Are Your Local Cops Becoming Far More Abusive?

This may be more for for­mer Law Enforcement Officers than oth­ers. Does it seem like Cops of today are abus­ing their author­i­ty much more than when you served? It’s okay to speak freely with­out fear of being brand­ed anti-cop. After all, those who wore uni­forms and braved the bul­lets have earned the right to speak with­out fear­ing being silenced with the anti-cop tarbrush.

♦How about telling a sus­pect, “you are under arrest; turn around, and place your hands behind your back, please”?

♦ What is the need to wres­tle every sus­pect to the ground with mul­ti­ple cops pil­ing on to effect a sim­ple arrest?

♦Is it nec­es­sary for police to esca­late every minor infrac­tion to agi­tate citizens

so they may have an excuse to use force?

More and more, we see police offi­cers betray­ing the sacred trust of the cit­i­zens who pay their salaries by abus­ing and even killing the peo­ple they are sworn to pro­tect. Every time there is an inci­dent where a cop is shot or even shot at, Mayors and police Brass, and Unions fall over them­selves to talk about the dan­gers police face. We get that; that’s what every cop signed up for.

What hap­pens to the cit­i­zen police abuse? Are the police out there serv­ing them­selves, or do they serve the pub­lic? When did cit­i­zens become ser­vants of cops they paid to pro­tect them? In case after case, we see cops abus­ing cit­i­zens. Police brass and their Unions respond with absolute dis­dain and con­tempt for the pub­lic. It’s as if they are Monarchs rul­ing by decree.

Of course, the job has dan­gers, so cops are trained to deal with those dan­gers when they arise. That’s why cops are giv­en the tools with which to pro­tect them­selves. Including the pow­er of life and death over citizens

That pow­er of life and death can be an intox­i­cat­ing drug that seems now to be influ­enc­ing many a police offi­cer’s behav­ior. Police Officers can­not con­tin­ue to abuse mem­bers of the pub­lic and then fab­ri­cate sto­ries, fur­ther putting the aggriev­ed cit­i­zen in fur­ther jeop­ardy. If an offi­cer can­not func­tion in their capac­i­ty, they should find alter­na­tive employment.

I served in Kingston, Jamaica, one of the world’s most vio­lent cities. I have been shot in the line of duty, and I have been shot mul­ti­ple times.

Yet it nev­er influ­enced me to be dis­re­spect­ful or abu­sive to cit­i­zens. Yes, using force to effect an arrest is some­times nec­es­sary, just not as often as these cops use it.

Video evi­dence high­lights the vio­lence and dis­re­spect police show and vis­it cit­i­zens. Even more fright­en­ing is the lengths they go to in fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence. This should scare every man, woman, and child in this Nation.

All too often, we read or hear of cas­es where Prosecutors are forced to drop charges against an accused because evi­dence sur­faced show­ing cops fab­ri­cat­ed charges. The ques­tion is, why are they not charged? Why are cops sub­ject to dif­fer­ent rules?

Fabricating evi­dence to gain a con­vic­tion is one of the most rep­re­hen­si­ble things a police offi­cer can do. It is an egre­gious breach of the sacred trust between police and cit­i­zen. An impor­tant creed of any law enforce­ment Agency must be that it is bet­ter for a guilty par­ty to go free than for the inno­cent to be convicted.

No stone should be left unturned in the quest to bring the guilty to jus­tice; despite that, the rights of the inno­cent must trump that desire. We are mere slaves to the law if our God-giv­en right to life and lib­er­ty can be snatched away on the whim and at the dis­cre­tion of a sin­gle cop with an agenda.

POLICE STATE

According to Jerome Herbert Skolnick, in deal­ing large­ly with dis­or­der­ly ele­ments of soci­ety, some peo­ple work­ing in law enforce­ment may grad­u­al­ly devel­op an atti­tude or sense of author­i­ty over soci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly under tra­di­tion­al reac­tion-based polic­ing mod­els; in some cas­es, the police believe that they are above the law.

Twelve states have adopt­ed “eaves­drop­ping” laws pro­hibit­ing peo­ple from video­tap­ing police actions with­out the offi­cers’ con­sent. And in California, police offi­cials have open­ly stat­ed that they will arrest peo­ple tak­ing pho­tographs with­out “appar­ent esthet­ic val­ue” if those peo­ple seem sus­pi­cious. Several courts have ruled these poli­cies uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. http://​www​.pbs​.org/​w​n​e​t​/​n​e​e​d​-​t​o​-​k​n​o​w​/​t​h​e​-​d​a​i​l​y​-​n​e​e​d​/​a​r​e​-​w​e​-​b​e​c​o​m​i​n​g​-​a​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​t​a​t​e​-​f​i​v​e​-​t​h​i​n​g​s​-​t​h​a​t​-​h​a​v​e​-​c​i​v​i​l​-​l​i​b​e​r​t​i​e​s​-​a​d​v​o​c​a​t​e​s​-​n​e​r​v​o​u​s​/​1​2​5​63/.

What cop will grant con­sent to mem­bers of the pub­lic to pho­to­graph them abus­ing some­one? Let’s agree that State Legislators who give such sweep­ing powers 

police are not all idiots. We must assume, then, that there are issues far deep­er and more sin­is­ter why they feel oblig­ed to pass these laws. 

In most cas­es, Police actions are total­ly san­i­tized. Even cre­den­tialed Journalists are barred from scenes of oper­a­tion. Some lack­eys who write what they want are allowed on-site. Demonstrations in America now have to be approved by .…. you guessed it, the Police. They decide where demon­stra­tors are allowed to con­gre­gate, usu­al­ly so far away from the tar­get of the demon­stra­tion that it ren­ders the protest null and void.

In some cas­es, Journalists have kept miles away from oper­a­tion sites under the guise that it’s for their pro­tec­tion. Generally, those oper­a­tions end with sus­pects killed after sus­tained fire­fights, and in a few cas­es, their bod­ies are burnt beyond recog­ni­tion. Every cit­i­zen who feels this is in their inter­est must ask them­self whether they or their loved ones are immune from a sim­i­lar fate.

Whose inter­est are the police serv­ing? Do cops still serve the inter­est of the cit­i­zens they swore to pro­tect? Or are offi­cers now tools of the cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal Oligarchs? Driving down any New York State Highway on a sum­mer day, you will most like­ly see a State Police Car lurk­ing in a medi­an or with lights flash­ing have some­one pulled over every two miles or so. Generally, they pull motorists over in places that put the motor­ing pub­lic at seri­ous risk. What did New York State do? The state passed addi­tion­al law requir­ing motorists to move into the next lane away from the cop. This places the bur­den of avoid­ing the cop on mem­bers of the trav­el­ing public. 

If guide­lines require them to pull over motorists in safe places, it isn’t obvi­ous from what I have seen. In the event of an acci­dent on a rainy day, you will prob­a­bly wait upward of an hour before a cop shows up. Where are all the cops on rainy days when the pub­lic like­ly needs assis­tance? The fact is that they are not there to serve the inter­est of the pub­lic, and they serve as tax col­lec­tors for the ever-mon­ey-hun­gry state.

This does not mean all police offi­cers are bad; besides friends, I also have fam­i­ly mem­bers who are police offi­cers. Most are caught up in a Tsunami they have lit­tle or no con­trol over. Many offi­cers who dare to speak out against abuse are side­lined or harassed out of their respec­tive departments.

Most of us who have worn a Police offi­cer’s uni­form will hon­est­ly attest to hav­ing had to speak to a col­league about their behav­ior, and some of us may have spo­ken to our­selves. This brutish brava­do being dis­played by police offi­cers is not an American phe­nom­e­non alone.

What both­ers me is America’s insis­tence on fideli­ty to Human Rights for small­er Countries. Most of these Nations have expo­nen­tial­ly few­er resources for sup­port and train­ing than their more pow­er­ful neigh­bor. While right here in America, Police act with impuni­ty dai­ly, as they are embold­ened to beat and kill cit­i­zens, large­ly with­out consequence.

Where is the out­rage from Amnesty International? Where is the out­rage from The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights or the United Nations Commission on Human Rights? Does the respon­si­bil­i­ty for Human Rights fall only to small, impov­er­ished coun­tries while large Western pow­ers and Israel are shield­ed and exempt from scrutiny?

I think not!