Maybe it's because I am mixed race and grew up in a poor minority neighborhood but it seems like the system is just eager and waiting to put everyone in it. Kind of like a low grade terror all the time.
I've heard so many stories about people ending up in jail in the USA or Mexico or other countries from things that would be considered minor and them having to fight their way out of it.
Missed bribe there, racist cops there, at least I'm safe home where the only time I have to worry about the police is during protests.
They love to joke about the Canadian attitudes towards their risk exposure coming into the states; although it has become more frustrating to cross the border, the mythology is a bit hyped.
I would say, however, and they'd probably agree, you'll find a huge variation in policing between regions and urban areas vs rural ones. I'm from the country (now in the city) and rural cops scare me more than urban cops because... hard to express.
Lived in the US my whole life and never had to bribe anyone. Europe? I've bribed people more than a few times to get shit done. Mostly Eastern, but the idea that the US is on par with Mexico via corruption is fairly laughable.
That being said, the US is definitely corrupt, but in the US corruption is legal as long as you follow the corruption rules. For example, I can donate $100K to my favourite political candidate right now and then ask them for favours, totally legal, but yet corrupt.
We're coming up to election season and candidates have already started bragging about who is paying their way (e.g. Wall Street, Koch Brothers, Big Oil, etc) and if anyone doesn't think this type of thing is an investment into future political favours then they're very naive.
PS - While there is corruption in every country, the US's electoral finance rules make it particularly bad.
I have never, in my life, encountered bribery on the scale of what goes on in other countries, in the USA.
If you tried to bribe a cop you would be immediately thrown in jail.
That being said just be respectful and they will be respectful back. Its been working for me for 29 years.
And no, not all cops will bring you in for bribing them; I'm much more pro-cop than most people that blab on the internet, but that doesn't mean there aren't bad ones.
Of course anyone can be racist, but when the white people have nearly all of the economic and political power, and the black people have nearly none, it doesn't matter if black people are racist, because there are no structures to support that.
Or, put another way, black people might call me "cracker" or "white boy" or whatever, and hate me because I'm white, but I can still walk into a bank and get a home loan. I was never red-lined out of living in a neighborhood at first sight.
The assumption that all a black person can do to be racist is call you (a white male) "cracker" is rather disingenuous.
This prank video is like a small example of USA's issues.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U0tDBvdunu0 ...try reversing the ethnicity and neighborhood in this video... the vid would be much shorter and the outcome much worse, I'm sure.
Pernicious, isn't it?
It isn't just about name-calling. It's about the systems that keep people disengaged politically and economically, generation after generation. The name-calling is just the surface stuff, and you know, I bet you anything that if people of color actually had a fair shot at anything in this country, the name calling wouldn't matter at all.
A sysadmin pal, for example, was walking down the street in a major city dressed in our standard sysadmin shabby with his beloved but somewhat ragged hometown baseball cap. Some cop decided that he looked to be a guy who had just shot a cop. They eventually sorted out the mistake, but my pal needed treatment in a hospital afterward. To this day he can't stand cops.
And that's in a city where I think the police are generally chill. When I lived in Chicago, I learned to treat cops with the deference I'd give to a vigorous, ill-tempered horse. The may have thought I was treating them with respect, but in my case it was a distrust born of observing how they treated other residents.
That last 5% is fucked up though. Detroit itself is beyond fucked up. I used to run a construction site at Jane and Finch (Canada's worst intersection at the time) in 2004-2006 and a couple years later I went through Detroit while picking up my friend's car. No contest between the two. The bad part of Detroit (70% of it) was like a failed 3rd world country. I was literally told to leave the area of town I was in when I got to the closed (at least for people importing a car) boarder.
I got pulled over by cops kinda near that area and you could tell they had an obvious power trip "respect my authority" vibe to them.
But then there is Salt Lake City, or Kansas City, or even poor, but hospitable places like Cleveland. They feel just as nice as Canada. Nice cops. Nice people. No sense of foreboding. America has a huge range of situations.
Atlanta has some places that are more like war zones than anything else. It's just as bad as some places I've seen in Central America. The state patrols around my area have the you better "respect my authority" vibe. I was screamed at because my vehicle smelled like alcohol (due to passengers) when I was being the sober driver for the night.
It's also unfortunate what happened to your friend. I dont fault the police for their methods, I think its a reaction to the realities they have faced. The big problem is they shouldn't be using those methods in every situation.
The big problem is that there is literally actually zero accountability around the use of "those methods", not during, not afterward. "Those methods" are used over and over again, sometimes even by the same individuals. There are no repercussions, no consequences, nothing.
How many police officers have faced a judge for assault and murder? Maybe they'd take the responsibility of their position a little more seriously if they actually had to make a case that the action was justified, and go to prison otherwise.
This is certainly a bold statement, and worth trying to dig into, because at least in the case of police shootings, it seems obviously and demonstrably untrue.
Credible statistics on police related shootings are apparently difficult to come by. However, this study by the Washington Post[0] and Bowling Green State University[1] suggests that the ratio of incidents (including accidental shootings and what would be considered legitimate shootings) to convictions is about 1000/1. If taken at face value, the legal system seems unreasonably biased in favor of law enforcement, (certainly, people who aren't cops can't expect those odds) and against non-white victims in particular, But accountability is still not "literally actually zero."
This is an important distinction to make, I believe, because a system in which accountability is difficult, and one in which it doesn't even exist, are vastly different in terms of practical, possible solutions worth discussing. Hyperbole only serves to pour fuel on what is already a volatile subject (especially on the internet, especially among so-called hackers on the internet.)
[0]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/14/1377509/-New-study-...
[1]https://blogs.bgsu.edu/pilproject/2014/08/20/police-crime-in...
Arrested on a false charge in an upscale neighborhood while well-dressed and not intoxicated. It took two and a half years of my life, a suspension from school, and over $50,000 before the charge was dismissed with prejudice and the suspension overturned.
The system works, eventually, for some people. But man can a rogue police officer and DA do some damage to you in the mean time. The psychic scars will probably never completely fade.
Feel like there are details missing to this story.
It's more along the lines of:
I was sitting at friend's house, (quite literally) in my Sunday best. I received a phone call from an acquaintance who was distraught. I arrived at the home, was arrested, placed in handcuffs (double locked behind my back), and held for forty eight hours without food or drink.
I was released after paying an exorbitant bond (did you know you can post bond with a debit card?), followed by a rather insane two and one half years prosecution, against the wishes of everyone involved.
Anecdotes work both ways, though. I'm sure hundreds of readers here could say that they've never been falsely accused and had to fight a rogue DA to get their name cleared (sounds like a movie plot).
If only you knew the rest of the story... It often felt like I'd been thrown into some bizarre screenwriter's fantasy. But this is real.
My experience suggests the problem is systemic, not isolated. I can only imagine that if I were a poor black kid from the inner city, I would be in prison right now, rather than several years removed from that nightmare.
No, that anecdote plus the fact that the USA has a disproportionate number of people in jails compared to other developed countries makes it sound like a common occurrence.
See this recent HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10091586
From the submission's referenced paper:
The incarceration boom is unprecedented in American history, and unseen anywhere else in the world; traditionally indistinguishable from its peers, the United States is now the world’s largest jailer, both in absolute numbers and in rate. Home to only five percent of the world’s population, it now houses over twenty percent of its prisoners.
The situation was that I got a minor speeding ticket in another state. Paid the ticket. State didn't update their records and it got marked as not paid. My state arrests me for failure to appear in court, suspends my license, threatened to impound my car, etc... I did nothing wrong in this case. The only way I was able to get it fixed was to talk to the director of the department of transportation for my state. I got lucky basically.
By the way, I'm a white middle aged male, so this isn't anything to do with race. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, just that the issue is systemic and not something that's merely cultural. The US justice system is extremely heavy handed and fairly deficient.
Isn't that self-contradicting? Then who'll listen to your claims?
How about Wikipedia: "In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...)
So much for "be respectful and they will be respectful back." Such systematic problems aren't about "respect." If an official enemy was so jail-happy, we'd probably not take such a claim seriously. Because we're not so programmed to believe their propaganda.
I can't tell if police behavior is getting worse, or whether it was always this bad, and it is just being caught on camera more often, thanks to ubiquitous smartphones. But you can now go on YouTube and watch only new videos of cops behaving badly every waking moment of your life. They shoot dogs. They beat up handcuffed suspects. They arrest protesters for trespassing on public property. They use pepper spray from 30 cm away against nonviolent protesters. They make racist and sexist remarks. They shoot people in the back and drop a weapon next to the body. They literally murder people, on camera, and are not required to take any personal responsibility for it.
You should give a cop no more deference than you would ordinarily give to any other person who could murder you on the spot and get a paid vacation as his only "punishment". Be respectful, and they probably won't kill you, or do a roadside body cavity search, or arrest you for resisting arrest, or drag you to multiple hospitals until they find a doctor willing to comply with their ethically dubious and medically unnecessary requests, or shoot your dog, or simply trash your car while performing a "search".
Be respectful, and they won't punish you for "contempt of cop". The Andy Griffith cop no longer exists. He has been replaced by the "made man" cop.
Your best course of action now is to avoid all police contact altogether, even while they are off duty. If they force you into contact, just keep your mouth shut and leave at your earliest safe opportunity.
My advice to foreigners is to not voluntarily visit the U.S. If you must come, do not stray from the tourist-friendly areas, and try not to be outside of your hotel or other lodgings between 11 PM and 5 AM local time. Write the phone number for your nearest consulate in permanent marker on the inside of your forearm, and make sure it stays legible for the duration of your trip. Purchase a health insurance policy designed for international travelers to the US before you arrive. If you find my advice dubious, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sureshbhai_Patel .
"Former police officer Eric Parker, who is accused of injuring Patel, was fired from the Madison Police Department and charged with third-degree assault. In March 2015, Parker was charged by the FBI with felony civil rights abuse."
http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/02/why_wasn...
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/04/state_charges_delay...
http://whnt.com/2015/09/03/prosecution-rests-in-madison-offi...
I find it somewhat curious that there is apparently no further news coverage of Parker's misdemeanor assault trial after April 29th, which was the original trial date. But I'm not curious enough to pay the ten dollars Alabama charges for online access to court records per case.
Come to America and your opinion will change almost instantly. The anti-US fear-mongering on this forum is incredible; it's as if all 300+ million of us are living in a dystopian police state where one wrong word gets you thrown in solitary.
Sadly one of my friends were arrested and convicted of a crime with not one piece of evidence besides one person saying something about them. They could have plea bargained for 18 months but instead they thought I am innocent so might as well be found not guilty. He got 12 years.
Why was he convicted? Because the law matters only when it's convenient.
I used to believe that "ignorance of the law is no excuse". I no longer do. The people enforcing the laws (prosecutor, judge, police, etc.) are explicitly protected from misapplying the law. There are excuses for them for not knowing the law, or not applying it correctly.
I claim the same rights as them. If ignorance of the law is an excuse for them, it's an excuse for me.
And yes, on the bare face of it, your friend should have been found not guilty.
There's your evidence. Witnesses are evidence.
So unless you start speaking the same language as everyone else, there's not much use in any discussion.
The witness was 15 years old with a history of making false accusations against both her brothers and two boys at her High School. She was found to have had mutual sex with both boys on the high school campus and those accusations were deemed false. Her brothers were never found to have done anything wrong also false accusations. She than made an accusation against my friend. All this past history that happened in the past year was deemed not applicable to her current accusations. Also what the accusations were changed every time for 6 months with different dates, times and locations and him being re-arrested multiple of times. That didn't matter because my friend couldn't verify where he was at all times the previous 5 months. BTW the accusations were made the Monday before my friends marriage.
The state's expert witnesses for IT were the worst pieces of garbage spewing false statements. There was one conversation on Facebook that was of concern which my friend denied having. It wasn't an illegal conversation (This happened at 2 AM after he announced that he was driving two states away to propose to his present day wife) The IP address was not the same IP as my friends DESKTOP computer. My friends IP was the same the day before and the day after the conversation and for a month prior to that ocnversation. Experts stated that IP addresses are dynamic and change all the time so it is no surprise that the IP address was the same the day before and the day after but different for that one conversation on his desktop computer which was the states story, my friend has proven he was at his apartment at that time. Jury just has to believe whoever they are going to believe. Guilty and in the state a 2nd grade teacher forcibly raped two boys got 5 years. This judge gave him 12 years.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268198...
If the point is money, then yes, you'd be right. But for a lot of people the point is status, not money. Taking a vulnerable or visibly different group of people and forcing them into a subordinate state is going to feel like success to a lot of people.
Hyperbolic statement with absolutely no details about this situation? Seems legit.
The line at the impound lot was filled with poorer (looking) people, especially Somali, Hispanic, and Asian people for whom English was not their first language. My dad drove me there and stood in line with me, and I could tell it had a profound effect on his outlook. My dad has always been quite liberal, but being a rich, older white guy living in the suburbs, he hadn't seen firsthand some of the more subtle ways that poor / minority people are disadvantaged by the system.