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Comment by cup | Hacker News Reader

This has been the third article on HN recently about the police. Historically it has been minority groups that only see this side of police activity. Now that upper middle class white individuals have experienced it though Its interesting to read the comments people are leaving.

For the record: I believe his advice is terrible for any person of lower socio economic background and especially for a person of colour. The number 1 rule when interacting with police should be you have no rights. Only when you're safely away from that policemen are your rights returned. Countless victims of police brutality can attest to that.

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> The number 1 rule when interacting with police should be you have no rights.

As a former Los Angeles sheriff's deputy who agrees with the majority of sentiments in this thread, I can confidently say that your broad statement is nonsense. Everyone, not just upper middle class whites, should know and assert their rights in police encounters.

This only works if you assume that every officer is nice, reasonable and believes strongly in upholding their duty to the public.

The sad fact of the matter is that a very large number of police officers are simply bullies in uniform. Asserting your rights to them, or acting "uppity," will only get you in trouble.

A sizeable minority of officers are indeed bullies. But while I can't speak for other police agencies, even the bullies are pretty well reined in by the policies in Los Angeles. I can elaborate if you like.

If by "pretty well reined in" you mean "given 30-day paid vacations when they misbehave" then I suppose you are right.

What you won't see (or will see very, very rarely) is a cop losing his job and standing trial for assault if they wrongfully use physical force on a civilian. They can always get away with "well, I thought he was carrying a weapon" or other such flimsy excuses. Combined with the fact that cops always look after their own, it becomes very difficult to successfully and meaningfully persecute a cop for abusing their authority.

Hey! I was just reading about you guys. http://www.lamag.com/features/2014/2/26/downfall/print

Thanks but I'll assert my rights from the safety of my home. No need to go on asserting rights to a cop with an itchy trigger finger. Or go do down the rabbit hole of asserting your rights and be degraded even more for asserting your rights. [1]

I'd like to believe the world works the way you think it does, experience has taught me otherwise.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/05/david-eckert-enema-...

You've never actually seen people assert their rights when talking to police, huh?

I think the correct phrase for this situation is, "you can beat the charge, but you can't beat the ride."

Police get all ornery when there's any kind of perceived challenge to their authority.

I wonder why that middle class, and upper middle class white individuals are now experiencing an increase in police.

Perhaps it's resentment of the widening income gap between 20-30 somethings in the tech industry and those in the service industry?

Another HN article referenced a Bay Area police officer making a remark about being a "wannabe billionaire."

"Perhaps it's resentment of the widening income gap between 20-30 somethings in the tech industry and those in the service industry?"

Maybe. Because of the billionaire big winner image, people outside the industry see techies as very well off.

In fact, cops make a lot more on average -- benefits included -- than techies or programmers or engineers. In big American cities, cops are paid similar total compensation to doctors. The usual breakdown is 125k or so salary plus gold plated health care, various fancy bonuses and discounts and a pension plan that's worth more actuarially than all of the salary. Totals above $400k are not uncommon.

NYPD, as mentioned in op, is considered much more stingy than suburban NY departments so the cops in question may not be making quite that much.

Those numbers don't sound right at all.

Bureau of Labor Statistics says the median is 55k. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes333051.htm

Since you said NY is stingy, I tried other big cities. Here's a list of Chicago PD salaries. https://data.cityofchicago.org/Administration-Finance/Police... The only people on that list with a salary of 125k are ranked captain and above.

Here's the LAPD salary schedule. http://per.lacity.org/psb/lapd_salary.htm Not even close to averaging 125k

Houston PD http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee... Again, much lower than what you're talking about.

If cops in the 4 biggest cities in America aren't making that much, who is?

Cops generally make a lot more than the official base pay. They get lots of routine highly compensated overtime even when working only 2000 hours a year. Published figures usually aren't representative. Seniority gives mid career cops lots of opportunities to pad overtime hours. Check the actual pay instead of salary schedules.

Also, retirement with nearly full pay at age 50 is common.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-17/highest-paid-califo...

http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/?name=&agency=CALIFORNIA+HIGH...

This Menlo Park police officer makes $133K in base salary, i.e. before overtime: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22382095/menlo-park-police-off...

That is significantly higher than the per-capita income in Menlo Park: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/0646870.html

Yeah, with my experiences with police officers who I know personally they seem to earn nothing like that.

Could you provide a source on those figures? I would be interested to learn about it.

I don't have data to back up my refutes, but on the surface those numbers don't add up.

In the US, state, counties, city and other local governments are struggling with their budgets. A police force with $400k in compensation per officer is way out of wack, and no way that tax payers would go for it.

At that level of compensation, that puts police officers in the wealthiest 1% of Americans.

I know here in Seattle (and the richer suburbs of Bellevue, Redmond, etc), it's a common complaint that police officers can't afford to live in the communities they protect.

In my case, it was a freak occurrence. I chose to wear my admittedly ratty looking but thrift-store looking hat along with a Century 21 snowboarding jacket.

Had it been a slightly warmer day, this incident would have likely never occurred.

That being said, I think what's happening on the left coast is the widening income gap coupled with a context switch that the cops are still catching up to. There are a lot of kids who bleed entitlement, some of whom are quite wealthy and some of whom are dirt poor.

For the record, as the giver of said advice: I pretty much completely agree.

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