Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakobegger | Hacker News Reader

Over the years I've observed that a certain kind of people goes to work in law enforcement or security. They are often a bit aggressive, they seem to have this feeling of superiority, and they enjoy positions of authority. It's rarely the calm, humble, balanced types that work in those fields.

I think this is extremely dangerous.

Has anybody else made this observation? Is there anything that could be done to change this?

View on HN

I've been working with (not for) the local police for the last year. Anecdotally, it depends on the cop. The badge and gun carry power, and power attracts the corrupted and corruptible. No one doubts that there are asshole cops.

Most of the officers I talk to are motivated by a strong sense of right and wrong. Some are just happy to be helpful. I talked to one guy who honestly enjoyed answering people's questions about renewing tags and getting a handgun permit.

There are plenty of calm, humble, balanced police officers. What I worry about is a culture of law enforcement that trains them to react with force, disproportionately target minorities and close ranks to any criticism, no matter how valid.

"Most of the officers I talk to are motivated by a strong sense of right and wrong."

is total opposite of

"There are plenty of calm, humble, balanced police officers."

Its a coinflip wether you belong to the right or the wrong end of the scale dependent on environmental factors shaping the police officer.

Preferrably you would want someone who can think for themselve. Which a police department absolutely doesnt want, hence they screen against high iq.

hierarchy and balance dont mix.

There's probably some truth to this. But another thing happens. Law enforcement and security personnel spend a lot of time dealing with imbalanced individuals. And that probably colors their behavior and attitude quite a bit.

I listened to the This American Life story [1] that went along with this NYT piece. In it they interviewed a hospital worker who pointed out that he and other workers regularly deal with the same imbalanced individuals that police deal with. They get hit. They get attacked. It is part of their jobs. What they don't do is fire weapons at their patients, nor do they carry weapons.

If relatively low-paid, relatively unprotected hospital workers are "tough" enough to deal with difficult and dangerous hospital patients without using violence, why aren't the police? Unfortunately our laws have made it too easy for police to use violence against people in difficult situations where others in the exact same situation could not or would not use violence. These laws even go so far as to protect police who use absolutely brutal violence to injure or kill individuals who really just need medical care, such as Kelly Thomas [2].

[1]: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/579/m...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kelly_Thomas#Incident

I don't live in the US, but here's a story from Israel: a doctor I personally know was threatened by a relative of her patient, along the lines of "if he doesn't get well, I'll kill you." She told that to the police, who asked for the relative's name, and having heard the name, told her "be careful - this guy can actually kill you."

All is well (I guess the patient recovered), but I'm not sure she'd call herself "tough enough to deal with dangerous patients without using violence"!

The implication was mafia or mossad -- or some other group above the law?

Seriously - what do you think? If it was in the US, what would you bet on - it being a guy from the mafia or from the CIA? "Mafia", obviously (or whatever you'd call Israel's somewhat-organized criminals.)

It's not about "being above the law", either, it's about the criminal being better protected by the law, in this instance, than the victim. The policeman likely told her the truth - that no action taken against this guy based on her reported threat is going to deter him from fulfilling it, likely the reverse, so she better be careful.

Perhaps it was the word choice: "can" implies that the killing would not be punished. Obviously any person can kill another, so to say "can kill" suggests a "license to kill". If I were a policeman warning someone about a criminal, I would say "might kill" or some other phrase that discusses likelihood rather than capability.

Well, yeah, but if a guy from the CIA murders a doctor in the US, will he be punished? I kinda think he will be. Is he likely to threaten a doctor with murder in the first place, as a way to ensure his relative is properly treated? I kinda think he's not. Why do you think a guy from the mossad is any different or will be treated any differently? Would you ever put "CIA" in the same sentence where you put "mossad" in your comment if the story happened in the US?

Because I can't imagine a policeman ever saying "he can kill you" except in a fictional setting where James Bond is licensed to kill and that policeman somehow knows about Bond.

Right. We have armed officers interacting with the crazies, because we don't take mental health issues seriously enough to have enough mental health care workers do it.

We used to have sanitariums, now we (non-experts) say it's cheaper/better to just release them into the public. Then get all surprised and pissy when things go wrong.

We've regressed.

I agree with you. But it should also be remembered that one reason the sanitariums were closed down was because of big abuse scandals.

Those big institutions were terrible.

Hospital is not a good choice for most people with mental illness. Even people with severe illness, such as psychosis, benefit from good quality community treatment where possible, reserving hospital for last resort intervention.

That good quality bit is important though.

You might want to look at the literature around "Early Intervention in Psychosis" style working.

"a certain kind of people goes to work in law enforcement or security"

Those people you have observed, did you know them before they went into that line of work? Were they more likely than your other, less aggressive/superior-feeling/authority-seeking acquaintances, to go into that line of work?

I'm not saying your hypothesis is not true (there may be something in it) but there is danger that (i) we mistake the cause for the outcome, and/or (ii) judge people's personality based solely on the way they behave whilst doing their job.

My "hypothesis" is based on three people that I know that wanted to work or did work in law enforcement. I've met two of the people I'm thinking of before they applied to police school.

But I'm aware that those are just anecdotes that just accidentally might fit a plausible narrative...

I think that the expectations of the work lead inherently to being traumatized or at least socially alienated from others after spending a good portion of your waking life scrutinizing their behavior for risks. This change in experience is culturally enclosed by pride and camaraderie around the story of the importance of the work. The security person then emotionally relies on this story to justify the traumatic experience and cover its raw emotional ramifications. It is quite a large leap to then ask them to feel a humane connection to others that could possibly interrupt their ability to carry out the work they've been tasked and for who's sake they have learned to find meaning in their own discomfort. I think that a true reimagination of the work itself will have to come to change the outcomes

I'm sure the loss prevention officer who was slamming an old man's head against the wall, yelling "stop resisting" was just traumatized from all the terrible chicken shop lifters.

I'm not saying your idea of the situation doesn't happen, but there are a good number of already unstable people seeking out the job, long before they have a chance to be altered by it.

People like the one you describe thrive in a culture that is blinded by its reflexive urge to support its officers in the face of the nature of the work.

I'm talking about how the abstract concept of these jobs inherently contains the seeds of their inhumanity. If that is fixed the many who are abusive can be seen clearly by each other. You rightly point out that there are individuals carrying out a far worse sociopathy than even the job could dream up for them. I completely agree.

I once had an acquaintance who was a doctor on the psych ward at a public hospital. He got off on having power over patients and would talk about how he liked locking them up. He also had no respect at all for medical confidentiality and would gossip about patients. Fortunately, he got fired from that job and no longer works with patients.

> He also had no respect at all for medical confidentiality and would gossip about patients

Did you report it?

Warrior Cop - Radley Balko is interesting read. There was observation from LAPD official that created the some of the first SWAT teams that the people most enthusiastic about being in SWAT most often are the one you really don't want there.

I guess it gets even worse in the private sector - you may get a person without the needed background or training to resolve the situation in the optimal way.

The good security guys don't work a hospital security job. As with everything else, you get what you pay for. The calm, humble, balanced types go for greener pastures.

Complete garbage.

Source -- My personal everyday experience.

The shooters were police officers, not regular hospital security.

NPR did a piece on this case last night. They emphasized that there are standard procedures for dealing with mentally unstable patients in a hospital setting, and the cops weren't trained in those procedures. They ended up escalating the situation.

They also interviewed a hospital security guard, who said the shooting was ridiculous. He said "We don't carry guns. We get hit all the time. We just deal with it."

That wasn't the police approach. One got hit, so they responded like they would on the street and deployed tasers, then lethal force, and followed up with felony charges.

Another issue was that the family asked for a mental health evaluation of the patient. Standard procedure is to immediately provide that upon request. Instead the hospital ignored it. Had they done a proper evaluation, the patient would have been moved to an area where they used regular security instead of police.

As of now the hospital is at risk of losing federal funding, if it doesn't reform its policies to the satisfaction of federal investigators, including better training for the cops and further restriction of their areas of operation.

Except these officers were moonlighting as security guards. How is that even possible?

Cops do that all the time. A long time ago I had a part-time job doing security at a YMCA; on busy days we'd have off-duty police directing traffic. I talked with some of them, who said most of the cops take side jobs doing traffic or security. The department even had an official system for distributing the work.

One of the standard perks of being a policeman in most jurisdictions is that you're allowed to take paid gigs off-hours as a security guard and use your gun and uniform, and in some cases your patrol car if it's assigned to you permanently as it is for many state police officers.

That must make taking bribes hard to catch!

On the one hand, it deserves to be shut down. On the other, its loss would be bad for the community due to lack of nearby hospital capacity and competition.

It's stupid that we now have this idea of competing hospitals. It's a competition to the most efficient lowest common denominator cost wise yet maximalized cash cow.

Seriously. Stay healthy. Stay away from doctors. Stay away from hospitals. (Family full of doctors who always say this.)

It looks like it's working out. Initially the CEO said their policies were fine and they would take the same actions again. Now that the feds threatened funding, the hospital is in fact making those changes.

Where do you observe this? From working around cops, or from reading the news/HN?

Of course, all jobs attract the kind of people who enjoy the work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com