Debat POLICE IN YOUR NATION

adavila posted on Feb 27, 2008 at 10:15PM
I dont know why in the US people hate so much police they say that because they overuse their power by hitting the people they arrest but dont these people deserve it? I mean they are criminals they have hurt people but when a police officer hurts them society looks at the cop as a bad guy.

Over here in Mexico is a different story we dont hate them but we also dont show any respect for them. The bad thing is that some police officers overhere are afraid to use self defense because if they do than all the community where the criminal lived would try to kill that police.

I´m just saying that police officers need to use selfdefense and sometimes is not wrong to hit the criminal; what do you think?
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hampir setahun yang lalu DarkSarcasm said…
Self-defense is necessary.
Excessive force is debatable...
hampir setahun yang lalu DrDevience said…
What Dark Sarcasm said...
hampir setahun yang lalu knifewrench said…
From what I know, the police in Britain are rather good at restraining criminals without bashing their faces in.

The American police, on the other hand are very trigger-happy and resort to guns and tasers way too quickly
hampir setahun yang lalu dazl said…
Irish police (or Gardai) are also well trained in taking down criminals without using excessive force.

Regular Gardai do not carry firearms(exceptions include the dectective branch).

hampir setahun yang lalu amazondebs said…
the police deserve respect for what they do, but they will not achieve it by beating on 'punk' kids
hampir setahun yang lalu Ratdog said…
I actually agree with knifewrench for once, American police are way too eager to shoot somebody. But then again, British cops hate teenagers. I was in town with my friends when one of them fainted, she has a medical condition, and fell down an escalator. The police saw her faint and fall yet when they came over to us, they kicked us out of the shopping centre saying we were being disorderly! They didn't even bother to check if my friend was alright.
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hampir setahun yang lalu amazondebs said…
coppers hate teens due to chav culture
which on their behalf i sort of understand but that was still bang out of order
hampir setahun yang lalu dazl said…
Meeee, hun, my dad's a garda. They're not allowed to take on students for work experience.
hampir setahun yang lalu harold said…
The difficulty is a bit of a self-supporting prophecy/feedback loop here in the US (at least, as far as I've seen). Police are human, of course, so such things will happen.

To elaborate: police officers - that is, regular cops, not senior officers - often don't get a huge amount of pay, much like teachers, though it varies from city to city. This results in a number of issues.

When cops aren't paid well, only two types of people become cops: idealists, and folks who covet some other perq of the job (such as the license to use deadly force). So you end up with a police force with a certain number of psychos (I've known several cops and guys who wanted to be cops in my life, and a typical quote from one who wanted to be a cop was "Just imagine what it would be like to blow somebody away with a shotgun!").

When cops aren't paid well, there is undue pressure to focus on law enforcement that draws in revenue, usually traffic tickets. This leads to a public perception that cops are punishing "regular folks" and not serious offenders. In addition to resentment on the part of the public, it also generates a fear of police in the minds of citizenry ("That cop is looking at me - what did I do wrong? How much is this gonna cost me?").

When cops aren't paid well, the temptation to abuse their power for personal gain becomes stronger. It may not be acted upon in illegal ways (though it is, sometimes), but it plays out in other, legal means, such as ever-expanding budgets for fancier, faster cars, larger arsenals, bigger gymnasia and shooting ranges, et cetera. This further alienates the taxpayers, who feel that they're getting little for their dollars other than more speed traps.

All of this resentment feeds back onto police, who become more and more closely knit in an "us-vs.-them" mentality. As a cop, you automatically support other cops, and anyone who doesn't support cops is suspect. This can play out in a range of ways, from small things like giving less police support for a rally of people protesting law enforcement brutality to major things like changing witness testimony when that testimony put a peace officer in a bad light. It also leads to increased police brutality, for as police feel more and more beleaguered, they feel that they have to respond to threats with greater and greater force. Eventually, this results in police shooting children with toy guns or people with language barriers unable to understand a traffic cop's directions.

In some poorer communities, the police and the rest of the community are so at odds with one another that it is effectively a war zone, with the police arrayed on one side and everyone else on the other.

Those are extreme situations, and certainly not all communities' police forces are this way, and not even all officers on a given force are this way. But enough of them are that these attitudes permeate most police forces throughout the country. Depending on where you live and/or were raised, you know personal examples of some or all of these scenarios I've described.

I should point out that the predilection to excessive force is aggravated by our news media, which focuses on spreading fear as much as possible. Fear sells; people will watch scary news when they would tune out or skim over good news. This affects everyone, and that includes police. If a person - even a peace officer - is scared, they're much more likely to react to a stressful situation with violence.

This makes me want to actually start a debate on the topic, something like: "Should police officers routinely carry firearms?" What do you think?
hampir setahun yang lalu sissy92dk said…
Here in Italy things are much different: cops aren't allowed to hit or shoot a criminal even if he's running away or he has a gun. The weird thing is that sometimes on TV you can hear about cops or normal citizens who reacted during a robbery or tried to stop people during a riot using weapons who are judged as criminals themselves. In my opinion this isn't fair, because it's ridiculous to think that you have to wait for the criminal to shoot and try to kill you before you can react. Selfdefence is often judged in a too critical way in Italy. But what if you were in that situation, risking your life and facing an armed criminal, scared that he could kill you in any moment would you be cold and calm enough to make a sensible decision? I'm not saying that police are allowed then to hit people or kill criminals without a actual reason but I think that we should find a compromise between selfsecurity and respect for every human being, criminal or not.