Hacker News Reader

Comment by zw123456 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who is 1)Rich(relatively) 2)White, and who has been falsely accused, and harassed by the police for idiotic reasons, I have an enormous amount of sympathy. I went through something similar a couple of times in my life where I had to fight to prove my innocence against incompetent and frankly really stupid police officers who where in my opinion, mainly big assholes who just wanted to bully people. I can say that had I not been pretty wealthy and able to afford lawyers I am pretty sure they would have fucked me over. Once something like that happens to you, you start to sort of understand how someone less fortunate can really get screwed over pretty easily.

View on HN

Same here. I was once assaulted by a police officer on the property where my father worked. The cop was employed as security and did not wear his badge openly. He was dressed in civilian clothes with his badge on his belt, behind his back. He verbally accosted me on a visit to my dad's place of work. Not knowing he was a cop I let him know where to go. He grabbed me, bent my arm behind my back and shoved me face first through hard metal doors. My father was livid and got in on the argument, on my side. I had bruises all over my face, neck and arms. I filed a complaint against him, but a week later he was part of the largest cocaine bust in my town's history. As a result he was beyond reproach. I've got a few other encounters like this, though not as bad. Not all cops I've run in with were bad, some were more than reasonable, but the bad encounters outweigh the good at least 3 to 1. Give a power tripping person a badge and a gun, hide them behind the blue code and the average civilian has little to no recourse.

It is interesting, almost everyone I know has a story where some cop abused there authority. When people start sharing their stories, it is always amazing to me how many people chime in with similar encounters. Until it happens to you, people don't realize how frightening and scaring it is. I completely feel for you. I was physically ill for weeks after my encounter. I believe that it is a problem that is far more pervasive than maybe is realized.

I am in a somewhat similar situation. The article talks of Mitchell fearing for his life due to police unwilling to protect him. I had a nasty string of events happen to me that also left me fearing for my life and unemployed (threatened after I quit my job... I quit twice, first time they nearly doubled my salary, second they said: 'you are going to not be able to keep a job ever again.' Months later at my new job I started receiving violent threats, then people violently broke into my office--nothing was stolen.) I notified the police, I asked them if they could look into--there were video cameras, and they could see who broke in and chased after me as I hurried out the emergency exit. They didnt investigate anything, or even record the break in as a crime AFAIK. I was then told I was being be fired for the break in occurring after I was told not to report it, but said that I did anyways ("this has nothing to do with you performance here in your job duties"). both were relatively small companies.

There is a lot more that was happening at that time, and it went from concerning to blatant to surreal. I was stalked/followed home by unsavoury-looking people. Men were knocking on my door speaking inaudibly and sometimes in Spanish. My tires had oil smeared all over them one time and had been overinflated. This is not inclusive of everything that happened. I called the police repeatedly and nobody did anything. I dont know how to get these concerns raised to anyone that cares.

Eventually I left the country and have been living abroad a couple of years since then. I am not really sure what to do without a job reference as a mid career male, but I get by in my days by meeting so many nice people and going to such beautiful places and trying to forget about what happened. I dont know if I can find a real job again and I think my life will be basically over if I cant. Im thankful for everything, but to be honest, I want to work again and am not sure how to recover from this in terms of career.

I havent talked about this with anyone, but when I read this I thought I'd chime in. Enforcing law and peace with prudence is important enough that when it isn't done right, people like Mitchell and I experience our lives are transformed and we are unemploued. In the meantime, terrible people are enabled. Police in my case and in the story's may have just been too busy, or misunderstanding, or overwhelmed--I dont know what the problem is, but the outcomen is awful.

It's difficult to say this in a polite way, but I think you should get an appointment at a psychiatrist and get assessed for schizophrenia. What you describe, particularly the "blatant to surreal" bit, sounds very much like potential symptoms: I'm not saying you're making this up, but that there's a very real possibility that your brain is connecting dots that it shouldn't be.

Haha I wish I was just crazy. I agree that it sounds unlikely. I also understand the temptation you express: to live in a world where the simplest and most easy-to-live-with answer is the right one: Ian Murdock "just snapped and went crazy." Snowden "just snapped and turned against his nation." "Poor minorities resort to violence to solve problems, employed upper-middle class don't ever engage that sort of thing." We don't like to live with uncomfortable truths. Unfortunately for me, I never did anything of such significance to humanity as those two--so reasonable and inquisitive minds will be relatively unlikely to look at my situation in detail.

Anyways there's a lot more to the story. I had a pretty bad reputation due to getting made a scapegoat for some things that werent my fault. I stood my ground which blew up in my face as multiple higher-ups doubled down. So I quit and their response was to close to doubled my salary, gave me a promotion, an apology, and lots of nice perks like use of a company apartment, expenses paid, etc, and asked I please just forget it ever happened. It's a long story and I could have made my life a lot easier if I just kept my head low, blended in and shut up.

Nevertheless, you should still see a shrink. If you don't like the stigma of mental illness then see one who calls themselves a 'life coach' and say you're going for advice on improving your life.

Alright, well we have two possibilities here. In the case that you are wrong, you condemn a victim to a slanderous label while enabling aggressors. In the case that you are right, and given what limited information is available here, it could appear a prescient response, but the other side of that is perhaps it would be quick-to-judge at this point--which is coming across as off-putting.

Sometimes you may think you know the answer to what someone else is going through, just by having a quick listen to what they have to say. What I would say to that: It's better to be thankful you have never experienced something like this.

That said, it isn't bad for me at the moment. If this had never happened I would still be working with boring business logic software in a company run by salesman, buying things I didnt need and wasting my 20s.

Anywaya, to be honest, it is alleviating to imagine this as all a psychotic imagination. The moral and egotistical implications and questions for me, in that case, feel much easier to answer. Not to mention--I don't have to worry about a nasty person seeking a nasty deeds.

I understand that surreal feeling, I had that a little bit for a while after because you suddenly just realize how vulnerable you actually are. I would not in any way pass judgment on someone else's state of mind based on only a post but for it was helpful to have someone to talk to about it (besides an attorney). For me it was my Dad, but if you don't have someone like that it is not a bad idea to seek out someone.

I hear you. It's apparent how I am coming across. If something like this happens, someone must be crazy and it's easy to look at the person suffering and say, that must be it.

I don't have someone like that, nor have I ever spoken with an attorney. I would be very interested in speaking with a psychiatrist, if for any reason, just to rule out the possibility, and who knows, but at this point in my financial life, that's not really in the cards.

Note that if you live near a university there's a decent chance they have a public-facing clinic as part of their psychology school that charges on a sliding scale

Is there anything other than the use of surreal, and the general unlikeliness of this happening, that is giving this impression?

People following you, knocking on your door, speaking Spanish (which I presume you/your ex-employer don't) are both all trademark symptoms and things that a company that fired you is extremely unlikely to do (because why would they?).

Seriously, please go see a shrink. If I'm completely wrong, the cost is pretty low, but if there is something to this, it may change your life.

I will. I'll have to figure out how to do it while abroad, and with funds being tight it might be a challenge, but it should be possible.

Unfortunately, I really am 100% sure it's not the case that it's imaginative--there's too much evidence. I.E. at a company after-party I quipped about something unethical/problematic one enployee who used to bully me (before I first quit) did. He started throwing bottle caps at strangers and pointing at me... Another employee witnessed this.

Some in the company joke about their political and criminal ties. Was about 150 people company and management team of about 25 was all fired... Apparently for this.

They're all sales people with personal connections who got into a company and nearly drove it into the ground before parent company kicked out all of management, but after I got bullied I fought back against some of the worthless underlings that remained. Egos hurt. Careers at stake. Etc.

Anyways while I have no doubt in my mind the company did not explicitly engage in this (it wouldnt serve any benefit to the company); likely the above mentioned person there engaged this in his free time--it wouldnt be hard to drive across town with a bunch of money and offer a job to disenfranchised youths.

While I can personally guarantee it was real, and I will see a psychiatrist anyways, to rule this out... If it was somehow hallucinations, then it all ended when I left anyways, and it never presented associated symptoms in my life. So the problem I am more concerned about is figuring out how to approach employers at this point, establish myself somewhere in the States I wont be homeless (you need proof of income to rent somewhere), and start getting productive again.

Unfortunately, I'm really afraid this does, indeed, all sound crazy, and it only detracts from getting help to solve my problems.

i feel that anyone with authority will exercise abuse at some point. I believe this is why the US has 3 branches of government. Abuse, unfortunately, is human nature.

Thanks. I have a few friends, all on the conservative end of the spectrum, that claim I brought it upon myself by not trying to fit in. I was the weird kid in my town, not bad, just not a cowboy like the majority of the people in the deep south. As if that was excuse enough to warrant police abuse.

Cops are not trained to be "reasonable" they are trained to use overwhelming sudden force. This is for their own safety, because most people they deal with in close encounters are also not reasonable people.

Then they are trained wrong. It is imperative that cops--the people who patrol the neighborhoods our children play in, who are the first response to a (usually harmless) mentally ill person violating social norms, who are the recourse of overwhelmed parents with unruly children--it is imperative that cops are approachable, amicable, empathic, and reasonable.

Most cops never have any reason to fire their weapon. Being a police officer is a relatively safe profession. Everyone they have contact with has legal rights.

I'm afraid you have been given wrong information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum

I have dealt with cops on a lot of occasions, some of the major ones being a fortunately non-fatal OD of two of my friends, getting my door kicked in, and one arrest for sneaking into a building. I also am a white guy from an upper-middle class background.

The OD was a difficult moment. I found my friends and called it in. Both of them lived, which I am of course grateful for, but afterwards the cops spent a lot of time yelling at the group of guys who had been obliviously smoking weed downstairs, pressuring them to snitch on the dealer, and even threatening to charge us with possession (which actually can happen).

The raid was mostly as expected. The house was not too torn up or anything. The cops actually claim it was a mistake, that they were looking for someone who had lived in my apartment over a year before. I'm not so sure about that though. They didn't find any drugs, which I believe they were looking for. They confiscated a bunch of electronics from my roommates and I and it took about 2 weeks to get those back. The cops were friendly during this process. I also know one other person, a female family friend, who was completely innocent and got mistakenly raided in the middle of the night.

The building one I was just too curious. At night a friend and I snuck into a rubber plant that was under renovation. We didn't break or steal anything. I was the younger of the two, at 13 and 15 respectively. The cops had guns drawn (which I don't fault them for) and gave us a couple good knees to the stomach during the arrest. The very weird part was a cop holding down my friend and joking "did you piss yourself?" (he had not) while grabbing his crotch for easily 3-4 seconds.

The above are easily dismissed as being related to my choices in life, granted. But I've also had other random incidents. A cop pointed a gun at me because I was walking through a large college campus and stumbled into some incident where police looking for someone. Another time, my friend was the designated driver one night and, being unfamiliar with my car, accidentally flashed the brights at a police car going the opposite direction -- the cops did a burnout, came speeding up behind and slammed on the breaks, screamed at us, then peeled out in a cloud of smoke! And yet another time, looking out the front window of a law-abiding friend's house, we saw a swat team lining up to storm the neighbor's house, which had at least three or four young kids living there -- we went downstairs.

One a lighter note, a police helicopter shined its spotlight directly on me while I was sitting on my porch alone, at night, on a high dose of LSD. That was awesome and surreal, but a little dystopian.

The cops had guns drawn (which I don't fault them for)

This is one of my pet peeves, I believe lethal force should basically never be used by law enforcement (at least normal one, outside of SWAT or whatever edge case).

If I ever become rich, I'm going to invest in some nonlethal weapon with similar range and accuracy and disablement power as lethal ones, I guess current tasers aren't good enough for law enforcement to feel safe in an escalating situation (and the U.S. has plenty of lethal weapons going around). That would also make me feel better if people feel the need to go around armed (which is a very US-only thing, doesn't happen in Europe and Latin America and Asia as far as I know).

> I can say that had I not been pretty wealthy and able to afford lawyers I am pretty sure they would have fucked me over.

This is one part of the justice system which needs fixing. I prefer the system of legal aid like they do in Germany rather than a public defender .

As bad as your case is, this story seems to have very little to do with the police outside of them being tasked to enforce a court order. It sounds like these orders are being requested by the DA and granted by judges. It is also about laws that may be debatable in merit but are most likely abused in practice. (We can only say "most likely" because the only records available are difficult to process to judge how often these orders are used, never mind whether their use can be construed as legitimate.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com