Really? I'm a Canadian who had an awful experience with US police. I was attending a music festival that had a noise complaint, officers came in with guns drawn. I've never seen this approach in Canada.
I'm not gonna spill all my interactions with the police on the internet, of course, but I've been to college parties where the cops just told us to shut up. I've been speeding once or twice and had the officers bump the ticket down or give me a warning.
Perhaps we have good cops over here in Washington?
I've had police give me arbitrary orders. I've had police in a state of ever-escalating anger while I'm being completely cooperative and saying not much more than "Yes sir, no sir!" I've had police rant and rave at me outside my car window. I've had police bury incidents of threats and physical intimidation against me as a favor to their friends. I've had police tell me bald-faced lies about the District Attorney's office that the District Attorney told me were complete fabrications.
I've also had very good interactions with the police.
I'm an Ivy League graduate and have often been a highly paid professional -- which was my status for most of the above interactions with the police. I have no police record of any kind. I am rather small in stature and have a meek personal demeanor and a clean cut appearance. I am, however, not "white." My interactions with the police have been astonishingly varied.
This video [1], of course, should always be mentioned when discussing police interaction. In short, don't ever talk to the police. US Police are trained to make exercising the myriad rights we have both uncomfortable and counterintuitive. But you have to remember that by the time you are in front of a police officer, it's too late to talk your way out of whatever situation you are in. You can only make it worse by talking to them.
My first year in college (in WA), campus police (actual po-lice with a campus jurisdiction) conducted a coordinated raid on pot dealers in the dorms which they treated like a raid on a meth lab : guns drawn, doors kicked in, loud noises, innocent bystanders thrown to the ground, etc.
Obviously, this isn't analogous to a party - and cops do in fact have a SOP they follow when it comes to drug raids - but I still feel like it was handled in an unnecessarily heavy handed and tone-deaf way that's somewhat symptomatic of a larger problem.
Every single time this topic comes up here there are always one off incidents of how violent the police are, or are not. These one off's really aren't useful either way.
Also another reason why police arrive here with guns drawn when they've been called to some kind of incident/argument/disturbance is there is a much higher chance that someone here has a gun and could do them harm. I'm not sure why everyone glosses over that fact when the USA has 300 million guns vs. some place like London.
valid point.
Don't think we're too far off from our friends down south.