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Comment by jokedontlaugh | Hacker News Reader

Here's a dirty secret that doesn't get talked about much: the officers looking at the streaming images we spy from your home end up seeing you and treating you in the same way people see and treat Internet streamers or reality show celebs.

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Correct. Every once in a while a story surfaces about Law Enforcement circulating official photos of someone attractive with inappropriate comments. We all know someone who worked in "loss prevention" that would virtually stock someone in the store; and the stories of TSA 'randomly' selecting attractive people for pat downs are legendary. Is this anecdotal, yes. Is this true, yes.

Or law enforcement using these tools to stalk and harass or murder their ex-girlfriends.

Police are serial domestic abusers, its a very serious issue: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...

Pretty sure most of them take anabolic steroids, whose effects can lead to -guess what- delusion, aggressiveness and violence (not unlike cocaine). I wounldn't be surprised at all if random drug tests on cops confirmed this.

This isn't true. Do you have a source?

The Department of Justice is concerned enough to have a presentation: https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/pubs/brochures/steroids/l...

Also this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128028254/anabolic-st...

Chapter 3 has a lovely abstract: The anabolic steroid abuse problem within law enforcement is straightforward. Police culture embraces images of aggression and masculinity, serving up both institutional and social rewards for those that conform. Denying this reality is not reasonable. Anabolic steroids help provide an easy path to those short-term rewards. However, these rewards are temporary, high risk, and illegal. Additionally, as with any form of illegal drug use, it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Anabolic steroid abuse requires committing any number of crimes and direct association with other criminals — including those who deal other illegal drugs.

Law enforcement has a professional obligation to public safety that includes employing and deploying only those officers that are fit for duty. It is not possible to use anabolic steroids and also maintain psychological or character-related fitness for duty. However, because of related performance- and image-enhancing benefits, in combination with ignorance of the law, anabolic steroid abuse is tolerated by some public safety agencies and many in the legal community. This short-sighted approach, which amounts to the burying of heads in the sand, ensures that harm will be caused and that legal liability will be incurred.

> Anabolic steroid abuse requires committing any number of crimes and direct association with other criminals — including those who deal other illegal drugs.

Is that actually true? I was under the impression that you could find a doctor that would prescribe them to you. Not the case with, say, cocaine.

I was under the impression that you buy them from your friend at the gym. In the US, the whole class of anabolic steroids are Schedule III controlled substances. There are many compounds that went through clinical and animal trials, steroid chemistry was big in the 1950s and 1960s, the story of Syntex is one of treachery and villainy, but not many are available at market these days. The only use case is cachexia in the very elderly or in cancer patients. A physician who prescribes them too frequently would attract attention, unless of course he has a special relationship with law enforcement.

> The only use case is cachexia in the very elderly or in cancer patients

Uveitis, Grave’s disease, gout, alopecia, systemic vasculitis & giant cell arteritis are some other viable reasons for being prescribed steroids.

Corticosteroids like Prednisone aren’t anabolic steroids.

Your first source is 14 years old.

Here's a one year old source, the British Medical Journal, last reviewed this October : https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-us/987

Thr authors list the risk factors: employment as nightclub bouncer, professional male dancer, professional wrestler, or law enforcement officer. BMJ is highly reputable.

So the reason smalltown police act like BOPE in Rio is that they want to look buff like a male stripper! They don't want to be the arm of the law, such work is dirty, boring and tedious, their goal is to look sexy with their guns, their kink escaped from the bedroom into the streets!

No wonder that they have a recruitment problem, regular people won't join Anabolics Anonymous, only slightly troubled weirdos and high school bullies will come. It makes you very pessimistic about police violence and proper discipline in the force, they won't ever improve unless they solve their drug abuse problem first.

A simple search for steroids side effects will confirm this.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/anabolic-steroid-misuse/

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/ster...

It's super weird that you would blanket say it is not true without doing a quick investigation yourself. What happened there?

Seems like a better phrase is 'I find this hard to believe. Do you have a source?'

I certainly doubted the 'most' part of that statement but after looking into it, it really does seem like there is a problem with steroids and the police. Potentially still not 'most' police but certainly enough that it's an issue.

Most was surely an exaggeration on my part, however some well known brutal beatings by cops in my country ending with the death of the arrested had the family of the victim being ridiculed and verbally attacked by police associations. Eventually in the most famous case to date it took one of the involved officers to talk after 9 years to expose what everyone was certain of: a coverup. There has been zero cooperation from above.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/world/europe/ilaria-cucch...

http://www.ansa.it/english/news/2018/10/26/superior-sent-cha...

What made me even more angry then however was the fake camaraderie LEOs associations showed when protecting their colleagues; that's not camaraderie, that's collusion plain and simple, which is probably even worse than having the brain f'ed up by hormones.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/30/italian-police...

That's standard police force badness.

No need to invent anabolic steroids as a cause.It's not like these things didn't exist before steroids were available.

Cops abuse of steroids isn't an invention at all.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/derek-james-from/edmonton-poli...

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

https://nypost.com/2018/02/22/nypd-cops-in-hot-water-for-var...

https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19520798/scandals-cops-an...

And at least one book has been written on the topic.

https://psmag.com/magazine/the-hidden-world-of-police-on-ste...

Inexplicably, Canadian drug law excludes possession of anabolic steroids.

I speculate it has to do with police influence on the writing of laws.

> Internet streamers or reality show celebs.

While that is a serious invasion of privacy, there is a far more critical issue of using this technology to suppress and abuse political enemies or those who are unable to defend themselves (minorities, undocumented people, the poor, etc.).

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