Cops today are more blindly aggressive to anyone. It is sociopathic behavior. Today they’ll brutalize a scrawny teenager, a father in front of his kids, a mother pushing a stroller or a frail oldster back-talking them at a traffic stop MORE readily than a rowdy bar patron at a bar brawl.
When the Irish gangmembers in New York City matured a bit and joined the Police way back in the days, did did show considerably more discretion — they were brutal men looking for fights too, but they had a code. They were as tender to old ladies and youngsters as they were brutal to street thugs and toughs. They understood people. The were humane but brutish men. They were tough guys, men, but not too many bullies among them.
Today too many who join the police tend to be insecure, emotionally unstable bullies, petty, latent or near sociopaths wanting to wear a ‘power suit’ of a uniform that allows them to be BIG and POWERFUL, to assert dominion over all. They do not want to be held to any account. It is a motive of being free of responsibility while forcing all to submit to you. God-hood.
The concept of “Cop” has been established in the culture. Grab a badge and uniform and immediately be invincible, beyond account, infallible and powerful. You no longer have to prove it, like the men in blue on the streets of New York once did.
Yes, there are some who join for good motive. But too many not. And the reason that ratio of bad to good has changed is because society has put cops on a pedestal. We not longer hold cops to account in every action they make.
Here’s an example — a man in street clothes tells a man he sees walking along the street to stop and produce ID. The other good people in the vicinity would immediately object to such rudeness. But a cop in uniform does that and who objects? Immediately the poor man is considered a near-criminal, a man under suspicion. Better we should, upon seeing an officer making a such a demand where there is no obvious suspicion of bad action, raise our voice in alarm just as if it was a man in plainclothes.
“Better we should, upon seeing an officer making a such a demand where there is no obvious suspicion of bad action, raise our voice in alarm just as if it was a man in plainclothes”
If we did, the first one to do so, judging from the recent news reports in Denver and elsewhere, would be beaten and arrested. That tends to put a damper on others stepping in.
I don’t know what the solution is, but if things keep going down this road, I think we might see things develop into a situation akin to what we see in Black communities, where distrust of police is nearly universal. There, people assume the worst and won’t cooperate with police even when it’s in their own best interest. Reciprocating, some police start viewing all the members of the general public in those communities as the “enemy” and treating them as such.