No you are required to obey a police officer any time they step in to control a situation even if you aren't under arrest. This is silly to think otherwise. Just try to waltz into a crime scene. The officer will tell you to stay out. You are expected to follow his directions. You can't just decide you don't want to walk around and simply continue past the officer or you will get arrested for not obeying the officer.
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No you are required to obey a police officer any time they step in to control a situation even if you aren't under arrest. This is silly to think otherwise. Just try to waltz into a crime scene. The officer will tell you to stay out. You are expected to follow his directions. You can't just decide you don't want to walk around and simply continue past the officer or you will get arrested for not obeying the officer.
Nope. You'll get arrested for interfering with a crime scene. Which is illegal. The fact that Police told you not to do it is irrelevant to whether that act will get you arrested. Police often tell you not to do illegal things, and will arrest you for doing them, but that's due to the acts being illegal not the cop giving orders.
Again, disobeying the Police is not a great plan, and often results in this sort of thing, but it's not illegal.
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That the "it is illegal to disobey police" attitude is so prominent is probably a big part of why the wrong sort of people so often become cops.
Again, disobeying the Police is not a great plan, and often results in this sort of thing, but it's not illegal.
There are "lawful commands" that you are legally required to follow, however, that is a pretty small category of things police say. Given that police are allowed to lie, it is often difficult to know what is legally required and what is not. Some commands even make it to the supreme court, and may be legal one day, but not the next.
Sometimes it is best to just obey, other times it is best to get the hell out of there. Every situation is different.
Given the outcome in this situation, I think that girl had every reason not to trust these police, and probably should have just ridden off right away.
She tried to ride off. They snatched her off her bike.
The system encourages and protects this behavior, but doesn't CAUSE it. There are plenty of cops who manage to get through their shift without assaulting a child.
I'm trying not to paint broad strokes here, because there ARE a lot of good cops. But seemingly they're surrounded by cowards, bullies, and incompetents. =/
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I'm trying not to paint broad strokes here, because there ARE a lot of good cops. But seemingly they're surrounded by cowards, bullies, and incompetents. =/
Actually, there have been studies which show that the vast majority of police misconduct is committed by a relative handful of officers.
The real problem is that the entire force routinely protects and enables these 'few' bad cops... which makes them ALL bad cops.
Just as in this case, the recent police abuse case in Rochester, and dozens of others... all the officers on the scene and the heads of the police force make excuses for the conduct being 'necessary' or 'appropriate'. That strongly discourages prosecutors from 'going to war' with the entire police force they rely on to arrest criminals and thus the abusive cops remain on the streets and the problems continue.
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Gee we don't seem to have the same hassles in Australia.
Then again it's a lot harder to become a Police officer here, and the training is significantly longer. We also pay them properly.
High standards cost money.
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Based on my searching, Australian police make about the same as U.S. police... about 35,000 US dollars (over 45,000 AUS dollars) per year on average.
Of course, where I live in New Jersey the median wage is over $90,000 US dollars... and anyone who thinks that NJ cops have notably high standards has never met one.
Yeah to some extent I agree Fergie. They should pass a law protecting the police from punitive damages only. If the cops broke your foot then they should be sueable for the medical costs, but letting people sue for millions because some jerk uses excessive force is just a sneaky way to impoverish the whole community just so you can get rich quick.
The system encourages and protects this behavior, but doesn't CAUSE it. There are plenty of cops who manage to get through their shift without assaulting a child.
I'm trying not to paint broad strokes here, because there ARE a lot of good cops. But seemingly they're surrounded by cowards, bullies, and incompetents. =/
"Cause" is a weird word. Sure, there are plenty of cops that get through not just their shifts but their entire careers without assaulting a child. And there are some teachers who do assault kids.
But "cause" gets weird when you start looking at a larger scale than individual cases. The system encouraging and protecting the behavior may not "cause" any individual assault, but it definitely "causes" there to be a lot more of them.
proximate cause and ultimate cause would be the ideas here.
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Yeah to some extent I agree Fergie. They should pass a law protecting the police from punitive damages only. If the cops broke your foot then they should be sueable for the medical costs, but letting people sue for millions because some jerk uses excessive force is just a sneaky way to impoverish the whole community just so you can get rich quick.
I think the point being made was that cops should face a more direct cost for their abuses. Lots of major American cities have paid out tens of millions in settlements for excessive force cases over the years. If officers are 1) rarely fired, and 2) never actually pay a dime towards the fines/court costs they incurred (which they don't) then where exactly is the incentive to change behavior? Making it so that some percentage of those costs came out of their pension plan would create a direct incentive to avoid excessive force--this is a spitballed example, I don't know what the legal implications of such a reform would be.
If y'all feel like making yourselves angry, you could click around here for a while.
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Yeah to some extent I agree Fergie. They should pass a law protecting the police from punitive damages only. If the cops broke your foot then they should be sueable for the medical costs, but letting people sue for millions because some jerk uses excessive force is just a sneaky way to impoverish the whole community just so you can get rich quick.
Actually, I'd suggest that the opposite should happen, then.
Raise punitive damages. The whole point of punitive damages is to punish, by which read, to inflict negative consequences upon the whole d--n system in order that the system itself changes to avoid having that happen again. In criminology, they call this "deterrence"; the idea being that you're not going to drive drunk if/when you realize that a single conviction for drunk driving can cost you $10,000 of real money, in addition to all the other consequences (like jail time, loss of your license, etc.) And while you might argue that it's not fair to the other members of the family that they should suffer poverty when their life savings are wiped out and the primary breadwinner loses their job,... that argument never seems to work on the tough-on-crime types that are so big on deterrence as a factor.
So I'd actually be quite happy if the Township of Washington Heights were sued into bankruptcy because a rogue cop decided to shoot two black preteens. Because if that actually happened, that would mean that the nearby city of Jefferson Hills would realize "oh, s--t, we need to make sure that none of our officers do anything like that, or we could all lose our jobs and our pensions."
This is especially true if the Washington Heights PD supports that rogue cop. I will accept that no recruitment and training is 100% perfect, but when the chief of the WHPD testifies that "Officer McIntyre was performing within his authority and training; we support him 100%,"... fine, I will take the police chief at his word, and therefore the problem is not with Officer McIntyre, but with the township itself. Ergo, the township needs to be punished, not the officer, and $100 million in punitive damages (a year's tax revenue) seems quite reasonable, given that the township just fined someone else three month's income for drunk driving when no one got hurt....
Based on my searching, Australian police make about the same as U.S. police... about 35,000 US dollars (over 45,000 AUS dollars) per year on average.
Not quite.
The NSW Police Force offers a very attractive salary and benefits package, which includes a starting salary of $ 65,000.00 (2014) plus six weeks annual leave. Family friendly policies ensure a supportive environment, which caters for maternity, carer's, sick and compassionate leave.
Working Conditions - NSW Police Recruitment
www.police.nsw.gov.au/recruitment/the_career/general_duties/working_conditi ons
The training is also significantly more robust.
That and not having a number of sub-cultures to police in a given city helps keep things civil as mutual understanding goes a long ways.Gee we don't seem to have the same hassles in Australia.
Then again it's a lot harder to become a Police officer here, and the training is significantly longer. We also pay them properly.
High standards cost money.
Of course, when Australia does have to deeal with subcultures, it doesn't go well. But how Australia treats its native populations is a whole other story.
Also, Australia's immigration policies are more stringent than the USA's. Millions have simply walked into this country with no money or education and are here to stay. That can't happen Down Under. And if it did, and one were to get caught, one is shipped back out pronto. As I understand it. Am I right?
I want to be sure I understand you. Are you arguing that immigrants are the cause of our crime rates, or that police are more tempted to be violent against immigrants, or what?