It's really no different in banks but they are regulated and must provide proper reasoning to denied customers for the models they use in my country. It's not enough to say "your score is too low".
It's very easy to create artificial stupidity!
- Sitting in a parked car in a suburban street for too long.
- Going shopping at 2am.
- Walking under a bridge at night.
It's OK as long as they quickly realize you're harmless and leave you alone.
Currently.
It seems to me they harass anyone they perceive to be abnormal.
As a delightfully abnormal human, I'm very glad I was born just north of the 49th parallel. It's not perfect, but I do feel free to be myself.
I even wrote about it recently: https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-ame...
Police do in fact exist to enforce the law. It really is that simple.
Police exist to "keep the peace." The question is whose peace are they keeping. Well I suppose the reaction of police at the Jan. 6 insurrection vs that of the BLM protests tells us a little. Or the union busting police did in the past. Or blocking the polls for minorities.
But it absolutely isn't "that simple."
They shot a woman in the neck. What’s the difference you’re trying to portray?
I've had two illegal stops in the past year because in one I took a swig from a soda bottle going by a speed trap and the cop wanted to see if it was alcohol. The other, a cop in an unmarked car tried to run me out of my lane to follow a speeder.
Some years ago I had to deal with a small town gumshoe in Indiana who had staked out an intersection of IN route 55. This was late at night in pitch black darkness. Indiana highway signs look like speed limit signs from a distance and IN55 in particular is hard to distinguish from the 55MPH speed limit signs. The local cops know this and abuse their power to make illegal stops.
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.2361263,-87.2433936,3a,75y,1...
Indiana requires signals 200 ft from an intersection in rural areas rather than the normal 100 ft. The county couldn't be bothered to have an advance sign for the intersection so I didn't know when to signal for the turn. He and I were the only two people on the road but clearly I was a major threat to public safety.
Me and my buddy were standing on the sidewalk of a bridge, making a time lapse. Within one hour, someone called the police on us twice.
Do that 10 more times on 10 different bridges, and I’ll be shocked if that happens even one more time.
I should have said that my interaction with the US society has been that people tend to meddle with others' business more often than in other countries that I've been to.
But, yeah, I have many more anecdotes.
Likely it would happen another 8-10 times. Happens all the time, the bigger the bridge, the more likely.
Get away from the wealthy areas on the coasts and "noneya business" quickly becomes the societal norm.
Only places rich and population dense do the police have the spare shits to give about what other people are doing.
It’s important not to confuse media narratives and cherry picked videos with trends. It’s also important not to generalize across such a diverse set of individuals and jurisdictions. You’ve got everything from LAPD to an elected backwoodsy county Sheriff.
Heck, I’ve been stopped in NYC for “walking with a limp” (bike accident, fractured knee)...while wearing a $500 shirt and designer suit.
What you refer to as “cherry picked videos” are just the instances that happen to have been filmed. Seriously, after Central Park Karen and Minnesota, can we at least acknowledge there might be an issue?!
More importantly, parent wasn’t even commenting about race.
Did you try to make a joke ? Both of those are racist to the core. They are the same.
> It’s also important not to generalize across such a diverse set of individuals and jurisdictions.
Pick one.