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Comment by baldfat | Hacker News Reader

This is the perfect dilemma to bring to people who back police 100%. Who are they going to defend? The Police or the War Veteran?

Clearly the local police made various constitutional violations against a suicidal war veteran and they trashed his place and left it for him to come back to. How jaded and unconcerned?

Sadly one of my former employees left and joined the war and while there lost a buddy in Iraq. After being home for 12 months he took his life leaving all of us in shock. If police did that to a hero who are they willing to go for bat for????

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Just to clarify: he was not at all suicidal, but accidentally called the suicide hotlibs instead of a crisis hotline.

Just to clarify the Veteran Crisis Hot line was renamed in 2011 from the Veteran Suicidal Prevention Line.

If he was suicidal it even makes the actions of the police even worse. The whole issue is not the initial interactions with the police nor their initial entree into the home. The issue is the second and third entree into his home and unconstitutional search of his home. This occurred hours after the first search was conducted and the subject was getting medical treatment.

> Just to clarify the Veteran Crisis Hot line was renamed in 2011 from the Veteran Suicidal Prevention Line.

...and was done so to encourage early intervention, sometimes before the veteran becomes suicidal.

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/About/AboutVeteransCrisis...

>> In 2011, the National Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline was renamed the Veterans Crisis Line to encourage Veterans and their families and friends to make the call. People who know a Veteran best may be the first to recognize emotional distress and reach out for support when issues reach a crisis point — and well before a Veteran is at risk of suicide.

"If police did that to a hero who are they willing to go for bat for????"

No one. This should be obvious if you're living in the US. Even if you've never had an encounter with police, watch ANY cop show, especially the reality ones. Every roughly 20-30 seconds you will hear some cop talk about how dangerous the job is (it really isn't) and how their main objective is to get back to their family. The police does not give a fuck about you and they certainly will not "stand up" for you if you are in danger. They will get back home to their families at all costs, including your own life. The rest of the "serve and protect" bullshit is for rubes and other idiots who are dumb enough to believe it and whose parents did them a huge disservice by not teaching them about one of the gravest dangers of American society.

I can personally vouch that not all police are like this. I have a handful of family friends who are/or were police officers and they very strongly embody the values of "serve and protect." Honestly, they would give their life if necessary to save a life however they obviously would try to avoid death. So while there are definitely horrible police officers, there are definitely a great deal of honest ones as well.

Rather than rally against the police in general, we really should focus on identifying the sources of the horrible ones and how to develop more of the honest officers. Personally I believe this can only occur through transparency and accountability but that's just my 2 cents.

I agree. The only way to fix this is to remove immunity for all cops in all cases and start holding them responsible like we do regular citizens, if not to even more stringent rules. This is first and foremost a cultural problem however, one that is so ingrained in culture, especially legal culture, that I see no way of making headway. When a judge automatically believes what a police officer says and a police officer's testimony is worth more than a regular citizen's testimony in court, you're looking at challenging the whole system of justice we have as unfair, biased, and broken. I don't see a path to any reform that doesn't hit that conclusion in this country, especially when you're talking about reforming police or getting on a path to fair trials/sentencing. In the meantime, the cultural biases that lead to this are so strong and so highly ingrained, reinforced by racism and other divisive hate, that you'd have to throw out the whole idea of trial by jury (which is extremely outdated and especially unjust in modern society) to make headway.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying, until you have truly revolutionary change, all cops will be perceived as the absolute danger to life, limb, and property that they potentially are. That is unfortunate for the good ones, but that's life. I don't go around questioning whether members of other gangs like the Bloods or Crips have ill intent for me, so I certainly will not question whether members of the biggest, most heavily armed, most dangerous gang in the US have ill intent for me. I just assume they do because the majority do.

Actually, I'd worry less about the Bloods and the Crips: they're businesspeople, and as long as you aren't involved in their business (pushing drugs), you probably don't have too much to worry about. The police are a different story, because to them, we're all "the enemy".

Absolutely. Sorry if this didn't come through clearly.

While certainly true that not all cops are bad, my personal experience shows that it's not at all rare, either. Or if they're not "bad", at least they don't behave with the respect and responsibility that should attend the power they wield.

A really significant portion of my "official" interactions with police have been negative. I've listed these here before:

- I watched a friend being roughed up by cops. (not beaten, but physically pushed around) for absolutely no reason.

- I've had evidence of a traffic violation fabricated against me. (full disclosure: I was guilty, but that doesn't excuse lying about evidence)

- I've had police at a traffic stop curse at me and throw my documents. (I understand why he felt this way, but it was due to him making assumptions, starting with a belligerent attitude, and misreading the situation)

- Some older kids were physically bullying me and a friend. We went to a cop for help, and the extent of his aid was to say to us "better watch out, they'll probably hit you again".

Given the limited amount of interaction people normally have with police, the number of times this has happened to me says that I'm either a lightning rod for lousy cops, or the problem is more than just a few isolated bad eggs.

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