Racism Part two

[magnkarl]

24 minutes ago, Rolta said:

Second attempt at this in the right format now. This was a really significant read, an eye opener on the police in the US.

There may also be a few cross-over UK points in there, although I'd guess police in the UK have a different attitude, so mainly about how 'society' is set up and maintained.

https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759

 

Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop

Officer A. Cab

 

Jun 6 · 21 min read

I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.

This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough.

The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.

American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.

 

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WHY AM I WRITING THIS

As someone who went through the training, hiring, and socialization of a career in law enforcement, I wanted to give a first-hand account of why I believe police officers are the way they are. Not to excuse their behavior, but to explain it and to indict the structures that perpetuate it.

I believe that if everyone understood how we’re trained and brought up in the profession, it would inform the demands our communities should be making of a new way of community safety. If I tell you how we were made, I hope it will empower you to unmake us.

One of the other reasons I’ve struggled to write this essay is that I don’t want to center the conversation on myself and my big salty boo-hoo feelings about my bad choices. It’s a toxic white impulse to see atrocities and think “How can I make this about me?” So, I hope you’ll take me at my word that this account isn’t meant to highlight me, but rather the hundred thousand of me in every city in the country. It’s about the structure that made me (that I chose to pollute myself with) and it’s my meager contribution to the cause of radical justice.

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YES, ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS

I was a police officer in a major metropolitan area in California with a predominantly poor, non-white population (with a large proportion of first-generation immigrants). One night during briefing, our watch commander told us that the city council had requested a new zero tolerance policy. Against murderers, drug dealers, or child predators?

No, against homeless people collecting cans from recycling bins.

See, the city had some kickback deal with the waste management company where waste management got paid by the government for our expected tonnage of recycling. When homeless people “stole” that recycling from the waste management company, they were putting that cheaper contract in peril. So, we were to arrest as many recyclers as we could find.

Even for me, this was a stupid policy and I promptly blew Sarge off. But a few hours later, Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her.

If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.

We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years.

I know what you’re going to ask: did I ever plant drugs? Did I ever plant a gun on someone? Did I ever make a false arrest or file a false report? Believe it or not, the answer is no. Cheating was no fun, I liked to get my stats the “legitimate” way. But I knew officers who kept a little baggie of whatever or maybe a pocket knife that was a little too big in their war bags (yeah, we called our dufflebags “war bags”…). Did I ever tell anybody about it? No I did not. Did I ever confess my suspicions when cocaine suddenly showed up in a gang member’s jacket? No I did not.

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.

And that’s the point of what I’m telling you. Whether you were my sergeant, legally harassing an old woman, me, legally harassing our residents, my fellow trainees bullying the rest of us, or “the bad apples” illegally harassing “shitbags”, we were all in it together. I knew cops that pulled women over to flirt with them. I knew cops who would pepper spray sleeping bags so that homeless people would have to throw them away. I knew cops that intentionally provoked anger in suspects so they could claim they were assaulted. I was particularly good at winding people up verbally until they lashed out so I could fight them. Nobody spoke out. Nobody stood up. Nobody betrayed the code.

None of us protected the people (you) from bad cops.

This is why “All cops are bastards.” Even your uncle, even your cousin, even your mom, even your brother, even your best friend, even your spouse, even me. Because even if they wouldn’t Do The Thing themselves, they will almost never rat out another officer who Does The Thing, much less stop it from happening.

Continued in the link – the article is much, much longer than this.

A good idea is to always have your phone handy, install a dashcam in your car and film any interaction with a policeman or community officer. They generally behave much better on camera than off, and it gives you evidence to complain once they inevitably break the statutes. Make sure that you're facebook live streaming the incident or uploading to the cloud as there's been several reports of police deleting incriminating videos once they seize your phone. 

[Dodgyknees]

I know two people who joined the police. One was always a rocket polisher. Abusive, racist, thick as shit.

The second person is a nice guy, helps out with food parcels, always there for others.

I'll let you decide which one left the police as it was stressful and which one got promoted.

[Rolta]

22 minutes ago, avfcDJ said:

I know two people who joined the police. One was always a rocket polisher. Abusive, racist, thick as shit.

The second person is a nice guy, helps out with food parcels, always there for others.

I'll let you decide which one left the police as it was stressful and which one got promoted.

Sounds a shame. I have a friend who joined up last year. He told me a similar-sounding story that there are two types of police officer — those who want to help people and those who want to control people.

Edited June 15, 2020 by Rolta

[KenjiOgiwara]

3 minutes ago, Rolta said:

Sounds a shame. I have a friend who joined up last year. He told me a similar-sounding story that there are two types of police officer — those who want to help people and those who want to control people.

Sounds a bit like politicians that tbf. All though they often start out at 1 then move to 2. 

[magnkarl]

'Luckily' for us we've had our police defunded by a morally corrupt government. Hopefully these funds can be channeled towards social workers, community based policing projects and to clean up the policing schools where police is essentially scared to death of the grave and dangerous public by watching shoot outs, terrorist videos and assuming that everyone who's different is a criminal.

[chrisvilla4]

Have to say my own personal dealings (through work) with the police have been positive, I have had to call them a few times when dealing with volatile young people and they have never exasperated the situation and have been respectful and dealt with things well.

Of course, when I've attended matches I've been spoken to and treated differently and appreciate they have a job to do. 

There is of course good and bad in every job and walk of life.

[Demitri_C]

Guys who urinated has been jailed hopefully some arrests for those right wing idiots and the idiots who vandlaised the churchill statue

Edited June 15, 2020 by Demitri_C

[Davkaus]

14 days for outraging the public decency doesn't seem too unreasonable.

[villa4europe]

What's the punishment for just pissing in the street? 

[Davkaus]

5 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

What's the punishment for just pissing in the street? 

Public urination isn't generally a crime, it falls under outraging the public decency, as here, or a breach of the peace or something like that. Down a side street with as much discretion as you can, and nothing will come of it, especially when all of the public toilets are off limits. 

There'd be people locked up up and down the country every Friday and Saturday night if it was taken seriously. If that memorial hadn't been right next to him and a copper had seen him in the act, they'd have just moved him on. 

[tonyh29]

8 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

What's the punishment for just pissing in the street? 

 

tbh as they have done him under "public decency"  I think it would technically be the same offence  , but I'm not sure you'd get 14 days jail time for it ..

probably comes down to "outrage minimum standards of public decency"

 

Quote

O

UTRAGING PUBLIC DECENCY 1.7 Outraging public decency is also a common law offence, and was formerly regarded as one form of public nuisance. The offence can consist of any act or display fulfilling the following conditions: (1) it must be lewd, obscene or disgusting to such an extent as to outrage minimum standards of public decency as judged by the jury (or other tribunal of fact) in contemporary society;6(2) it must occur in a place which is accessible to or within view of the public;7

Edited June 15, 2020 by tonyh29

[HanoiVillan]

It would take a heart of stone not to chuckle:

Yer man basically got dobbed in by his dad. He's about 28 years old.

[HanoiVillan]

(To be clear, though, regardless of what I think of this guy's politics, 14 days inside for public urination is ridiculous. I hate these 'because you were caught in the media' sentences)

[bannedfromHandV]

36 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

What's the punishment for just pissing in the street? 

You normally get a fine, think it’s about £60

[NurembergVillan]

12 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

(To be clear, though, regardless of what I think of this guy's politics, 14 days inside for public urination is ridiculous. I hate these 'because you were caught in the media' sentences)

Getting caught pissing on a memorial to a dead copper was never going to end well.

[villa4europe]

12 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

You normally get a fine, think it’s about £60

That's what I thought too, same as littering, just a slap on the wrist and a spot fine 

[coda]

16 pints is a good effort.

[blandy]

21 hours ago, villa4europe said:

all of a sudden during Brexit its like she injected some of Katie Hopkin's froth and started spouting bollocks left, right and centre, she's become a proper social media mouth piece and the worst kind too, controversial to the point where it stinks of an attempt at self perpetuation rather than her actual beliefs

She says and writes horrible things for money. Like all the rest of them. She's paid to do it. She's presumably come to believe some of it.

[bannedfromHandV]

19 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

That's what I thought too, same as littering, just a slap on the wrist and a spot fine 

But then most pisses in the street don’t end up on the front pages of the news so I guess normal rules do not apply 

[Wezbid]

It takes about 20.5 cans of Fosters to get a buzz, the poor thing was determined, that's for sure.