when I was in spain the police had a attitude that said don't fuck with those guys but oddly enough the police in Portugal right next door were very chill
Police brutality.
Posted by: XXX_er
when I was in spain the police had a attitude that said don't fuck with those guys but oddly enough the police in Portugal right next door were very chill
I know right? It's like being in a different country.
Posted by: GreyHead
Posted by: thefishtailbites
I think it's actually very normal to feel anxious in those situations. I get similar jitters going through customs (my knees get shaky.) However I'm aware I'm not doing anything wrong so nothings gonna happen.
Maybe I wasn't clear in my post. " if I as a 60 something, law abiding, white male, feel intimidated and threatened by the police if I am forced to have an interaction with them, I cannot imagine how marginalised folk feel. "
Mic seems to get the gist of my message.
Put yourself in the shoes of the marginalised folk. They don't "fit" the good guy stereotype, so they are significantly at risk even if they have done nothing wrong. except as Mic puts it " fits into a certain "box", hairdo, clothes, tattoos, skin color, perceived "attitude", place or time, this person might be in trouble despite their innocence".
I've travelled through many and lived in several countries, and without exception, north american police and border authorities cause me the most extreme mental concerns. If that's the case for an "innocent" grey haired old man, spare a thought for those who might be in the "box of concern".
I understand you feel intimidated and threatened but I would ask why? Is there a real threat of harm to you? I don't believe there is. Or Mic. Provided you are not misbehaving.
Everyone is biased. Everyone. If I was doing a risky job like policing, I would have my guard up as well, unfortunately. Some people have an actual hatred for all police.
It works both ways. Put yourself in an officers shoes. Would you feel more intimated and threatened approaching a lifted 4x4 with 5 big tattooed men with dreadlocks vs a soccer mom with 2 kids driving a rav4?
By the way I am not saying police brutality doesn't happen, ever. I'm saying the chance of it happening to someone, even with dreads and tattoos is slim to none, provided they are not acting irrationally or breaking the law.
Posted by: thefishtailbites
I understand you feel intimidated and threatened but I would ask why? Is there a real threat of harm to you? I don't believe there is. Or Mic. Provided you are not misbehaving.
Everyone is biased. Everyone. If I was doing a risky job like policing, I would have my guard up as well, unfortunately. Some people have an actual hatred for all police.
It works both ways. Put yourself in an officers shoes. Would you feel more intimated and threatened approaching a lifted 4x4 with 5 big tattooed men with dreadlocks vs a soccer mom with 2 kids driving a rav4?
By the way I am not saying police brutality doesn't happen, ever. I'm saying the chance of it happening to someone, even with dreads and tattoos is slim to none, provided they are not acting irrationally or breaking the law.
The fly in the ointment with this however is that people who are already uncomfortable around police can be triggered into acting irrationally if they have to deal with police who are acting in an intimidating manner even if they have done nothing wrong. If an individual in a position of power lords it over you it is bound to create feelings of resentment and mistrust and that is not an effective way to engage with people. I think that's the crux of the problem for a lot of people; they see police as public servants and do not appreciate being treated in a subservient manner when dealing with them.
Posted by: thefishtailbites
I understand you feel intimidated and threatened but I would ask why? Is there a real threat of harm to you? I don't believe there is. Or Mic. Provided you are not misbehaving.
Everyone is biased. Everyone. If I was doing a risky job like policing, I would have my guard up as well, unfortunately. Some people have an actual hatred for all police.
It works both ways. Put yourself in an officers shoes. Would you feel more intimated and threatened approaching a lifted 4x4 with 5 big tattooed men with dreadlocks vs a soccer mom with 2 kids driving a rav4?
By the way I am not saying police brutality doesn't happen, ever. I'm saying the chance of it happening to someone, even with dreads and tattoos is slim to none, provided they are not acting irrationally or breaking the law.
I absolutely know what you are talking about, there is a beautiful little book called "Left of Bang" by Van Horne, or "Meditations on Violence" by Miller - and in both books the authors reflect on various issues that have to do with perceived threats, how to identify possible threats and all that has to do with situations that can escalate quickly.
And I am aware of the whole thing - and I still think that if a person wants to be a police officer, they should be able to do better, be better, and not get intimidated by five tattooed dreadheads in a pick up truck but rather check on the soccer mom as well.
Police officers should not be biased, the same as high-school teachers have to be just and fair, and not treat different students differently. And, yes, I am fully aware of what I am saying, all the implications that come with a statement like that. Police officers should not judge books by their covers, no matter how much experience they have.
I am serious about this, a civil society based on democracy, civil law and a constitution should be able to have law enforcement that is not protecting the rotten apples, that is not behaving in a way that most PoC are uneasy around them, that is not racial profiling, and the like.
And if we bring "white privilege" into the equation, the whole situation changes drastically. And statistics for both Europe and the North American continent tell me that a lot of police officers are not unbiased but highly biased.
Of course, most people do not experience police brutality, I agree - but that does not mean that all is well and fine.
At work, we have a beautiful postcard saying "Strong people do not put others down, they lift them up."
A person with a stab vest or even a plate carrier, a taser, handcuffs, and maybe with some serious weaponry at their disposal should be able to do differently, behave differently - it is their profession, their calling.
They should not be the bully, or be perceived as the bully.
Last edited by: Mic on Dec. 6, 2022, 5:05 a.m., edited 2 times in total.
So the Memphis cop is limping around from kicking a guy in the head too hard and too many times. You can't make this stuff up.
I haven't watched the video and I don't think I'm going to. It's been described to me and that was disturbing enough.
Double amputee had to be shot because he was wielding a knife, after each headline I think I can not be shocked...but then something new is happening. Odd that there are never headlines in which white US Americans get shot by the police, or strangled to death, or beaten to death.
How's the victim of Anthony Lowe doing? That's the poor guy who was left with a life threatening stab wound resulting in a collapsed lung & internal bleeding.
Posted by: Stuminator
How's the victim of Anthony Lowe doing? That's the poor guy who was left with a life threatening stab wound resulting in a collapsed lung & internal bleeding.
That's a related, but separate issue Stu. The question in the Lowe case is could the police have done something different to handle things? While Lowe did have a knife, at the time he was about 3-4m away and moving away from police so he did not pose an immediate threat to them. There is generally a significant discrepancy in the way police in the US deal with people of colour, and imho a lot of that is based on the preconceived notion of criminality of people of colour. I think it comes down to police training that seems to have an emphasis on stopping a suspect at all costs - even if that means killing them. Police are trained to kill when firing the guns, so firearms need to be a last resort.
"They shot first asked questions second, 100 per cent. Nobody approached me, nobody approached me at all, I was just beaten and taken to the ground and interrogated while being beaten,” he said.
VPD again. Jesus Christ. What a disgrace.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/03/22/BC-Renews-Investigation-Into-Prince-George-RCMP/
“I knew obviously something wasn’t right,” Kerr says. He filed a complaint with the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, the RCMP’s oversight body, which sent investigators from Ontario. Then another long wait began.
It wasn’t until 2021, a decade after his original complaint, that Kerr began making inquiries with the CRCC. That March, he received a 33-page CRCC investigation report that had been sitting on former RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki’s desk for three years.
The report “eviscerates the RCMP from top to bottom, from the commissioner on down,” he says.
“Simply stated, there never was any investigation,” he says. “They tried to bury it. They really tried to silence me in the first few months when I brought the information forward. There never was any investigation. They hadn’t even gone so far as to take a file number.”
Has anyone ever tried to complain about the VPD?
Back in my college days, I was at a friend's place in Kits for a party and one of my buddies decided to streak down the street. He was off his ass drunk, of course, jogging slowly, with the police following him. It was pretty hilarious. I can still picture it. Long story short, an off-his-ass drunk older cop was riding shotgun with a female new recruit. When they got close enough the drunk cop jumped out, grabbed the naked guy by the neck and attempted to throw him to the ground. The naked guy hadn't noticed them so he just reacted and by the time he realized it was a cop he already had him laid out on the hood. So the cops came back to the party looking for him. I thought that shit was going to hit the fan. The old dude was screaming mad, calling us accomplices, and threatening to arrest all of us if we didn't turn him in for arrest immediately. Then a sober girl that had arrived just before the cops yelled back at him "You are fucking drunk." You could hear a pin drop as the young recruit ushered him out of there. One of the guys hosting the party was a UBC law student and thought they were going get the old bastard but they never even managed to lodge a real complaint because the VPD "had no way of knowing which police officer it was." They didn't care because we didn't have evidence.
If a bunch of UBC students with affluent parents couldn't even get a drunk cop reprimanded for an assault that had multiple witnesses what can a prostitute do?
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