<p>Wow, what alot of stereotyping and lack of respect for a whole profession. I bet those of you with your petty complaints, “he had a chip on his shoulder”, “he was mean” would be wanting those officers to risk their lives to help you if needed.
Imagine if I said, one time I was in the inner city and a bunch of black guys approached me and mugged me. I have little respect for black people. Most of my encounters with them have been bad" Most would be in an uproar.</p>
<p>Good analogy Keymom. There are many police officers and if a few are bad it should not be surprising. </p>
<p>There are many police groups who are very well trained. The State Police of many states require up to a year of classroom training and several months of field training. Most of these police organizations have professional internal investigation units who investigate independently and are not afraid to point the finger at a state police behavior poorly. </p>
<p>Your duty as a citizen when stopped by a police officer is to comply with his or her lawful instructions in a polite and considerate manner. If the officer behaves improperly, you should report the officer and deal with him or her through the proper investigation process. Many states will utilize polygraphs to help identify police officers being untruth. It is not perfect but the process of investigation is not as flawed as many people think.</p>
<p>Many people the same way about all teenagers. Even ::gasp:: OURS!!!</p>
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<p>Correction - respect is earned. You don’t have to respect the person to respect the authority invested in the person by society. Remember, it is the citizenry who decided that there needs to be an executive branch (with the law enforcement agencies that entails). So authority is granted. I suppose you could also argue that it is earned in a way by making it through police hiring and training (not a small achievement in most places). </p>
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<p>Yes, a healthy suspicion is always a good thing and is needed as an oversight mechanism. Outright distrust? No.</p>
<p>Terrible analogy, Keymom. It’s simplistic and an easy rationalization for bigotry.</p>
<p>Does this thread break anybody else’s heart?</p>
<p>I mean, I’m an ACLU-card-carrying liberal, and as obnoxious about personal liberties as they come. Maybe it’s just all the nice police officers that came to talk to us at school when I was a kid, and it could be the great folks at the Champaign Police Department who showed up at my apartment before EMS and comforted me when I had pneumonia in grad school and was lying on the floor unable to breathe, or it might be the LA County Sheriff’s officers who negotiated a truce between my husband and the unethical moving company that trashed my belongings and swindled me out of over $7000, but I just can’t understand all the hate and generalization going on here. This is typically a really reasonable community.</p>
<p>I’m thankful that I’m in a job where I almost never have to make split-second, life-critical decisions, and where I only rarely see the worst sides of people. I don’t have to see things that give me nightmares. I don’t have to face a stereotype that I’m a power-hungry brute. I don’t have to wear a uniform that makes me a target to people who want to kill me, and I don’t have to live with the reasonable fear that every day I may be killed, or I may have to kill someone.</p>
<p>I don’t have to do any of that because there are angels who walk this earth and do that for me so that I can live my life. There are a few who are far from angels, who abuse the privilege and the power, and who are responsible for the horror stories that have been shared here… but to paint all these people with the same brush as you do for those few who didn’t join the force because they wanted to serve and protect… that’s just unfair.</p>
<p>I believe that we should all be wary of everyone we encounter. That’s the kind of world we live in. I think we should give respect to everyone we encounter until they do something to lose our respect. Putting on a uniform and lining up to physically stand between us and people who would wish to hurt us-- that’s not cause to discard respect for anybody. That’s cause to give respect, be cautious, be polite, and presume their innocence before assigning them guilt, the same as the law says that they ought to do for us. If they’re the “wrong kind” of cop, then perhaps you can teach them by example. If they’re the “right kind,” then they will return your respect and courtesy.</p>
<p>I believe in equality, and I believe in personal freedoms. That means that I believe in those who would protect my freedom to vote, to learn, to speak my mind in a peaceful way, and I believe that I shouldn’t treat any one person differently than I would treat anybody else. I try to give everyone I meet a smile and treat them with respect, from the homeless guys I meet on the street to the lady who drives my bus, right on up to the president of the company I work for. I don’t believe that things should be any different just because a person is carrying a badge.</p>
<p>I have been working with police officers for 25 years and have been married to one for 21 years. The broad sweeping strokes for all police officers I am reading just blows me away.</p>
<p>There are some jerks in law enforcement, just as there are jerks everywhere. These men and women are ordained ministers, youth coaches, involved parents, caregivers of elderly parents, volunteers. They bowl, they fish, they are in service organizations, they golf, they are in profressional organizations. Many of them have undergraduate degrees, many of them have graduate degrees. Many have gone on to have additional training from the FBI.</p>
<p>Do you know how much training they must get before they are certified? Are you aware of much training they must recieve during the year to maintain certification? Do you realize how much an officer on the street must know? How many processes and procedures they need to follow and if there is a mistake an arrest and ultimately a case may be negated.</p>
<p>Did you know that police officers chuckle at the simplicity of what we see on television shows and wish it could be so easy and wish they really had access to the technology we see?</p>
<p>Yes, I have met some idiots, but they are far out numbered by genuine good guys.</p>
<p>As an aside, I am a civilian working with people in a para-military like environment, I certainly do argue with people with guns!! I am not afraid!!!</p>
<p>Icarus, if you (or someone else) has a story that helps the voters see a problem with the incumbent and you spread the story widely enough, it can be done! I wrote letters to the local paper editors, and then made copies of the published letters (turned 'em into little personal campaign flyers) and stuffed thousands of them in newspaper boxes around my county with some added info on the candidate I was supporting. I also told my story to everyone I knew in my county, and if they seemed receptive I asked them to share it with other voters they knew. I did let the candidate I was supporting know what I was doing, and also checked on the campaign laws to make sure I followed them. A lot of people have no opinion on the sheriff’s race, they just haven’t had a reason to think about it one way or the other.</p>
<p>Some careers tend to attract a certain personality type more than others. That’s not to say everyone doing X job has a Y personality, but there are probably commonalities.</p>
<p>LakeWashington,
Why terrible, why simplistic?
All I am reading are anecdotal accounts as rationale for lack of respect, distrust of police.
When I use the same for a racial group it is wrong…just wanted you to see that (I don’t believe my example I hope you realize).
I believe it is wrong to use anecdotal evidence to stereotype any group. But I guess you have a double standard.</p>
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<p>I would like to refer you to a study done at the University of Queensland called “Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Risk-Taking and Career Preferences” by Kinner, Mealey, and Slaughter. I have been using it for personal “risk management” for years.</p>
<p>While the study is a bit too complex to be posted in its entirety, here is a quote that may be pertinent to the topic:</p>
<p>“Consistent with the notion that psychopathy is associated with risk-taking, those who scored highly on measures of psychopathy appeared to have a much greater interest in a career in policing. Presumably the excitement , the power, and the status of the job were attractive to more psychopathic respondents (Griffin & Ruiz, 1999; Reming, 1988). High Machs were also more often interested in this sort of career; this result may be explained by the strong relationship between Machiavellian views and psychopathy”.</p>
<p>Of course, policing is not the only job high Machs/psychopaths are suited for. If Robert Hare is to be believed, a lot of folks in the financial industry, for example, also fits the bill well.</p>
<p>Icarus,</p>
<p>Your semantic points fascinate me. Where can I sign up for your newsletter? :p</p>
<p>Seriously though, I tend to believe that authority, in a society where authority is granted by free principals to free agents, is earned as well as respect. </p>
<p>I agree that respect is also one of those issues, but here’s my take: if a cop is abusing his authority, he should not be granted that authority any longer. I have a very strong libertarian streak when it comes to social policing, particularly when it comes to press. To me, granting authority is at once one of the most necessary but also most dangerous things a free society does.</p>
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<p>Subscribe to my posts - I’ll be here all week :D</p>
<p>It appears I misread your statement - I read it to mean that authority must be earned for each individual an officer comes into contact with. I agree with you that the authority vested in police must be earned, and I believe it is through the hiring and training process. And I also agree that once that authority has been abused, it should no longer be vested in that person. We were saying the same thing in different ways.</p>
<p>However, I think that police officers are also innocent until proven guilty just like the rest of us, and that valid authority should be assumed (again, with a healthy suspicion) until proven otherwise.</p>
<p>I am also strongly libertarian, and many of the things I support would make the job of the police harder rather than easier (since civil liberties for everyone trump perceived safety or desire to catch criminals), and I think that is the way it should be in a free society.</p>
<p>It is not necessarily racist to say “I won’t vote for Barack Obama.” It is racist to say “I won’t vote for a black man.” I think that unfortunately the OP’s post title communicates more of a generalization than what s/he intended. The point seems to be a more specfic one along the lines of “I have no respect for police officers who behave this way, and I’ve seen this kind of behavior more than once.”</p>
<p>TheGFG,</p>
<p>I see it as a different issue.</p>
<p>Obama didn’t choose to be a half-black/half-white (SECRET MOOSLEM). He was born that way. </p>
<p>Officer Sunshine, on the other hand, chooses to be a cop.</p>
<p>Icarus,</p>
<p>Point taken.</p>
<p>Keymom, take a look at TheGFG’s post (#34). She or he effectively made the point without lazy rationalizations or sarcasm. By the way, personally I am always wary of complainers who rant about “double standards.”</p>
<p>I was brought up in a traditional household and taught to respect authority. My approach was to assume police officers are good until proven otherwise. Unfortunately, after many years on this earth, my view has been tainted by bad encounters. Not one or two, but many. Perhaps their tough jobs have made them miserable…I don’t know. But I don’t appreciate being screamed at for innocent mistakes, or pulled over for no reason, or being told “You can’t be here” after breaking down on a busy bridge. I’m hanging on to the assumption that I’ve been unlucky enough to run into “bad eggs” - but I’m really starting to wonder. It may be time to revisit officer selection and training procedures. Something seems to be terribly wrong…</p>
<p>I agree with Toneranger, time to revisit police training and selection.</p>
<p>I think the stress of the job probably does eat away at some of them until they become unpleasant, cynical, and sometimes even corrupt. That said, most of the cops I’ve encountered have been nice people. Though there are certainly some idiot ones around here as well, some cops actually got in trouble for drag-racing through the city at night a few years ago. Not responsible!</p>
<p>Lazy rationalization??
Please point out where I used rationalization. I hope you don’t think my statement about black people was one I was factually making. It was an example.
I am saying stereotyping is wrong in ALL cases, not just against some groups.
I had the same type of discussion with someone at work who was categorizing all “born again Christians” as racist wackos yet was offended when someone spoke about Muslim terrorists (they didn’t even say all Muslims were terrorists!). That is what I mean by double standard.
And how is saying “I guess you have a double standard” a rant?
Also please point out the sarcasm.</p>