Week 10 (8-14.12.14) Police brutality around the world. Criminals, psychopaths or adrenaline junkies?
Every now and then, the media
burst out with news describing cases of excessive force usage against the
protesters or an abuse of power by police officers, in the most common
situations.
Incidents described below present only a few examples of
extensive police brutality observed in USA and Poland over the last decade:
·
26th November 2014, officers from Cleveland
Police Department shot a 12 year old boy twice in the torso, after a citizen
called 911 and reported that the child had been playing with a gun in the park, terrorizing people. As
it turned out, the gun with which the child was playing, was found out to be BB
replica. Here is a video of the incident : http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/26/cleveland-shot-boy/19548827/
·
February 2014, LAPD squad, during a hunt
for a spree killer, over 100 bullets were shot at the wrong car inside
which, two innocent women were delivering newspapers. Police officers mistaken the
colour and the make of the car. Happily,
women survived with some injures.
·
December 2011, officer Dale L. Tompkins was sentenced to
185 days in jail for engaging in a sexual intercourse, on the hood of a patrol car, with
a female prisoner in exchange for letting her go.
·
5th July 2011, six police officers beat to
death a homeless man on the street in Fullerton, California. Only two officers
were found guilty. The first one - of a murder and the second - of an involuntary
manslaughter.
Poland:
· 2013, Przemysław Wipler was beaten by the group of police
officers in Warsaw. Only a year later the recording of that incident is
revealed
·
Countless videos of police officers breaking traffic
laws, being drunk on duty, refusing identify themselves or using speed cameras
against the law
·
2005, on precinct, police officers beat up a few young men from my hometown during
interrogation
A Few more examples (I
advise to turn the volume down):
It is obvious that every country
suffers from numerous cases of police abuse (of a different degree, of course)
and that their descriptions or even the footages can be easily found on the Internet; thus, available to the
general public’s opinion.
What do you think are the
reasons of such actions?
In my opinion reasons vary
depending on the country. For instance, the American society lives in constant fear caused by TV news,
several “Wars”: War on Crime, War on Drugs; which have led to paranoia in police forces. On the other hand, I believe that the cops in USA are
so trigger-happy because they are allowed to, they look for adrenaline and in
some cases they are just sadists who could be criminals if they didn’t join the
force.
As a comparison, in Poland the
reason is that all people who worked in the Judiciary or Executive: militia,
courts, parliament weren’t sacked after 1989 and they passed their bad habits
to the younger generation. Of course, it might sound ridiculous and impossible
to perform but this is what should have been done nearly 25 years ago.
Do you think that the police brutality in Poland is a real problem?
Do you think that the police are becoming more professional or the
opposite?
Do you think that the police have too many rights? If yes, please present
examples.
Sources:
Comments
handle having a little more power and instead of using it to help other, they use
it to abuse the law. It is like Stanford Prison Experiment where students were
playing roles of prisoners and guards.
In my opinion, typical police officer should be well educated, that would
probably decrease amount of this situations. Like you wrote, police officer
shouldn't be a sadist, who would be a criminal if he didn't join the force.
Unfortunatelly I must agree with you, if you think that the police are becaming less profesional. This is phenomenon which is exist everywhere. Generally level of education falls.
I’ve never thought about it but in my opinion earlier retiring is not right. Many people have worked very hard all their life and they have nothing from its.
Do you think that the police are becoming more professional or the opposite?
Do you think that the police have too many rights? If yes, please present examples.
I have never been harassed by a Polish policeman ever before. I don't think it's a problem even if there are cases of expressing brutality among them. If it is the problem, then it is real.
Comparing police 5, 10 or 20 years ago, I probably would be able to find reasons that the system is becoming more and more professional and the opposite.
I don't think so.
In USA if you attack policeman, he can shoot you. In my opinion this is right. We have to know that they are law. In poland they can taken you for 48 H. In my opinion this are not the same rights
Also you shouldn't(this is practice not theory) defend yourself or member of your family if the officer attacks unlawfully you or him/her if your are not willing to go to the prison in the blink of an eye.
In some States they made cops wear cameras on their chests and there was an 80% drop in complains! 80%! I think it's a very beneficial solution. Not only for people but also for police officers, if they have a recording then nobody can make a false accusation that they behaved wrongly. Cops should use force if its necessary but they should always look for another way of the situation. I also believe that they should have extensive psychological tests made to even become a police officer. They should be stable and rational people and not hotheads that will shot their gun at anything and abuse power.
Article about video cameras: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-26821045
Definitely they have too many rights for example they often are violating personal space. Goverment should do something with that.
Is Poland police lazy? Oh yes, everyone knows when something got stollen, you could say goodbye to it. Also there are still huge percent of unsolved murder cases. That is show of complete opposite to professionalism which are shown in other countries. In russia, for example, normal policemans could overuse their privilege and so does some high ranking officers. But, special units for murder cases are doing fine job (at least from 200 till 2009, that is were i lose track on it.) I am afraid a bit of american police officers in some states, they are small and not many people are keeping track of what is going on. Such police in small american cities can have to much rights sometimes and whenever something bad happens, it would be hard to blame one.
I do also noticed lately a huge amount of some anti-police propaganda that grows from people which only contact with police, when they do something unlegal. And everytime one officer screwup something, there are much more people who accuse police of being crap.
Here in Poland I saw only good side of police officers and as for me they are example of what reforms should be done for Ukrainean police in order to stop being bigger threat to the people than criminals. In that meaning I can say, that in terms of personal approach towards police in Poland I could say it is more responsible and professional. I could say that ofcourse there are always idiots and scums in every profession and social groups, but at least you have a possibility to fight with it and change something, while in Ukraine the only thing you will face - total ignorance and letting things to go hang.
https://news.pn/en/public/118678
https://news.pn/en/criminal/83534
https://news.pn/en/criminal/39647
However my good friend has been accused of performing some network attacks and when his PC was confiscated he didn't want to share his disks encryption keys - that was the reason police has beaten him during investigation.
Also I don't believe that Police has too many rights. Better example of service with too many rights is municipal police. They are not trained enough to perform for example car speed checking.
I've never had any problems with police, so I have no personal experience to base my opinion on. There are some known incidents like the one you mentioned (Przemysław Wipler's case), but I think most of them show rather police incompetence (lack of proper training, lack of procedures, etc...) than police brutality.
I believe (I want to believe) that after some recent incidents with police incompetence, some improvements have been made. I hope so.
Another problem with police (and citizens) in Poland is that people dont respect them.
There are too many stories about unprofessional Polish cops that just go around and try to give away as many tickets as possible, just because they have to have a success rate or something. My friend got a ticket for going through a crossing with a pedestrian walking on it while the pedestrian was on a completely different crossing and was in no way disturbed.
I had this situation on my trip to USA: we had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere and suddenly a police car appeared and a very nice policeman offered us his help with changing the tire and he even found us a place to fix it on his gps and then escorted us there. It felt really great to know that there are policemen that are helpful and offer help instead of this feeling of panic and fear that we are going to be punished.