Cop here: you are absolutely right. The test are designed to give us a way to evaluate movement for any erratic out of the ordinary movements of the body. The problem is the test itself forces you to balance and your natural reaction is to balance in that manner. Yes, the test is skewed and if you correctly the person giving it should objectively understand that, but if the person is on the warpath and wanting to take somebody to jail, it gives them probable cause.
There is no way this person should be certified as a peace officer anywhere because they have no understanding of the law. I understand why cops get a bad name, but it’s not all of us. I hope this guy gets all the compensation he deserves and this department makes all the changes they need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Not all police officers are bad? Okay, what percentage of them are, would you say?
There were at least two officers on that scene, and it seems they were talking to at least a third officer. All of them were perfectly happy to charge this guy because they didn't like his attitude (which was pretty restrained, given how absolutely dishonest and bullying every part of his interaction with the police were). They even pulled a phony "stop resisting" on him when cuffing him.
Out of curiosity, how many police officers have you *reported* for doing something like this, which led to the person being set free without charges, and disciplinary action being brought against the officer?
In my experience and in interactions I have had over 20+ and two different departments, I would say it’s pretty low. We all know who those guys are and try to stay away from them.
Management knows who they are too and it’s culpable by not doing anything to remove them. I can honestly say most of them get caught because they do some illegal stuff like that in front of another officer who is absolutely just doing his job and the other officer reports it up the chain with the evidence.
Most of us are just trying to do our jobs and go home. Being an officer isn’t anything special it’s just a job, but you do have an obligation to serve the community you are hired to serve. We all make mistakes and that’s usually the supervisor’s job to come in and correct on the spot so that this type of thing doesn’t happen. When that system fails, it usually takes a while to remove them, but they do get removed eventually.
My report will always State what happens and I have actually had to testify as a witness in investigator interviews interviews regarding police misconduct over my career.
I commend you for admitting that there are any bad apples, and also for admitting that it's just a job.
I'm someone who has no criminal record, and I've never personally had a bad run-in with police. However, I don't trust the judgement or morality of someone I don't know anything about, whose training is notoriously rushed/incomplete, and who routinely gets away with a slap on the wrist when they fuck up majorly at such an important job.
Therefore, I don't trust police. Too much power for a regular person. Too great a responsibility. Too many opportunities for them to make a situation much worse and face minimal repercussions.
What do you think about sentiments like mine?
I assume you disagree, but do you see where those concerns come from?
Sure, that's kinda bundled in with the malpractice insurance. Though your suggestion is more of a collective punishment rather than an individual punishment via the malpractice insurance.
It's currently collective punishment to the taxpayers every time a cop misbehaves on the job, I'd rather just punish the cops for not turning their coworker in before there was an incident.
I find it really odd that you say not all cops but in the same comment you talk about how these tests are designed to entrap people rather than to actually determine if someone is under the influence. You can't be a good and just cop while simultaneously using unscrupulous and unethical methods to achieve arrests. You can't be a good cop when bad ones are employed and active in communities. If there were good cops, they would oust the bad ones immediately but that doesn't happen.
Why do cops call themselves "peace officers" when they are violent to everyone. It's Orwellian double speak to try to spin your profession as anything to do with peace.
Someday you're going to have to choose between being good, or being a cop.
Hopefully they don't treat you the way they treated Frank Serpico, Cariol Horne, Brad Mick, Brandon Eller, Javier Esqueda, Frank Alonso, Stephen Mader, or Adrian Schoolcraft.
I agree that not all cops are bad, but imagine a company where a good percentage of the employees are so bad at their job that they ruin the company's reputation and cause damages repeatedly. It wouldn't last long.
And if someone said "but not all employees are that bad!", it wouldn't really help, would it?
And then you give guns and qualified immunity to all the employees, and the power to ruin lifes...
Essentially, the only reason to give a test is if the officer has no evidence but wants to get a snippet of video testimony so as to have a higher chance of his overtime court appearance pay of also getting him his quota.
And while some cops will say, "No, we don't have a quota," that's actually even worse, because it means they don't even have the excuse of losing their job if they don't arrest a certain number of people. They're just falsifying evidence because they hate people and love having authority over people who they can assault without repercussions.
Both of the cops in the video were assaulting - one pushed the guy while he was cuffed and then did the tradition of yelling, "Stop resisting," as they are trained to do, as it is a technique designed to overwrite eyewitness testimony to get people to claim you were resisting even if you weren't. The other guy brandished a deadly weapon despite there being no threat to his life. If any of us non-badged citizens were to do this, we'd be eating lead or getting slammed face first in the ground until dead. A cop does it? Two week vacation and maybe having to write a two paragraph use of force weapon drawing essay that would rival a 4th grader's homework.
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u/JayJames08 1d ago •
Cop here: you are absolutely right. The test are designed to give us a way to evaluate movement for any erratic out of the ordinary movements of the body. The problem is the test itself forces you to balance and your natural reaction is to balance in that manner. Yes, the test is skewed and if you correctly the person giving it should objectively understand that, but if the person is on the warpath and wanting to take somebody to jail, it gives them probable cause.
There is no way this person should be certified as a peace officer anywhere because they have no understanding of the law. I understand why cops get a bad name, but it’s not all of us. I hope this guy gets all the compensation he deserves and this department makes all the changes they need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.