Police are not on your side, don't ask them for help

[TheHammer]

Once Google Glass becomes prevalent and you can record and upload things to your Google Cloud storage in real time, shit like this can be sorted out pretty quickly.

You'll probably see a lot of "Hey what are you do....." right before the glasses stop functioning from having been smashed in the pavement and stop transmitting. Presuming its not from a bystander anyway lol. I suspect the same might be true of recording devices on officers themselves that will have a tendency to "break" or "malfunction" during a questionable altercation.

[TheFeniX]

Houston is jumping on the bandwagon which is a welcome change considering their abysmal dashboard cam installation rate of 5%.

Barton said he got out of his delivery truck and started to walk back to meet the officer to show him his driver's license and proof of insurance.

"I never got that opportunity. As soon as I opened up the door and stepped out of the truck, he jumped out and shot at me," said Barton, whose account was confirmed in the camera footage. "The gun was pointed at my head. He shot at me, and started screaming at me to get back into the car."

"Some people have said what I did was wrong, but I've gotten out of my car and met with police lots of times," Barton said. "There was no reason or just cause for his actions." He has filed a federal civil rights suit against Boehm and the city of Austin.

This shows us two failings of American enforcement:
1. Where the Hell do you learn about how exactly to handle being pulled over by an officer? My Driver's ed didn't cover it, luckily my mother gave her own account on what to do: stay in the car, hands on steering wheel, don't suddenly reach for anything, turn on interior lights if it's dark, kill engine.

2. The thousands of different municipalities both rural and urban all handle things with their own procedures and said procedure can vary wildly leading to situations like the quoted one above. Although I guess reckless gunfire IS a good way to get someone to stay in their car, then let you drag them back out of it.

Sidenote: Thank God for abysmal Police firearm training.

Hilariously, even following the procedure can be a huge hassle, such as when my roommate got pulled over for 2mph over the speed limit. He got back to the apartment literally drenched in sweat, and began guzzling water, because he had to sit in his car with the engine off (per the officer's order) in the middle of Texas summer while the cop kept him on the side of the road for 30 some-odd minutes while he ran a few checks (in his air conditioned cruiser). Then again, this wasn't too long after 9/11 and he's pretty "Arabic" both in looks and name, so that probably makes it OK (tip: no it doesn't).

[Crown]

Once Google Glass becomes prevalent and you can record and upload things to your Google Cloud storage in real time, shit like this can be sorted out pretty quickly.

You'll probably see a lot of "Hey what are you do....." right before the glasses stop functioning from having been smashed in the pavement and stop transmitting. Presuming its not from a bystander anyway lol. I suspect the same might be true of recording devices on officers themselves that will have a tendency to "break" or "malfunction" during a questionable altercation.

No by prevalent I really do mean ubiquitous.

[Simon_Jester]

You'll probably see a lot of "Hey what are you do....." right before the glasses stop functioning from having been smashed in the pavement and stop transmitting. Presuming its not from a bystander anyway lol. I suspect the same might be true of recording devices on officers themselves that will have a tendency to "break" or "malfunction" during a questionable altercation.

I kind of doubt it because it's such an obvious, suspicious thing that it immediately makes the officers targets for investigation.

[InsaneTD]

You would also expect them to use equipment that is even tougher then a GoPro. And those things have been know to survive vehicle crashes.

As for jailers wearing them, there shouldn't be an area of a jail were there isn't a recording device. And prisoners should never be taken to such an area.

[Kamakazie Sith]

The cameras being rolled out to my department are $3300 a pop and are very tough.

[Agent Fisher]

KS, what cameras are you using? My company issues me and a select number of security officers in particular districts the Axon Flex from Taser. It's a good camera, decently rugged, but the magnetic mounts can get knocked off in a struggle.

[Guardsman Bass]

The cameras being rolled out to my department are $3300 a pop and are very tough.

Glad to hear it. The trial experiments with them elsewhere were a boon both for police officers and those they interact with - much less use of force and much reduced police misconduct claims filed.

[Kamakazie Sith]

KS, what cameras are you using? My company issues me and a select number of security officers in particular districts the Axon Flex from Taser. It's a good camera, decently rugged, but the magnetic mounts can get knocked off in a struggle.

Same and yes they do get knocked off in a struggle.

I don't have mine yet since they're rolling them as budget allows and to those with lower seniority first.

Glad to hear it. The trial experiments with them elsewhere were a boon both for police officers and those they interact with - much less use of force and much reduced police misconduct claims filed.

I've always been a supporter of cameras. They've also proven to be an effective deescalation tool. People who are acting out or confrontational calm down when you inform them that they are being recorded.

[Darmalus]

This shows us two failings of American enforcement:
1. Where the Hell do you learn about how exactly to handle being pulled over by an officer? My Driver's ed didn't cover it, luckily my mother gave her own account on what to do: stay in the car, hands on steering wheel, don't suddenly reach for anything, turn on interior lights if it's dark, kill engine.

No idea where you would get that training as a civilian, but I received this (mandatory) training multiple times in the Navy.

[TheHammer]

You'll probably see a lot of "Hey what are you do....." right before the glasses stop functioning from having been smashed in the pavement and stop transmitting. Presuming its not from a bystander anyway lol. I suspect the same might be true of recording devices on officers themselves that will have a tendency to "break" or "malfunction" during a questionable altercation.

I kind of doubt it because it's such an obvious, suspicious thing that it immediately makes the officers targets for investigation.

You can be suspicious all day long, but that doesn't prove anything. On the other hand, a video showing misconduct can be very incriminating. That being said, I hope as KS mentioned that the Cameras are tough and very tamper resistant.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Houston is jumping on the bandwagon which is a welcome change considering their abysmal dashboard cam installation rate of 5%.

In this video at :39 you can see the man put his hand in his pocket while ignoring the officers commands. I don't have an issue with the officer drawing his firearm and taking a defensive posture. However, this shouldn't have resulted in a shot being fired because the officer had no reason to believe that this man was dangerous. Kind of like the point you made in another thread officers should be prepared that people keep other things in their wallets besides guns.

1. Where the Hell do you learn about how exactly to handle being pulled over by an officer? My Driver's ed didn't cover it, luckily my mother gave her own account on what to do: stay in the car, hands on steering wheel, don't suddenly reach for anything, turn on interior lights if it's dark, kill engine.

2. The thousands of different municipalities both rural and urban all handle things with their own procedures and said procedure can vary wildly leading to situations like the quoted one above. Although I guess reckless gunfire IS a good way to get someone to stay in their car, then let you drag them back out of it.

It should be the same everywhere. Personally I think keeping them in the car is safer for both officers and the subject. It happens once a while in Utah, where you're expected to stay in the car, someone will exit and it will cause the officer to take a defensive posture.

Hilariously, even following the procedure can be a huge hassle, such as when my roommate got pulled over for 2mph over the speed limit. He got back to the apartment literally drenched in sweat, and began guzzling water, because he had to sit in his car with the engine off (per the officer's order) in the middle of Texas summer while the cop kept him on the side of the road for 30 some-odd minutes while he ran a few checks (in his air conditioned cruiser). Then again, this wasn't too long after 9/11 and he's pretty "Arabic" both in looks and name, so that probably makes it OK (tip: no it doesn't).

Stupid. Like having a person turn off their car will prevent them from fleeing - well, unless the officer took the keys.

[Kamakazie Sith]

You'll probably see a lot of "Hey what are you do....." right before the glasses stop functioning from having been smashed in the pavement and stop transmitting. Presuming its not from a bystander anyway lol. I suspect the same might be true of recording devices on officers themselves that will have a tendency to "break" or "malfunction" during a questionable altercation.

I kind of doubt it because it's such an obvious, suspicious thing that it immediately makes the officers targets for investigation.

You can be suspicious all day long, but that doesn't prove anything. On the other hand, a video showing misconduct can be very incriminating. That being said, I hope as KS mentioned that the Cameras are tough and very tamper resistant.

They're uploaded off site. Officers have no editing permissions. We can review the video though for report writing purposes. Eventually, our reports may just have a synopsis along with "see video". That will be awesome.

As for durability. I haven't heard of them being put to the test but Taser claims they're durable.

[Agent Fisher]

The videos are uploaded from the cameras directly to either an agency's hard drive/server, or to Taser's cloud based Evidence.com. The only editing a user can do with a video is pull a clip from it. Say from :30 seconds in to 2:00, you can pull that and have it as a separate video clip, but hte main file is still intact and will have notes on it to tell the administrator that User: Agent Fisher pulled a video clip of 30 seconds to 2 minutes from the video.

And KS, don't get your hopes up on just going with SEE Video. We've had the Axons for over a year and we're still cutting paper on everything.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I might try talking like that. I'm not saying it's sane to do so, only that I might.

I just don't buy that someone put in a stressful/threatening situation would spit out a line that reads from an undergrad policy major's midterm essay. People just don't talk like that, never mind people who've been supposedly kicked in the head, stomped on, and thrown in solitary.

I don't blame you for not trusting him, but I can quite easily see some of the dumber, more ignorant and criminal-ish people I've encountered in my life saying that line.

No, it reads like how a sheltered wealthy white man THINKS criminal (i.e. poor) people think. There is nothing about that sentence that reflects realistic diction for anyone. It reads like clumsy exposition in a crime novel you find at airport newsstands.

[Havok]

Hahahahahahahahaha! What?! Police are over reactive, knee-jerk abusers with power issues?

As I have actually had dealings with the SFPD, I can, anecdotally, attest to this EXACT behavior. Man, and go ahead and show the tiniest bit of weakness or fear. That's what gets them going. Once they know they can intimidate you.

If this guy's story is true, which I can fully believe, his mistake was trying to be reasonable, trying to find the logic in the situation. He should have just said "Fuck you pig! Do what you gotta do." He wouldn't have been treated any worse and they wouldn't have tried to pull the "oh they're gonna like you in jail" bit they love trotting out when they smell weakness.

The best and funniest part is that this type of behavior was prophesied to me like, a decade ago, believe it or not, by other Cops that had been on the force, appropriate moniker, for ages or were recently retired. They straight up said that these new cops don't know or want to know how to deal with people or situations in a rational way that they aren't on the job to help people or save lives but are just there for the money or the power. I have very little respect for cops in general, but those I do have since retired and are/were mostly Oakland and SFPD. You find the odd cool cop that isn't just out to prove all his high school bullies wrong, or just wants the pay check and ridiculous retirement benefits that fuck all the other city workers, and fuck everyone else, but for the most part they are all just douchebags soldiers in the most well organized and armed street gang in the U.S..

Oh and it is a fucking hoot once they find out my last name. I've been called a wetback by an "officer" Garcia.

P.S. To the people saying or thinking that "oh it's just one anecdotal story" and it must be hunky dory the rest of the time because no one is reporting anything, they used to say the same thing about rape. Because you know, why would you/victims possibly be worried about abuser police retaliation or harassment or people not believing you.

[InsaneTD]

I've heard that police in the US get "commissions" for each ticket and such they write, is that true?

[Havok]

Not that I am aware of. I don't think you need a commission when average pay is almost 100K a year. (I think that is a 10-11 number)
You may be thinking of quotas, which as far as I know, are frowned upon if not outright not allowed, but I think it's pretty much universally held that almost all departments have them on some unofficial level. I mean, if you aren't making arrests/giving out tickets, then why do you have your job?

[Kamakazie Sith]

We don't get any commissions for the tickets we write and quotas are suppose to be illegal. What that means is that you can't receive a poor performance review or be disciplined for not writing tickets. That being said Havok is correct about there being unofficial quotas. They come in the form of incentives such as time off.

The average pay for a US cop is roughly $55,000. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm

Those that make six figures usually hold the rank of Lt. to Chief.

[Vendetta]

I've heard that police in the US get "commissions" for each ticket and such they write, is that true?

More likely the force has a political target for the number they should be giving out in order to Fix Crime, so officers are under managerial pressure to do so.

[Havok]

The average pay for a US cop is roughly $55,000. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm

Those that make six figures usually hold the rank of Lt. to Chief.

IIRC my numbers were taking average amounts of overtime into account as well. They also may have just been California numbers as well.

[Simon_Jester]

I might try talking like that. I'm not saying it's sane to do so, only that I might.

I just don't buy that someone put in a stressful/threatening situation would spit out a line that reads from an undergrad policy major's midterm essay. People just don't talk like that, never mind people who've been supposedly kicked in the head, stomped on, and thrown in solitary.

I don't know. While I've never received a serious beating, under most stressful situations I DO talk like that, at least part of the time. It's not because of unusual calm or intelligence, it's just that I've spent so much of my life communicating in this mode (complex written sentences) that it comes more naturally to me than 'natural speech' for other people sometimes.

I don't blame you for not trusting him, but I can quite easily see some of the dumber, more ignorant and criminal-ish people I've encountered in my life saying that line.

No, it reads like how a sheltered wealthy white man THINKS criminal (i.e. poor) people think. There is nothing about that sentence that reflects realistic diction for anyone. It reads like clumsy exposition in a crime novel you find at airport newsstands.

Put this way. I don't think it's a direct quote, but I can easily believe people in a jail saying such things. I can also believe him paraphrasing what they said, not least because it would sound very stupid for him to quote several lines of broken, crude English in the middle of his long essay.

[Gandalf]

1. Where the Hell do you learn about how exactly to handle being pulled over by an officer? My Driver's ed didn't cover it, luckily my mother gave her own account on what to do: stay in the car, hands on steering wheel, don't suddenly reach for anything, turn on interior lights if it's dark, kill engine.

It should be the same everywhere. Personally I think keeping them in the car is safer for both officers and the subject. It happens once a while in Utah, where you're expected to stay in the car, someone will exit and it will cause the officer to take a defensive posture.

You didn't address this part. Is there a place where "pullover procedure" is imparted on to people? Is it just assumed that everyone knows what to do because of some social osmosis?

[Simon_Jester]

This may be a major cause of random citizens with no criminal record getting in trouble with the police- sincere ignorance of just how precisely they expect you to act and how swiftly compliant they expect you to be. Because while there are lots of individual sources for "how to act around a cop" there is no one source that delivers this information reliably.

Between the subcultures where real knowledge of how to act around police is partly supplanted by idiot young males swaggering to prove how big their balls are,* and the fact that a lot of people in the middle class seldom if ever actually deal with the police, and when they do are often meeting those police in places where they really are more deferential...

Yeah. That makes it harder to react the way the officer expects when one suddenly pops into a situation where the police officer expects absolute control and quick obedience to all orders.

*(I once heard an anecdote of a three year old child whose first reaction when someone said the word 'police' was to shout "I ain't afraid of no po-po!"; that's an extreme and possibly fictional example of the kind of self-defeating spinal reflex I'm talking about)

[Rycon67]

If someone were to try and use stand-your-ground as an excuse for shooting a cop after they got pulled over, the jury might actually buy it.

No, they wouldn't. Thanks for coming and saying something incredibly stupid though.

For better or worse, it wouldn't surprise me if some people did think that way.

I remember hearing about how in 2009 when 4 Oakland, California police officers where shot dead and a fifth wounded that some people where actually celebrating their deaths.

I personally think that's horrible, but as much bad stuff as people do hear about police now days, even if it is only a small percentage of the overall number of law enforcement in the US, I can see why some people might not consider that a bad thing.[/quote]

I don't see any reason for there to have been cops at the scene in the first place. What purpose did they serve other than to aggravate the situation?

Most police or sheriffs will usually be trained and equipped to conduct basic first aid or other first responder level medical aid. Also, considering the fact that in most departments, there will usually be officers out on patrol somewhere at all times, whereas a lot of fire departments and some ambulance services may not leave their stations until an actual call comes in, quite often a cop could be on scene some minutes or so sooner than an ambulance or firefighters.