Police Brutality, San Bernadino Style

[AthenaAwakened]

When a police officer is caught flagrantly misbehaving on video, the most that superiors and union officials typically concede is that he's an exception to the rule, a "bad apple." That can be true. There are something like one million cops in the U.S. Many do their jobs ethically, and even the best run police agencies sometimes find themselves employing a cop whose behavior is anomalously awful.

But the modern era of videotaped police brutality, which began when a group of LAPD officers nearly killed Rodney King, has also revealed a darker variation: the occasions when multiple cops participate together in obviously extra-legal assaults, where many throw punches and kicks and still others are silent bystanders whose complicity typically grows when they accede to fabricated police reports.

The latest illustration of this pattern occurred last week in San Bernardino County, California, where an NBC news helicopter captured the end of an unusual chase: a suspect fled on horseback across the wilderness while cops gave chase. In an initial use of force, one deputy used a Taser to knock him from his mount. "He then appeared to be stunned with a Taser by a sheriff's deputy and fall to the ground with his arms outstretched," NBC reports. "Two deputies immediately descended on him and appeared to punch him in the head and knee him in the groin."

He was quickly if not immediately subdued. Nevertheless, "in the two minutes after the man was stunned with a Taser, it appeared deputies kicked him 17 times, punched him 37 times and struck him with batons four times. Thirteen blows appeared to be to the head." As many as 11 sheriff's deputies were ultimately complicit, with only the very last to arrive on the scene having a plausible excuse:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national...ice-brutality-goes-beyond-a-bad-apple/390303/

 

[bleubird]

It has been pointed out in many threads on this problem.Training.There are like 17,000 police departments in USA with no standards.I think all police should go to a state police academy.
Or a federal standard.

 

[Rhea]

I think these brutal videos should be played on loop in a judicial lunchrooms. So the judges never forget who "the people" had to see prior to the judge.

 

[Valjean]

In addition to training I'd add initial screening and decent pay.
If the demographic you're attracting are authoritarians and sociopaths you've got to expect problems.

 

[Nexus]

In addition to training I'd add initial screening and decent pay.
If the demographic you're attracting are authoritarians and sociopaths you've got to expect problems.

Police departments use extensive psych screenings with multiple interviews, its clear authoritarians and sociopaths are exactly the type most depts want to recruit onto their force.

 

[Valjean]

Well, if you recruit Nazis, what do you expect?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, if you recruit Nazis, what do you expect?

I would expect at least some level of order and discipline where undesirable elements are eliminated in a systematic and regulated manner. Not some kind of willy-nilly anarchist-type randomized displays of violence.