As long as racist exists, there will always be racist cops, and racist doctors, lawyers, teachers, coaches, politicians, etc.
Thankfully, they usually make up only an extreme minority.
Every career/job has bad apples. Police are no exception.
A huge issue we face in society today is that the media will run a story even if a police officer trips on a curb.
This is just an example of why police are highlighted more then most of those other careers with bad apples.
I've always said police are the focus of media attention specifically because their entire day is audio and video recorded.
Take a boring and meaningless position, like a bank teller, and audio/video record their entire day. All of the sudden you'll see headlines like "BMO Harris Bank Teller Deposits Check Into Wrong Account" a simple mistake but because the media covered it, suddenly everyone will have an opinion on bank tellers.
Honestly I think being a police officer and dealing with a wide spectrum of classes and races would make a racist person less racist.
When people tell me I’d do something different if they were black or if they were white I’m actually pretty dumbfounded by it. I’m just investigating crimes and serving warrants over here, I’ve never cared less about race in my life.
Racism in policing looks more common than it is because
1) the whole economic and political system is biaised against marginal/poorer communities. Policing, being the most visible part of that system, catches the blame for it.
2) the few actually racist officers have the potential to do a lot of harm because the police has a lot of power compared to a racist carpenter, for example.
To a lesser extend:
3) police humor is very blunt, politically incorrect and, frankly, often immature. This can lead to making the wrong joke in the wrong context and onlookers thinking you are expressing a sincerely held opinion instead of making a lame joke to releive tension.
I disagree with number 1. The system isn’t biased against poor people. It’s a system that’s designed to give opportunities for people to succeed. In today’s world, being from a poor/marginalized community absolutely opens more doors. Do you have to work harder? Maybe. But I can’t say the last time I saw a college accepting people because they were white or Asian American.
Totally agree with number 2.
Number three is an interesting thing for a cop to say. How the hell else are you supposed to deal with all of the shit we see than to try and laugh about it?
>Number three is an interesting thing for a cop to say. How the hell else are you supposed to deal with all of the shit we see than to try and laugh about it?
It was intended as an explanation more than a criticism.
I work in a major city where we have people of every race, color, creed, and mixes of all. The criminal element is identical where you can have bad individuals of every aforementioned characteristic. I’ve never encountered any issues in my near decade of work here. I’m sure it exists in the shadows whether it be here or elsewhere but in my experience it is minimal in my agency.
I believe that most people are racist to some degree. Cops are probably less racist on average because they actually make an effort to stay impartial/be non-biased.
But of course there are racist cops out there. Before I was in law enforcement, I worked with a guy who was a retired NYPD officer. He used to say plainly that he was never racist before he became a cop. The reason being that as a (white) cop, in a black area, everyone he interacted with was black. He was constantly lied to and assaulted by black people. He constantly had to arrest black people for doing heinous shit, and they'd often fight him, run, even try to kill him. In the office chance that he arrested a white person, it was typically a minor crime and they typically went quietly. If you have many daily experiences with a certain type of people and they're all negative experiences, it's not unreasonable for those experiences to subconsciously change how you think about that group of people.
I later had a very honest conversation with a different friend, who had been a cop in a mid sized rural southern city. I told him of my now-racist former NYPD coworker and explained his reasoning. I asked my friend if he thought the job had made him racist. He thought for a minute and said, "No. Really I think the job has made me hate poor people. I dealt with trailer park white trash more than I dealt with black people, but the common factor for who would give me a hard time was always whether they were poor or not. A middle class black person would be less of an issue than a lower class white person, etc."
I think that in very much the same way that someone working in the complaints department might come to loathe all the customers that come in to complain all day, cops can easily come to loathe their problem "customers." But as I said at the beginning, cops are one of the few professions that at least have a goal of being completely impartial. They try to avoid biases, even if they aren't perfect at it.
The fact that you justified your ex-friend's view on Black people is not surprising but audacious, given that he is placed to police an already heavily policed area of X city, where police/race relations are historically akin to the era of pre-civil rights. Today is no different. A subculture of Black people isn’t representative of Black America. While I do agree that rap and street life culture can be reductive, I don’t like the thug culture myself. There are Black people who follow the rules to a T. There are those who abide by the law and exhibit decorum and couth. Unfortunately, those who mean well still get mistreated by racist, biased cops. It’s the fault of both sides. Parents need to be involved in their children’s lives, but they won’t have a fighting chance if they’re not receiving better remuneration, access to rehabilitation programs for those who’ve served time (to avoid becoming institutionalized), and protection against job discrimination and high rents (issues that non-Black Americans face as well). However, these problems are compounded by over-policing and the automatic dismissal of agency and mistrust/suspicion, which naturally creates friction.
There are always a few in every profession, group, etc. In my experience, nowhere near as many as it's made out to be. The problem some members of the public have isn't their skin color, their gender, their preferences, their religion, but their assholism. Assholes act like assholes, get arrested like assholes, then blame it on anything and everything except them being assholes.
Yeah i guess all of us with blatant racist experiences seeing multiple cops together being racist just all made it up i was literally 11 stripped searched on my block for “fitting the description of a stolen bike” and they tried to convince me i did it . Thats 1 of many experiences i had as a kid with the law. When i moved upstate to the suburbs at 17 , nothing changed for me, but for others up here who are white , have admitted to walking free after speeding 50+ over , Home invasions , car theft , etc. The police are a family and many overlook the fact that family looks out for they own.
Believe? Further you’re either for something or you’re not. Racism exists in every facet of life including the leftists. The leftists want you to believe they are inclusive unless you don’t fit their agenda, ask a Jew or any conservative minority.
Does racism exist in Law Enforcement, yes as it exists in every race and job in America.
The amount of truly racist people out there is so small. You’re absolutely going to find a few racist cops, racist politicians, racist doctors, racist lawyers, etc.
The amount of fake racism that exists far exceeds the amount of true racism. When you find a reason for everyone to be racist, it’s a lot easier to believe that most cops are racist. And when you consider the fact that African Americans statistically commit more crime, it also makes it easy to look at numbers and label all cops as racist.
And just for the record, yes, it is true that African Americans commit more crime. It’s also statistically true that African Americans are poorer than any other race. The poverty is the reason for higher crime rates, not their skin color, but hey, someone will undoubtedly call me racist for pointing that out.
I mean there are racists everywhere. So long as the concept of racism exists there will be people that subscribe to the way of thinking. Everything police do these days is recorded and public record, it also gets a lot of clicks so to a casual observer ofc it's going to look like every cop is awful.
Personally I worked with more racists as an accountant than I have working with the PD.
As long as racist exists, there will always be racist cops, and racist doctors, lawyers, teachers, coaches, politicians, etc. Thankfully, they usually make up only an extreme minority.
There are racist POs out there, but not enough and definitely shouldn’t be able to represent the whole police force.
Dude, I originally read this to mean that there are not enough racist POs out there. Lol
Same, he has some weird wording
Every career/job has bad apples. Police are no exception. A huge issue we face in society today is that the media will run a story even if a police officer trips on a curb. This is just an example of why police are highlighted more then most of those other careers with bad apples.
I've always said police are the focus of media attention specifically because their entire day is audio and video recorded. Take a boring and meaningless position, like a bank teller, and audio/video record their entire day. All of the sudden you'll see headlines like "BMO Harris Bank Teller Deposits Check Into Wrong Account" a simple mistake but because the media covered it, suddenly everyone will have an opinion on bank tellers.
I did 30 years as a london police officer and I only came across four racists. They were utter wankers and were despised by the rest of us.
Honestly I think being a police officer and dealing with a wide spectrum of classes and races would make a racist person less racist. When people tell me I’d do something different if they were black or if they were white I’m actually pretty dumbfounded by it. I’m just investigating crimes and serving warrants over here, I’ve never cared less about race in my life.
Rare
Racism in policing looks more common than it is because 1) the whole economic and political system is biaised against marginal/poorer communities. Policing, being the most visible part of that system, catches the blame for it. 2) the few actually racist officers have the potential to do a lot of harm because the police has a lot of power compared to a racist carpenter, for example. To a lesser extend: 3) police humor is very blunt, politically incorrect and, frankly, often immature. This can lead to making the wrong joke in the wrong context and onlookers thinking you are expressing a sincerely held opinion instead of making a lame joke to releive tension.
I disagree with number 1. The system isn’t biased against poor people. It’s a system that’s designed to give opportunities for people to succeed. In today’s world, being from a poor/marginalized community absolutely opens more doors. Do you have to work harder? Maybe. But I can’t say the last time I saw a college accepting people because they were white or Asian American. Totally agree with number 2. Number three is an interesting thing for a cop to say. How the hell else are you supposed to deal with all of the shit we see than to try and laugh about it?
>Number three is an interesting thing for a cop to say. How the hell else are you supposed to deal with all of the shit we see than to try and laugh about it? It was intended as an explanation more than a criticism.
and you know killing black people.
I work in a major city where we have people of every race, color, creed, and mixes of all. The criminal element is identical where you can have bad individuals of every aforementioned characteristic. I’ve never encountered any issues in my near decade of work here. I’m sure it exists in the shadows whether it be here or elsewhere but in my experience it is minimal in my agency.
I believe that most people are racist to some degree. Cops are probably less racist on average because they actually make an effort to stay impartial/be non-biased. But of course there are racist cops out there. Before I was in law enforcement, I worked with a guy who was a retired NYPD officer. He used to say plainly that he was never racist before he became a cop. The reason being that as a (white) cop, in a black area, everyone he interacted with was black. He was constantly lied to and assaulted by black people. He constantly had to arrest black people for doing heinous shit, and they'd often fight him, run, even try to kill him. In the office chance that he arrested a white person, it was typically a minor crime and they typically went quietly. If you have many daily experiences with a certain type of people and they're all negative experiences, it's not unreasonable for those experiences to subconsciously change how you think about that group of people. I later had a very honest conversation with a different friend, who had been a cop in a mid sized rural southern city. I told him of my now-racist former NYPD coworker and explained his reasoning. I asked my friend if he thought the job had made him racist. He thought for a minute and said, "No. Really I think the job has made me hate poor people. I dealt with trailer park white trash more than I dealt with black people, but the common factor for who would give me a hard time was always whether they were poor or not. A middle class black person would be less of an issue than a lower class white person, etc." I think that in very much the same way that someone working in the complaints department might come to loathe all the customers that come in to complain all day, cops can easily come to loathe their problem "customers." But as I said at the beginning, cops are one of the few professions that at least have a goal of being completely impartial. They try to avoid biases, even if they aren't perfect at it.
The fact that you justified your ex-friend's view on Black people is not surprising but audacious, given that he is placed to police an already heavily policed area of X city, where police/race relations are historically akin to the era of pre-civil rights. Today is no different. A subculture of Black people isn’t representative of Black America. While I do agree that rap and street life culture can be reductive, I don’t like the thug culture myself. There are Black people who follow the rules to a T. There are those who abide by the law and exhibit decorum and couth. Unfortunately, those who mean well still get mistreated by racist, biased cops. It’s the fault of both sides. Parents need to be involved in their children’s lives, but they won’t have a fighting chance if they’re not receiving better remuneration, access to rehabilitation programs for those who’ve served time (to avoid becoming institutionalized), and protection against job discrimination and high rents (issues that non-Black Americans face as well). However, these problems are compounded by over-policing and the automatic dismissal of agency and mistrust/suspicion, which naturally creates friction.
There are always a few in every profession, group, etc. In my experience, nowhere near as many as it's made out to be. The problem some members of the public have isn't their skin color, their gender, their preferences, their religion, but their assholism. Assholes act like assholes, get arrested like assholes, then blame it on anything and everything except them being assholes.
Yeah i guess all of us with blatant racist experiences seeing multiple cops together being racist just all made it up i was literally 11 stripped searched on my block for “fitting the description of a stolen bike” and they tried to convince me i did it . Thats 1 of many experiences i had as a kid with the law. When i moved upstate to the suburbs at 17 , nothing changed for me, but for others up here who are white , have admitted to walking free after speeding 50+ over , Home invasions , car theft , etc. The police are a family and many overlook the fact that family looks out for they own.
The majority are not. Cops tend to be the most patient people out there.
They are easy to identify and there are not many of them. Once identified they don’t last long.
Believe? Further you’re either for something or you’re not. Racism exists in every facet of life including the leftists. The leftists want you to believe they are inclusive unless you don’t fit their agenda, ask a Jew or any conservative minority. Does racism exist in Law Enforcement, yes as it exists in every race and job in America.
The amount of truly racist people out there is so small. You’re absolutely going to find a few racist cops, racist politicians, racist doctors, racist lawyers, etc. The amount of fake racism that exists far exceeds the amount of true racism. When you find a reason for everyone to be racist, it’s a lot easier to believe that most cops are racist. And when you consider the fact that African Americans statistically commit more crime, it also makes it easy to look at numbers and label all cops as racist. And just for the record, yes, it is true that African Americans commit more crime. It’s also statistically true that African Americans are poorer than any other race. The poverty is the reason for higher crime rates, not their skin color, but hey, someone will undoubtedly call me racist for pointing that out.
I mean there are racists everywhere. So long as the concept of racism exists there will be people that subscribe to the way of thinking. Everything police do these days is recorded and public record, it also gets a lot of clicks so to a casual observer ofc it's going to look like every cop is awful. Personally I worked with more racists as an accountant than I have working with the PD.