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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

I actually have a friend who became an NYPD officer (!!!) at some point last decade. Generally I've never had problems with individual police.

I think the drug war is bad for a wide variety of reasons, and the militarization of domestic policing (mainly over drugs, and now terrorism) is bad for everyone (including the police), but it's not because I've personally had problems with police.

I'm a white, upper-middle-class, works-with-USG/DOD, contracted in war zones, lots of friends in government/police, etc. person, so I have it exceptionally easy, sure.

I've met bad individual officers, but it's rare, so yeah, I generally do trust police, based on my personal experience. One of the worst tendencies of policing organizations is the "thin blue line", so they need to take aggressive action in cases of internal abuse to overcome that.

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I actually have a friend who became an NYPD officer (!!!) at some point last decade.

Ask him if he's got any crazy stories about stupid shit other cops have done. Then ask him why he hasn't reported them for doing it.

That's the real problem, a very real application of "one rotten apple spoils the barrel." The problem isn't so much the individual police who violate the public trust (there will always be bad apples as long as there are humans involved), it is all of the others who turn a blind eye to those violations.

Those cops who never commit any overt violations but let other cops off with a free pass are the ones responsible for eroding public trust because they teach the public that it is an "us vs them" mentality. As a privileged white guy 99% of the time your interactions with the police will probably be just fine, but even you never know when that 1% bad apple is going to show up, but you do know his buddies won't do anything to hold him to account for what he might do to you.

I think you probably understand this to some extent, referencing "the thin blue line" (the documentary of that name actually turned the phrase on its head), I just wanted to spell it out for anyone else who might not be familiar with the ironic definition of that term.

This isn't an issue that's particular to police. Go into a restaurant and have an average meal? The waiter isn't going to start harping on how crap the chef is. Call up tech support for your five-figure software? They're not going to dump the devs in the shit for your problem. Presenting a unified front to outside forces is usually necessary for employment, and something that we do innately as humans anyway. Given how thoroughly whistleblowers are destroyed, it's hard to fault someone for not calling a colleague out on relatively small matters.

Edit: I don't mean the article when I say small matters

This isn't an issue that's particular to police.

It is particular to police in that they are entrusted with greater responsibility than pretty much any other organization in the country. Their standards of accountability need to be proportional to that responsibility.

Given how thoroughly whistleblowers are destroyed, it's hard to fault someone for not calling a colleague out on relatively small matters.

That's circular reasoning -- Given how corrupt they are, it is no wonder that no one on the inside stands up to the corruption.

I think you're misreading me. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be held to a higher standard of accountability. I'm saying that presenting a united front is something that is a very human trait - and further saying that of course people aren't going to step forward when whistleblowers get the axe.

If you want to fix issues with the police, the first thing you have to understand is that there are humans behind those uniforms, humans who have spent a significant part of their life getting there. Being part of a skilled occupation is not something most people can just toss aside casually, hence why small offences get overlooked. If you can understand the motivations and psychology of the people doing the wrong thing, you have a wider array of tools at your disposal than "I have a really big stick here if you make a wrong step".

As for the circular reasoning bit - not at all circular, given that I'm not saying 'free pass'. If you want to break the cycle, change the culture. You do that by making it a point with the people cops answer to; make them give whistleblowers better protection. Changing the culture is difficult, but if you want serious change, that's the way to do it.

I hate to even say it but ... there were a set of trials that occurred in Europe in the middle of the last century. It seems like you would have been pro-defense ...

Nice Godwining, given that I've already clarified an hour ago (in response to Amadou) that I was not defending their actions, but trying to better understand motive to stop this happening again.

Thanks for calling me a Nazi for trying to better understand how people are motivated, by the way. I suggested improving protections for whistleblowers as a way to prevent this kind of situation in future. Clearly I instead should have been demanding permanent imprisonment (or even the death penalty) for specific people I don't like, all without a nod towards a fair trial. Then I wouldn't be like a Nazi at all!

> I'm a white, upper-middle-class, works-with-USG/DOD, contracted in war zones, lots of friends in government/police, etc. person, so I have it exceptionally easy, sure.

It sounds like you get it at some level, but to make the point extra fine: this is privilege. When white middle-class guys (which includes me) say, "eh, they've always been nice to me, so I'm not sure what the big deal is", we're failing to care because it the problems don't affect us. A cop's not to stop and frisk me for no reason or kick down my door looking for pot or harass me for some trivial moving violation or throw me in jail on unreasonable charges to get beaten and raped every day. They're always nice to me. So it's easy to say, "cops are kinda great, and that one time my house got robbed they were ON it", and just never internalize the fact that for so many people, they're an armed oppressor working with official government sanction and little accountability. That it takes something as mind-blowingly outrageous as court-sanctioned rape to get our attention and we're still not quite willing to look the system in the eye and say, "man, this is just fundamentally broken"...well, that shows just how deep that privilege goes. Is it any wonder that bad cops and prosecutors (and, gulp, judges) feel empowered to do this kind of shit?

> works-with-USG/DOD, contracted in war zones, lots of friends in government/police, etc.

You're part of the problem. Seriously, these people stick by their own--it's the rest of us poor bastards who get the shit end of the stick.

I think groups like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition are pretty clear on things like the drug war being both wrong and unconstitutional, and essentially racist in origin and perpetration.

The problem is that when things do go wrong, especially if you fit certain stereotypes, there seems to be little recourse beyond a costly court battle against an organization with far more resources than an individual (monetary and social).

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