I recall reading an article written by a former cop who said 20% of cops are excellent people and 20% are really horrible people. The remaining 60% are doing a job and will be approximately average most of the time but depending on the day or the culture of their department or other circumstances could be a hero or a villain.
I realize its an oversimplification on many levels but I find it useful sometimes in trying to think about cops as people, something which often gets lost.
There are around 700,000 police officers in the US. If one of them is caught doing something bad every day, that's 0.00014%.
US police in general have a lot of issues and need to improve dramatically, but the stories about cases of bad behavior are not representative samples, even if you factor in the amount of bad behavior that goes undiscovered.
First of all, the statistics for police violence in America are so incredibly awful compared to the rest of the world that we have to wonder what's going on here. It's not the press reports that is killing innocent people, it's the police.
Secondly, my personal experience doesn't support the idea that most police are bending over backwards for the people. My scorecard:
- Really great help with a flat tire and a missing jack.
- Decent, professional interactions in a handful of traffic tickets and that kind of thing.
But on the other hand:
- I watched a friend get roughed up (not exactly beaten, but rough physical treatment) for no reason at all.
- Been cursed at and had my IDs thrown around by annoyed cop (I understand why he was annoyed, but it was the result of him misinterpreting the situation)
- I've had false evidence entered against me over a speeding ticket (to be fair, I was guilty, but the actual evidence offered was fabricated)
- At about 13 y.o., in a market with a friend, and some bigger kids were physically bullying us. We turned to a police officer saying "those kids are trying to hurt us". The reply from the cop was, "better watch out, they'll probably hit you again".
It's impossible to quantify, but my experience shows me that there's a really large proportion of bad cops.
Your experience is not universal. Out of myself and many young friends, there are few bad dealings with Police and mostly positive. Including people convicted and sentenced.
"the cops showed up with bear mace and rubber bullets for the protesters. THE PEOPLE administered aid. THE PEOPLE apprehended the driver. the cops did nothing but antagonize the crowd of people that were almost murdered."
If there was a 1 in 10 chance that a police officer would beat me up when I encounter them, I'd avoid police like the plague.
Even if it was a 1 in 100 chance. Police are armed, and have an overwhelming legal upper hand. Police have a position of extreme trust and need to have a much lower percentage of "bad people" than any other group.
The other problem is that police have been credibly accused of tolerating the "few bad apples". If true, then I don't consider them "fine people".
While certainly true that not all cops are bad, my personal experience shows that it's not at all rare, either. Or if they're not "bad", at least they don't behave with the respect and responsibility that should attend the power they wield.
A really significant portion of my "official" interactions with police have been negative. I've listed these here before:
- I watched a friend being roughed up by cops. (not beaten, but physically pushed around) for absolutely no reason.
- I've had evidence of a traffic violation fabricated against me. (full disclosure: I was guilty, but that doesn't excuse lying about evidence)
- I've had police at a traffic stop curse at me and throw my documents. (I understand why he felt this way, but it was due to him making assumptions, starting with a belligerent attitude, and misreading the situation)
- Some older kids were physically bullying me and a friend. We went to a cop for help, and the extent of his aid was to say to us "better watch out, they'll probably hit you again".
Given the limited amount of interaction people normally have with police, the number of times this has happened to me says that I'm either a lightning rod for lousy cops, or the problem is more than just a few isolated bad eggs.
Yes, a number in a separate comment that I won't duplicate here.
While I have had some unpleasant experiences with some jackass cops (mostly when I was still a public defender), the majority of my experiences with the police have been them doing their jobs.
In fact, the number one complaint from the cops I interact with is all the jackasses that give the rest of them a bad image. (And before you ask why they don't do something about it, they can't, in the same way that most of the programmers on this board don't have the power to stop programmers at other companies from doing what they do.)
Really? I find that very difficult to believe based on the sum of my interactions with police. Maybe they're lying, but most of the people I've spoken to have nothing but negative things to say about the way they've been treated by police.
Most people can't fuck you up as much as a bad encounter with a cop, so it doesn't really matter if "most" cops are good; what matters is that you never have a bad encounter with a cop.
Some people, and some classes of people[1] are almost guaranteed to have bad encounters with cops.
A good goal would be to reduce the number and severity of bad encounters.
1. Ethnic Minorities, Persons with mental health issues, etc.
I think the Buffalo incident yesterday[0] gives us a good indication of just how rare a good cop is. Even though there were dozens of cops that witnessed it, they all lied and claimed that "During that skirmish involving protestors, one person was injured when he tripped & fell".
Then, after the cops who nearly killed the man got suspended, all 57 people on that particular team resigned "in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders,"[2].
Since you want empirical results, that is 0 good cops out of the 57 people on the force. We can employ the rule of 3 to establish an upper bound good cop rate as 5.2% (95% CI).
This isn't to say that the cops are by nature bad. Rather, the institutions and norms that exist in many police departments ensure that nearly all cops become bad cops.
Did the article talk about what the 60% do about the 20% who are horrible? This is the question that tends to be avoided in discussions that take this line or similar ones. If those numbers are accurate, the majority of average cops outnumber the horrible ones 3:1 and also have the 20% of excellent cops to refer to as examples. I think that's a more useful framing than one which positions the majority of cops as victims of "the day or the culture of their department or other circumstances".
They should be, and usually are. But there's two problems.
One, is that if even 1% aren't, those 1% can cause untold damage to your life. We're usually pretty bad at judging risk, so many people won't accept "a very low chance of a very big problem" for the same reason many people will accept "a very low chance of a very big reward" and play the lottery.
The second is more disconcerting to me; all too frequently I see people assume that when someone had a bad interaction with the police, they must have done 'something wrong' to be interacting with them in the first place. Either we believe police are eminently approachable, or we believe that someone interacting with the police "must have done something to deserve it". We can't have it both ways.
It's weird that you counter anecdotal reasoning with more anecdotes. I never 'demanded' anything, though, I said it was usually useful and I'm hardly the only person with the same experience.
Yes, sometimes things go uncontrollably wrong. There are bad cops out there, but it's hardly the average case. Those incidents made the news for how bad they were, not how common they are.
There are hundreds of millions of people in the USA. There are millions of people interacting with the police in some capacity. How many incidents can you name?
We simply don't have any data of quality that could substantiate any claims on this subject. So all claims on it are unsubstantiated.
> it's completely compatible and most likely that the ratio is overwhelmingly good cops with a few abusers, and generally if/when present, concentrated in specific localities.
What is your reasoning? Not only is this an unsubstantiated claim, but it also comes with no logical reasoning describing how you reached this conclusion, unlike my original post.
> The generalization that cops are inherently predisposed to evil or something is bizarre, unhelpful and polarizing - not to mention inflammatory to all the cops that are in fact lawful and in many ways more honorable than most citizens in terms of sacrifice, risk, and social good.
You call this idea bizarre, inflammatory, and state that cops are in fact lawful and more honorable than most citizens. You haven't given any evidence to support this, nor have you explained any type of reasoning or logic for how you arrived at this conclusion.
I find this very ironic and hypocritical, as you directly accused me of making unsubstantiated claims; I at the very least provide logical reasoning, while you fail to provide anything other than vacuous conclusions.
Blind hatred for police seems to stem from experience. My father said once (after I had a particularly horrible, and unfair besting, by the police) that I had no respect for the police because I had never been in a situation where I had seen heroism, or been helped. The police have never stopped a robber from burgling my house, or stopped a violent crime from happening to me or anyone I know.
The point is, that anecdotally, the police have never appeared to be a positive force around me, except intangibly. They only seem to focus on things I myself, and many of my peers, consider acceptable victimless crimes. They focus on padding revenue by stopping speeding violations, and petty drug offenses.
Largely, police appear to regularly abuse their authority, ignore relevant data, and serve an agenda I am diametrically opposed to. Obviously, this isn't a scientific study, but I think it encapsulates the hatred for police.
Also, there are many instances on youtube and the news, of them either covering for fellow officers, or ignoring basic laws, like speeding, cell-phone use ore petty drugs. They need to wear cameras for objective scrutiny rather than be allowed to BE the law.
EDIT: I should say that of course, there are police officers who work hard, are incorruptible and are genuine upstanding citizens who enforce laws and are just. The simple fact is that a percentage of bad actors can disrupt the flow enough to severely damage an institution if given significant power. See the banking industry for an analogy of this. I do not mean to discount all police, and many do positive things in society.
It'd be interesting to see real numbers, but I suspect officers on the beat get the short end of that stick.
reply