(no subject)

[theweaselking]

From Michael Paladin:

A fast food restaurant cashier in Dayton, Ohio, found that it doesn’t help to be right when you’re dealing with police thugs. The cashier took an order from a cop at the drive-thru window. She gave him change for a ten, but the cop claimed he gave her a twenty. The manager confirmed that there wasn’t even a twenty in the register, but the cop came in behind the counter, pepper sprayed the cashier, and arrested her. Analysis of the tape confirms that the cashier was right, and the cop was wrong. Naturally, the cop was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the cashier was paid $60,000 in damages.

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(movie link)

I often wonder why so many Americans are terrified of cops. Then I see things like this and I remember that police in the USA really aren't anything like Canadian cops - there's a deep cultural difference in how they're perceived, how they're treated, and the type of people who get into grunt-level copdom.

It doesn't help that she's ignorant and combative, but he's not supposed to be. It's his JOB to act with more sanity and self-restraint than a fast food clerk.

Comments

[jirel.livejournal.com]

While he's not supposed to be like that, there's also the other side of the coin. (Let me note here that I don't know any cops so this is supposition on my part.) You could never pay me enough money to be a cop even though I believe in the law and would love to help people. Too many of them wind up dead. And there's no way to tell the person who is going to kill you from the argumentative driver you pull over for a traffic ticket. Which you are issuing to him because obeying the traffic laws keep people alive longer.

Too many Americans have a cultural attitude that the Police are enemies. Treat someone all the time like an enemy and watch them become an angry, combatative person who reacts with semi-controlled violence in situations. We talk about the soldiers who have to deal with the civilians that may be the enemy who will whip out a gun and kill them - what about the police officers who go through the same thing for years and years?

[mrbankies.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it's a catch 22. You act like an asshole, people don't like you and won't trust you. I've been treated like crap by cops before for no good reason. That sort of thing isn't going to make you friends.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

And yet they get that treatment because they pepper-spray teenagers.

(If I were her manager, I would have dialled 911 and reported a man dressed as a police officer, attempting to force a teenaged girl into his car and threatening her with mace - but that's because there's just two possiblities, here: either the cop is a fake and needs to be arrested, or the cop is real AND NEEDS TO BE ARRESTED.)

[city-of-dis.livejournal.com]

Too many Americans, including myself, have been abused, bullied and so forth by cops. If Americans have a cultural attitude that the Police are enemies, perhaps it is because the Police (in general) abuse their power, lash out at the weak and take out their frustration and aggression on those who haven't earned it.

[aimisdirty.livejournal.com]

The bitch behind the register was just as much in the wrong. He told her that she was under arrest - and she was resisting arrest. Tough shit, you little mouthy fuck. If a police officer arrests you, you don't try to argue it with him. You don't threaten him.

Most cops (in the US, too) are great people. There are simply a minority who abuse their authority.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Except that he doesn't have the right to arrest her without a cause, and he doesn't have a cause, either.

Don't get me wrong, she's an idiot, but she has a *right* to act that way, and he's completely in the wrong for coming behind the counter, he's COMMITTING A CRIME HIMSELF by arresting her without probable cause, and the pepper spray is adding assault on top of it.

Frankly, she's got no proof that he's a cop. He's dressed up like one, but you can buy those, easily. He's carrying a gun, but you can buy those even more easily. He's demanding that the teenaged girl come out to his car when she's done absolutely nothing wrong, she knows she's done nothing wrong, and the cop SHOULD know she's done nothing wrong because all the evidence backs her up.

Most cops (in the US, too) are great people.

I agree, but while on the job, they attitude they display is very, very different than Canadian (or German, or Dutch)[1] cops. American cops are always, in my experience and in what I've seen in reports, aggressive, rude, and completely uninterested in what's actually going on. It's not a happy combination when there's an entire culture that's terrified of them.

[1]: Those being the other three kinds of police I've dealt with personally.

[aimisdirty.livejournal.com]

Theft isn't a cause for arrest? He wasn't right, but he believed that she had stolen from him. And nothing about her attitude suggested that he should believe that she /didn't/ steal from him.

Didn't he drive through in a police cruiser? Does she ask him to ID himself? The patrol officer doesn't normally investigate crimes in detail. The way she was behaving, frankly, didn't suggest innocence.

Most of the US LEO's that I've dealt with have been pretty good people. Some are idiots - but not the majority. The exact same in Canada. How much of a chance do you think all of the polite and helpful US LEO's will have at getting their names into a news story? People don't care about that. They only care about pointing out flaws, when they could never manage to handle or understand the stresses of the job themselves.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

In America, resisting arrest is pretty much a crime whether or not the arrest is warranted. If a cop says you're under arrest, you're expected to do as you're told.

Yeah. It's that bad.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

If you resist arrest for anything in Spain or Italy, you get treated to a beating.

[aimisdirty.livejournal.com]

Are you the kind of person who gets upset when the 'oppressed' citizens shoot cops are get imprisoned for it?

Have you ever taken a less than lethal course (pepper spray, specifically). Please, please don't talk about his intent with the pepper spray and how he used it. What he said was inappropriate - what he did, was not.

LTL devices: Pepper Spray, Taser, etc are designed to save the lives of aggressive suspects. Comparing the use of a baton to pepper spray is ridiculous, and highlights your lack of knowledge and experience in this area.

Though he made a mistake, he did (obviously) believe that she had stolen his money. Theft is a crime. It would have all been sorted out in a few minutes at the station, and then the cashier could have handled her complaints against the officer for wrongful arrest through the system. She was resisting arrest, and refusing to co-operate with him. Regardless of what she thinks of the police, you don't do that.

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

Pepper Spray is the new Police Baton.

No. It is not.

While this is the public view on LTL devices, it is not reflected in the law nor in practice. In the majority of jurisdictions LTL devices are Lethal Weapons just like guns are. Because of this a report must be filed every time an LTL is used, even if it's just an accidental discharge. Also because of this many departments are reluctant to issue LTL devices and many officers are reluctant to use them. While OC is a weapon and should not be treated with lightly, subjecting it to the same regulations as firearms leads to it being underutilized and so often leads to an increase in injuries -- both of officers and civilians.

[city-of-dis.livejournal.com]

Cops do not have absolute authority to arrest people whenever they damn well feel like it. Citizens have a right to resist arrest when the arrest is unlawful, as it was in this case.

Most cops that I have met in the US have had the quintessential bully attitude, when in uniform and even when I have gone out of my way to be polite and accomodating to them, they have been standoffish and rude. I don't blame most Americans, particularly Americans of color, for being wary of and even defensive against cops in this country.

[aimisdirty.livejournal.com]

It's a shame that you feel that way.

The US LEOs that I have dealt with as a civilian, and trained with on ranges have been polite, helpful and professional - minus a couple of bad experiences in both cases.

I'm not saying that there aren't bad apples who are cops - just that the instances where a police officer does something even mildly questionable are given a shitload of publicity, where their work to save lives and ensure public safety every day is ignored.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

"There is no room for callousness, non-conformance to community and police standards, nor brutality in policing today," Chief Lowe said. "He was callous, non-conforming and brutal in his treatment of Brandy Martin." (http://windswept.livejournal.com/825489.html?thread=2200209#t2200209)

[ed-dirt.livejournal.com]

Cops think people in general (other than their fellow cops) are scum. This is a conception they arrive at after repeated exposure on the job to people at their very worst.

Cops see people at their very worst because nobody ever calls the cops until things are 10 on a ten scale of bad and totally out of control.

Imagine seeing that, eight hours a day, five days a week. All the time.

So cops think the general public is made up of lying, violent, stupid criminal scum (I've been friends with quite a few cops and this is universal. Read some of Joseph Wambaugh's early stuff for another example. He was a cop too).

So...what we've got as a result of this is a group of heavily armed people with the power of arrest and unlimited force if they decide they need "backup". And these people think we're scum.

It's like paying an enemy armed force to come shoot you and take you to prison and deny you any semblence of respect, all in your own home town.

I don't have any solution to this, but i do know one thing. When The Cop is talking to you in America, you have two choices...

1. Make sure that you don't piss them off--even if it means kissing their ass, or

2. Go to jail (maybe with a beating if you're black).

As regards the video, I'm actually kind of surprised that the cop let the girl go on as long as she did. Most US cops would have had her in cuffs as soon as she cussed at him.

I bet she doesn't do that again. Although $60,000.00 is mighty tempting...

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I don't care who you are or what your position in life is, pepper spraying someone over $10 and swear words is absolutely retarded. This shouldn't be a discussion about cops vs regular people, this should be a discussion about reasonable response to a situation as a human being.

[ed-dirt.livejournal.com]

except that the (American) cop's response (when faced with a swearing yelling civilian) was completely typical, making this a cops-vs-civilians issue.

[ed-dirt.livejournal.com]

and not to clog the thread, but cops in the UK are totally different from cops in the US (probabl;y like the Canadian cops you mentioned).

I personally think that the US cops' attitudes are the result of the gun culture in the USA, where you have cops armed with guns facing a populace that they believe is also armed with guns.

Turns people into defensive assholes.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

This gun culture I keep hearing about, how do I get in? I mean, I've lived not only in the US all my life, but I'm a Southerner on top of that, and yet, the only time I've ever shot a gun is on a range, and all my friends who own guns keep theirs locked up and only shoot them on a range. I'm gonna go hunt this mythical beast, the Gun Culture, if I can but find a dog (enunciate that O in the long, me bein' a southerner) who can but sniff it out (once again, the O is long).

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Wow. This happened in 1998. They cop's been fired, reinstated, and (apparently) promoted since then.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

And through the miracle of dateless YouTube, I am learning about it 8 years late!

[psyco-path.livejournal.com]

I remember when we were up in canada for a bit and watched the canadian version of COPS. The cops were so polite and nice. It was really very very amazing and odd.

"Sir, I beleive that you are drunk and I'm beginning my investigation of you for drunk driving."

Oh, and yet again, I'm proud to be an ohioan.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Um, the difference in Canada is that the Canadian cops who want to randomly beat up people don't do it where there are witnesses. The sort of thing does happen often though, just ask Kerry.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

i hated seeing her get sprayed. her stand was insightful and courageous, because she knew his whole karmic existence was outta line. in fact he was fired for the incident.