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Comment by dleslie | Hacker News Reader

This is why I teach my children never to speak to police officers, to avoid them as much as possible, and to leave the area should they become visibly present.

And I live in Canada; when I travel to the USA on business I stay in the hotel or the venue and restrict my traveling as much as possible. I don't fear the citizens, I fear the police.

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That's always made me sad. My ex was American - when we moved to Ireland, I made a habit of routinely (once a week or so) asking random policemen for directions to places, just to teach her that they're entirely approachable here.

The closest thing we had to a bad experience, was one chap who took it upon himself to walk with us until we could see our destination, just to make sure we found it. I'd only wanted to waste a moment of their time, not a few minutes.

In some rural communities this is how the police behave in the US. I've seen police changing tires for people near my house countless times for example.

I lived in rural Michigan for a few years. I knew every city cop by first name (very small city. like "how on earth to do you call that a city" small), and it'd generally fit that description. But the sheriff, state police and tribal police .. wide berth.

Obviously anecdotal so I can't disagree with you. Just that my experience of rural police was a mixed bag. Black uniform good. Blue uniform bad. Brown uniform really bad.

I'm from Pennsylvania, I think it was the Quakers[0] who framed it originally like this but police here do more community policing as opposed to broken windows policing. In my experience, most police mainly use the law as a tool to keep the peace and don't really care what you do as long as it doesn't bother anyone else. Sure there must be some bad ones out there, but it goes to show you that a different mindset can have a measurable effect on the outcome.

[0]https://www.quakercloud.org/cloud/chicago-friends-meeting/an... (looks like they are still at it 400 years later)

In some rural communities police are on a huge power trip because they're some of the most powerful people in the small town. Some are good, some are bad, just like everywhere else.

It's still good advice in general.

I grew up in a small rural community. I'm sure the cops here occasionally do things like changing tires for people.

They're also bullies who like to go on power trips. If they feel disrespected at all, they will beat you senseless (and have).

Police across the US are almost universally bullies on power trips. The job of police offer is every bully's biggest dream: they can get paid to go around and abuse people while demanding respect from everyone.

Weird, it seems counterproductive. Why doesn't the US police in bigger cities try to integrate with the citizens?

Is the violence risk so big or are there legal reasons?

The history of policing in the US is a bad one, rife with torture and abuses that are heard about for decades until various notorious cases force the public to demand change. You also have generations of people who were legally allowed to be abused by police because of their race, or economic status.

That shapes the character of a country's police, and the people's response to them.

US cities are an order of magnitude more violent than cities in other countries, and there is major racial conflict (until fairly recently, police forces in majority black cities like DC were mostly white).

They should. The phenomenon of heavily-armed police spending most of their working hours either in a squad car or actively handling a disturbance, rather than walking a beat, is a modern one. It's something Peter Moskos laments in Cop In The Hood, which is a pretty decent book on the practices of modern police forces written by a sociologist who served for a year as an experiment.

Beat policing is not one of the most dangerous occupations in the US, and a lot of the danger police face is self-generated: readiness to escalate conflict alters the calculus of offenders as well.

The big issue we have with current police forces is cultural, and it probably can't be fixed by fiat. We'll have to do it at the organization level, through attrition. It's simple. For simplicity of discussion, rename all current patrol officers "assault officers"; they're the heavily armed ones that spend their day in cars or in confrontation. Now: stop hiring new assault officers. Instead, for every assault officer headcount you'd hire, bring in 1.5-3 new "compliance officers" who can walk beats, help people, de-escalate simple criminal incidents, and very quickly summon assault officers.

(I also think that most police officers should simply be disarmed. They should have ready access to long guns, perhaps in the trunk of their squad car, but they shouldn't be 5 seconds from killing someone else at all times during their work day.)

"they're the heavily armed ones that spend their day in cars or in confrontation"

This is simplifying quite a bit. Right now, most LEO are not in positions that require being heavily armed or in confrontation. The vast majority of LEO currently are in positions where being armed is not a benefit, if not a outright detriment, but their training and regulation require them to carry weapons unsafely (see for instance court security police who must carry weapons, except when they are in the courts where they actually work and where they must not carry weapons, leading to them all walking around with empty holsters all day).

The other side of this is of course corrections officers, who have objectively the most dangerous jobs in LEO but receive the least training, the least pay, and the least equipment.

It turns out this is quite simply a cultural problem. The culture of law enforcement in the United States right now is quite simply dangerous and irrational. Without fixing that culture, renaming titles isn't going to go very far.

Renaming the titles isn't the point. The point is freezing new hires into that culture, and creating a new culture to run in parallel to it.

There already exists a separate culture without weapons (corrections officers). Its universally less paid, less equipped, less respected and more dangerous.

So we create a third culture, beat cops who aren't gun slingers.

In sum, you and others seem to describe the present situation as a result of a more violent historical past? And maybe it could be more like an European model?

Thanks, that answers my question.

(Regarding the equal number of up/down votes on my previous comment: Save the emotional energy. :-) I'm a curious European without a clue about the related political discussion. I'm sorry if I stepped on any toes; for the record, my home country is probably more dysfunctional than USA, but in different ways.)

I was under the impression it is everywhere like this. The police would be the first I would approach when having a question.

They should be, and usually are. But there's two problems.

One, is that if even 1% aren't, those 1% can cause untold damage to your life. We're usually pretty bad at judging risk, so many people won't accept "a very low chance of a very big problem" for the same reason many people will accept "a very low chance of a very big reward" and play the lottery.

The second is more disconcerting to me; all too frequently I see people assume that when someone had a bad interaction with the police, they must have done 'something wrong' to be interacting with them in the first place. Either we believe police are eminently approachable, or we believe that someone interacting with the police "must have done something to deserve it". We can't have it both ways.

I'm American and moved to Norway - and it has taken some time for me to get used to the idea as well.

The oddest experience for me: Border control. I took a trip to Amsterdam, and upon arriving back in town my things (and the person sitting next to me) were searched. I understand.

But... the dude was nice. Polite. Didn't have an angry look on his face. Sure, he asked about drugs more than once (I was in amsterdam, so understandable).

I've not lost my mistrust for police, but it is slowly fading, for sure.

Thats interesting,

I'm not sure which part of Canada you are from, but here in Edmonton the police are very friendly and as far as I know that is the majority opinion. Personally, and even amongst my friends (which ranges from Tim Horton's Employees to CS Professors) the opinion is the same. In general, especially in parts of downtown, I feel safer with the police around.

I don't, however, have the same feeling in the States.

AFAICT it really depends on which Canadian city you're in, the VPD and TPS are not the RCMP after all, and whether or not you appear to be native, black, or a prostitute. Still, you don't want to catch the attention of an officer; they are an agent of state force capable of incredible violence.

But I agree that, in general, Canadian police forces are nowhere near as bad as major metropolitan forces in the USA.

Not trying to nit pick here, as my experiences with Edmonton police have been similar, but my fiancee, who's black, has had different experiences with Edmonton police.

Nothing as negative as this, but experiences that left her disheartened (police saying: well what should do you expect us to do? when she was jumped by a number of gang members at WEM).

I also suspect that if you were to speak to Aboriginal Edmontonians, they'd have different opinions. Consider the way that the RCMP has treated indigenous individuals in the past.

I remember a long time ago, I think it was in Saskatchewan, where the RCMP would pick up drunk indians, drive them way out of the city and drop them off. In the middle of winter. Keep in mind this is Saskatchewan where it's typically -30C at night in the winter.

Several of them froze to death.

http://www.cbc.ca/news2/background/aboriginals/starlighttour... as well as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlight_tours and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_deaths .

The best advice I ever got regarding police came from my mother years ago, who got out of defense law the moment she laid eyes on the system. "At the end of the day, a cop is just someone with a gun, and if no one else is there to contradict them, their story will be believed."

Now of course we know that even with video evidence, there's little hope.

Frankly, you've allowed yourself to fall prey to US election year propaganda. If you look at the numbers you're very safe travelling in the US, and to the extent you're in danger it's from criminals and not police.

The problem as I see it is that while 99% of police officers are not only law abiding and do their job with integrity, the 1% out there can and do destroy innocent lives. It is like walking into a mine field. You could very well walk out unscathed but one 'routine' brush with the wrong police officer and your life may never recover. So are you willing to take such a small but catastrophic chance? An intelligent person would do all they can to minimize the risk.

Yes, but the point is the risk is so small you're off into lightning strike territory. Do you worry about brain eating amoebas when you swim? Do you refuse to fly because the plane might crash?

I do take cover during storms.

And the risk is much higher if you happen to not be white.

My position is in-line with the advice of lawyers[0][1][2][...] and police[3]. And as a foreigner I have virtually no rights while on American soil.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UezKO4TnaHs

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKe-NC30obg

3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y_l3sa-iJQ

>And as a foreigner I have virtually no rights while on American soil.

That's simply false. In criminal matters you have exactly the same rights as a US citizen, even if you're in the country illegally. Though it is true you don't want to say anything to cops if they've taken some kind of official notice of you, that's not the same thing as asking for directions or reporting a crime.

You will get the same advice about answering questions in Canada, by the way, and for the same reason:

>Never voluntarily subject yourself to a police interrogation where it is apparent you are a suspect or accused. If you are approached as a witness you can ask the police, on videotape, to confirm that you are being questioned only as a witness and that you are not in legal jeopardy. After an arrest, there is an enormous power imbalance. The police -- hopeful of obtaining a confession, or damaging admission -- will take advantage of your vulnerability, at least to the limits of the law. Your best choice is always to consult a lawyer and you have a right to free consultation with duty counsel.

http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/blog/2012/06/what-to-do-when-t...

The reason people hammer home the idea you shouldn't talk to cops in the US is (like Canada) remaining silent isn't prejudicial during a trial. You have nothing to gain and can only hurt yourself.

By the letter of the law and international agreements, foreigners have rights.

In practice? Enjoy jail and a swift deportation because you happened to say the wrong thing to an officer or otherwise incur their disgust. What an embarrassing, and costly, end to a business trip that would be.

Have you ever actually been to the US? For something like that to happen you'd have to be breaking the law. Saying the wrong thing to a cop won't do it - local police don't have the power to deport you. The most they can do is refer you to CIS, and if there's no crime CIS will say "Why are you bothering us?"

It should be common sense you don't go to a foreign country and break the laws, no matter where you're from or where you're going.

Ha, right. Police only ever beat you down and jail you when you've broken the law; what a laughable myth.

Did you even read the original article?

Yes, and I noted the lack of independent verification. All we have here is an accusation.

Are you exaggerating or are you seriously concerned that the police will harm you? No matter what your race/gender/color/face/etc., citizens are far more dangerous. There's simply tons of them. Even in the US, this whole police-violence thing is a bit of a red herring. Yes, it's terrible, police need to be checked more, etc. But no, it's not a "massacre" or remotely the top reason someone will be killed.

If I am assaulted and mugged I get some bruises and lose my wallet.

Those are relatively minor outcomes compared to the enormous court expenses and years or a lifetime of damage that an officer can do. Hell, as per the article, the $300 to get my car out of impound would be a lot more than the pocket change I stand to lose in a mugging.

Most well-fed sharks won't attack a human, but I'm not about to dive into the tank.

Bruises and a lost wallet are also minor compared to a transit accident. Yet I'm guessing you get around? They're less than the damage from choking to death, but I'm guessing you eat more than liquid food?

I don't think you're actually calculating the risk here.

Actually, I refuse to commute by car because of the risk of accident and the health impact of the stress of driving and the sedentary lifestyle.

That sounds ridiculous to me.

Do you use a paper towel so that you don't have to touch the door handle on your way out of the bathroom, too?

Yes, I do. I've seen too many men piss, zip and walk out without washing.

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