>>Hard to believe actions like that were taking place in the U.S.
Is it? I'm a Canadian and everything I hear about the US police terrifies me - SWATing leading to innocent people being killed, unarmed black men being shot, no-knock warrants, civil forfeiture, the impossibility of convicting police for just about anything. If the worst thing they were doing was selling drugs that'd be an improvement as far as I can tell.
Oh, I'm not under any illusions that this kind of thing never happens in Canada, but I think if you look at the response to that incident (compared to cases in the US) there are hopeful signs.
The Braidwood Inquiry concluded the use of Tasers in the case wasn't justified. The officers were charged with perjury (not murder, but at least something). The RCMP issued an apology to Dziekański's mother.
Compare this to the response to fatal shootings in the US, and it's very clear to me I prefer this line of the sand.
> In February 2009, it was reported that Canada had unilaterally suspended its mutual legal assistance treaty with Poland, thus blocking Poland's own investigation of the Dziekański Taser incident.
Whoa, those cops surely have a serious level of political backing.
This baffles me always to no end - the flame with which the officials would defend cops who went seriously out of borders. Every time in every locale.
In most "oh things are terrible in America" matters, I believe other countries are about as bad, but have a tamer media. But police misconduct really does seem to be worse in America. For reasons I don't fully understand.
One part of it is probably guns: even in states with strong gun control, there are plenty of them in the hands of hoodlums, so voters appreciate the Dirty Harry approach to dealing with them.
Of course we can guess various reasons, voters like police, cops stick together etc, prosecutors and police work together etc. But those things are true in other countries too.
A lot of it is how the police largely pick on the most vulnerable populations--poor people, minorities, ex-cons, people with drug problems, whatever. They're not dumb, they know that if they tried to shake down drug-addled sons of senators, they'd be fired. So, like all abusers, they pick targets that can't fight back. And those targets are the ones with the least political/economics agency, the fewest connections, the least ability to respond to police brutality, whatever.
And the middle and upper classes--the only voices ever represented in media (excluding the current endless spate of articles interviewing poor Trump voters)--of course they not only have no problem with the police, they don't know anyone who's been shaken down. As a general rule, at least.
So, you look at the predominant voices in the media, and they have no problem with the corruption of cops, and they don't know anyone who does.
Gosh, even my nominally progressive sister goes into any discussion about police brutality with an assumption that whoever got shot deserved it. And she's generally aware of social issues!
The biases are baked in so deep, and so uncomfortable to unpack, it's easier to just to turn away from it all.
The UK's media is vicious, yet there are few areas where the UK (or other countries subject to UK media scrutiny) are on-par with, or worse than, the US. North Korea maybe?
A group of people standing around watching a person who is clearly confused and in distress but do nothing. Uniformed armed officers arrive to take charge of the situation, use little judgment and follow what they think is procedure, when it is not, and/or clearly should not be. A tragic outcome. A government apology. Do Loop.
You're mostly right, although the killing is typically overblown and taken out of context in many circumstances. But when it does happen, you're right that it's damn near impossible to get a conviction of a police officer. And civil forfeiture is probably even worse than what media coverage would lead you to believe. Ironically Loretta Lynch, the second Attorney General under Obama, did this extensively in her career in NY. It's sad when the people who are allegedly representing the interests of the underprivileged have done so much to exploit them. (And don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to be partisan or suggest that the GOP is better or anything like that. It's just disappointing how much of this crap runs through all layers of our government.)
To play devil’s advocate for a moment: children are often coached by parents in cases like this. Remember “balloon boy,” who hid in the garage per his dad’s instruction so the family could get their 15 minutes of fame?
That said, kids like to make things up too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened here.
If you want to charge children for lying, everyone would have a thick binder full of criminal records by the age of 12. Maybe, of we want to blame anyone, it should be the media for but doing their due diligence before publishing a price of news.
I imagine it was a small lie that got out of hand. She did not mastermind a media storm. She told a lie to her school or her parents, they went to police, police talked to media, media interviewed the family, etc. At some point, if she were an adult, she would have understood that the lie had gotten out of hand and would have put an end to it. She was probably so afraid of "getting in trouble" that she didn't dare admit she lied in the first place.
When I was in kindergarten, I once lied about seeing a snake in the schoolyard. I don't remember why or how, I just told a stupid lie like every stupid kid (which is the same thing as every kid) does all the time. Now, no one believed me and I don't think that anyone else in the world remembers what I said, but imagine if they did. Imagine the grown-ups had taken it seriously and called 911 (well, 125 realistically , it wasn't in North America). The city would have started a large investigation to find the missing killer snake, the media would have printed article after article reporting on how people should be scared of sending their kids to school when there are dangerous animals on the loose and no one does anything about it, recess would have been cancelled, ... Imagine a shark scare, but on a larger scale. Every now and then, some grown-up would have asked me if I was sure I saw a snake, and due to the aforementioned stupidity, plus the fact that I was afraid of getting in trouble, I would have nodded yes. It would have been The News until something else distracted people from it.
None of this happened because no one believed me in the first place. But if it had happened, should I have been held criminally responsible for all the trouble?
That's my point. Kids lie all the time for all sorts of reasons. If you want to start holding them responsible through criminal justice system, you would have to send every one of them to jail.
> Don't judge all the the US by its corrupt big cities.
> I recognize nothing in this story in my town's local police (we're about 65,000 population, and the cops are quite relaxed and civil as a default).
I was stopped without explanation in Andover, KS (population < 12000 as of 2010). Officers harassed me and threatened to arrest me when I would not allow them to search my vehicle. They claimed that they smelled pot in the car. I Was not a pot smoker and was borrowing the vehicle from an anti drug family member while mine was in the shop. The claim was bogus and they were clearly trying to intimidate me.
In a neighboring city (Wichita), police responding to a 911 call that I placed after being robbed at gunpoint played good-cop-bad-cop with me. They suspected that my roommate and I were selling pot (we weren’t) and refused to press charges on the assailant because they assumed we were withholding information. I tried to call them on it, but I was unsuccessful. They didn’t give a shit about us because of the assumptions they made coming into the situation.
FWIW, I have two friends who are cops. I do not think all cops are bad people. Your dismissal of the issue is problematic.
Well we can trade anecdotes, it doesn't really prove anything. A relative was stopped by the cops, with weed and a pipe visible in the car, and was just told "keep that out of sight" and this is a state where it's not legal. Why? Because the local prosecutor does not prosecute simple possession cases and they know it would just be a huge waste of their time to bring people in and book them just to have the cases dismissed.
Police need to deal with every walk of life. I just served on a jury where the police were made to sound like a bunch of idiots by the defense because a person who appeared to be a witness wasn’t interrogated like you were.
Aggressively interrogate victims of crime, and you will find nobody wants to report crime or even cooperate with the police any more. That's far more damaging than missing the opportunity to prosecute a single drugs case, but it isn't measurable.
I didn't say drug case, because it wasn't relevant.
In my situation, a young woman was killed by a car. So a person is dead, and neither the victim's family and friends, the perpetrator's family or others will really know if justice were served.
That's not making excuses for corruption or the despicable conduct in Baltimore. But sometimes our perception of police conduct goes one way because we haven't walked a mile in their shoes, and don't have the big picture of how their world works.
Which of it's big cities aren't corrupt, though? This isn't just a localized problem, these people often end up in federal positions. Plus, there's a huge percentage of the population that lives in large cities. It's too big of a problem to avoid judging the U.S. as a whole by it.
It's funny how normally reasonable people forget that what manages to reach our awareness are very rare and shocking events that are not at all representative of the vast majority of day to day activity, whether police related or otherwise.
You are allowing yourself to be misguided if you focus on what gets put on the front page of CNN.
I don't know about others, I want my police force judged by their worst interactions rather than the majority of their interactions. I want the standards set high enough that all those bad things practically never happen rather than some small regular percentage of ongoing interactions.
No sane person would want to risk their life on a daily basis, wrestle people into their cars against their will on a daily basis, and be subject to the scrutiny you describe in your post, the hatred that is described in other posts, all for a policeman's salary. Literally no sane person would take that deal. Are you about to sign up to be a cop? Hell fucking no.
You could say the same thing about a firefighter- and yet they exist. Sorry, if you mistake courage with insanity.
Some people have a urge to help that lets them run into the wrong direction.
Without that- you would have died in that car-accident you sometimes get flashbacks to.
There is a dentist effect here at work- everybody forgets the negative moments in live, everyone forgets about theire dentist until it hurts again. Police and Emergency services are socially isolated due to that effect.
Is it? I'm a Canadian and everything I hear about the US police terrifies me - SWATing leading to innocent people being killed, unarmed black men being shot, no-knock warrants, civil forfeiture, the impossibility of convicting police for just about anything. If the worst thing they were doing was selling drugs that'd be an improvement as far as I can tell.