Police Brutality

Pamela - posted on 08/01/2011

Yeah I saw that video. Pretty shocking of the police to treat her the way they did. If they're not going to do anything wrong, what have they to fear?

Rosie - posted on 08/01/2011

it's not even always violence that they resort to. a woman named emily good was videotaping a policeman pull over someone. the officer got pissed and wanted to take her camera away and force her to stop taping. she refused, he arrested her. this video is what happens to supporters of this woman, who gathered in a neighborhood meeting. http://youtu.be/bqPZxRWxxm4

Pamela - posted on 08/01/2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/151806/15_...

I fear we are seeing something that is becoming systemic.

Dana - posted on 07/31/2011

I think there are a few bad apples. It seems there is a percentage of cops who go into law enforcement because they crave the power to control and dominate. It would be interesting to see that percentage actually.

And Dyan whenever I hear about people getting into trouble about "mouthing off" to cops, I actually get pretty bothered by that. It's not as if we're all children who need to respect our elders. We should be allowed to have a voice, especially if we're not breaking the law.

Rosie - posted on 07/29/2011

i think that police have the unpleasant job of decifering who is really a threat, and who isn't. after multiple times of being attacked, or trying to get away, i'm sure it's somehow engrained into them that they feel threatened almost all the time.
however that doesn't give them an excuse to go around beating people up. i think they seriously need some retraining on how to handle situations, and maybe some psychiatric help to help them decifer threats from normal behavior. i spent a good amount of time on youtube one day looking at video after video of police brutality. most of these videos were situations where the suspect didn't do ANYTHING threatening, and still got beat. women, men, teenagers, it didn't matter.

my MIL got arrested once. her husband whom she is seperated from and her got into an argument. he got pissed and called the cops. he was living in their house, she had moved out and was back trying to get a few things. she was standing on the sidewalk and the cops told her she was trespassing. first it was her house, second she was on the sidewalk which is public property, not the homeowners. she got pissed and mouthed off and wouldnt' leave. they grabbed her and twisted her arm behind her back, hurting her. NATURAL reaction is to try to stop the action that is hurting you, and of course it's seen as resisting arrest. so they throw her down and cuff her. IMO, she shouldn't of been mouthing off, but it's common sense when someone gets hurt they're going to cringe away. i see it all the time on COPS, police doing that, hurting people like it's nothing.

http://youtu.be/jqZC7LRL4AM

Krista - posted on 07/29/2011

They do carry guns, and I believe that they now carry tasers as well. We've also had a problem with tasers:

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/st...

Personally, I'm not a fan of tasers. I think that they give the police a false sense that they can be used without any real danger to the suspect, so they wind up OVER-using them.

And as well, I think that here you have the same tendency for the cops to protect their own, instead of coming down hard on cops who abuse their power.

I don't think it's QUITE as egregious, however...not that I've heard, anyway.

Sara - posted on 07/29/2011

I think police brutality is a systemic problem.

This is a really interesting article about police brutality from 2010. It's a little long, but I think it's a good article.

http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2010/0...

Is police brutality a problem in Canada as well, Krista? I don't know much about it...but do police there carry guns/tasers/etc?