Just say no (to EVER calling the cops)

[kitkat]

There aren't enough birdcages in the world to hold all the newsprinterly evidence of the fact that *calling the cops* is just a plain bad , but what the heck...here's another: How Do You Charge an Unarmed Man with Shooting People? Get the NYPD Involved

[DerGolgo]

Well, while the work and culture of coppering probably doesn't help to bring out the good in those who engage in it, cops suck for a very simple reason. People suck. Give 'em not just a uniform, authority and a gun, but the legitimacy to use it, without having to fear much consequences, well ... people suck. Cops are no more evil than any other fucker running around, they just have the opportunity to show it.
I don't think blanket condemnation is very intellectually or morally diligent. The problem isn't that they're cops, but that they're us. They just have more dangerous toys to play with, and I don't mean the guns. Toys like legal authority and legitimacy in they eyes of the public. If there was a public outcry, if society demanded cops shoot less ... if that outcry comes from their own social stratum ... you could bet they would. They'll react to social trends like anyone else. Apart from having chosen a less than harmless occupation and perhaps risking their lives in the course of duty now and again, often enough doing actually helpful things, they aren't special - neither especially good nor especially bad. Some aspects of either are just emphasized, others subdued, by their culture and experiences at work.

In you slightly gun-crazy culture, this kind of thing here is what you expect to happen. Or what I'd expect, at least. A couple of cop makes a bad decision, goes to quick to using his gun. And with legal tools available for these cops to save their asses, and for those who work with them to help them save their asses, they'll use 'em, won't they.
There are ways to make sure these things don't happen. Hire more cops, for a start. NOT to put out on patrol. But so that you have enough of them so you can take some away from patrolling and suchlike, so you can give 'em the better training to handle situations where they might reach for a gun. And so you don't have to worry about your manpower quite as much when considering whether to hold a cop responsible for what they did.
As much as I'm quite fucking sick of cops over here (apart from just what goes through the news, I've got my own, very personal reasons), comparing 'em to yours, I must give 'em credit. In 2011, cops over here fired 85 shots on duty. In total, in the whole year. 49 of which were warning shots. Sure, people over here don't pack as much heat as they do in the US, cops don't have to be afraid to get shot like they do in the states. But should the difference be that enormous? Would US cops have a reason to shoot what, ten times more often than Jerry cops? Twenty times? Thirty times? Considering the larger population, also, what, a hundred times more often? Did US cops fire more than 8500 rounds in 2011? I think they probably did. The only mention of a statistic I could find in a hurry indicates US police kills about 600 people each year. They may have ample reason, they may have not, you live with 'em, it's for you to judge. But cops can be less trigger-happy. Between 1952 and 2012, over 60 years, police in Germany shot to death a total of 476 people.

I do think it's better training that helps here, and the legal system that treats any shooting done by police like any other shooting, criminal investigation and all. Cops NEVER go to prison for stuff done on duty over here, mind, usually not even for stuff they do off duty (which makes the most recent case of consensual murder/cannibalism here even more interesting, as it's a cop who did the eating...), but at least they've gotta answer a few questions when they end another's life (with or without fava beans).

[kitkat]

Yeh... no. Cops, over here at least, are a particular *kind* of human being, of the robotic/authoritarian variety, exactly the type they recruit and psych-screen for. They are not "us" by any stretch of the term, sorry, not anymore than a freakin' SS camp guard was "us". (And they know it too..their socialization is very circumscribed when it comes to "civilians", which has always been a big hint in the "us or not us" dept.) Police depts here have a high (and climbing) serving of the bonafide "shoot first; ask questions later" trigger happy "officer safety" type. You have no *clue* how many innocent people are shot/and/or killed by cops in this country--and usually without consequences of any significance to the cops involved. It has rather gotten out-of-hand since the police militarization movement (borne of the 9/11 event). I am far from alone in my assessment of this...I cannot count the number of incidents I have witnessed where those involved dearly regretted getting the police involved in whatever altercation they got embroiled within. Nine times out-of-ten they just make whatever bad situation there is--worse. This instant example is just the most recent to hit the wires in a long, long string of such travesties. That the bastards unfailingly dodge and shift responsibility for their actions is just fetid icing on the moldy cake. And BTW, being a cop here in the US is *not* an overly dangerous job, "gun crazy" society notwithstanding; doesn't even make the top twenty. It isn't TV..when they go in for anything even imaginably dangerous (and they have great imaginations judging from what they apply their SWAT teams towards) they invariably use overwhelming force. What casualties they sustain as a group are mostly attributed to a)vehicle accidents and b)ambushes (very rare).

The US is a full-on police state. I pity anyone who thinks otherwise.

[Pattio]

I was just having a conversation along these lines with a friend, as I imagine many of us have. I agree broadly, if less darkly, with kitkat that our police are over militarized, over insulated, and over powered, and that any person should rightly feel afraid to call them, knowing that the loss of a life, and not just a 'bad guy's life, is such a likely outcome.

I respond to this,as I do to most things, with a ridiculous utopian science fiction. I have this idea that there is a need for a new kind of civil service, one that is generalized rather than specialized. We all accept that specialization seems to be the manifestation of progress, leading to efficiency and advancement, and yet I think anyone would agree that a 'specialized' thing, whether it is a tool or a person, is a thing which is often completely useless outside its specialty. I mean this quite broadly, to include both a specialty tool or a specialized career. We all can imagine scenarios where this plays out. Union carpenter asked to do plumbing? Policeman asked to put out a house fire? Social worker asked to gunfight a militia? Politician asked to sweep a sidewalk?

What might it be like if there was a new category of civil servant? A General Responder. A Civic Helper. In my fevered imagination these civil responders would be dispatchable to any situation. They would show up with some brains, some compassion, some guns, some shovels, some food and, most importantly, with direct lines of communication and understanding with whatever more specialized agencies will need to be called in. Most of all, the General Responder would be trained to enter into any situation looking to help.

I'd like to think that the ranks of this profession could be filled with people who were highly placed in the more specialized disciplines perviously- semi-retired Chiefs of Police and Fire and military, and also with young people needing work and experience. What would matter most is hard work, compassion, and a can-do attitude. Maybe the General Responder can solve a problem. Maybe they can get out of the way so the shooters or firefighters or excavators or doctors can do their specialized jobs. But they wouldn't be there to shoot first, assert the Authority of the State, or say 'not my job'. Their job would be to respond, to triage, to allocate, to dispatch: to help.

[Jaeger]

Yeh... no. Cops, over here at least, are a particular *kind* of human being, of the robotic/authoritarian variety, exactly the type they recruit and psych-screen for. ...

The US is a full-on police state. I pity anyone who thinks otherwise.

I forget who said "power should only be given grudgingly to those who do not want it," but they're right.

--Jaeger

[kitkat]

Interesting idea, Pattio, but i gotta lament the need...as such social helping roles were once filled (albeit less "professionally" than I imagine your "civic helping force" to be) by one's friends and neighbors. But in this disconnected and dysfunctional era that sort of mutual connection is fast becoming a thing of the past.

BTW the "dark" comes with intimate familiarity of the breed, personally and professionally. Three caveats: 1) corruption and excess is individual dept dependent to a large degree. That is one reason I chose to live & stay in this particular city: the police dept here is extraordinarily benign. Unfortunately, one need only venture outside city limits to encounter one of the most consistently corrupt forces in the country. 2) there's been a broad evolution going on with the old 'protect & serve' types being steadily replaced/culturally subsumed with authoritarians/by authoritarianism. I have even watched this happen within the US Coast Guard, an organization i have had considerable professional contact with over many years past, transforming from a helping to full-on enforcement mentality in just a couple-three decades. 3) I am fully aware of the role law enforcement plays in society, based on *practical necessity* resulting primarily from economic forces we all have to live with. I see it as a result of the relatively recent and vast expansion of an underclass comprised of those who no longer have economic viability or even economic *purpose*--and in a system where economic viability is a literal prerequisite to life (let alone the 'pursuit of happiness'), the rise of this resultant mass desperation makes maintaining order, more and more, an extreme task. Cops are collectors of human garbage for the most part, but such garbage being *created* by the system they all serve--and not _born_ as such. The tragic scale of this is hard to miss... So I understand--(yet decry)--the need, appreciate the social stresses resultant on both sides, and my position of 'don't call the cops' rises from practical considerations rather than being ideological in nature. Simply put it is reasonable to *avoid* introducing highly stressed, heavily armed and fascistic *men* into one's personal life under virtually any circumstances aside from simple administrative purposes (obtaining a police report for insurance purposes comes to mind).

[Mk3]

Interesting idea, Pattio, but i gotta lament the need...as such social helping roles were once filled (albeit less "professionally" than I imagine your "civic helping force" to be) by one's friends and neighbors. But in this disconnected and dysfunctional era that sort of mutual connection is fast becoming a thing of the past

Were these the same neighbors that lynched the black neighbors? Or the ones that spit on the Jews? The "minutemen" help each other, their friends and neighbors, shoot Mexicans crossing the border.

Further, I would then expect to see ardent advocacy for universal carry if you are truly hoping for a neighbor driven pk force.

Essentially you seem at once to be advocating the Golden Dawn Party and the dissolution of formally structured forces. I concur that civilian police are now armed like military, with about 1/3 of the discipline; and I concur that a more neighbor centric approach is among the more viable solutions, but I don't think you would like the world your asking for kitkat. I've seen that world, and it is REALLY fucked up. You'd be instead disgusted at the indifference, cowardice, and complacency as empowered individuals remained but lost all accountability. Realistically on this board there is a story that YOU POSTED about a cop that was held accountable for a minor infraction and then reinstated at the will of the public. http://www.utmc-forum.org/pub/viewtopic ... t=16620500" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I think Pattio is on track, but the thing is that was once (and in many cases still is) the way for small town cops and fire, and being an integral part of the neighborhood, they were accountable to their neighbors. Essentially every police force that I can recall that has been detached from those it policed has been accused of, and usually guilty of, being overly violent and authoritarian. think wild west, 90s LAPD, or old New York (once New Amsterdam). They are also usually allowed to operate until (unfortunately) they commit an excessively violent act or acts and public outcry forces their withdrawal/remodeling. I don't pretend to have a new answer, but there are many good suggestions out there.

What I'm saying is, we full well know the answer isn't "no police" but to this particular quandary, and frankly any like it, we should advocate for proper accountability, rather than an emotion fueled overreaction. Use things like this as an impetus to rally people for accountability and change to the established force, rather than pursuing an unrealistic and frankly asinine goal of abolishing the force all together. Those knuckleheads need to be held to task for their moronic discharge of a weapon, and especially for the casualties they caused. [I can't fathom how your aim could suck that much, but I digress] Anyone caught beating the hell out of a suspect, or butt raping them with enemas, or shooting wantonly into a crowd belongs on trial--in jail is yet to be determined, ON TRIAL.

This actually bothers me most:

Cops are collectors of human garbage for the most part, but such garbage being *created* by the system they all serve--and not _born_ as such. The tragic scale of this is hard to miss... So I understand--(yet decry)--the need, appreciate the social stresses resultant on both sides, and my position of 'don't call the cops' rises from practical considerations rather than being ideological in nature. Simply put it is reasonable to *avoid* introducing highly stressed, heavily armed and fascistic *men* into one's personal life under virtually any circumstances aside from simple administrative purposes (obtaining a police report for insurance purposes comes to mind).

Aside from my personal desire to attack the stress of anyone allowed to be "off duty" this still fits with the reform piece. I understand your position here, but it makes me sick (not with you). This is why there must be outcry, participation and reform. The legitimacy of this argument is inspiringly disgusting. No one should feel the need to fear the actions of the police, to include criminals. The guilty should fear the wrath of a jury, and the innocent should fear naught.

As for human garbage my thoughts on that are as follows:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door"

[DerGolgo]

Yeh... no. Cops, over here at least, are a particular *kind* of human being, of the robotic/authoritarian variety, exactly the type they recruit and psych-screen for. They are not "us" by any stretch of the term, sorry, not anymore than a freakin' SS camp guard was "us". (And they know it too..their socialization is very circumscribed when it comes to "civilians", which has always been a big hint in the "us or not us" dept.)

Well, I think we should first clear up what I meant when I said "us". I meant society at large. That which you'd consider "just people". People you might not like on a personal level, might never grow to like would you meet them. People with different opinions, different habits, but just people. Not raving maniacs, not even bloodthirsty monsters just holding back. But just people.
The uniform, the closed social group and closed world-view, the authority, the reinforced self-righteousness and perceived hostility of the environment, those all just emphasize what's already there - to the point where it becomes the defining feature, really. You say it yourself, they hire people with the right psychological profile - not people with a pattern of violent behavior or anything, not even people with the right mindset. People who's personality just happens to fit. If you met such people before they became cops, before they were immersed in that closed-off group-think, you'd probably only consider them a bit harsh, but not that much different from anyone else. Just people. Us. Well, perhaps not us-us specifically, but us, the society. Regular folk.
That's the sort of description I've heard said about war criminals, again and again. From camp guards to the Einsatzgruppen, who followed the frontline Wehrmacht troops into Russia to "clean up". From people who knew them after the war - and from people who had known them before. Perfectly normal chap, who'd have thought? Such a nice man with his family, very sociable, really good with kids... were common descriptions I recall from stuff we read in school, tv documentaries, museum exhibits. Not the puritan hardass fanatic, not the furtive, cagey guy trying to hide from their past. But just another chap. Nice guy. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Which is where you make your mistake. You play the "them-and-us" game yourself. They are not special, they are not exceptional - they fall within what is generally considered "normal". Those who act normally, who don't hold office like they do, they often enough just lack an authority that tell 'em to do it, don't get such behavior even further reinforced and emphasized by the trappings of office and groupthink, they must normally be in the habit of considering the consequences of their actions and, even if they were willing to do it without orders, don't get much opportunity to boot.
All it takes to make such a normal person into an evil "monster" is opportunity, permission to act in ways normally prohibited, removing responsibility for consequences and creating the perception that this is what they're expected to do. Like an authority giving an order. They're "just following orders", right? They're "not responsible". That was the common thread the camp guards and the like themselves expressed when asked how they could have done what they did, wasn't it. Those higher up in the command chain made obedience easy. Took away all need to consider the consequences of their actions other than carrying out orders, instilled in them the certainty that, even if what they did was wrong - they weren't responsible for it. They weren't doing something as much as that something was happening, this was the perception this created. Someone else made the decision, that they had anything to do with it was entirely coincidental and those decisions, the consequences, were none of their own concern. Combine that with a certain personality, that of someone with limited empathy to begin with, perhaps someone who as a child was never taught to respect anyone who wouldn't give him the belt, someone who'd rather follow orders than think for themselves and only maybe with a not-easily-upset-stomach, you've got someone who's going to aim a flamethrower into a packed schoolhouse, will drop a canister of Zyklon into a gas chamber or will do just about anything.
Because, for them, in their perception, they aren't doing it. They are only carrying out orders. What happens isn't their fault. It's not even their doing. It doesn't take a psychopath to do this. Or a sociopath. Or anyone you wouldn't consider "just a guy". You might consider them an asshole even, but you wouldn't endow them with special powers of evil-doing, or a particularly black soul. Or any black soul, even.
Recall the Milgram experiment. People would go and, as far as they knew, kill the other test subject - some would look uncomfortable doing it, but they'd do it. Because they were provided with an authority that let them rationalize such behavior as okay, let them disregard their own sense of responsibility. They didn't even need months or years of immersion into some isolated social structure and groupthink. 65% of participants did it, applied "terminal" voltage. Those are not special cases, statistical outliers. That's a clean majority. It's normal. It's us. Perhaps not you, I'd like to think not me. But us as much as "the banks are ripping us off", as "the politicians are lying to us".

I have a distant uncle. Haven't seen him in over a decade. Genuinely nice man, helped me edit a very-short film I had shot. Back before anyone but owners of the latest Mac could practicably edit video entirely digitally, when you needed special little machines that whirred and cost a ton of money even in amateur-quality. He liked music, was a gadget freak. Had rigged something to play sounds of the rain-forest when you'd flush his toilet, which was also decorated floor-to-ceiling with photographic wallpaper of a beautiful rain-forest waterfall. And he had an intercom rigged in there, too, to give guests a fright when they'd be taking a leak. Hid the speaker behind the tank, crafty bugger. Genuinely nice chap, totally cool even with kids portraying the smoking of the herb on camera (unlike other, much younger people), endlessly patient when explaining to a teenage numbskull how to edit video. Not even a normal member of society, but a nice, kind one. I only learned later that, until the 1970s, he'd have annual get-togethers with his old buddies. From when he had been in the SS. He hadn't been a camp guard, I don't think he'd have stuck around in Germany had he been that, he was fairly intelligent. But from what I was told (not by him), he wasn't Waffen-SS, either, but SS proper. I've never entirely understood how people got into the SS proper, I understand they'd occasionally conscript people they'd desperately want (like the father of another distant uncle of mine who was a highly-qualified engineer), but otherwise, they were just as likely to turn volunteers away.

The banality of evil, it's quite real.


As far as a pattio's idea of a universal helper goes, well, the idea is better than relying on neighbors stepping in. I think neighbors helping one another out is awesome, and that's how society should work. But it's not something you would want to rely on. Often enough, you want an outsider. Someone who doesn't know you, or your neighbor, from Adam. Someone who won't be motivated by whether they like you, approve of your lifestyle, or are angry about your begonias growing over the property line.
As far as a universal helper goes, well, that used to be part of my job description at the cable company. The customer should, ideally, only talk to one person, who'd know all about billing, contracts, new products, procedures and processes, even tech support to a certain degree. Let me tell you that, with just what you can get from your cable company, such universal abilities are difficult to qualify someone for, even more difficult to remain up-to-date for, and almost impossible to get down in their entirety. As much as my bosses hated it, my colleagues and I, we'd have to ask customers to hold while we asked a colleague to find something out or had to look it up, or had to put them through to specialists. With all the things cops, fire fighters, EMTs and what have you have to deal with, I'm glad there's a group of specialists specifically trained to save lives, like fire-fighters and EMTs. If there's a need to (ideally) keep the peace, or at least provide something that makes people think twice before breaking the law, well, a cop should be specifically trained, also. Not in handling guns so much as in field-psychology, defusing situations, encouraging people to be cooperative, all of that.
You might want someone who can step in and mediate in inter-personal conflicts, like neighbors arguing over the begonias, who knows which specialists to call. Someone who could step in like that in non-emergency situations, to take a load off the cops. That'd be a good idea, I think.

[GeekGrl]

@ pattio: Yes. Idealistic and yet practical, its not difficult to imagine such a service being implemented. Private/non-profit organizations already exist that are capable of (and frequently do) much of what you outline. The Red Cross comes to mind.

@ mk3: Yes, with applause. A reasoned and eloquent response, especially in light of how easy it would have been to be anything but.

[Jaeger]

...
...All it takes to make such a normal person into an evil "monster" is opportunity, permission to act in ways normally prohibited, removing responsibility for consequences and creating the perception that this is what they're expected to do. Like an authority giving an order. They're "just following orders", right? They're "not responsible".

I'm not enough of a WWII scholar to really know, but I'd wager that disobeying Führer was a demonstrably and painfully bad idea. It's certainly a bad idea in the current U.S. Military.

Not necessarily an excuse, but an important fact to note. "Kill those people or I'll fucking kill you and/or your family" is a significant and understandable motivation.

...
The banality of evil, it's quite real.

Tru dat, Br'er Golgo.

...With all the things cops, fire fighters, EMTs and what have you have to deal with, I'm glad there's a group of specialists specifically trained to save lives, like fire-fighters and EMTs. If there's a need to (ideally) keep the peace, or at least provide something that makes people think twice before breaking the law, well, a cop should be specifically trained, also. Not in handling guns so much as in field-psychology, defusing situations, encouraging people to be cooperative, all of that.

doG love 'em, that's sort've what they're trying to do faced with the reality of the activity, which often involves the potential for serious physical harm. Therein lies the rub.

--Jaeger

[DerGolgo]

...
...All it takes to make such a normal person into an evil "monster" is opportunity, permission to act in ways normally prohibited, removing responsibility for consequences and creating the perception that this is what they're expected to do. Like an authority giving an order. They're "just following orders", right? They're "not responsible".

I'm not enough of a WWII scholar to really know, but I'd wager that disobeying Führer was a demonstrably and painfully bad idea. It's certainly a bad idea in the current U.S. Military.

Not necessarily an excuse, but an important fact to note. "Kill those people or I'll fucking kill you and/or your family" is a significant and understandable motivation.

--Jaeger

True, but such coercion alone won't work. Anyone can threaten to kill you if you don't do it - but unless the group of people around you at the time agrees, they can threaten all they like. They needed the group-dynamic, the self-reinforcing groupthink and all of that. The people involved had to fear being ratted out by their comrades, had to fear being punished by their direct superiors, for this to work. And only those "at the coal face" had to do the actual killing in this. Most of the time, the camp guards didn't actually have to put a bullet into anyone, nor operate the gas chambers. They knew what was going on, were seeing it themselves, but didn't have to "get their hands dirty" directly. Unless someone was trying to get over the fence, when they were prohibited from firing warning shots and were under orders to shoot to kill, they were technically prohibited from killing inmates unless except as part of the prescribed process with the "selection". But they often enough would, they'd kill for sport. And their superiors would declare that yep, that guy had been trying to escape, shooting him was legitimate, avoiding any consequences for them. They didn't even have to make an effort to get out of disciplinary action over this themselves. Not just obedience, but the whole behavior involved in torture and murder, was made easy like that. Show them that murdering someone against orders is tolerated, you don't need people have much to fear to carry out the orders to murder.
And not all of them had to "fear death" for helping anyone, or for just not killing them. Russian POWs in POW camps here were treated little better than inmates of the concentration camps. They weren't gassed, but they were worked to death, too. Guards of those camps were under orders to shoot to kill to prevent any escape. One guy decided to look the other way instead and let no less than 80 POWs escape. They could have made an example of him. But they didn't need to, they just transferred him for his disobedience.
I don't recall much talk about having to fear consequences like that, "us or them", people having to fear death if they didn't murder. They'd rationalize in all directions but "If I hadn't done it, they'd have shot me!", that's not a common thread. Yeah, disobeying orders while in the military would be punished, but they didn't have to make extra special punishments for it. Quite the opposite. If you make disobeying killing a kid punishable by nothing more than any other act of disobeying a much less heinous order, you teach people that the act itself isn't that special, you demystify it, you make is just another mundane thing.

[kitkat]

mk3, i don't know if you assumed (or how if so) that i advocate dissolving police forces and/or replacing such with "neighborhood watches", so-to-speak, but i can assure you I am for neither. Socio-economic disintegration is what underlies this entire "misbehaving police" issue. Treating the latter w/o mitigating the former is simply treating symptoms rather than the disease.

DG, I knew what you meant; they say the same about serial killers as well. Far from these character testimonials confirming these types as part of the "us", to me it simply indicates how obtuse/oblivious/polite most people actually are when it comes to evaluating/reporting the essential characters of their fellows. My feeling, however, is that such are most definitely are not "just people" but distinct aberrations within the larger population (see: The Authoritarian Personality). BTW, Milgram was a fraud; his famous experiment a manipulated sham. (Perry; Behind the Shock Machine). And in addition, there is a BIG difference between being coerced by a group of authoritarian thugs to engage in correlate behavior--and doing the same of one's own volition. Then there i the matter of continuance...all people make errors, both material & moral. Dis continuance of a behavior that causes psychic pain is the default. But continuation implies a lack thereof...and thus deviation from the norm. In this vein, a cop can quit his/her job (I did) and go on to something less unsavory or get another LE job in a more benign department--or they can stay on. If the latter is the choice made, it is difficult to argue that there is not a psychic reward in so doing. Evil only appears banal. Look closer and it is anything but.

You know, you love to cite the civil rights era (in the US) whenever you talk about how people can overcome their social programming and prevailing groupthink. You should look at that era again and compare your "just people" argument here to the real-life mass (mis)behavior of that era. Then, perhaps, you'll recognize the paucity of your arguments here.

Also, i must admit i find the attempts at "normalization" of various and sundry nazi nastyness concerning. Is this Germany's bad conscious-salve nowadays-- "it's wasn't *us*! Why, anyone would have done the same thing?"? I certainly hope not. I thought that today's Germans rather recognized that their historical culture, one of extreme authoritarianism and militarism (naturally) dominated by sociopaths, was the causal culprit in that dark time..and since severely mitigated in deference to that fact. IOW, as before, a plain yet horribly awful mistake that won't be permitted to occur again. But if current economic dominance leads to a revival of rationalizations such as this "evil is just people" BS, then I have to wonder if that old bad culture is bubbling up yet again. I find this a scary thought--particularly with the concomitant rise in militarism in my OWN country--and the social evils (such as corrupt & sadistic police forces) that sort of culture inevitably begets.

[DerGolgo]

In this vein, a cop can quit his/her job (I did) and go on to something less unsavory or get another LE job in a more benign department--or they can stay on. If the latter is the choice made, it is difficult to argue that there is not a psychic reward in so doing. Evil only appears banal. Look closer and it is anything but.

I must ask. Did you quit your job because of what your colleagues were doing? Because of what you were expected to do? Or did you perhaps worry they might assimilate you eventually, that you'd do things you didn't approve of because, given enough time in that environment, you'd stop disapproving of them? The latter is a sentiment I've heard expressed often enough, not relating to law enforcement perhaps, but that people were concerned about becoming what they were expected to be. I don't want to accuse you of being another normal person who feared being corrupted into evil, who is or at least was thus corruptible. I just think it's something anyone should occasionally ask themselves. Do I want to become what I'm currently becoming?
Yes, those who do might get a psychological reward from staying on. This doesn't have to be the ability to commit violence. Exercising power over others, being elevated by society to a special status, having the camaraderie of a closed social group. Those are quite common desires, throughout society. Wanting to be the alpha dog, being perceived as special and strong, being part of a pack. Tell me honestly that isn't something you can see many in society expressing through their actions, all the time, and most people expressing at least some of it, some of the time. I see nothing here that wouldn't have someone fall within the normal spectrum.

You know, you love to cite the civil rights era (in the US) whenever you talk about how people can overcome their social programming and prevailing groupthink. You should look at that era again and compare your "just people" argument here to the real-life mass (mis)behavior of that era. Then, perhaps, you'll recognize the paucity of your arguments here.

Well, I didn't cite it here because it didn't pup up in my head. Can't think of a good analogy in this regard really.

Also, i must admit i find the attempts at "normalization" of various and sundry nazi nastyness concerning. Is this Germany's bad conscious-salve nowadays-- "it's wasn't *us*! Why, anyone would have done the same thing?"? I certainly hope not. I thought that today's Germans rather recognized that their historical culture, one of extreme authoritarianism and militarism (naturally) dominated by sociopaths, was the causal culprit in that dark time..and since severely mitigated in deference to that fact. IOW, as before, a plain yet horribly awful mistake that won't be permitted to occur again. But if current economic dominance leads to a revival of rationalizations such as this "evil is just people" BS, then I have to wonder if that old bad culture is bubbling up yet again. I find this a scary thought--particularly with the concomitant rise in militarism in my OWN country--and the social evils (such as corrupt & sadistic police forces) that sort of culture inevitably begets.

No. It's blaming the exception that should concern you. The idea that it takes a special, violent psychopath or whatnot to do these things. This would be the apologists direction. "They did it. We were not responsible, it was these special people - only the special people could do it, not us normal people! There, we couldn't have had any responsibility." Blaming these events on exceptional people alone means trying to absolve oneself. If not from responsibility for these events, but from the responsibility to be on the lookout, to not let it happen again. Because if you expect only special people can do that, you won't expect it to happen again, because you don't expect people to be capable of it. Blaming it all on special people and special circumstances is at the very least complacent, ignoring that there are plenty of people capable of doing such and similar things, they are around right now.
It may take a genuinely evil person to plan such things, to give the orders. But anyone can, given the right circumstances and environment, become a war criminal like that. Very few people may be an exception, people who are seriously steeped in a moral code, truly and instinctively value the life of others. These people are, when they are described in our culture, often portrayed for being exceptional. It doesn't take a monster, either. It only takes a normal, regular human. It wouldn't work immediately, it would take some effort. From a person's socialization to training them military drill or the like, immersing them in the groupthink for long enough. But it's doable. That someone is a nice enough chap, soldier or political leader, does not mean they won't murder children. And just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it any less evil. That is the point. You've got to watch out, for what other actually do, and for what you yourself do. Just because something is an order doesn't mean it should be carried out. That's what made all these normal people into murderers, carrying out orders without thinking, without having to think. And even if they did think, they'd brush their doubts aside, because other forces were stronger than those doubts, the forces that authority and social pressures and even rewards (like camaraderie and social recognition) created.
Not having to consider one's own responsibility for what's going on is a tempting situation for many. Which is why many became executors of these evil fucking schemes, or at least willing accomplices.
If you expect that evil is done only by special people, you may end up overlooking it. Most people will see someone doing something and will think "that's a good guy, so what he's doing must be good". Which is how, again and again, fuckers got away with stuff throughout history.
If you can blame it all on "special", evil people entirely, you won't bother considering whether you should blame yourself. Because no one thinks of themselves as evil. That's how such things are done - by people who don't stop to consider whether they themselves are doing evil. Which normal people will happily do if given the right environment, an authority to prod them along and if they don't have to fear the consequences.
Only if people are aware they they themselves are always responsible for their actions, that they themselves are quite capable of doing such things, will they even begin to watch out for what they're doing. Most people who are convinced they are doing good aren't convinced by abstract moral and ethical considerations as much as by their conviction that, hey, they're good people, so they must be doing good.
The point isn't "it's wasn't *us*! Why, anyone would have done the same thing?".
It's the exact opposite. "It was US. WE did that. It wasn't special people, it wasn't anyone extraordinary. It was US who did it, us perfectly normal, everyday folk. We either did it with out own hands, or let others do it. Because we couldn't be bothered to think. Because we were looking at the people, and not at what they were actually doing. Because we weren't looking at what WE were doing. Because, hey, we were all good and normal folk, weren't we - why would we expect ourselves to do evil?"
Anyone you don't suspect of being capable of doing something evil, you're more likely to grow complacent about. Anyone you're sure isn't capable, you won't bother watching out for at all. Which is exactly what the history between 1933 and 1945 demonstrated. Perfectly ordinary people didn't just let some gang of pyschopaths get away with murder, but they helped. Perhaps not out of their own conviction. Perhaps not willingly. Perhaps they were even disgusted with it all. But they did it. Perfectly normal, ordinary people. When they stopped to think, just carried out orders. People who let their environment drive them to doing such things proactively even, because they didn't stop and think.
First, people didn't think, because they were convinced that they were normal people, and normal people don't do evil, so there was nothing to think about. Later, they refused to think, because then they'd have had to admit they had done evil, or were doing evil, weren't "good".

Nazi Germany isn't the only example of normal people acting in such ways. Consider Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. People who were perfectly nice neighbors one day were murdering their own neighbors the next, or leading those who'd do the murdering to their neighbors doors.
Not everyone may be capable of actually wielding the machete, or leading the gang armed with those to their victims. But enough are. And those that are, they don't appear out of the ordinary until they do, and they don't think of themselves as out of the ordinary. Ask anyone, they are ordinary. Someone who behaves like x, talks like x, lives like x, is ordinary, normal. We cannot look into men's souls, or women's for that matter, we can only get a glimpse from what they do. Unless someone has actually done something to indicate they aren't normal, unless they have actually deviated from the norm, there is nothing that'll tell us they aren't.
So even if you are correct, even if it takes special, exceptional people to do such things, what would they be until they actually do it? What would you consider them, would morally have to consider them, as long as they don't deviate from the norm? What would they be if, until they do it, they never even considered doing such things, never even thought themselves capable? If they only ever thought within the spectrum of what is normal? They'd be normal, wouldn't they. How many people who have done exceptional things have explained that, until they went and did them, never thought themselves capable, and of whom no one ever expected such exceptional deeds? A person may thus do go and stand out, suddenly and surprisingly. Or they might do the opposite.

I think our basic difference is our view of humanity. You seem to consider the inability to commit an atrocity to be the norm, anything else to be the exception. You hold our species in fairly high regard.
I disagree, and I find that history seems to hold up my disagreement. The norm is that we are still driven by deep, tribal instincts, messed up self-perceptions, the drive for not just physical but emotional self-preservation and fear. We are all cut from different cloth, and some of us surely are incapable of doing such things. But so many people are capable of doing it, it is just as much part of the spectrum of personalities that is normal as the other. Being able to do evil is quite normal.

Consider times past. In many cultures, parents would murder their own daughters. Because society favored boys. For centuries in China, people would break the feet of young girls. So they could meet some arbitrary, socially determined standard of beauty. Once upon a time, people would burn their neighbors at the stake for being a witch. Because doG told 'em to.
Were all the people who did these things exceptional? Or were they normal, just doing what the tribe allowed or demanded?

That's why it's important to recognize that it doesn't take an exceptional person to do evil. Because it doesn't, and because no one is immune from their tribe, from the society around them. You or I, we cannot recognize normal or abnormal without that which we have been taught by society all our lives in the back of our heads. If being morally restrained and concerned with others was entirely normal, it wouldn't be admirable. We may have many instincts not to harm our fellow humans. But we have other instincts which, given the right circumstances, do overpower the first set of instincts. The instincts that make us follow the herd and try and get it's respect and gratitude.

[Mk3]

My feeling, however, is that such are most definitely are not "just people" but distinct aberrations within the larger population (see: The Authoritarian Personality).

So from reading this literature (and kudos for a source) you propose that humankind is subdivided into three categories that are essentially leader (sadist) follower (masochist) and zen. However I find it difficult to utilize that literature to galvanize your argument (if rench reads this, he's cringing here). Given nothing else but the concept of enlightenment would not the greater majority of humanity always fall within masochistic form following a few sadists? The sadists of course requiring each other as rivals in order to fuel their masochistic population base into malleable and more deeply entrenched followers. I say this to further submit that there would truly only then be two forms of human, the sadist who believe they've achieved zen, and the masochist who believe they are enroute to the same end.


This is what concerns me, classifying people. We are with little exception (ie handicapped) all born the same. The synapses work the same, the fingers and toes do the same things (minus one pinky) As we age we make choices and based on the consequences of those choices we form our personalities. I certainly have not achieved zen, but I have a hard time believing anyone has. I do adhere to the concept that people are intrinsically good, in the same vane but antipodal to DG's apparent view (not faulting brotha DG just illustrating). Admittedly I have to remind myself of that at times when I start to suspect people just because they are different...like all the local dudes in dresses. You seem to think absent dementia no one could do violence to anyone else, which DG accurately points out is simply not true. The reason I take the intrinsically good approach is, given a revised view of what they've done people at large become intent on unfucking their mistakes.

Further, as I understand this, you are saying the cops have evolved to a militant force as a result of a criminally inclined lower class developed by a power lusting upper-class taking all of the wealth and leaving no alternative...and you're mad at the cops. I don't know many police personally, but those I do when asked what made you want to be a cop will answer to help people. Not to lord over them and beat the shit out of them and give them traffic tickets and enemas. Absolutely some cops lose sight of their reason for being, as do members of every profession. I do not like or agree with the "protect the officer shoot the suspect" mentality, if you join a civil service, you've leased your life, get over it and do your damn job. [sledit: not to mean your job is to be killed, but that it is inherently dangerous, and it is not acceptable to kill someone else simply so you don't get hurt, in fact the expectation is that given the choice of saving a civilian or your own hide, the civilian is saved]

To come around to the original post, an unarmed man charged for police shootings, that is really more of a failure of the DA's sanity than the cops. Further, he hasn't been convicted of it yet, and thereby is thus far guilty of no crime in this case. If the public had shrugged this off, that would be a real problem, but there was immediate outcry for review, and unfortunately this type of incident does seem to be on the rise. Lastly the cops that did the shooting were two of many. They have been removed from front-line service during the internal review. This is where I think DG may well be on to something with the full assault investigation, though we might already do that, I don't know.

[DerGolgo]

I do adhere to the concept that people are intrinsically good, in the same vane but antipodal to DG's apparent view (not faulting brotha DG just illustrating).

I feel the urgent urge to clarify. I don't think you have accused me of any fault, mind, I just think my previous statements may have been, well, less than entirely comprehensibly articulated by, well, me. I left out some crucial illustration of what I'm fairly certain is my opinion, I think.
I don't think people are inherently evil. No, far from it. They aren't inherently, or intrinsically, good though, either.
I think people are inherently people. People can end up doing good, or doing bad. Without even considering whether they are one or the other.
What they do depends on a complex and, probably, unknowable mess of external stimuli, individually filtered perception of the stimuli, entirely internalized personal hangups, whatever they have learned, consciously or otherwise, throughout their life, and reactions guided by instincts our species developed over a million years or more, which are largely inappropriate or ineffective in the modern world. Doing evil is, unfortunately, often easier than doing good. If it was the other way around, good wouldn't be commendable but the default. But the ease of evil, and our tremendous and intimidating powers of rationalization, make that a choice too many people find make too often. Hence, people suck.
Life is complex, messy, and hard bloody work. People may do bad, or good, by accident, with good or bad intentions. Which is where the problem lies. While I don't want to make excuses for fucking murderers, people judge others good or bad too quickly. Not allowing for mistakes, errors. The slightest incident must reveal a person's entire character. Something left over from the days when Joe Caveman Esq. had only seconds to figure friend or foe. Too many people too often refuse to consider why someone did something. Not merely the immediate purpose, but the deeper motivation and greater circumstance must be considered if you actually want to judge someone's character. But since people won't do that for others, they don't have it done for them, either. So they, themselves, stop, or never start, considering why the heck they just did that, or want to do another thing, or are avoiding a third. Many not just end up lacking self reflection, but desperate to maintain their self-perception, desperate not to have to judge themselves badly, they end up rationalizing whatever they do as being evidence of whatever self perception they have decided they could get away with. And thus, they never revisit the bad decisions they have made, they don't learn from their own mistakes.

Some end up doing bad things, downright evil things, and some of those cannot actually comprehend that they're actually breaking valid moral restrictions. Because they have trained themselves against any introspection that might scratch their fragile ego. Others do comprehend it but keep doing it anyway, rationalizing perhaps with superior reasons outweighing these restrictions, or not even rationalizing at all. But unable to change their mode of behavior, for any number of fucked-up psychological reasons.
I don't think any of these, or anyone falling within the spectrum spanning between them, is particularly less evil than any of the others. Evil depends entirely on what you do to people, and what for, and what the effect is. Good intentions don't make a dent in there, either. Doing evil things may, specifically, not be easy. But deciding to take the easy route, making the decision to go with evil, is itself easy.

I think it's the lack of introspection, the sheer fear of learning something uncomfortable about oneself, the paralyzing terror of not meeting one's own expectations, that keeps many people from genuinely considering whether they actions are moral. You can get over these hangups, I think. Probably not completely, it's probably impossible for anyone to consider oneself (or most other people, for that matter) impartially and objectively. But the very least anyone should do is to try.
Many, perhaps most, don't try. Many, perhaps most, because they aren't even aware of their lacking introspection. Either from genuine ignorance of the concept or it's necessity or because they have built a magnificent palace of self-delusion and can't, or don't want to, find the exit. Which doesn't mean they are necessarily evil, either. It just means they fucking suck. People suck. Most, almost all, actually want to do good. But apart from differing definitions of what is "good" - finding such a definition that's remotely accurate, that's what people truly and genuinely suck at. Consequently, they suck at the doing of good. Not always, perhaps not even most of the time, but enough of the time. It's the human condition, I think.

[Pattio]

Going back and re-reading about this particular case, I find myself thinking along a different ludicrous utopian science fiction branch than my noble civil service concept, and now thinking about how moments like this, which is to say, a crazy person on a rampage, are also a great example of the need for advanced non-lethal weapons technologies. I believe this guy was brought down with a taser after Officers Tweedle Dee and Dum were done shooting bystanders, so its almost a success story in that regard. Sticky, slippery foams. Inflatable enclosures. Tactical mobility denial ranged butterfly net launchers. Our cops need this stuff.

I keep coming back to my civil service concepts too. We all know that part of what the US is screwing up around the world is expecting our soldiers to be diplomat/police. What the hell is going on when our militarized home police aren't police anymore? Who's job is it supposed to be to 'keep peace' anymore? Sorry to be unproductively rhetorical, just venting. We all know how I feel about the tool named the Peacemaker.

[Mk3]

Sticky, slippery foams. Inflatable enclosures

Sounds like my bedroom

We all know that part of what the US is screwing up around the world is expecting our soldiers to be diplomat/police

Oh yeah, we suck at it. We're not trained or equipped for it, and a big part of the reason many of us get in to this line of duty is so it WON'T be the case back home. The last thing I want to see at home is some fat cop with an M4 (and probably fuck awful muzzle discipline). I want home to be Barney Fife with one bullet in his pocket. That is why I get so pissed when I hear of police using military tactics and hear it legitimized on the news. Body armor is passive, have at it, door breakers sure why not, siege tactics? No. If it is that bad call the governor and have the National Guard do it for you. If its still too big, they can involve federal forces. Stick to being Barney and Andy, we all liked Barney and Andy, even if Ron Howard is the poster child for soulless gingers.

Plus if they'd used

advanced non-lethal weapons technologies

the bystanders would have been =http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_(weapon)]DAZZLED by the police, vs you know, shot. It baffles me that they would even consider discharging a weapon in the same environment they would never conceive of tossing out tear gas. If you are not willing to clear out the sinus of the masses then you aren't ready to rain lead on them.

I stand by the solution being advocacy and reform rather than avoidance. Not calling them will, if anything, further tip the balance of stupidity toward preemptive violence, as people would effectively only call when they feel their lives are near forfeit from the situation at hand. The training would respond by moving further toward ROEs (though we still use escalation of force). Thing about a rifle, its hard to walk around with one usefully and not have it in your hand. How exactly do you plan to grapple with someone first holding a rifle? Sure you can butt stroke, but then you've already used a weapon and gotten in close proximity. (best Navy phrase ever: the Rear Admiral Lower Half demonstrated the butt stroke for his seamen).

I'd rather be pissed about this:

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4[/media]
(they are unbelievably lucky that didn't turn into a riot)

Than This:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... d+man&sm=3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have no issue with cops being armed, but as they are citizens they should be held to the same standard as any other private citizen who fires a shot. I'm in a war zone so my son doesn't have to be. Lets keep it that way.

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." John Adams

[DerGolgo]

Just had a properly silly idea.
Problem would be convincing cops that "No, you don't need to immediately default to maximum force in every situation. You know the assholes who don't like cops? They'll stop not liking cops when they see cops acting sensibly, not like they're bloodthirsty." What's more, convincing the gated-community fuckers and law-and-order politicos that this is so.
From what I gather from you lot's media, it strikes me as a feature of the copper culture that they must make people fear maximum force.
Here's the actual idea: Convince some PD to replace the first couple of bullets in every mag with rubber-bullets, or one of those compressed sand things. Yes, nasty, but not quite as nasty as the metal variation.
Then don't make other PDs adopt this tactic once it has proven itself (if it does). Just convince a few other PDs to at least consider it. At the same time, make the media look at how brutal and inhuman it is. At the terrible pain it causes. Not that cops may use a weapon, but that this one, in particular, is too much, somehow. Even when the alternative is deadly metal bullets, the media could make such a fuss, couldn't they. Especially when it's something about to be adopted by PDs elsewhere. Think of the children!
But the "liberal media" demanding cops give up, or don't even acquire it? How many talking heads wouldn't rest until every PD everywhere had adopted such stuff? How many cops would want it extra much, just because of that?
And once the non-lethal response has it's foot in the door...

Or maybe a cash-incentive for whichever PD manages to reduce the number of firearms-fatalities at the hands of their officers the most?

As regards pepper-spray orgies like the one Mk3 posted above ... to quote what he put into the mouth of Jubal Early:

You oughta be shot. Or stabbed, lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified, but they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?

Day-one of riot control training: Enjoy a dose of pepper spray, right in the kisser!
I mean, they still put infantrymen through the tear-gas hut for gas-mask training, or don't they?

[kitkat]

I must ask. Did you quit your job because of what your colleagues were doing? Because of what you were expected to do?

yes.

if you expect only special people can do that, you won't expect it to happen again, because you don't expect people to be capable of it.

not at all. That "people" are capable of being psychologically aberrant is already apparent. Rather it gives the opportunity for identification and analysis of the type, which in turn is critical to screening such away from power. *That* is how you stop such things from happening again.

It may take a genuinely evil person to plan such things, to give the orders.

My point exactly. Ordinary people may well be *coercible* into acts of evil, but willingly doing so--and with willing repetition--is the difference between the psychopathic and the rest of us. BTW, where exactly do you think the various psyche issues that combat vets derive from? There is a reason 30% of Vietnam vets have diagnosable levels of PTSD. Include the undiagnosed, related conditions, and relate that percentage to the percentage of those who actually saw significant combat and the relationship between being coerced to do evil (all combat in this war was inherently evil) and the reasons for the resultant psych damage upon those coerced into such acts becomes clear.

If you expect that evil is done only by special people, you may end up overlooking it. Most people will see someone doing something and will think "that's a good guy, so what he's doing must be good". Which is how, again and again, fuckers got away with stuff throughout history.

Well, i doubt we'll ever agree on this. If you expect evil can be instigated by anyone, you'll suspect anyone, fear of one's fellows will become pervasive, personal familiarity will lose its ability to mitigate such universal fear and society will come unglued as a result...much like what has been happening in my country over my lifetime. This is unnecessarily tragic--as the vast majority of people are utterly incapable of casually perpetrating evil acts--rather this behavior lies within the realm of the psychopath virtually exclusively. That an aspect of psychopathy is the ability to act as a social chameleon is the primary reason so many can be deceived into thinking they are "just like us". The Disturbing Link Between Psychopathy And Leadership

If you can blame it all on "special", evil people entirely, you won't bother considering whether you should blame yourself.

Nonsense. Anyone has the ability to choose. What one sees as a mistake, what one sees as psychically uncomfortable, repugnant etc and the choice as to whether to repeat or refuse/avoid repeating. These are individual responsibilities and have nothing to do with whether or not one recognizes that the individual(s) acting to coerce one into these questionable behaviors is or is not recognized as a psychopathic personality.

It was US. WE did that.

Only in the sense of "we" being the culture which fostered such results. That and almost total ignorance of the tools of manipulation psychopaths use upon the general population to induce desired behavior/beliefs (propaganda was *invented* during this time period and so virtually NO one had any ability to defend against it's effects.)

Not everyone may be capable of actually wielding the machete, or leading the gang armed with those to their victims. But enough are. And those that are, they don't appear out of the ordinary until they do, and they don't think of themselves as out of the ordinary.

No not everyone is "capable of actually wielding the machete" to be sure. Glad you at least see that much by now. But as to the latter part of your statement above, that may hold relatively true for the ignorant but for those with even a passing familiarity with psychopathy (and related disorders), it is definitely *not* true. How well does one need to know another before an accurate assessment can be made of their empathy levels and the degree their own self-interest dominates their behavior? (The latter being particularly relevant to the case of cops.) Not very long at all. You see we know what their characteristics are now. This makes it possible to identify the type. Forewarned is forearmed.

I think our basic difference is our view of humanity. You seem to consider the inability to commit an atrocity to be the norm, anything else to be the exception. You hold our species in fairly high regard.
I disagree, and I find that history seems to hold up my disagreement. The norm is that we are still driven by deep, tribal instincts, messed up self-perceptions, the drive for not just physical but emotional self-preservation and fear. We are all cut from different cloth, and some of us surely are incapable of doing such things. But so many people are capable of doing it, it is just as much part of the spectrum of personalities that is normal as the other. Being able to do evil is quite normal.

Yes, i do see this differently. I am also aware of history and I am also sadly aware of the fatal flaws of this species, BUT--these flaws are not the universal ability to perpetrate evil but rather they lie in ignorance, instincts of self-preservation that allow coercion to work so effectively for those who apply it, a species-wide proclivity for self-delusion, particularly when it comes to uncomfortable/disconcerting realities and a pervasive preference for emotional rather than rational thinking. These are the mass species' weaknesses which psychopaths have historically been so adept at exploiting.

This is what concerns me, classifying people.

It should--at the very least, when it is contemplated in a prejudicial/cautionary fashion, it should instigate an in-depth examination of the evidence/logic justifying such division. And...if such evidence is poor or contrived or lacking entirely (as is the case in racism, homophobia, sex/gender, etc) then such proposed prejudicial divisions should be not only dismissed but condemned. However if it is rationally based --it should be adopted--as any exposed, data-supported reality would be. Also, one should be wary of the emotionally-based tendency to generalize to the specific using either certainty or unjustified-by-data levels of probability--as doing so is a fallacy and one which provides the foundation for much unjustified prejudice.

Now, you might consider the last sentence to be descriptive of my *own* position re; the police. IOW, that my extrapolation to the specific in this case is unsupported by data/reason/logic. But I submit that it _is_ so supported and that the proposed aversion to casual police involvement is wholly justified on a risk/reward basis (probability). I base this on a universal: police culture. An example can be found in use-of-force doctrines. In such, in virtually every US police organization, "officer safety" justifies not only use of deadly force but *indiscriminate* use of deadly force. IOW, "collateral damage" (harming the innocent) is utterly acceptable under these universally adopted culturally-based policies (as in the instant case, one among a plethora of other similar cases). The psychological character of these policies can be thus determined to be de facto psychopathic (unjustified elevation of one's self-worth above all others). Therefore any individual subject to such a culture, or a willing adoptee of such, has a high probability of acting in a psychopathic manner. Avoidance of such entities reasonably corresponds to a quite ordinary and wholly justified sense of self-defense; of one's personal freedom and personal physical safety. Basically it works like this: If you willingly adopt a behavioral culture which is defacto psychopathic in nature, your probability of *acting* in a conforming psychopathic manner becomes very high indeed. This applies not only to LE, but to employees of organizations such as...Goldman Sacs... as well.

[DerGolgo]

I read your words, and it shakes out to me as the following: while a psychopath may be the one who decides to do the evil, a regular person, without any psychological pathology, can be coerced to act on the psychopath's behalf and do the evil deed with their own hands?
To whit:

Therefore any individual subject to such a culture, or a willing adoptee of such, has a high probability of acting in a psychopathic manner.

Quite what I've been saying from the beginning. Take a normal person, put them in the right environment and circumstances, and they'll do it. They may even end up doing it without specific orders, but because they adopt their leader's rationale as their own.

If you expect that evil is done only by special people, you may end up overlooking it. Most people will see someone doing something and will think "that's a good guy, so what he's doing must be good". Which is how, again and again, fuckers got away with stuff throughout history.

Well, i doubt we'll ever agree on this. If you expect evil can be instigated by anyone, you'll suspect anyone, fear of one's fellows will become pervasive, personal familiarity will lose its ability to mitigate such universal fear and society will come unglued as a result...much like what has been happening in my country over my lifetime. This is unnecessarily tragic--as the vast majority of people are utterly incapable of casually perpetrating evil acts--rather this behavior lies within the realm of the psychopath virtually exclusively. That an aspect of psychopathy is the ability to act as a social chameleon is the primary reason so many can be deceived into thinking they are "just like us". The Disturbing Link Between Psychopathy And Leadership

Ah. Casually. You're introducing a new word here. I wasn't talking about anyone doing any of this without plans, unintentionally, out of the spur of the moment or without consideration for the consequences. Just considering different consequences than they should. An SS camp guard shooting a prisoner, even if they did it for sport, didn't necessarily do it "casually". They may have wanted to impress a superior, or felt the need to be part of the pack and to demonstrate their membership thusly.
I know pretty much everyone I meet would be capable of committing a war crime. You know why this doesn't make me live in fear? Because I don't necessarily have to suspect they'd commit that war crime against me, personally, or anyone I know, and because there is no damn war going on. Unless I meet someone with the opportunity and an excuse to do something like that, I don't suspect them. I'm aware they could do it, but I don't have to fear it happening right fucking now. Knowing my father could drive his car drunk doesn't mean I have to fear him do it - unless I know he's in a situation where he might get drunk and want to drive later.

Being on the lookout for people starting to act in that manner includes being on the lookout for anyone providing opportunity, the convenient excuse, all of that, for them to do it, and things going that way. The psychopaths alone lacked the manpower to do what happened here between 1933 and 1945. Sure, they managed to recruit quite a few more psychos - but most of what was done was done by quite normal people, who were only following orders. Not casually, since following orders was something they had learned from childhood was a sacred duty, one not to be taken on lightly.
At the end of the day, looking out for psychopaths is prudent, certainly. But you must look at what people actually do, regardless of they psychological setup. You must consider whether the culture around them is growing into a place where it might let them do something else, also. Whether or not someone had the profile to do x is irrelevant once they've done x. I'd like to make sure I live in a world where no one has the profile to do x. But I'd also like to live in a world where actually no one does it, which strikes me as being slightly more pressing and relevant.

And if you want to be on the lookout, differentiating between "normal" people and people who only appear normal, those social chameleons, you just have to do what I suggest you do. Be aware that every normal person can do such things. Because no one walks around with a sign "I only appear normal", and anyone who strikes their fellow people as "only appearing normal" is already out of these people's definition of normal, aren't they?

If you can blame it all on "special", evil people entirely, you won't bother considering whether you should blame yourself.

Nonsense. Anyone has the ability to choose. What one sees as a mistake, what one sees as psychically uncomfortable, repugnant etc and the choice as to whether to repeat or refuse/avoid repeating. These are individual responsibilities and have nothing to do with whether or not one recognizes that the individual(s) acting to coerce one into these questionable behaviors is or is not recognized as a psychopathic personality.

Unfortunately, some people choose not to choose which order they carry out. Enough people are so weak willed, so honed through their life to respect authority, that neither the psychopathic personality of their leaders, nor the psychopathic nature of their orders, can drive them away. They desperately want someone to follow, they emotionally need that. And they can't deal with having picked the wrong one to follow, with having not seen the bad side of them or of their plans. Or how would you explain the inevitable occurrence of apologists, desperate to explain why the atrocities committed by their leader weren't atrocities, but necessary.
Choosing means taking responsibility. For many, that is the most frightening concept of all.

I think our basic difference is our view of humanity. You seem to consider the inability to commit an atrocity to be the norm, anything else to be the exception. You hold our species in fairly high regard.
I disagree, and I find that history seems to hold up my disagreement. The norm is that we are still driven by deep, tribal instincts, messed up self-perceptions, the drive for not just physical but emotional self-preservation and fear. We are all cut from different cloth, and some of us surely are incapable of doing such things. But so many people are capable of doing it, it is just as much part of the spectrum of personalities that is normal as the other. Being able to do evil is quite normal.

Yes, i do see this differently. I am also aware of history and I am also sadly aware of the fatal flaws of this species, BUT--these flaws are not the universal ability to perpetrate evil but rather they lie in ignorance, instincts of self-preservation that allow coercion to work so effectively for those who apply it, a species-wide proclivity for self-delusion, particularly when it comes to uncomfortable/disconcerting realities and a pervasive preference for emotional rather than rational thinking. These are the mass species' weaknesses which psychopaths have historically been so adept at exploiting.

Ah. I think I've found our disagreement. You figure the psychopaths who make others carry out their evil plans are the ones doing evil here, the others are victims. At least that's what this sounds like. Victims of psychological weaknesses and of the coercion these weaknesses allowed to be applied to them. Fine, fine, interesting proposition. And I don't even particularly disagree with it - not entirely.
What I disagree with is that evil is the domain of the psychopath here. Their coerced "victims", they are to blame for letting someone coerce them into such actions. Not universally, not always 100%, but they are not innocent bystanders, by any definition. If some soldier mows down a village's population with his machine gun, an evil thing is done - and it's not the psychopath doing it, it's that soldier. The psychopath may have given the order, but the soldier carried it out. Under coercion, perhaps, but he did it. If you lay all the blame on the psychopath here, you're just saying that soldier "was just following orders".
Yes, it's entirely unreasonable to expect any regular person to withstand the coercion in such a situation, probably chose their own death over the deaths of people who then someone else would murder. Yes, it's important to recognize the psychopaths and keep them far, far away from positions of power.
But you must also realize that, when they are in a position of power? The ones carrying out their heinous orders, the ones actually puling the triggers to commit the atrocities, don't have to be psychopaths. The psychopaths just have to convince them. By coercion, for example, or by providing the right environment, the right culture, as you yourself pointed out.
There is no inherent goodness in people that prevents genocide. Believing that is the fallacy that results in people being ever so surprised whenever such happens. The only way to prevent stuff like genocide is by stopping those who would give the orders. But unless you know someone would carry out these orders, would you be much concerned with stopping the psychopaths? If you were sure that, even if they got into power, they couldn't make anyone actually do it, would you be quite as concerned?

Lastly, if, indeed,

Therefore any individual subject to such a culture, or a willing adoptee of such, has a high probability of acting in a psychopathic manner.

Not just "any psychopath" but "any individual" ... and also, in your second post in this thread, you said

Yeh... no. Cops, over here at least, are a particular *kind* of human being, of the robotic/authoritarian variety, exactly the type they recruit and psych-screen for.

If that culture can do it to any individual, what do they need the screening for? The flipside: if any individual can be made to behave like that, how sure can you be that it was their variety of humanity that made them act that way, and not the culture that turned them that way? In other words: If they are, indeed, psychopaths now, were they perhaps normal, once?
Before you say it: Yes, correlation doesn't equal causation. That any individual becomes more likely to act like that under those circumstances doesn't mean it was those circumstances that made them act that way, doesn't mean it's causative. But whether it's causative or not, as stated above, you point out it works with any individual. If it can be observed with any individual, it can be observed with quite normal people.

[Mk3]

First this should have worked

the bystanders would have been DAZZLED by the police, vs you know, shot.

DAZZLED Just makes me laugh till I fart.

Second:

Day-one of riot control training: Enjoy a dose of pepper spray, right in the kisser!
I mean, they still put infantrymen through the tear-gas hut for gas-mask training, or don't they?

US armed forces do, and it sucks, a lot, it wears off in a few hours, but the memories of puking in your shirt last a lifetime (because some prick will always be there to remind you). In fact we endure most of the crap that has been called "torture" as a part of training, but that is a topic for another post. You can absolutely be awake for 54 hours and then run 10 miles, you might not remember it that well at the end though. What they didn't prepare me for was being knocked on my ass by jet engines while my eyes were frozen shut.

Anyway I think most police departments do indeed get pepper sprayed as a part of their training, for just that reason, but I'm not certain. I will say getting shot at (even with just blanks) having your encampment raided, etc does wonders to help you learn to chill the fuck out. I don't know what the standard FTX/Crucible/gauntlet/other-creative-this-is-going-to-suck name cops go through is, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. It seems like they are well trained in the "kill or be killed" scenarios but not the "take a few punches and get over it" scenarios. In that kind of work in a major metropolitan area, you're going to get hurt some times, and if they couldn't get this dude to the ground my guess would be they don't have a lot beyond basic disarmament and take down. Looking at a few of the gang-style beatings that have gotten cops in trouble seems to confirm it, but then again we don't see the arrests that go well on the nightly news.

[mtne]

Interesting and well thought out discussion.

I call the cops all the time. The alternative which I've been discouraged from is to handle things myself.

Unfortunately/fortunately, most of the time it's just so there can be a record of complaint for problem renters and eventual action against the non resident landlords who don't give a fuck about my hood.

Unfortunately/fortunately, our poor barrio is the shit dumping grounds for the metro area punks who don't do that shit at home. Street racers with a non-pursue policy that everyone knows about makes our residential streets the wild west most evenings in the summer and weekends year round. Apparently caltrops are illegal, and road spikes are not for public purchase not to mention fuckall expensive.

Unfortunately/fortunately, I can appreciate white privilege. Should the police choose to shoot someone around here I've got decent odds of not being the target.

Unfortunately/fortunately, that doesn't mean much given the skills I think most of them possess.

Unfortunately/fortunately, our levels of personnel are based on stats. If no calls come in everything must be good, right? Also, staffing levels are inadequate for 1987 populations......... no updates in 25 years of population growth. People in poor areas don't call the cops. Crime therefore goes down as far as the people who don't live there are concerned. So things decline. Gang activity continues with minimum interference.

Unfortunately/fortunately, many of the officers in our district also live in our district and are neighbors. I ask them directly what they want us to do. They say call and report, get accurate stats so they might be able to get access to the resources they need.

Unfortunately/fortunately, that doesn't mean some of them aren't power hungry assholes.

so on so forth. Psychology theory is nice and all, and discussions on evil and the human condition are relevant. Concerns about how to change social/economic conditions are really where it's at. Perhaps how to address the overall lack of empathy in people as a rule.

.... but not utilizing the one resource we have to address issues in our neighborhoods is fucking stupid. Would it be nice to have other resources, sure it would, and I advocate for them were ever we can get them. I also advocate for involvement for everyone to do more than bitch about things, don't like it get off your ass and paint over some graffiti, get the habitual drunk driving down your streets a DWI, ask that random guy knocking on doors who he is and why he's there. Get out and talk to the people in your hood, get to know everyone on your block. Or you could just move to the burbs. Or talk theory on the net.

[kitkat]

I read your words, and it shakes out to me as the following: while a psychopath may be the one who decides to do the evil, a regular person, without any psychological pathology, can be coerced to act on the psychopath's behalf and do the evil deed with their own hands?
To whit:

Therefore any individual subject to such a culture, or a willing adoptee of such, has a high probability of acting in a psychopathic manner.

Quite what I've been saying from the beginning. Take a normal person, put them in the right environment and circumstances, and they'll do it. They may even end up doing it without specific orders, but because they adopt their leader's rationale as their own.

LOL! Nice try! No, quite NOT what you've been saying and I quote you: "All it takes to make such a normal person into an evil "monster" is opportunity, permission to act in ways normally prohibited, removing responsibility for consequences and creating the perception that this is what they're expected to do."

*That*...is not coercion. That is just permission.

[DerGolgo]

I read your words, and it shakes out to me as the following: while a psychopath may be the one who decides to do the evil, a regular person, without any psychological pathology, can be coerced to act on the psychopath's behalf and do the evil deed with their own hands?
To whit:

Therefore any individual subject to such a culture, or a willing adoptee of such, has a high probability of acting in a psychopathic manner.

Quite what I've been saying from the beginning. Take a normal person, put them in the right environment and circumstances, and they'll do it. They may even end up doing it without specific orders, but because they adopt their leader's rationale as their own.

LOL! Nice try! No, quite NOT what you've been saying and I quote you: "All it takes to make such a normal person into an evil "monster" is opportunity, permission to act in ways normally prohibited, removing responsibility for consequences and creating the perception that this is what they're expected to do."

*That*...is not coercion. That is just permission.

But it is subjecting that person to that culture, is it not? In that whole paragraph, you do not mention once that such culture would be a culture of coercion. You explain rather eloquently, instead, that negative outcomes like collateral damage are culturally accepted, how the use of deadly force is justified ... yet you don't mention the cops being coerced into violence.
If you want to LOL! Nice try! me, but feel the urge to retcon the argument you yourself have presented, which didn't include the mention of coercion there, only the description of the immersion in culture doing that, it makes you sound quite a bit condescending. I get that you have more experience in what a police force looks like from the inside, or any such experience for that matter, I'll admit I have none. But, while that was what this thread started with, it escalated into a discussion of how and why people act like shit. I have spent my entire life in the country that has presented what's probably the most drastic example of how people can act against all morals and ethics. The public discourse here at some point always comes back to that, I can't count the hours I've spent in classrooms, in front of the TV, or reading newspapers and magazines on it all. While that still doesn't make me an expert, I think I've gathered a reasonably valid opinion about it. And the sentiment that, given the circumstances I've described, normal people are quite capable of behaving "monstrously", is something I've heard expressed often enough over here.

I'll give ya, not every possible act of evil a normal person is capable of requires only permission and opportunity and suchlike. But enough monstrous deeds require only that, the permission and the other stuff I've described in what you've quoted here.
If they may do what they will, people will, sooner or later. And sooner or later, quite normal people may wish to do violence. For whatever reason.
Perhaps we have a different definition of coercion. Someone who decides it's fine to sell AIDS medication in Africa for ten times the going price in Scandinavia, because it make the company a nice profit and him a nice bonus, I don't consider him coerced. But he doesn't have to have a general lack of empathy, either. Just where it concerns people thousands of miles away, people whom his own socialization tells him deserve no better, because their poverty must be their own fault, just there, it may just be that any empathy he feels for those can't compete with his greed and the rationalizations and justifications he produces in order to make himself feel alright about what he's doing.
Is a culture, not just a sub-culture but the whole society-shebang, that suggests to people that those of faith x are bad and must be removed, and that it's everybody's duty to help with that, is that culture coercing the fuckers who lived happily next door to their neighbors for decades but now call the authorities on them? Or are they psychopaths?
All the people who didn't call the cops when Kitty Genovese was getting slaughtered. Are all of them psychopaths? Or what coerced them? Or did the situation, with so many people present, let them put the responsibility to do something on the others, providing themselves with an apology for their inaction. The opportunity to do something, though nothing in this case, the ability to avoid personal responsibility, to rationalize even that they were expected to do this nothing - don't make a fuss, don't bother no one, none of your business, all of that, and the rationalization that they didn't have to act, providing them the permission to act in a prohibited way. Standing by as a young woman was getting murdered, I think that's prohibited behavior in pretty much any culture. I don't see that they all have to be psychopaths, nor do I find this coercion. Or is the culture that dictates people shouldn't make a fuss, is that coercion?

Check this out, fast forward to 2:50. Staged accident, to see who'd stop and help. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41vUNHCPa28" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
All those people driving past. All of them psychopaths? All of them coerced? Does having an appointment to make count as coercion? Diffusion of responsibility is what it's called, I think. And once one drives past, the others will follow the herd, without thinking, after all, the herd, it rules. Is that coercion? Or just an excuse? Or fear, the fear to encounter a dying person or having to deal with blood. Is that fear coercion? Or is it something every normal person experiences in every bloody unfamiliar situation?

Does it really take a psychopath to do this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_disengagement" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Do selfish reason one who does it count as coercion, or must that person be a psychopath?

Perhaps we both should consider the following: A differing definition of "normal". When you say normal, you seem to mean someone with no psychological pathologies, a mentally healthy, well adjusted person.
When I say normal, I mean someone from the middle area under the bell curve. Someone who is within the range of what is generally considered normal. Not by psychiatrists, but by everybody else. And what everybody else might find entirely normal, the psychiatrist might dissect into any number of aberrations and pathologies.

[guitargeek]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kelly_Thomas" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[kitkat]

DG i'm bored, sorry. We made our respective points and that's that, far as i'm concerned.

[DerGolgo]

DG i'm bored, sorry. We made our respective points and that's that, far as i'm concerned.

Well, that's a sudden change of tack. Okay, cool.

[Rench]

This is an AWESOME thread, and I lament that I don't even have time to catch up on it right now. HOWEVER, to throw in my 2 cents (adjusted for inflation) without even reading others' comments thoroughly, does anyone know where the term "Police" came from? Linguistically?

"Polis," referring to "city" (Greek I believe?). It was a shortening of Man of the City, someone who cared about and took pride in their neighborhood, village, countryside even. Someone who cared for and looked out for their fellow neighbor, much like was suggested earlier. They helped those who needed, and enforced order when needed. Like so many things, it's the fine details over millennia of evolution of the concept that have it bogged down. I know cops who I trust implicitly with everything they do for my community and more. I know others who are donut-munching sacks of shit that like to prove how tough they are. Funny thing is I can say that about almost any population, civil servant or otherwise.

-Rench

[mtne]

So KK and DG - Aside from the mental / theroretical / religious (as in you can't convince or change those of a certain faith religious) back and forth (mutual masturbation).

Got anything to say about real world on the ground living in communities kind of stuff? Communities with populations that are at odds or don't care about their local living conditions?

I mean don't EVER call the cops is nice propaganda/sentiment/words to live by. So are don't diddle little kids. Killing puppies and kittens is bad. And always be gracious to Austrian artists. But really where's that get us........

[DerGolgo]

I've met asshole cops. I've met reasonable cops. I've met cops who were, honestly, nice guys.
Cops are guys like you and me. Unless you know, form personal experience, that your local cops would make the situation worse...call 'em. When in doubt, and all of that.
If nothing else, they'll carry along the authority that may be required to make someone shut the fuck up, or will have the wherewithal to call the people with the right tools. And not just make them go, but go in a hurry. That may be a function of their job, rather than their personal standing and whatnot, but if you're bleeding to death of what have you, whether the EMT who comes around was called there because of someone's job description or some other reason doesn't matter. What matter is that someone is with the right tools and skills is present to help.