THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Pepper spray imposes some nonzero harm on its targets.  Presumably, its use (or the threat of its use) produces some benefit to cops relative to just physically hauling people away - reduced chance of injury to cops, perhaps, or even reduced change of injury to targets.  If that expected harm is small relative to the expected benefits, then, no, there is nothing wrong with that scenario.  (At least not as far as what the cops are doing.)

It is disheartening to hear protester-types claiming that the 1st Amendment gives them the right to camp out/"Occupy" any spot they want for as long as they want.  Failure of education, I guess.  “Occupy"ing isn’t speech, it’s a an attempt to use force (if not violence) instead of suasion to win an argument.  And I think that stinks.

Pseu, while occupying is not necessarily speech (it depends on what you are doing and saying while you are occupying, and what the reason for the occupation is - “speech does not have to be words), there is this little clause in the same Amendment that contains the right to free speech, and that is the right to peaceful assembly.

However, that right (peaceful assembly) is also subject to time, place, and manner restrictions, so your point is well-taken…

The police can’t submit you to water torture, no matter you do.
And the police can’t hang you for a parking ticket.

So they ran afoul of two things: cruel and unusual punishment, which pepper spray likely falls under and disproportionate response.

"However, that right (peaceful assembly) is also subject to time, place, and manner restrictions”

That’s all I’m saying.  And I have seen quotes of protesters claiming specifically that “Free Speech” justifies their doing whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want.

Settled law or not, what kind of right is the right to freely assemble if you have to stop when those you oppose tell you to?

Uh, the same as any other right we have - subject to valid, practical, and reasonable restrictions.  There is virtually no right I can think of in the Constitution that does not have its exceptions.  You cannot yell, “Fire” in a crowded theater, you cannot possess child pornography, and you cannot camp out on a county-owned Little League Field 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during Little League season.

Seriously, you have a point, except that it is not true that the government can arbitrarily restrict that right to free speech, assembly, etc.  There are a littany of conditions that must be met regarding the reasonableness of those restrictions. Now, whether you agree with those restrictions on a case by case basis is another story.  That is why we have judges and courts that are supposed experts on the Constitutional interpretation and legal precedent…

"cruel and unusual punishment,”

Maybe.

“and disproportionate response.”

I missed that one in the Constitution.  Where is it?

Seriously (I am playing devil’s advocate again) what would be a proportionate response, assuming that they had to remove the people eventually (which I think is a valid assumption)?  Water hoses?  Vicious dogs?  Drag them away? Page them in the student union?

This is slightly tangential, but MGL.... what does “page them in the student union” mean? Never heard that one before.

Personally, I would go with a stink bomb.

#8 it was just a joke. Like, page them on the phone....

What other constitutional rights are restricted for any purpose but direct harm to an individual or group of individuals?

"Devil” MGL is presuming that the police has the right to exact actions against those who are assembling.

The problem is that the police in the past has shown enough evidence of interfering in a peaceful assembly rather than just applying the law after that assembly has been deemed illegal (by the courts).

The police are of course in a no-win situation.  They are really enforcing “suspected” illegal activity more than anything, since you are only guilty when tried in the court of law.

So, those assembling believe they are innocent (they are by definition) and are not engaging in illegal activity, and the police suspect they are engaging in such activity.

Not to mention that the police have the double-duty of keeping the peace, even if there is no suspected illegal activity (an almost pre-emptive strike that if they didn’t keep the peace, suspected illegal activity would result).

Isn’t tear gas more effective than pepper spray for large crowds? I mean, pepper spray makes ONE PERSON hurt A LOT; tear gas disperses through a very large area and makes EVERYONE hurt just enough to want to leave. With pepper spray, the cops would have to keep spraying and spraying until every single protester gets hit. Not very efficient.

Ultimately, I’m in favor of tear gas. When Purdue made it to the Rose Bowl, I attended the “riots” that night (which weren’t that serious, but were a public nuisance/hazard nonetheless).

Realistically, the cops had to break us up. They sprayed tear gas, and I walked peacefully back to my dorm after a few seconds of mild pain. It didn’t strike me as cruel or unusual at all.

My impression is that force should only be used to the extent that it promotes public safety. Since the protesters were not an imminent threat to public safety, there was no reason to use significant force at that time.

The rub is deciding what is inapprpriate about the T, P, or M of the given protest. People silently sitting on a sidewalk? Whatever. People sleeping in tents in a public square? Whatever. People blocking streets such that emergency vehicles can’t get through and waving torches and pitchforks? Now, there’s a problem.

Admittedly, those are pretty distinct situations. I don’t think anybody disagrees that law enforcement should be able to use pepper spray, given that it’s nearly non-lethal. All disagreements are about law enforcement’s standard for using it, and in MGL’s hypothetical above, there isn’t enough context provided to determine if the protest was being conducted in an inappropriate manner.

Same logic applies to Tahrir Square. Replace ‘pepper spray you’ with ‘shoot you’.

Does this change anyone’s opinion?

Seriously (I am playing devil’s advocate again) what would be a proportionate response, assuming that they had to remove the people eventually (which I think is a valid assumption)? 

First I think a discussion would have worked (and maybe with people who don’t appear as Violence is the only option storm troopers). Ticket them. Assign them community service. Or if it really gets out of hand maybe, maybe, maybe, arrest them. Walk up and say you are under arrest for “x”.

I’ll accept MGL’s implied premise, that if police give ample warning of the adverse action they intend to take in the face of non-compliance, then their eventual taking of that action (presuming, of course, continued non-compliance) is more justifiable. But it also matters what the action is.

Another way to look at MGL’s question would be to ask what actions would people find reasonable to take against non-compliant protesters, and what actions would be unreasonable.

Presumably nobody here would approve of starting to shoot protesters with live ammunition, even if they were duly warned in well advance, simply for passively occupying a space. Bill/13 suggested tear gas as a more appropriate (and effective) alternative to pepper spray. Would tasering be OK? Rubber bullets? Using physical force to move protesters? Sonic crowd control devices?

Even thinking in the abstract, individuals would differ over where they might draw a line (and indeed there may not be a linear ranking of methods that most people could agree on).

While proportionate response isn’t part of the constitution, it is part of most people’s sense of fairness, which may well matter more in public perception of justice of an action than whether the action is technically legal.

So I’d be much more comfortable with issuing some sort of summons (de facto for disobeying a police officer) than with pepper spraying. Or indeed simply trying to remove protesters physically, one at a time, having given due warning.

Ideally I’d know more about the level of disruption caused by the protest. Harsher methods are more justifiable if the protest is more disruptive or threatening to the population at large, and less justifiable if the protest is less so. Blocking access to, say, a subway station or bridge is a bigger deal than simply protesting in a park.

pepper spray comes from chili peppers, so i think technically it’s a fruit.

i would question how useful pepper spray is in actually clearing a crowd. it doesnt seem like it would be all that effective in dispersing a peaceful crowd that just refuses to leave. if the crowd became violent, however, and threatened the people tasked with clearing them out, then it may be the best option for subduing an individual, but that would all depend on the specific interaction and deemed appropriate on a case by case basis.

In a way, I like Geoff/18’s idea of handing out tickets, but there’s a big practical problem: you can’t write a ticket without first knowing a person’s name (i.e. you have to see their ID), and non-compliant protesters probably won’t give police the ability to write them tickets.

I don’t agree with Ken/14’s idea that “imminent threat to public safety” should be the standard for use of nonlethal force.

I think if the threat is not imminent, the police should take time to plan out a strategy to remove the protesters as safely as possible and to encourage the highest possible rates of compliance (so they don’t need to use force on very many people).

But if a law requires the protesters to leave the park, and the protesters basically say, “Make me!”, I believe the police are required to go in there and use some sort of force.

@Geoff/18

“Harsher methods are more justifiable if the protest is more disruptive or threatening to the population at large, and less justifiable if the protest is less so. Blocking access to, say, a subway station or bridge is a bigger deal than simply protesting in a park. “

While I believe that some forms of disruption might be so mild that they shouldn’t be illegal, I don’t think the police have any practical way of using different crowd control methods for different locations. A non-compliant crowd in the middle of nowhere is just as difficult to disperse as a non-compliant crowd near a subway station.

The only thing the police can tailor their methods to is the compliance level of the crowd. The police should start as mild as possible (e.g. with verbal warnings) and if they have to use additional force, they should escalate as gradually as possible and give protesters every possible chance to go home peacefully.

But if the police lawfully order a crowd to disperse, and some members of the crowd don’t comply, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the police should consider going back home and letting the protesters continue to create some small amount of public harm.

12/tango

-setting all politics aside best i can-

i really like your post.  the police really are in a no-win situation, and that has to be frustrating for them. they have a very complicated job to do, and i think they get no respect at all for doing it. the questionable actions of a few easily cast a shadow on the good work and friendly/peaceful interactions of thousands of other police across the country.

Typically, police action, in the absence of exigent circumstances, requires a warrant.  TPM restrictions also typically require due process. One crucial missing piece of information from your hypothetical involves this sentence: “Anyway, the authorities have decided that it is time to enforce the law.” Who are the authorities here? How did they decide? The process is not trivial. If the police are claiming a criminal trespass, are they executing a validly obtained arrest warrant? Or a warrant of eviction? How was the TPM restriction arrived at?

INS had this problem.  They were given two mandates:
1. process foreigners in this country
2. control foreigners in this country

So, they split them into two agencies:
1. CIS
2. ICE

ICE is border, security, enforcement, etc.  The immigration police basically.

CIS is more like the customer-service part, where they take fingerprints, process applications, etc.

The local police force is setup the way INS used to be setup, so that they sometimes get into a conflicting mandate: do you preserve the person’s right to assemble, or do you arrest the person for possibly exceeding his rights to assemble.  Presumably, things like permits are supposed to make it easier on the police, so that there’s a clear mandate from all concerned.

Suppose the protesters were on your property. What kind of force would you expect the police to use when you called to have the protesters removed?

The fact that the protesters are on public property doesn’t change a thing. It is still property. Someone (the mayor, the city council, the university administration, etc.) is in charge of how that property can be used, just like you are in charge of how your property can be used.

Dylan: I don’t think that is (entirely) true, that public property is subject to the rules imposed by the trustee of the public space, even if it contravenes the Constitution.

We all agree that the police would have the right to arrest you.  That is, seize you, handcuff you, put you in the back of a police car, take you to jail, and leave you there, pending a judge granting bail or release.

So why use pepper spray instead of arrest?  Only if normal arrest is not immediately possible.  It’s not possible if, for instance, you have a weapon and are threatening to shoot the cops.  If you have a hostage.  If you’re trying to get away.

In this case, normal arrest is not immediately possible ONLY because there aren’t enough cops.  That is, it has nothing to do with the actions of the perpetrator.  He’s saying, “arrest me if you must.” The cops are saying, “we can’t do that fast enough, because there are too many of you, so we want to pepper spray you instead.”

That would be fine if it were absolutely urgent to stop the protestors from doing something serious.  But all they’re doing is refusing to move.  To me, that’s not enough of a reason to use that kind of force.

Also, there are other things the cops can do.  Fence in the area, and not allow anyone in (but allow people to leave).  That would work, especially if you confiscate the food and/or bathrooms (which I assume you could get a judge to make legal).

So, my conclusion: the pepper spray threat is not legitimate and should not be allowed.  Arrest them one by one if you have to, unless and until the consequences of moving slowly become too serious.

7/
“I missed that one in the Constitution.  Where is it?”
Srsly? I know you’re not serious about that, right? Or is MGL just a pseudonym for Clarence Thomas and you’re arguing that the only laws allowable in this country are those explicitly articulated in the constitution?

I think Phil/17 has it exactly right: The police have the authority to do only one thing in this instance: arrest them one-by-one by carrying them into a police car. Tasering, shooting, pepper spray, etc. are allowed in very specific circumstances when the police are in danger, not as a way of making their life easier.

And though my brother-in-law is a cop, I have very little sympathy for the police in this situation. They were simply exhibiting their hatred for these poeople. You can say that this behavior comes out as a function of the modern-day militarization of the police, but that militarization of the police is the police’s fault.

I believe this is pretty relevant:

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6118/6373648765_ff14b78055_o.jpg

My hypo is based on the premise that a court deemed the assembly to be illegal and the people must be removed. Surely no one wants an assembly indefinitely on a Little League Field, on the runway of an airport, in the middle of the street, etc. (all of these examples run afoul of pretty obvious “place” problems, which is why the SC deemed that those restrictions are appropriate).

So in my hypo, we have already determined that the people must leave or be removed.  Ticketing doesn’t help!

If any reasonable person doesn’t think that the campus police at UC Davis would not have gotten as much or more flack for tear gas, then, well, you are not a reasonable person!

Phil says to get more manpower and arrest them one by one.  For one thing, Phil, you are assuming that the harm from pepper spray (I have no idea what that is - I assume, like tear gas, your eyes burn and maybe your throat) is worse than the harm from being arrested?  That is a pretty big assumption.  Using the pepper spray spares these people from being arrested.  You ever been arrested.  At the least, you have to go down to the station, possibly be put in a holding cell for hours, possibly strip searched. Not to mention then fighting that arrest or paying a hefty fine.  So, you’d rather all that than be pepper sprayed?  Maybe so, but I doubt that everyone shares your view.

And what about the harm or potential harm from having to physically remove each person when you arrest them?  You don’t think people will resist and possibly get hurt or hurt the police?  And you don’t think that it could possibly cause a melee or riot?  I don’t think, Phil, that you have through this through very well…

Pepper-spray in 2011 is water-hosing in 1961.

mgl, these people are expecting to get arrested and practice not resisting. They’re so worried about giving officers a reason to beat them that they actually learn techniques to get arrested peacefully. And they have repeatedly helped isolate and detain the few people who do attack the police. Why don’t they get to decide they’d rather be arrested than attacked?  Isn’t that the bedrock of having police instead of vigilantes?

No, the police should arrest them for doing something illegal. It’s not the job of the police to decide punishment.

MGL/30: Funny coincidence ... I’m reading the latest book by Leo Katz that argues why it’s unacceptable to torture convicted criminals, *even if they agree to it to avoid a prison sentence*.  I bet he’d think the same thing about “pepper spray is better than being arrested.” I think I agree with him, but I’m still digesting his argument.

BTW, if the arrests start a riot, then pepper spray is fine to put down the riot.  I’m just arguing that “follow the law or get pepper sprayed instead of arrested” is the illegtimate use.

mettle/29

a cute sign, but the “they” referenced in the sign refers to two entirely different groups of people.

and fwiw, they sign can easily be taken as pretty accurate. many cities have enforced park rules just like they enforced banking regulations...they stood by for a while and only acted once things started to get too messy and lose control.

I like the idea of a temporary fence. When the activists have to leave, they can’t be replaced. The protest ends by attrition, and no physical confrontation from authorities is necessary.

This is probably relevant: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/23/MNH11M2VU0.DTL

“More than a decade before last week’s videotaped incident at UC Davis, a federal appeals court ruled in the case of North Coast logging protesters that officers can legally use the caustic chemical only to prevent harm to themselves or someone else.

The California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which advises police agencies and officers statewide, says pepper spray ‘can have very serious and debilitating consequences,’ and ‘should only be generally used as a defensive weapon’ and never to intimidate or retaliate.”

It seems like the cops’ actions in MGL’s hypothetical go against court guidance (in California, at least). They can’t pepper spray protesters in lieu of arresting them because it’s inconvenient for them. It’s on them to figure out how to do it without hurting anyone.

35/
“They” could be replaced with “we” as in “We, as a society,”.

The laziness of police officers is really what a lot of this comes down to. Pepper Spray, tazers, rubber bullets - these are supposed to be bullet substitutes. That is, they are supposed to be making the target (there are specific targets with these, as opposed to tear gas) less likely to die/be seriously injured. Police instead use them to minimize their own chances of being injured. To me (and others), that is simply not a valid use, it’s one that speaks to poor training and an aversion to personal danger not appropriate to a police officer.

Pepper spray for the police is not the same thing as pepper spray in the hands of a private citizen for personal protection.

39/

those are some sweeping statements about police. a few choice (and highly publicized) instances does not mean that all cops behave that way. i think this prevailing viewpoint furthers the lack of respect between the protesters and police and makes the problem worse. (and it goes both ways..i think the police lose respect for protesters too)

unfortunately, friendly interactions between protesters and police does not qualify as news in 2011.
---
that being said, i don’t think police should ever bring out the pepper spray or any weapon short of full on rioting. but then again, i don’t think that peaceful protesters protesting wall street shenanigans should object to reasonable requests to move either.

40/
Yes, perhaps only a few of these examples of police brutality are related to OWS, but there are dozens upon dozens of examples of inappropriate use of tazers and pepper spray dating back years. Glen Greenwald’s blog has a particular egregious video of police applying pepper spray to the eyelids of environmental protesters with q-tips from not too long ago. The Occupy Oakland protests are partly fueled by recent unresolved shootings and tazings of unarmed people.

This is *not* a few bad apples. This is an US-wide institutionalized militarization of our police force.
Black uniforms, truncheons, riot shields, black visored helmets, regular use of tazers and pepper-spray: This isn’t your fathers police force anymore and this is a really really big problem, that needs to be fixed.

The lesson I have learned from all of this is that you should not protest if it inconveniences anyone. When people get tired of your protest, you should be polite enough to go home when directed knowing that your point has been made.

It’s interesting that we have come to expect that all protests should occur during business hours or at scheduled times approved by the authorities.

I think history shows that the police will do what they are instructed and will use maximum force if allowed.

As I said, I was playing devils advocate and truly wanted to read the comments of lots of smart folks on this blog. And unlike the other thread there is not this huge emotional/cultural bias that hinders people in thinking rationally.

I am coming around to the idea that the police can arrest these folks even if it may be difficult or inconvenient, but they have no right to exert any force, including pepper spray, in lieu of arrest, in order to disperse them, unless there is some danger they are attempting to prevent.

And Mettle while I somewhat agree with your characterization of police in general, it is an example of how bad it is to use a broad brush to paint a small area.  And do you really think that the police have become like this?  If anything I think they are much better than they were 40 years ago. Have you ever seen videos of police confrontations with minorities and war protesters from the 50s, 60s and 70s?

I wonder how likely it is, in the case of a large protest, that the police would actually be able to arrest people one by one without a bunch of them getting violent.

In the case of the logging protesters, IIRC, there were only a handful of people who clearly ended up being peaceful, and the police could’ve avoided the pepper spray entirely if they’d just gotten a pair of bolt cutters to cut off the protesters’ chains/handcuffs. So obviously, it’s possible for at least some number of protesters to get arrested peacefully. But with a much larger crowd, the likelihood of violence is much higher.

I certainly agree with Phil/34’s position that the right thing to do is start arresting and then, if it gets violent, use crowd control methods.

But I wonder what the odds are of the police arresting a crowd of 100 people one by one without igniting a riot? And if it does spark a riot, and the police then use appropriate methods to break up the riot, does it make any difference in terms of PR?

In order to arrest them (and get them to disperse) you still have to physically remove them, so ultimately it does come down to how best to physically remove them.  I’m certainly not opposed to negotiation, compromise, etc. in order to try and avoid any physical confrontation, but in the end, if they won’t leave and you are compelled to see the leave, some kind of force is going to be necessary.  I was under the impression that pepper spray is a mild form of force, say, as opposed to tear gas, but I could be wrong about that.

And I should not have said that this is not an emotional issue therefore it can be discussed rationally. To some people, they hear the words “peaceful protest” and “arrest” or “remove” or “pepper spray” and right away they yell or think, “police brutality,” when that is not necessarily the case, especially in the case of arrest which may entail some physical force if any of the protesters fail to cooperate which is often the case…

There are 5 faulty premises that I see in MGL’s hypothetical and followup posts:

1)That pepper spray isn’t particularly harmful.

It’s important to consider solution strength & distance, and duration of spraying when determining harm. There are different solution strengths of pepper spray:

http://www.defense-technology.com/pdfs/specs/MK-9_Aerosol%20Projector%20Rev%2012_10.pdf

The spray used by police in the UC Davis protest is the .7% solution from that link (which indicates that it should not be sprayed closer than a 6ft distance).

Here is a summation from Scientific American of the adverse health effects (which include death in the case of those with asthma) of pepper spray:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/11/21/about-pepper-spray/

2)That there aren’t degrees of force to attain compliance between asking people to leave and pepper spraying them (or even between physical trying to remove them and pepper spraying them). eg, Rudimentary knowledge of Bralizian Jiu Jitsu like that used by bouncers to get potential drunk people out of their bar.

3)That arresting (currently) peaceful protesters individually is more likely to incite them then pepper spraying them en masse.

4)That people engaging in civil disobedience prefer being pepper sprayed to being arrested. Arrest is not just a universally known consequence of civil disobedience, it’s very often the point. I think a negligible number of these protesters would see it your way (though I’ve been arrested, and you are certainly right that it sucks pretty bad). Not to mention the fact that police such as those at UC Davis were surely intending to use the pepper spray to disentangle the arm-locked protesters AND THEN ARREST THEM (I think they did take some into custody, right? The only reason they weren’t able to disperse or arrest the others is because they got freaked out when the students unified and walked them back).

5)That there is some form of resistance that is non-violent but requires pepper spray to gain compliance. Can you give an example where this might be the case? The UC Davis students were seated in the universal pose of non-violent resistance with their arms locked. The ladies in NYC were penned in by the orange NYPD mesh. What are you imagining non-violent protesters doing that would require any serious force to remove or disperse them? IOW, what are they doing that you couldn’t just get a couple of cops to grab them one by one and remove or arrest them?

6)That the manual removal or arrest of individual protesters is mutually exclusive with using pepper spray. As Phil pointed out, the pepper spray (and worse) are means that are available if a protester responds to his physical removal with force directed at an officer.

Thanks for the provocative initial post and enlightening comments by all.

MGL-

“And Mettle while I somewhat agree with your characterization of police in general, it is an example of how bad it is to use a broad brush to paint a small area.”

In what sense is Mettle’s post broad brush painting a small area? He doesn’t say all cops are evil. He says that the militarization of the police force is a much wider issue than just that which we see in a few examples at Occupy protests. And he says that there are many more instances of inappropriate use of pepper spray, tasers, etc than what we’ve seen just at Occupy. These are patently correct (and even, IMO, conservative) assertions that easily verifiable. The former is the focus of reports in the NYTimes, WashPo, Reason, Slate, Salon and innumerable other journals and sites. Radley Balko has reports of the latter literally daily, as do Copblock and a number of other sites. A quick check of police brutality on youtube give you thousands of examples that overwhelmingly support his statement.

And even if it were hyperbole, what would make this an example of how bad it is to paint with a broad brush- as opposed to just an example of painting with a broad brush?

“And do you really think that the police have become like this?  If anything I think they are much better than they were 40 years ago. Have you ever seen videos of police confrontations with minorities and war protesters from the 50s, 60s and 70s?”

I don’t think Mettle was at all saying that police of yesteryear didn’t feature brutality. He was saying that the level of brutality is compounded by the fact that the government has heavily militarized/weaponized police forces in the wake of the war on drugs and the war on terror. This is indeed a fact that indeed differentiates todays’ police from even the rioting police in Chicago ‘68.

#26 Tango

Are you saying that local authorities can’t regulate behavior on public property if that behavior involves speech? What if they were protesting in the middle of a courthouse during a trial?

The right to free speech does not mean that the government is forced to provide everyone with the means of communicating their ideas to a wide audience (in this case land to shout on or to hold signs on).

Holy crap, how we many warnings do people need?

We’ve become a nation of warners (especially parents), and as a result we’ve become a nation of ignoring warnings. Sometimes people don’t even act when the subsequent warning has now become an action right in front of them. They seem stunned that someone actually did what they warned they would do. Whuh, whuh, whoa.

Anyway, to the OP. Yes, it is fine. It is probably safer than trying to move them physically or handcuff people and arrest them.

As for the protesters, kind of the whole point of the protest is to express dissent publicly, so I expect them not to move until forced. If it’s worth it to them to protest long enough to require being physically moved, then it’s probably worth it to continue the protest and force the hand of those threatening to move. To just disperse when threatened with action, makes the protest seem a little non-protesty.

Do protests still influence change?

Dylan/48: I’m saying local authorities can’t supercede the Constitution.

As for the “forced to provide”: who said anything about the govt providing anything.  It’s a question of when is the government allowed to intervene.

Also, you are trying to treat an open space or park as the same as an enclosed court room, because both are owned by the public… as presumably is the white house.  As long as the public has access to assemble in a large enough and public enough area, the public is happy to be prevented from accessing more specific areas of land they own by a government they elected.  Their government does not mean that it’s a regime that can exceed its authority.

What are we even talking about at this point?  Putin’s Russia?

”...the public has access to assemble in a large enough and public enough area...”

Who is to provide this area? Who is to maintain it?

CC/49

“Do protests still influence change?”

Well, they get people’s attention and get people in the news talking about whatever they’re protesting, so in that sense, a protest is at least as valuable as a television ad.

Protests influence public opinion at least a little bit, and public opinion influences the actions of politicians at least a little bit.

But if you’re asking whether the “Occupy Wall Street” protests will lead to landmark legislation comparable to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I’d have to say no.

@47/MGL

I think police equipment and attitudes have changed drastically as a result of the changed attitudes toward police, not so much the War on Drugs.

Strangely, my buddies that are officers in suburban areas are lesser equipped and less active in the WoD than are the guys I know that work in low-income areas, despite working in an area that likely spends more money on drugs. Hmmm.

I think it’s a combination of the defiant (read: Gang)influence on society and the “sue everyone” nature of society. Not only are people not afraid of cops anymore, they don’t respect them. They don’t hold anything back when yelling at cops ... and they know if the cop over-reacts, then it’s the cops ass. I think in the past, the same behavior would have resulted in the suspect “learning some respect” via a beating.

I’m guessing that if you talked to “old school” cops, they could tell you story after story of things they did to suspects that were commonplace, but would get them suspended or fired today. They didn’t use tasers, because they didn’t have tasers.

My preference for this situation is arrest. Arrest probably ewasn’t the resulting option because of resource allocation (it would cost too much) and the chance that it could escalate as the officers were physically putting people in handcuffs. The idea is that the spray would probably end the protest and wouldn’t cost a whole lot.

"They don’t hold anything back when yelling at cops ... and they know if the cop over-reacts, then it’s the cops ass.”

That certainly would be a different situation than I see. Time after time, police testimony in abuse/excessive force cases is shown to be complete lies, even when faced with contradictory video evidence (which doesn’t often exist, typically leaving the original stories as “evidence"). Cops beat people in custody, they abuse them during arrest, they arrest without cause and hold for the magical 48 hour period, they falsely identify themselves or remain anonymous illegally, etc. Only when faced with overwhelming evidence against them and public outcry and generally politicians out for something are law enforcement officers ever called to real account. It’s generally leave with pay until news coverage stops, and then back to active duty with a slap on the wrist.

It’s still very old school, except that the cops now tend to only move in force when they are in a vastly powerful position, hence my characterization of “lazy” upthread. One cop never risks making an arrest, it’s always 3 or more. Why police a crowd with 5 officers, when 25 let you fence them in and escalate the situation?

Police go on foot patrol with multiple weapons and bulletproof vests, or out with armoured cars with with tinted windows and built-in battering rams, and then pretend to be surprised when people treat them as adversaries.

"Police go on foot patrol with multiple weapons and bulletproof vests, or out with armoured cars with with tinted windows and built-in battering rams, and then pretend to be surprised when people treat them as adversaries.”

first off, i have never seen any of these things from police in my life.  either you live in a far more dangerous place than i do, or this is something which is specialized and only occurs during potential riotous situations.

i am continuously amazed at how people routinely disrespect police and their work. how many people out there have made derogatory comments directed at police officers?  laughed at police stereotypes or depictions on tv and movies? been angry at police for merely doing their job? i know people who have honestly gotten angry at police for pulling them over when they were admittedly speeding/running lights/etc. this baffles me.

do not get me wrong, i have zero tolerance for police brutality or anything close to use of excessive force. but at the same time, people do not make their jobs easy. even a small increase in the respect for the officers would go a long way in easing the tension on both sides.

and fwiw, the word “militarization” i hear so often about police could easily be reworded as “modernization” in most cases. the shields and helmets are clearly for safety, and pepper spray and tazers *can* be useful tools for the officer. a rogue cop pepper spraying an innocent person does not mean that pepper spray is bad. it means the cop was bad. i dont think that equipment and policy should be confused. its like the old argument, “guns don’t kill people...”

I work with the police daily. I think police work sucks. I mean how many times can you respond to a domestic violence call at the same house in one week? Nothing brings back that loving feeling like a restraining order. Seriously.

Everyone wants law and order. Everyone wants the police to do their job .... just not when it involves us, then we want a break. When they “get” us, our first question is why they are screwing with us, when there’s drug dealers running the streets and unsolved murders out there. Never mind we were going 19mph over the speed limit and texting while driving.

They have to make highly scrutinized decisions, sometimes with very little information, and we expect a near perfect degree of accuracy.

Basically, I think police spend FAR too much time with our citizens that don’t work and stay up all night.

I’m surprised by how limited the police are in what they can in some aspects.

Sounds like aweb is describing the SWAT team or a Special Ops unit. You don’t see any cops looking like that in the suburbs.

Circle/56:
“I’m surprised by how limited the police are in what they can in some aspects.Sounds like aweb is describing the SWAT team or a Special Ops unit. You don’t see any cops looking like that in the suburbs.”

and dutchbrowncoat/55:
“and fwiw, the word “militarization” i hear so often about police could easily be reworded as “modernization” in most cases. the shields and helmets are clearly for safety, and pepper spray and tazers *can* be useful tools for the officer.”

“first off, i have never seen any of these things from police in my life.  either you live in a far more dangerous place than i do, or this is something which is specialized and only occurs during potential riotous situations.”

Here, now you can say you’ve seen these things:
http://www.theagitator.com/2010/05/05/video-of-swat-raid-on-missouri-family/

Here’s a map of paramilitary police raids:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

I understand that you guys might know a small handful of cops and that the fact that you aren’t witnessing paramilitary raids or police brutality in the suburbs (of course the grossest incidences are in cities with larger budgets & larger police forces). But it is extremely frustrating to hear you minimize the problem and outright assert that it doesn’t exist except in isolated instances and “potentially riotous situations” based on no evidence except your personal experience. Especially when it is so damn easy to just google these things to find the counter evidence for your view of the world.

Thanks for the links Wexler. Please also read “The New Jim Crow,” which touches on the militarization of law enforcement.

@ wexler

thanks for the links. the video was disgraceful, and is a clear example of excessive force, something i cant stand.

before things get even more chippy here, i just want to point out that i think that 99% of the differences here are based in the language.  when i (and i believe circlechange) was discussing cops, i/we are discussing the classic suburban and city officer, the type that most people will encounter regularly in their day to day lives. and really, you will not see this level of militarization or violence from these sorts. hence the comments i made which you quoted. and i think that both circlechange and my comments regarding these officers still apply.

we are both aware of the existence of swat teams, please do not insult our intelligence. and while i still dont think i am against their existence, i am 100% against the level of force used in examples like your video. i can see the usefulness of that type of officer, and i would wager that we would be in full agreement on how frequently and for what type of incidents these officers are employed. i can understand being a little over prepared, but the incident in the video clearly crosses the line.

60/browncoat

I don’t know what numbers would actually constitute “most” and “regularly” but I think your priors of what police were like from 15 years ago are impacting your present observations. Officer friendly has been replaced with a far more menacing version. Not necessarily all with truncheons, but certainly over-armed for a cop on the beat in the ‘burbs.

As for “modernization”, it’s pretty clear from the all-black uniforms, the hidden faces, and so on that “shock and awe” is part of the new wave of police methods which has nothing to do with modernization.
In terms of the overarming - bullett-proof vests, a huge array of weapons at their disposal, shields, masks etc - I’m not sure that there was a modern crisis or problem calling out for this solution. 

Perhaps I am uninformed here, but I don’t recall drastic increases in policemen getting hurt over the past 10 years. If anything, violent crime has consistently been decreasing for about 2 decades. So, this overarming seems hardly justified - I don’t see how there’s anything modern about it.

It’s truly sad. The police-civilian dynamic is broken and it’s getting more broken each year. I truly don’t know what it is, but a few candidate explanations:
- military supply companies trying to make $$ & playing on police fears
- the patriot act and the DHS
- the privatization of many law-enforcement functions
- the war on drugs
- human nature and the stuff discussed in bowling for columbine
- the internet and smart phones (i mean, people blame those for everything else, so why not?)

All I do know is that it is *not* due to an increase in violent crimes over the past 10 years. If anyone has any insight, I’d love to hear it.

61/mettle

I don’t know. I live in Iowa, and looking at the map linked in 58, I see 3 incidents since 2006 tagged on the map in my whole state.

By comparison, in just the city of Ames, which I consider a low-crime area and which has a population around 50 thousand, we’ve had 3 murders in the same time period.

I’ve had patrol cops wave at me as they drove by (THIS YEAR, not 15 years ago), and the friendliest guy I work with (he’s such an extremely happy/nice guy it’s almost a joke) happens to be an ex-cop. So, although I’m sure different officers have a variety of different personalities, “officer friendly” is not a thing of the past.

And when the cops served a search warrant on my cousins to investigate an incident of school vandalism (just a year or two ago), I didn’t hear anything about SWAT teams or police brutality.

I recognize that every year, there are dozens of terrible incidents somewhere in the United States.

But you’re overreaching when you say that those incidents represent the true nature of all cops.

You’re also overreaching when you say that it’s a recent and growing trend. While people are fond of saying that everything is a “growing trend”, police violence has always existed to some extent and, unfortunately, probably always will exist to some extent.

And you’re REALLY overreaching (to an extreme degree) when you say that the color of a cop’s uniform, or the clear shield covering a cop’s face when he wears a helmet, are CLEARLY designed for the sole purpose of psychological warfare.

While most of what you’ve said seems like a mild overstatement of a real problem, your comments about black uniforms just sound silly to me.

Joining the conversation late.  I’m very surprised that #18/Geoff’s comment didn’t resonate a little more here.  He pretty accurately describes how I tend to think of the situation.  There’s a range of “compliance techniques” that can be used, ranging from simple hands-on handcuffing to the use of lethal weapons.  Everyone will have a somewhat different opinion of when various techniques are appropriate.

Even if the use of pepper spray were *explicitly* legal (there seems to be some indication that its use probably wasn’t legal in CA under the circumstances), that would do little to prevent outrage.  Just because the police were simply “doing their job” doesn’t mean they can’t and shouldn’t be held to the standard of “doing their job *well.*” We expect other public employees, particularly those in positions of power, to perform well, not simply legally.  We rightly hold police to similarly high standards.

Btw, the Simpson’s addressed the penultimate paragraph of MGL’s scenario here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPICwNe5UGc

62/
It’s all out there:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=increase+in+police+brutality
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=police+shock+and+awe
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=police+black+uniforms

The first link in the first search, USA Today, I would hardly call a liberal rag. It continues in that vein for hundreds of thousands of links.

Among the many stats: “Between 1995 and 1997 the Department of Defense gave police departments 1.2 million pieces of military hardware, including 73 grenade launchers and 112 armored personnel carriers. The Los Angeles Police Department has acquired 600 Army surplus M-16s,”

With respect to uniforms:
http://www.policeone.com/police-products/apparel/undergear/articles/99417-The-psychological-influence-of-the-police-uniform/

There’s also this, from FOX NEWS:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352471,00.html
“Massachusetts Police Get Black Uniforms to Instill Sense of ‘Fear’”

I don’t think it gets any more explicit than that.

I think that gets at every point where you said I overreached.
I’ll let the statistics and investigative articles speak for themselves and you can compare that to your personal anecdotal evidence of your pal at work.

Hi mettle.  Look me up!

Hey Confirmation Bias,
You bring any data with your pith or have you not yet learned about the wikipedia?

"By the early 1980s there were 3,000 annual SWAT deployments, by 1996 there were 30,000, and by 2001 there were 40,000”
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/13673446

Those numbers are pretty striking to me.

62/Bill:

“I don’t know. I live in Iowa, and looking at the map linked in 58, I see 3 incidents since 2006 tagged on the map in my whole state.”

No, the map just shows the “botched” incidents- ie, where cops got the address wrong, killed an innocent person, etc. There are thousands more paramilitary raids not represented here, though I guess it’s some kind of comfort that the police were able to apprehend weed dealers in these raids without killing them or their pets.

“I’ve had patrol cops wave at me as they drove by (THIS YEAR, not 15 years ago), and the friendliest guy I work with (he’s such an extremely happy/nice guy it’s almost a joke) happens to be an ex-cop. So, although I’m sure different officers have a variety of different personalities, “officer friendly” is not a thing of the past.

And when the cops served a search warrant on my cousins to investigate an incident of school vandalism (just a year or two ago), I didn’t hear anything about SWAT teams or police brutality.”

Sure, Iowa has is not the locus of militarized police forces. But, why is this anecdata even relevant? What bearing does your personal experience have on the data? No doubt there are friendly cops among the millions. And no doubt most of them are not part of SWAT teams. But exponentially more cops are part of paramilitary units than a few decades ago, and their mandate has widened from existential threats to weed dealers, doctors who prescribe pain medications liberally, and their ailing patients.

BTW, every time someone mentions Ames, Iowa, I think of Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in The Hustler.

“I recognize that every year, there are dozens of terrible incidents somewhere in the United States.”

Would it change your opinion much if instead of dozens of cases of police misconduct (including brutality, false arrest, sexual abuse, etc) there were hundreds? What if there were thousands? How about… tens of thousands, every single year?

“But you’re overreaching when you say that those incidents represent the true nature of all cops.”

It’s possible that I and others have not clearly articulted our positions. It’s not that officers are worse people than they were decades ago, it’s that they’ve been given a much broader (and misguided) mandate, and that the militarization of police forces has lead to more deadly outcomes in encounters with criminals and innocents.

That said, the quote above is pretty clearly a straw man argument. Nobody has said ALL cops natures’ are represented by incidents of brutality, etc.

OTOH, I would submit that cops are on balance worse people than the average citizens. They have higher levels of aggression (don’t have links handy, but will look when I have time) and are more likely to abuse their authority. On balance, bad people become cops.

68/Wexler

I would argue that women who become cops are almost always better than the average person.

I believe men are sort of 50/50; some are overly aggressive and became cops for the sense of power or for the gun, while some are just nice guys who want to help people and grew up in families who saw police officers and firefighters as heroes.

Anyway, mettle used some pretty strong language to suggest that non-militarized police officers are a thing of the past and that Circle et al were deluding themselves, and I thought it was a stretch. The anecdotes just illustrated that in the sample of my life, the ratio of good to bad cops has been large.

When I look at the USA Today article mettle linked to, which says the number of cases in which police throughout the U.S. violated victims’ rights rose from 224 in 2001 to 281 in 2007, and when I think about the huge number of police officers that work in the U.S., I don’t see that much cause for alarm.

I don’t see an enormous epidemic, and I believe the best way to prevent these violations is to work on a local level and make sure YOUR police chief and YOUR city council take these issues seriously.

I don’t believe there’s anything we could ever do at a federal level that would bring the number of violations throughout the U.S. below maybe 100 a year. And I doubt that the frequency of police abuse has ever been all that much lower than it is today.

68/69

while i can see the case for police being more violent than other professions, i find the statement “bad people become cops” to be a huge leap.

all people, especially the bad ones, will have a tendency to overextend their power.  this is true of any position of prestige or influence, it will just manifest itself in different ways. the stanford prison experiment and similar psych studies come to mind. you can see examples of abuse of power in most news stories, whether it is the penn state scandal, rotten congressmen, or the banking/financial crisis.
---
and while i certainly won’t ignore them, i have to cast a skeptical eye on some of the figures. for example, are swat teams (comment 67) just doing the jobs that other specialized units (army, police under different names) used to do?  why use total numbers vs. rate numbers when populations and crime rates have varied? 

or for that matter, how often the incidents which occur are documented and what the standards are for reporting.  the example of sexual harassment comes to mind.  in the 50’s, such behavior occurred but was not reported or weighted as heavily as it is today.  that does not mean it occurred less though, just because there were less reported incidents.

police violence is certainly an issue that could use more attention, i agree. similar to the sexual harassment example, awareness and understanding will go a long way in eliminating a problem. i am just a little skeptical on how severe some think the problem is. i have some friends who regularly cry out that we live in a police state, and i think that their legitimate concerns are ignored at large because of their extreme approach and views.

69/Bill, taking your points in reverse order:

“And I doubt that the frequency of police abuse has ever been all that much lower than it is today.”

Do you mean that the rate of police abuse cases per interaction with citizens has held steady? I don’t know whether this is true or not, and I’d be curious to evidence on the matter.

But if you mean that the number of police abuse cases has not risen, then you are incorrect. There are simply way more stops and arrests since the advent of the drug war, and therefore more cases of abuse. To believe there are less cases of police abuse, you’d have to believe that police have become 10 times (or whatever) more professional over the past few decades.

“I don’t believe there’s anything we could ever do at a federal level that would bring the number of violations throughout the U.S. below maybe 100 a year.”

I take your general point, but one thing we could do to instantly reduce the number of police abuse cases is end or attentuate the federal war on drugs. At the least, Obama could stop his troops from continuing armed raids on sick people, their doctors, and their suppliers who are in compliance with state law.

“When I look at the USA Today article mettle linked to, which says the number of cases in which police throughout the U.S. violated victims’ rights rose from 224 in 2001 to 281 in 2007, and when I think about the huge number of police officers that work in the U.S., I don’t see that much cause for alarm.”

The article is only referring to the infinitesimally small number of police misconduct cases in which the DOJ & federal prosecutors decide to get involved based on someone’s civil rights being violated (for which they have a very high standard). You can’t possibly believe there are only a couple hundred cases of police misconduct in the US each year? You can find more than that in short order just by going to youtube and searching for police brutality, tasering, pepper spray, etc. Try doing this and tell me you don’t think there’s something to be alarmed about.

There are, at the least, thousands of cases of police misconduct:

http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=2776

The stats at the top of the page show 4,000+ victims from the first half of 2010 alone. And that only includes the reported cases.

Here, now you can say you’ve seen these things:

I understand that you guys might know a small handful of cops and that the fact that you aren’t witnessing paramilitary raids or police brutality in the suburbs (of course the grossest incidences are in cities with larger budgets & larger police forces).

I already said ...

Sounds like aweb is describing the SWAT team or a Special Ops unit.

I am describing everyday patrol officers, not the SWAT team. We cannot use a special unit of law enforcement to represent the collective whole ... especially when they represent such a small percentage.

I fully realize that if I do not agree with another’s opinion, then it simply means that I do not have much knowledge or experience with the issue. That might be right, and it might not be. The men in my family have traditionally entered two professions: Military & Law Enforcement, generally in that order. My dad and I are kinda the two freaks that went to college, and beyond Masters Degrees.

---------------------------

Patrol offciers and SWAT units are different groups with different functions.

Doesn’t the publiuc almost expect these special units to look like the special units we see on TV? I recall reading a popular science magazine a decade ago illustrating that the new modern spec ops law enforcement officer would look like well, Snakeyes from the GI Joe movie.

We’re making it sound as if the police are evil for establishing this “appearance”, even though it’s composed of stronger, lighter, combat armor, etc.

These aren’t the guys pulling you over for a speeding ticket.

There are also exceptions, and a bad raid doesn’t condemn the whole group.

I agree that the demeanor of police officer’s have changed. My comment was that they’ve changed in response to the changing attitudes toward them.

I think you underestimate how the attitudes toward police officers have changed over the recent decades ... or perhaps the opinions and views have just spread to more groups, or have been more vocal.

My opinion is still that law enforcement coulda woulda done this type of thing previously in history and it woulda just been a “well, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about”.

What I am saying is the police have far less independence that they used to.

72/Circle-

All of that strikes me as pretty reasonable. I would note, however:

“I am describing everyday patrol officers, not the SWAT team. We cannot use a special unit of law enforcement to represent the collective whole ... especially when they represent such a small percentage.”

Since full-on SWAT teams (and lesser, but still nefarious units like the NYPD drug units that were planting drugs on innocent suspects) make up a much larger % of the police force than they used (and make up a MUCH larger % of police actions than 40 years ago), that should indeed make us shift our characterization of the whole.

And…

“My opinion is still that law enforcement coulda woulda done this type of thing previously in history and it woulda just been a “well, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about”.

What I am saying is the police have far less independence that they used to.”

I don’t know if the demeanor of police have changed because people’s attitudes towards them have become more brusque. I don’t know if the average patrolman is more or less likely to be abusive than in the past. And I don’t know if police on the whole have more or less independence. I’m happy to defer to your personal experience here and concede these points. And yet…

Whatever the historic levels of police misconduct, the levels today (by the whole, not just SWAT teams, and including not just patrolmen but police chiefs, department leaders, and sheriffs) are still grossly unjust and grossly deleterious. Police misconduct in several communities (mostly cities and mostly black neighborhoods) are one of THE MOST pressing problems to the citizens of the communities. Police criminality now rivals the criminality of the general public. In 2010, police committed MORE sexual assaults per 100,000 (~63) than the general public (~29). Fatalaties from excessive police force result in MORE deaths than murders. Rates of corruption, fraud, false arrests, and false reports are staggering. This is to say nothing of the more banal and quotidian threats and harassments made under color of law.

Re: police abuse historic vs current levels. In this video Radley Balko asserts that academic criminologists say that police departments have gotten “more professional, more accountable, and more transparent” than they were in the 1950’s and 60’s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVf-iintxio

The quote is at 3:44 of the video if you don’t want to sit through three minutes of watching police kill people and steal their stuff.

When I comment on regular foot patrol, I’m in a middle-sized Canadian city, and foot patrol officers have as standard issue, that I can see - bullet proof vest, firearm, tazer, billyclub, and pepper spray. This has stepped up over the past 10-15 years. They aren’t unfriendly (moreso than most people), but they are heavily armed - that’s four identifiable weapons that a complete layman like me can see in passing, plus the body armour.

The problem I see is, that once you give the police all of these weapons, they have less incentive to de-escalate situations to the point where they don’t need them. It’s gotten progressively easier for police to enter regular situations that were once defused through good police work, and just start throwing the power they have around. So rather than talk, skip to wrestle, hit, taze, spray, cuff, arrest. And since police forces have been getting bigger (faster than population in most areas), they often have power in numbers now too.

It’s a cycle of increasing disrespect that both sides (police and non-police) are stuck in, and I don’t expect anything short of “we’re broke, you can’t have the resources anymore” to stop the police side from upping the ante further. In many large cities, the police are now military-grade equipped in non-significant numbers (semi-automatic weapons, full body armour, riot gear, armoured vehicles, etc - these things were rare not that long ago). This force ends up getting used on whoever happens to be around. Sometimes it’s well-armed drug dealers (rarer then police like to admit, especially those that fight back against police - the weapons are for fighting each other for the most part), sometimes it’s people sitting on the ground in an inconvenient place, and by gum, you have a city by-law to enforce. I don’t know how to reverse the cycle, but I do know that more police power isn’t going to make people think better of them.

There’s a consistent pattern evolving in this discussion:

1) Wexler or I make some claim about the current state of the police in this country
2) Circle and Bill challenge it with anecdotal evidence and insist it is too strong
3) Wexler or I provide mountains of statistical evidence and reportage to support the claim
4) Circle or Bill say it still doesn’t seem right, especially given their personal experience and opinions.

I’m not sure we’re making much progress here, but hopefully those inclined to appropriately discount personal opinion absent evidence (i.e., most people here) are getting something from it.

I’m not looking at this dis issuing as me refuting anyone else or an arguement that I am out to win.

I’m simply voicing opinions in an exchange of information.

Police are required to wear bulletproof vests. The guy I work with hates his, but not wearing it gets him in trouble and in some situations could void his insurance.

I view things like tasers and pepper spray as being alternative or precursors to brandishing their firearm. Not necessarily giving them more weapons and/or making them less likely to defuse a situation through peaceful means, although that is possible.

I look at situations like Rosney King and wonder how many times that happened pre Civil Rights where the conclusion from society may have been, “Well he shouldn’t have been evading or trying to get off the pavement.”

I also look at past personalities and recall heavyweight champ Jack Johnson being arrested multiple times for transporting white women across state lines.

I’m not sure if the modern police appearance of more armored/armed creates the situation of them being more aggressive or if it’s just in response to citizens being more armed or more aggressive towards police? IMO, it’s a chicken egg situation.

In Chicago we had the police riots where they attacked unarmed folks with clubs and dogs. Had that happened today, there’d have been trial after trial.

I think the nature of crime and the response has escalated, and I’m not sure what caused what. I’m just saying that in the past “brutality” situations were not likely reported and treated as they are now.

Again, I’m not really trying to refute anything, but merely talking about observations as we try to discover items in the cause-effect sense.

Mettle,

I just re-read through the comments to make sure I wasn’t positing a bunch of unfounded opinions in the face of reliable data, and I did not see where I did.

I do see a whole lot of meshing between the groups of police and SWAT as if the local cop and a raid specialist are really the same position.

I also saw some sweeping and unfounded generalizations made about the personality of officers.

Even if police were among the more aggressive of citizens, that would seemingly be common sense. It’s an author arrive and dangerous position. It’s like saying something about firemen not having a balanced sense of fear.

I think we have unrealistic expectations of officers, from their appearance to their demeanor. I think I would probably make a horrible cop, but a good detective. My nature is to assume the best of everyone and things like that. As a cop I could easily envision myself getting shot by someone that I didn’t think would do it. My guess is that it doesn’t take many years on the job to loose that feeling, especially when you deal with the same crap over and over, like I do at my job.

The situations being described seem to have more to do with how special units are trained and the intelligence they’re fed rather than reflect the standard cop who answers domestic disputes, writes speeding tickets, etc.

Locally when there’s a drug bust of 5 persons or more it’s an outside agency involved where the local officers provide support or backup. I don’t really see much of the general cop being involved in raids or busts and things of that nature.

I think certain comments need to be directed at specific groups and not just law enforcement in general. From what I know of our local guys they pretty much want to handle situations without escalating them into something big. Admittingly, I don’t know anyone in a SWAT unit, but when I lived in KC I was friends with quite a few cops I worked at a gym). I still don’t know how they can see what they see on a daily basis and still view people as human beings.

As if on cue:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/police-militarization-use-of-force-swat-raids_b_1123848.html

Proving, once again, that the Insidethebook blog is two steps ahead of the national media.

The article lists interesting examples of situations gone bad. But, there’s absolutely no overall data to examine. There’s just general assumptions being made through statements that we as they reader are intended to take as facts.

This is where our standard of proof is far lower when we agree with something as opposed to when we don’t.

In fact, very little about the raid that was unusual. For the most part, it was carried out the same way drug warrants are served some 150 times per day in the United States. The battering ram, the execution of Whitworth’s dog, the fact that police weren’t aware Whitworth’s 7-year-old child was in the home before they riddled the place with bullets, the fact that they found only a small amount of pot, likely for personal use—all are common in drug raids. The only thing unusual was that the raid was recorded by police, then released to the public after an open records request by the Columbia Daily Tribune.

This bothers me. Data to support these claims would be fantastic. How often do the raid teams know if minors are present? What is the average yield of a drug raid? What is the average prison sentence for drug raid convictions?

The execution of dogs is understandable given the protective nature of dogs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a dog guy and have 3 of them ... but if someone breaks into my house, all 3 dogs are going to attack and/or diisrupt. You’re going to have to leave or kill them. Let’s not make it sound like the SWAT teams are shooting hamsters, turtles, kittens, pets, etc just to cause emotional harm. We have to be able to discuss this as adults, without just going for the emotional low hanging fruit.

They’re shooting dogs which can be a threat to safety or a distraction to a possible larger threat (person with a gun).

The article make it sounds like botched or low-yield raids are commonplace? Are they? The author doesn’t provide evidence to or for.

I guess I look at this differently than the author.He, himself, states that 150 raids occur daily, and then lists eleven instances where the author feels things went very poorly over a 5-6 year period.

So, out of basically 220,000 to 328,000 of these types of raids ... 11 have gone very wrong. That’s .003 to .005 %.

What % of error is worth the practice is a different discussion. I am only discussing how the author using the “facts” or “data’. He lists the “150 times per day’ as a means of overwhelming us with how often these quasi-militia cops are raiding our households only to come away with less than misdemeanor crimes.

But, he also throws out a number that leads to an incredible % for accuracy if these are the raids gone bad. Every aspect of government should be this awful.

You know what I mean.

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I recall a study a couple of decades ago when TV violence was really on the upswing that measured how many killed humans a person might see in two hours of viewing television.

Another study showed how little emotion observing a killed human brings out, but the emotion of seeing a dog get killed or kicked was very high.

So, in the end, the part that bothers me most is rather than talking about higher levels of certainty to protect our rights regarding search and seizure, I hear and see more comments about shooting the dogs than anything else ... even though we as owners will brag that our dogs will protect us at all costs. Again, it’s not like the police were raiding houses and dumping the water out of aquariums to kill pet fish or shooting hamsters. They were killing animals inside the house that would have a high probability of attacking the officers.

I’m not happy about it, but I also realize that without raids police aren’t likely to ever make any busts worth a toss. I also prefer this to pulling people over for anything and everything just so they can search the car looking for something bigger.

That said, the author’s comment about law enforcement viewing citizens the way a soldier would view his enemy is very interesting and I’d love to see some data/information on this rather than just a “looks like to me” situation.

It wasn’t that long ago that the image of police if overweight, drivearounds, that only guarded the donut shops and couldn’t catch you on foot if you hopped on one leg.

That the new image is one more “soldierish” should be a “good thing”. I don’t know that law enforcement is inherently a passive activity or that it always has to be done with a wink and a smile. Any job where someone shoots at you is not a “friendly profession”.

We are definitely going through a conversion period where the officers are moving from your friendly neighborhood police officer (were they ever that? Y’know the whistling cop walking around carry groceries, chuckling while breaking up a good ol husband wife argument, etc) to an all business law enforcer.

It still cracks me up a bit that reality is following TV. Quick: What does the police officer look like in 2025? That’s right, they look like they were straight out of a Halo video game. If they didn’t look like this in 2025, would we think they weren’t serious or not up to par?

Sorry I rambled a bit because I’m trying to get a lot of ideas down in very little time, but I am interested in some data that compares law enforcement mentality now versus 25 years ago, and not just an author’s perception of the situation.

http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-war-victim/

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/the_cost_of_americas_police_state/singleton/

Thank you for the links. Both stories are very disturbing.