I have had numerous encounter with police and never, ever had a problem, nor witnesses bad behaviour on the part of police.
Conversely - cops, as a normal part of doing their jobs have to deal with drunk, crazy, wild and violent people quite often.
I'm not making a comment about the article, but about the 'presumption of innocence'. I think 'bad cops' are probably an issue of culture within specific policing stations and groups.
> I have had numerous encounter with police and never, ever had a problem, nor witnesses bad behavior on the part of police.
Well that is just amazing to be honest. I have LEO in the family and they all did personality 180s after joining. They converted to an "us vs them" mentality. All of there coworkers were identical.
I am not saying that they ran around being assholes to everyone, but they literally started thing less of "others". Every person in the community is a criminal now, they just haven't been caught.
You can even see it in action. If you have ever came across a person in the grocery store wearing a high-and-tight and they looked at you with bafflement as to why you did not immediately get out of their way when they were passing -- that was an off-duty cop.
BTW, the power-trip doesn't just apply to cops, if you know any correctional officers, you will see the same phenomena.
This power-to-bad-behavior conversion isn't just some anecdotal stories, it is well-known in repeated physiology studies.[1]
You can see it in their personal lives as well.[2][3]
Add to us-vs-them mentality and inflated sense of power a below average IQ (PDF page 92), and you have what we have today.
I was under the impression that the Stanford Prison Experiment was not a reliable experiment due to a number of confounding factors. Introduction of bias by the lead researcher, influencing the participant's behavior is one such factor. In this way, the experiment is more of an example of how not to conduct research, more so than a reliable indicator on how power goes to people's heads.
"The high and tight is a military variant of the crew cut. It is a very short hairstyle most commonly worn by men in the armed forces of the U.S. It is also popular with law enforcement officers and other public safety personnel."
The Stanford prison experiment does not apply to cop to citizen relationships. The power imbalance isn't even close to comparable.
Consider your anecdote about getting out of the way in the grocery store. If that happened in a prison the guard would just immediately punish the person. A cop can't do that.
The difference is a random citizen shooting you will go to jail if they get caught. A police officer will get paid leave with a presumption that you did something to cause it while it is "investigated" by their brothers/sisters in blue.
If their brothers/sisters in blue don't like them then they will be arrested for murder if they acted inappropriately.
Otherwise the investigation will likely be half-assed or purposely sabotaged. The "blue line" is a real thing, most cops won't take down other cops unless they have to/dislike the other cop.
Every place is different and while there are obviously bad police officers, there are also some very good ones.
I once had a friend here in Japan who unfortunately was starting to suffer from mental illness. She let her visa lapse and when her employer asked her about it, she decided to do a runner. I caught up with her at the bus station and it seems that her employer had called the police because they showed up too. First thing she did was punch one of the two officers.
In Japan, this is a pretty big deal. I'm sure many people have heard stories about the Japanese police. I tend to be quite careful of them because they have pretty broad powers. Anyway, calm as anything these guys restrained her and just held her until she calmed down. Then they explained how her visa worked and told her where to go to fill in the paper work to get it all sorted. They explained that her employer still wanted to employ her and to help her get things worked out. And then after everything was all straightened out, they left.
Without arresting her.
This was a godsend to my friend who was able to sort things out and as her disease progressed was able to go back home for treatment. I'm still grateful to those police officers. I don't think all Japanese police are like that, but there really are people who are good at their jobs.
