Jailers stand by while paralyzed man slowly dies

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Sadly, I have yet to see data proving that only a small percentage of cops are bad.

I have long suspected that 90% of them give the other 10% a bad rep. the feel-good PR vids you see on tv and in print stories are the few good cops they trot out to boost their image and fool the people into thinking all is ok in blue meanie land.

The video shows a jail, a different situation than police on patrol or at the precinct. The unique pressures that drive abuses in jail are the subject of some interesting studies, famously the Stanford Prison Experiment. Among the people demonstrating depraved indifference are a licensed practical nurse, several detention officers and several sheriffs. These are not police officers, having different duties and jurisdictions. Using the blanket term "cops" to lump them together doesn't help to understand what is going on.

Because corrections officers, police officers and Sheriff's deputies are organized in different ways, have different duties and procedures, they need different kinds of reform.




That's simply untrue. There are not a huge number of killings and beatings by the NYPD. More than that, the reformed Civilian Compliant Review Board under Mayor De Blasio has released many statistics about police violence and misconduct. The 2015 semi-annual CCRB report includes the following significant information:





5% of officers is a tiny minority. It's still too many. With 1,339 allegations of improper uses of force against roughly 1,700 officers (5% of 34,000) it's easy to see that this is a little less than 1 incident per officer in that 5% and no incidents at all for the other 95% of officers during the reporting period.

From the perspective of basic fairness and justice, shooting at random targets among the entire force is not a reasonable response to the crimes and abuses of the 5%.

From a pragmatic perspective, even if you only targeted the 5% who used excessive force, shooting at them is not going to produce any positive change.

These stats are about the NYPD. Other police departments and Sheriff's offices have different cultures and some (e.g., Ferguson) almost certainly have a higher percentage of bad officers. but that still doesn't justify blaming all of them for the crimes of some of them or make it rational or effective to declare yourself judge, jury and executioner and go off trying to kill them.

why then cannot anything be done about that malodorous 5% that cause all the cop trouble? I suspect their union is 99% of the problem.

The NYCPBA is a malignant horror, always defending even the very worst scum like former officer and now ex-convict Michael Dowd.
Case in point: the 1985 case of bad NYPD torturing people with stun guns

The NYCPBA has two interests: protect all police regardless of their guilt or innocence and expand it's own wealth and power. This is a problem endemic to police culture. The Atlantic magazine has a good article on this.

The internal culture of individual police forces is the other problem. There is a near universal prohibition on "rating a brother officer out" AKA reporting misconduct. The extremes to which Police at all levels will go to enforce this code was famously demonstrated in New York by the cases of Frank Serpico and Adrian Schoolcraft.

The pervasive culture inside the NYPD makes the larger number of officers who don't beat, torture or shoot people complicit in those crimes and that is a very hard thing to change for many reasons.

One obstacle to reform of the police culture that protects criminal police officers and abuses of power is the willingness of the PBA to use it's wealth and organizational power to defeat opponents in local elections. Another obstacle is in the inherent social dynamics of that kind of culture. A Mayor or Chief can come in fully dedicated to reform and make all kinds of proclamations, but it takes cooperation from the rank and file and lower level commanders to make it happen and that kind of change is very difficult to lead people into.

It can be done over time, but it is neither easy nor fast. The current CCRB appears to be a significant improvement over previous iterations, though it still has a long way to go.

In the meantime, corrupt officers will continue to perpetrate every kind of crime and get away with it. Shooting other officers at random is not going to change that. Actions like the shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge are more likely to inspire a reaction that gives the bad officers more cover as "heroes" and makes it harder to find and convict them.

There are no quick or easy ways to fix this problem but effective reform is possible.

effective reform seems possible only if the big club of the justice department gets involved and stays involved long enough, everywhere it is needed. too many bad cops, too many cities with bad cops, too little justice department resources. it is "whack-a-mole" going on.

The police are a gang, they all stick together, and they are all bastards.

Jail guards, police, they are all the same. They are all members of the same gang. You have to be a really sicko depraved human being to let someone in your care lay dying on the floor for five days, and that is what every single person who works in that jail is. If anybody else did something like that, they would go to prison. But because the jail employees are part of the enforcer class, they can get away with it.

just more culling of the underclass going on.

When you see a video of 20 cops kicking and beating a suspect on the ground, the 5% who are beating him the hardest are the bad cops. The 95% who are beating him less hard are the good cops.

^^^there will come a time not too far in our future, when uncle sam calls for his people to come help defend him, and nobody will bother, the citizens remaining will find it safer to cast their lot with the invaders.

That was not at all uncommon in the final days of the Western Roman Empire, when the poor saw hope for a better life under the Barbarians.

the writing's on the wall.

Final days of the Western Roman Empire? You guys sound like Donald J. Trump.

Which era of American policing was better?

The History of Policing in the United States



Do you really think things were better before? Maybe during the union-busting days?

If you concede that they are at all better today, do you think they got better because:

A) concerned citizens learned sniper skills and assassinated enough cops to cause procedural change and professional reorganization to spontaneously occur in corrupt police departments

B) legislators and reformers forced change through legislation and reorganization

The events that prompted this thread are terrible, sickening and intolerable, but that doesn't mean that things have fallen from some better state to a new low. The reality is that things are better now, but still firmly rooted in a terrible history. They are better now only because of the hard political work of generations who came before us and they will improve only because of the hard political work done by people who really want to make a lasting difference today.

Last edited by Adamantium on 02 Aug 2016, 7:58 am, edited 1 time in total.: typo

Things are at a new low, and it will only get worse. As that article points out the entire concept of policing in America started out bad, and has gotten progressively worse.

As I was the one who had brought up the last days of the Roman Empire, I think it best that I explain my comment.
I was simply responding to Auntblabby's comment about a future where citizens are no longer willing to defend a corrupt and impotent government. But I was hardly saying we're there yet.