Quote:
Originally Posted by gstelmack
Sorry, thought we were switching to a more general discussion based on this. There seemed to be developing another trend of forgiving people who act like jerks to cops because they are afraid something might happen, but not offering the same courtesy to cops who are confronted with such behavior who have very short timeframes to decide if there life is being threatened. I'm tired of the double standard.
Yes, the cops should be held to a higher standard, yes this guy should have backed down late in this tape, and yes sometimes cops go on power trips, and none of that excuses people ignoring the cop's instructions and deciding they can do whatever they want.
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Good post. People really just resent authority, and EXPLODE over any opportunity for bring it down a notch. If gives them the moral authority to defy authority, which is like some kind of drug. The national outrage over this one cop's poor attitude is going to embolden countless others to exhibit asshattery in the weeks to come.
Maybe if those Oakland cops had pulled their guns a little sooner they'd be alive today. Next time they will (perhaps when they pull over a black man who may or may not want them dead), they'll make a split second error, and the cycle will continue.
Police officers are human, nobody can ever really grasp that. And when they make mistakes (which is going to be fairly common, when there's almost 3/4 of a million of them in the united states), the first assumptions are always about racism, conspiracies, power trips. That gives a "high" to accuse them of such things. Everybody wants to be a martyr. If gives their lives meaning to feel abused by authority.
Cops should of course be held to higher standard, but again, there's close to 750,000 and the resources don't exactly allow them to be recruited from elite military programs and Ivy League Universities (though there are some from those places). It's impossible to find 750,000 perfect Americans for the role. Occasionally one will be VERY bad, even criminal, and very often, they're going to make mistakes.
MANY times, they'll make mistakes that show they're not cut out to be officers, and they're gone. It's a high stress job with high turnover and little security until you've proven yourself. It's EXTREMELY difficult to find the "perfect 750,000". Some like Rainmaker seem to think that without finding that perfect number, officer murders is just what's going "to happen". I promise you though, that if cities and police chiefs across the country could find that perfect 750,000 and send them out there every day, they would.
If it makes you feel like a big shot to feel like you're being held down by the man because you don't like the way an officer handled a traffic stop, that's your right I guess. But it might help to remember that 30 minutes earlier, that cop might have been dealing with a domestic violence situation, a traffic fatality, or a dead baby. A tiny bit of politeness and appreciation and understanding goes a LONG way.