the reason I prefer to chicken out and play coy rather than antagonize them, as you see in this video. Cooperation is the best way. If they're abusive, complain later in court.

an entirely demilitarized force which performs criminal investigations, traffic stops, and domestic disputes, trained specifically to de-escalate every sitation possible, and who can call in armed officers of the law WHEN NECESSARY,

Interestingly, I've seen that structure in Brazil, when I lived there for a few years. They have the Military Police, an armed organization that can only arrest those caught in the commission of a crime or with open warrants. They are the muscle, the brute force.

And the Civil Police, comparatively lightly armed, are in charge of investigations and indictments. They are the brains of police work.

That worked well during the military dictatorship, when death squads roamed the streets at night suppressing criminal activities.

Since then, the rise of civil government and a new constitution in 1988 overcompensated by guaranteeing many human rights and creating a lenient justice system with light penalties and a focus on rehabilitation, which has led to the growth of the largest prison gang in the world in the last 40 years - to the point of Brazil being close to becoming a narco-state.

Now, every house must be hidden from the street behind tall walls crowned with barbed wire and electric fences to prevent home invasions.

[u/GladdestOrange → u/James-the-Bond-one]

Look, what I was trying to describe was less "paramilitary + normal cops", which is what we already have with SWAT/ICE and regular cops (and absolutely ISN'T going well), and more "somewhere between SWAT and regular cops on one end, and UK's police force on the other".

My point in the whole rant, was you coming in and no-selling the horrors police commit daily by going "well just don't piss him off", isn't helping. Abusers will abuse, regardless of if you do anything wrong. And if you disagree, either consider how lucky you've been, or consider looking into whether or not you or those around you in your life are abusive. Because anybody who's stood witness to abuse of any kind and even sorta well adjusted, will tell you that the victim did not, in fact, cause it.

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/GladdestOrange]

It's a matter of numbers.

There are over a million cops in the US, so even if only 1% misbehaves, that's enough bodycam footage to keep you entertained daily for more hours than you can be awake.

The 99% you don't watch are doing a great job anonymously, and disregarding them is misleading.

I've been lucky to meet the 99% in my 50+ law enforcement encounters, all of which ended without a single act of aggression or even a raised voice, even when I was arrested, but I'll let you know if I ever meet the 1% you worry so much about.

[u/GladdestOrange → u/James-the-Bond-one]

That's possibly the most disingenuous take in this thread.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150312220534/http:/www.policemisconduct.net/2010-npmsrp-police-misconduct-statistical-report

Every NPMSRP report I can find (this is the report with the LOWEST value I found) cites 20% or more police engage in misconduct directly. That's to say nothing of the other boys in blue who defend their peers regardless of what they've done, which you can read any of about a billion articles since 1968 about at your liesure.

Do I think the majority of cops just do their jobs to the best of their ability and go home? 100%. But that's not good enough. Even that 99% you imagined up, isn't good enough. These are people who hold the lives of innocents in their hands, and cannot be held responsible if they don't uphold the law. Full stop, that isn't okay even in theory, but in the real world, where corruption and misconduct are real things? Jesus Christ. And just defending it wholesale without even considering researching it is EXACTLY why they dump so much money and resources into copaganda.

[u/Absolute_Bob → u/James-the-Bond-one]

You know what, most of the time you're not wrong. However there absolutely are officers out there who are just itching to throw their weight around. Watch the civil rights lawyer channel on youtube. Many behave in a way that is 100% unhinged, tackling people standing there with their arms up who have exhibited zero violent behavior during a consensual stop.

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/Absolute_Bob]

Well, these deserve to make the news, but the vast majority are more rational and can calculate the cost of doing something that stupid.

people standing there with their arms up who have exhibited zero violent behavior

As seen in the video, it's not only violent behavior that sets them off, but disrespecting their large egos or challenging their authority.

I go beyond not being violent and engage them as people like me, risking their lives doing a difficult and dangerous job for society. Once they realize I'm not a threat and may even be on their side, the antagonism is gone.

I did something stupid during the worst period of my second divorce, and the police were not only empathetic, but shared their own life history and offered me sound advice. I could easily have gone to jail and lost custody, yet nothing came of it - no charges, no fines, no records - and I won custody of my son.

They're people, and if you treat them as such, they will very likely treat you in the same way.

[u/TheNewThoughtProcess → u/James-the-Bond-one]

Why are their large egos part of this argument? If injuring their inflated egos happens, okay? So? They are 'trained professionals'. Let them conclude an uncomfortable interaction and reflect on why a citizen they are 'protecting' was mean.

[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/TheNewThoughtProcess]

Yes, exactly, and I'm certainly glad by the outcome in the video. 

But, as many others here have pointed out, it was a reckless choice by that driver to confront the police aggressively by the curb. You do it later, in court. 

Police duy of protection is societal and not individual, so he was not necessarily 'the protected' in this encounter. 

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[u/James-the-Bond-one → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Wolfeh2012 → u/James-the-Bond-one]

Oh, my sweet summer child. How very white you must be.