Hey VirginiaJoe,
I think it’s a fairly simple issue:
1. Educate the law-enforcement officers on what is and is not an overstepping of their authority. I have to expect that a great many of these incidents are due to A.) the police officers being ignorant of what they are and are not allowed to do and B.) they allow emotion to get the better of them.
(When the latter happens, they immediately drop from being a professional law-enforcement officer to a bully with a badge.)
2. Have a zero-tolerance policy for police officers who commit crimes. Immediate termination and criminal charges pressed against officers who use excessive force against suspects, especially when they’re already subdued.
Do you believe that the majority of the illegal actions by policemen are in the inner city, where crime is heavy?
What I believe is irrelevant and I haven’t seen any studies one way or another. However, I’ve seen several videos of these incidents—not many because they’re very hard to watch—and it seems that there’s very little pattern.
In some cases, it’s a traffic stop on an open high-way captured on the in-car video camera that shows a policeman using illegal force….in another case, it’s a policeman who’s angry and emotional because he sees someone filming him in a questionable act and uses his authority as a way of destroying that evidence. In another case, a police officer actually walked onto a citizen’s property to accost him for filming police activity across the street. In the case I cited above (Nick Christie), the illegal assault by police officers took place in the police station.
I’m sure someone more educated than I has more data that would allow them to spot a pattern. But, from what I can tell, stupid, irresponsible cops are just as likely to live in a rural county as they are in a large city.
I would imagine that being a policeman in large cities would be a very difficult occupation.
I agree wholeheartedly. And my hat is off to those who are doing it correctly and doing a good job of it.
I also have to believe that more policemen are murdered doing their job, than citizens are killed by cops, when the citizen is doing nothing to provoke it.
I think that’s obviously a very safe bet. The average person doesn’t even come into personal contact with a police-officer in the course of their day-to-day life.
But that reality doesn’t change the fact that—when unprofessional law-enforcement officers can commit crimes and brutality and hide behind their badge—then something has to be done about it.
Tony
