Are police-community relations collapsing?

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HerCrazierHalf

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Are relations with police collapsing? Are we hitting a point where actively resisting vs complying are seen as equally risky? Are we on the way to another set of riots?

It’s no secret that a number of communities have strained relations with police. Even decades before media attention it’s been widely known that excessive force and general misconduct occur too often.
Now with video of several events (such as shooting men already laying on the ground) I sense that a growing number of people will view resisting as the best option should they feel the police are unfairly applying force.

While the video below are teens, this seems symptomatic of a complete lack of trust and viewing police as a potential foe.

 
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I think that tension with the police is way overplayed by the media. I would certainly think that complying is much safer than resisting arrest. My experience with police officers is that they are friendly, and they just want to keep order and safety. Of course, I live in the country and rarely go to large cities, where they have to be more careful, but I still think that it is overplayed.
 
To be fair, I’ve never had a bad encounter with police but at least half a dozen friends have recalled past negative encounters directly to me. One friend was pulled out of his car through the window and another was the victim of in a domestic violence call and was cuffed and handled in a way that still leaves her with recurring shoulder pain decades later.

The media coverage often confirms what’s already been said in the communities.
 
EZweber said:
Of course, I live in the country and rarely go to large cities, where they have to be more careful,
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You and I, live in places where the cops look like us and often come from the same community or culture. Things are much different in other places, especially where the cops do not come from the community.

Yes cops are on the front line of enforcing the law and they deserve credit there. But we also need to address the code of silence and retaliation when someone breaks it. If certain cops are allowed to act with impunity due to a code of silence and the community being policed does not trust them because of it, we have a recipe for disaster and often increased crime and
 
True, but I would be a lot more worried without cops. They are generally more law abiding than the average person.
 
Relations have always been tense in communities with more racial and socioeconomic disparities. The Digital Age is simply making that tension more transparent and shining an important light on the reality of police corruption.
 
Here is body cam of man with knife chasing cop yelling “kill me!!”

And cop diffusing situation even though he could have lawfully shot the man.

There are tons of videos like this. The media won’t show them because don’t fit the narrative

 
Here’s a cop shooting an unarmed man laying on the ground.

 
In my 31 years, I worked with several who never should have worn the badge. Having said that, relations are mostly braking down in large, urban communities populated with a certain number of hate-filled, ignorant and gullible - whose thoughts are programmed into them by incessant media consumption.

Solution? Stop watching the media! It’s simple! Why must we pay to receive propaganda which misleads and angers us?

Fake news is real and broadcasting half of the story sells outside of the courtroom.

Flush the media.
 
Aquinas11 said:
And cop diffusing situation even though he could have lawfully shot the man.
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Watchdog groups are concerned that law enforcement agencies aren’t doing enough to combat police corruption. That’s not related to this video.

The officer in this video is responding well and bravely to a precarious situation.
 
blackforest said:
That’s not related to this video.
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The OP is about active resisting v complying
HerCrazierHalf said:
Are we hitting a point where actively resisting vs complying are seen as equally risky?
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HerCrazierHalf said:
I sense that a growing number of people will view resisting as the best option
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There are DOZENS of these “suicide by cop” videos where armed people are resisting arrest and charging cops in hopes they’ll be shot. They say “shoot me!” or “do it!”

Here is another one

 
Aquinas11 said:
The OP is about active resisting v complying
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The guy is mentally disturbed and suicidal. The officer did what he needed to do. Police community relations aren’t collapsing because of scenarios like this. They’re collapsing due to increased attention to police corruption.
 
I’m guessing that everyone posting so far is from the US. I think in the UK we have a very different relationship with the police because they are not routinely armed. The only police officers we have who carry weapons are on very specific duties such as personal protection for the queen, the prime minister, etc., protecting sensitive locations such as the Palace of Westminster and airports, and responding to events such as terrorist attacks or incidents with firearms. Other than these rare exceptions, a police officer’s authority derives from his status as a sworn constable with a power of arrest. My earliest memory of travelling abroad as a child was going to Spain and being terrified when I saw that every police officer carried a gun. I can only imagine that it completely changes the relationship between the community and the police when the police routinely carry potentially lethal weapons. This is also why British police uniforms are specifically designed not to resemble military uniforms and why police ranks do not follow military ranks.
 
Have you been to the US? Despite all of the school shootings and gun control debates, gun culture is an indelible part of our cultural fabric. I remember my Scottish relatives coming to visit. I took them out to eat at a local diner, and they spent almost the entire meal gawking at a gun that a sheriff, (dining nearby), was wearing on his belt.

That’s nothing compared to what you’ll see in “open-carry” states, where and Average Joe or Average Jane Citizen can and will publicly brandish their loaded guns. I like to warn Europeans before they visit and prepare them for the shock!

At any rate, I agree that this whole context makes for sticky citizen-police relations.

(On the other hand, at least in this country, Britain has been the butt of a lot of butter knife jokes . . . )
 
PJH_74 said:
Things are much different in other places, especially where the cops do not come from the community.
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I don’t but this for two main reasons
  1. in many big cities, police officers MUST live in the city limits and are not allowed to live in the suburbs - so they live in the community
  2. police departments do their best to place ethnic police officers in ethnic communities.
To me, the main issue is that when you resist arrest - don’t be surprised if you get beat up.

Cops are human and their first goal is to make sure they come home to their families. If they feal threatened, they are going to react because no cop wants to hesitate and then die because they hesitated. And honestly, it’s not so much that they don’t want to die - it’s more that they don’t want to make their spouse a widow(we) and their kids lose a parent.
 
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