What makes some cops so unwarrantedly violent and what’s the fix?

I think it's in large part the profile of the average police officer. Many of the people I knew who became cops were raised in conservative household where machismo and a militaristic sense of aggressiveness were promoted. They also happen to be dealing with some of the biggest scum bags who lurk on our communities on a daily basis. Scum bags who do such awful things that it would make you queasy. Not only that, you have an entire political movement in the country who views you and your profession as evil and tries to undercut you at every team, ex. Seattle and Minneapolis.

Basically it's a powder keg.

Those problems seem to exist most drastically in liberal cities. liberal (racist) cities are the root of most problems.

Dont run from or fight them...Be polite and you will have no problems...Really just common sense...We dont have a police problem, we have a crime problem , often coming from one group.

I think the problem is that positions of power attract those that have superiority complexes and control issues.

I think better vetting and stricter recruiting standards would help but only so much. A standard of “this crap isn’t going to fly” even for less severe cases can help get rid of bad apples before they do very bad things. The majority of police I’ve interacted with have been good kind people but there’s been a few that you can tell do it just because they like bossing people around and feeling powerful.

And you’re the guy always complaining about people buying into narratives?

police departments have already trouble filling positions because judges dont even put criminals into prison anymore in liberal (racist) cities. also I want to see your emasculated police force vs liberal city gang violence.

When has this ever happened for real?

This is always such a weird take to me. People who generally call themselves small government conservatives, lovers of freedom, also just tell people to subserviently obey agents of the government under threat of violence as if that isn't a contradiction of their beliefs.

In a free country if an agent of the government inconveniences you by stopping you going about your business you should be under no obligation to do the "yes sir, no sir" routine.

It's also the case if you watch any of these interactions that you usually have a bunch of panicked cops all shouting different, incoherent orders so doing what they ask isn't really an option.

All valid hypotheses.

I would preface anything by maintaining that police officers, especially in this country have an incredibly difficult job - on levels that we can't really appreciate. Often when the average citizen hears about the "unwarranted violence" it's just the tip of the iceberg for a lot of these people that at the end of the day are also human beings with feelings, emotions etc (believe it or not). Like imagine the day in the life of the average police officer - you are only dealing with BS from all sides - not just from people committing crimes but from people wondering why you can't solve who smashed their car window in and stole a backpack on the spot and take their frustrations out on you.

When you think of it this way, it's clearly obvious you need 1) a certain type of person with 2) a certain psychological makeup and 3) the right type of training to help them cope with this in order for them to be effective in the right ways. Well the problem is there is basically zero incentives in the job to attract the right people. So great, you are telling me I can become a cop and work long hours in a super high stress environment, dealing with incident after incident of cr@p (yes many of which would seem to us to be minor and not life threatening but it all snowballs and adds up) and you can get compensated on average here in the US $60k a year? Tell me how this attracts the right people with the right psychological makeup to be cops? It doesn't. To point 3) - even if it did, it's clear that there is an almost generational gap in the ethos of how police are trained where they are taught to inherently mistrust the public in general and that they should always be fearful for their lives. Police training is also laughably short - 16 weeks - they are set up for failure

So add it up - overwhelming lack of suitable talent with poor training for what is an insanely difficult job and to use a running simile, it's like taking a distance runner, giving them bad workouts for 16 weeks and expecting them to make the Olympic team in the 100m. Not only that when they don't, an element of the public abuses them, calls them b@stards and screams for them to be defunded. Yeah, great solution.

So all of your hypotheses there are fine, but let's try and have some empathy and think a layer deeper of how we even get to this in the first place. And full disclosure I have zero political agenda to push here and I am not an advocate for police behavior or apologist in any way shape or form. I'm just saying there is always more than meets the eye on stuff like this.

So you feel running from the police or being impolite warrants the death penalty? Please take your inbred a$$ back to your trailer park and go bang your sister like you always do.

A civilized society must have rules and people to enforce those rules...If not, we turn into Mogadishu.

You say that, but a lot of people have a hard time being nice when it’s clear the cop is just being a power hungry a-hole.

An example of something I’ve witnessed: a man was thrown to the ground and roughed up for jaywalking. Guy walks across the street safely (looked both ways and crossed quickly). Cop happens to be on the block and yells at guy to come to him aggressively. Guy knows this is bs, waves off the cop, yells out “sorry man” and continues on his way. Nothing threatening, just annoyed by the power hungry cop. Cop runs over and throws him to the ground, sticks his knee in his back, and pulls out cuffs before the jaywalker even had time to react.

Cop couldve talked to him, could’ve let it slide because it was clearly not a big deal, etc. But no, he felt disrespected for a small gesture by the man and straight up beat the crap out of him. That’s not ok.

They're just people like everyone else. With all the criminals they encounter everyday, they're doing an excellent job. I am not sure why people expect absolute perfection from them. Sometimes crap happens. It's not like they're getting paid a ton of money to deal with the bottom pit of the society. Officers die do get shot and die in duty. Why don't people expect perfection out of everyone else?

Lack of accountability and possession of control and power. The sad part is cops have a culture of complicity where they cover for their own. This is key and often unknown or overlooked. Any cop who violates this unwritten code and snitches or rats will potentially garner being shunned amongst the police peers. This lack of true accountability is a decisive factor.

The fix is prosecute the cops where warranted. No other fix is needed for a problem that is massively exaggerated and sensationalized. There are FAR bigger concerns in America.

America is a country of 360 million people, and its also a country with large gun ownership and its a relatively violent society. There is a lot of crime in the US. There are on average 10 million arrests every year in the US. Most people arrested are idiots to begin with, the majority are high and/or drunk, and the vast majority are criminals. Around 120 cops get killed in line of duty every year. With those facts and statistics, it is certain that you will have a few instances of police criminality when making those 10 million arrests.

Let's also not rule out roid rage fueling some of these incidents. A lot of cops are heavy into lifting and body building. A shredded physique is a physical and psychological advantage for the common police officer. I wouldn't put it past a lot of them to dabble in steroids, steroid pre-cursors, testosterone treatments, HGH, etc. to bulk up. Being cops, they would know how to source the good stuff.

I also wonder how many actively use narcotics? It is a highly stressful job and some may turn to drugs to cope. There is an old saying about the cops always having the best stash. There is also another joke that goes, "Police Seize 20 Kilos of Cocaine at Airport / Suspected Drug Trafficker Charged with Possession of 10 Kilos of Cocaine / Man Convicted of Smuggling 2 Kilos of Cocaine".

The article linked below makes the case that more de-escalation training can help alleviate the problem. Some stats for perspective:

1) Cops kill about a 1000 Americans a year, most of them shot, and about 50 cops die on duty, so a ratio of 20:1 that one could argue is excessive.

2) 10% or about 100 of the civilian victims are unarmed, so not negligible, but not common either.

3) US kills ~35 per million per year compared to Germany, England, Japan, Norway etc. that kill ~2 or far lower.

4) Finland and Germany have ~5500 and ~4200 hours of training respectively compared to US’ ~700.

5) American cops get much more firearm training vs de-escalation training at a 70:20 ratio.

6) Finland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in Europe (32/100, still much lower than US’ 120/100), but has almost no incidents of police shooting civilians.

7) Norway and Finland have much more rigorous rules for when escalation is justified, but in the US, it is at the discretion of the officer.

8) Police officers are 5x more likely to die by suicide than homicide.

So, American cops have significantly less training, even lesser de-escalation training, have to deal with a population with more guns than people, and lack mental health training and resources.

bbc.com

Police training in US v other countries - BBC News

https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews

Amid calls to improve training in the US, we examine how it compares with other developed countries.

Link:www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834...

The hours of training is pretty wild. You need more hours to be a plumber, cosmetologist (not cosmologist), or many others. Heck massage therapists in CO need 500 hours of training (only 200 less than a cop).

For all the people who want to defund the police, it might be better to provide more funding for training.

Being human and making mistakes. There is no 100% fix. We can do things to make it better but the idea that there will never be incidents where police officers do terrible things in a country of more than 300 million is impossible.