Bravo5150 wrote:
Mona Pereth wrote:
More funding would enable cops to do proper investigations and gather better physical evidence, in lieu of their current over-reliance on (intrinsically unreliable) witness testimony and confessions. Currently, the main go-to strategy for investigating crimes is to pressure suspects into making (sometimes false) confessions. This is the source of many police abuses, and the main reason for it is that it's the cheap and easy way to investigate a crime.
More funding would also enable better training of cops, and also better weeding-out of racist cops.
That still doesn't address my question as far as the cops who allow their egos cloud their judgment. I got stopped not long ago and attempted to explain to the officers who stopped me that I had a disability and would appreciate it if they would call an officer at a neighboring department because I spent the last year doing a bit of volunteer work for that department, mainly with that officer I requested. I was treated by the officers who stopped me as though I made a completely unreasonable request and treated as though my explanation of some of the type of work I did was the dumbest thing they had ever heard.
Yikes! I'm very sorry to hear about this.
I don't know enough about your situation to know precisely what kinds of reforms would have prevented or mitigated it, but, offhand, I have the following thoughts:
1) I wonder if the cop's assholiness was really motivated by "ego," or whether it was part of a deliberate strategy of messing with your head, for the purpose of getting you to do something self-incriminating. Messing with people's heads is something cops routinely do, usually as an aspect of the over-reliance on confessions that I mentioned earlier.
It would greatly help police-community relations if they would mess with people's heads a lot less often -- although sometimes it's necessary. (For example, it now appears that the Capitol rioters were prevented from attacking senators by
one cop who messed with the rioters' heads and thereby distracted them from invading the Senate chamber long enough for the senators to get to a safe place.)
2) Among the many kinds of additional and better training that cops need, they should get more training on how to recognize and deal with people with various kinds of disabilities.
3) More and better civilian oversight of the police department is probably needed in many jurisdictions, with better civilian complaint review procedures.
I think ego plays a part in it thinking it is ok to test the limits on me because I have a disability. A cop is supposed to only be able to stretch the facts of a situation, I find it a sort of common occurrence to find them trying to rewrite the rules.
Example, they are supposed to only be allowed to lie about witnesses who may have seen you doing som thing, but instead try to use the tactic of changing the rule to fit their agenda without making an effort to pull the rule up to make sure both parties have the correct understanding on the same page.
13 Jan 2021, 8:30 pm
