Cops who think that way are scum, of course. But rooting them out will not be easy or quick.

Especially since they're apparently the majority.

Just don't put that on a t-shirt in the Netherlands or you will be prosecuted -- even if you try to get cute and shorten it to ACAB or put it in code like 1312. The poor old police will still have their feelings hurt...

This is the authoritarian interregnum.

1. Give people uniforms and authority, this tends to happen (see Stanford Prison Experiment etc.) - us vs. them is baked into the _roles_. Talk to a cop sometime.

2. Big-picture, I don't think ticket-fixing is that big a deal. Like stealing office supplies, or using your connections to get a cousin an interview, it's an unofficial perk: "wrong", sure, but

3. letting ourselves get distracted into condemnation of players instead of game just exacerbates the mammalian tribal shitflingery that got us here to begin with.

Cops are part of the 99%. Tea partiers and "rednecks" too.

Is what they did wrong? Absolutely.
But having the next move be "Let's fling shit! Down with Bad Tribe!"? Well, it sure plays into _someone_s hands... I just don't think it's the 99%.

The off duty officers response is troubling to say the least. When dealing with law enforcement the bar is set much higher because these are the watchers. They have be held to a higher standard to ensure the integrity and the trust of the position.

Raven, #9: Lately I've started to think that the most thoroughly corrupting event in US history was Prohibition.

If you look at its history, things don't add up. There are traces of conspiracy, but why would e.g. a Rockefeller conspire for grubby _money_?

What if the wholesale corruption of the system - from the highest DC circles to the cop on the corner, _everyone_ got dirty - wasn't just a side effect...

One of the more cogent criticisms of Republicans and conservatives these days is that they don't allow internal dissent. This means all kinds of batshit insanity (and other forms of malfeasance) become common coin. I'd rather the 99% movement didn't go in that direction; I think a message that stresses accountability is one that should stress it on all levels.

Does this mean we should all form up for the circular firing squad? Of course not. What we need to rediscover is a way to criticize coherently without rejecting entirely.

In other words, we need nuance back. I think what I like most about the 99% movement is that it seems to get that.

Where my self-questioning started: what if I was a cop? Can I walk those shoes?...

If the bigger crime is cops covering up other cops crimes...isn't the bigger crime yet, the division of us all into these roles?

In a similar way, blaming rightwingers for where we are is, in my recently acquired perspective, not quite the solution it once seemed (the late "leftneck" Joe Bageant has some good writing on this).

"Hate the game, not the player" might seem trite and simplistic, and does not in itself offer constructive advice. Like "we are the 99%" it's an idea to just sit with for a while, unrushed for conclusions.

This is a moderatorial comment, not open to argument.

Note that I am not excusing the measures taken outside of due process. The described behavior outside the court room is inexcusable and should in no way have been encourage by the union. Some of those officers, from the info in the article should be fired and probably do jail time (particularly Ramos), but they absolutely have the right to have someone defending them all the way through the process both in court and in internal disciplinary hearings.

abi, #14: ...ehm? OK then...language barrier?

A few officers (somewhere between 2 and 5) are accused of major crimes--arresting people on false pretenses, planting drugs on suspects, insurance fraud, drug dealing, etc...

A whole bunch of officers are accused of ticket-fixing, which was already well-established when my grandfather started working in NYC in the late 50's, and which has been very much expected and accepted for generations. I'm someone sympathetic to those officers; it feels rather like the occasional crack-downs on taking excessive breaks at workplaces that find firing people for getting back from lunch 5 minutes late cheaper than laying them off.

Volgens mij, "Hate the game, not the player" might seem trite and simplistic, and does not in itself offer constructive advice. Like "we are the 99%" it's an idea to just sit with for a while, unrushed for conclusions. ziet er uit als I offer no solutions. Just: first, see.

Je móét aannemen dat de andere mensen in dit gesprek hebben over deze onderwerpen héél lang gedacht en betoogd. Iedereen in dit gemeenschap is een slimme volwassen (of, als niet, ziet er uit als een slimme volwassen op het internet). De kans dat je een onzichtbaar geheim, een bijzondere sleutel over die alle mensen moeten lang bemiddelen hebt aangetoond is...heel klein.

Te spreken in een conversatie alsof je kan zo'n geheim overbrengen is verstorend. Misschien is één keer een ongeval, maar twee of meer is asociaal. De enige reden om het telkens weer te doen, na mijn waarchuwingen, is om een soort kracht over de andere mensen te verklaren met je "wijsheid". Doe dat niet. Bij Making Light is de discussie geen wedstrijd; probeer niet meer om het te winnen.

Als je kan niet wat je wil direct en duidelijk zeggen, dan zeg niks. Één keer meer en ik zal alle je comments houden tot ik kan hun lezen en beslissen of ze te mysterieus of krachtzoekend zijn. En ik heb het vaak druk; misschien doe ik dat na verloop van veel uren of dagen.

(OK? Nog geen taalbarrière? Dan gaan wij verder in 't Engels.)

Defending them by refusing to admit that any police officers can be in the wrong and have been in the wrong in the past (with consequences: see R King) is a whole 'nother order of wrong. (Defending them when they've been caught red-handed is something that should be reconsidered.)

I have also read accounts, by people who know police officers, that make it clear that us-vs-them is an occupational hazard for all police.

Seems obvious to me.

Police-as-union-workers stand to benefit in the long term from OWS, as part of the 99%, for sure. Police-as-police, though, stand to benefit hugely and individually in the short term by doing what they are told by their bosses.

If they are pointing weapons at you, they are not on your side.

Yes, exactly. I find myself thinking things like "tone at the top" and "Where are their controls?" and "Who audits these guys?!"

In my opinion, a culture where routine external auditing is an accepted norm would do a lot to prevent casual corruption such as ticket fixes. (Actually, I'd like to see things like ticket enforcement modeled after health care in the age of HIPAA; violate this expectation and you will be fired, no matter who you are.)

Cliff @ 14

Speaking as a professional compliance officer, that sort of permissive thinking is a foundational part of the problem. If you have a workplace culture where ethics are consistently enforced and reinforced, you see a lot less ethical corner-cutting.

Yes, police-work is a hard job, no two ways. But from a compliance perspective, there are very clear guidelines about how to address situations in which corruption and malfeasance are temptations built-in to the job.

In a similar situation, I would expect an organization interested in minimizing corruption to:
1) establish clear ethical guidelines,
2) take consistent action against people who violate the ethical guidelines,
3) reward people for ethical risk-taking, such as reporting malfeasance or doing the right thing,
4) establish structures for preventing, identifying, and investigating malfeasance, so appropriate actions can be taken.

That's the simple version -- there are lots of tactics and approaches and philosophies I'm not getting into, based on specific situations, existing culture, the level of real support at all levels of the organization... It's an entire professional field, it's complicated.

What isn't complicated is that:
- No, corruption is never okay.

- Yes, I am extremely confident I could resist similar temptation, given a parallel situation. In a bad enough situation, I might have to leave the corrupt organization to maintain my own etical standards, but I am very confident I would not give in to corrupt standards of behavior.

- Yes, there are known frameworks, and structures, and tactics that can be implemented to support people in doing the right thing.

- Yes, it is possible (but difficult, and time- and labor-intensive) to reform existing cultures of corruption.

- But no, anti-corruption efforts will not be successful if we give people a pass on bad behavior.

Vooral 't vertellen aan een nederlander dat die direct met zijn uitspraak moet zijn.

Priceless.

Crazy(en terug aan de regularly scheduled program)Soph

Not the exact phrase, but I hit the concept in my poorly edited #9. I'm going to offer a corrected version here.

The problem of police seeing themselves as the law rather than its agents has gotten much worse in the past 30 years. It was exacerbated under Bush II. Under Bush II the top Federal justice officials were corrupt. This encouraged corruption throughout US law-enforcement, even in departments not directly under Federal authority. By "looking forward, not back"--by not prosecuting any of the Bush II administration offenders--the Obama administration made the corruption routine.

Isn't this exactly why Occupy is in the streets?

Raar maar waar!

I was thinking much the same thing. That this is just another example of how the wealthy, powerful, and well-connected are held to a separate standard of justice these days...

I have a soft-toy velociraptor who says that. I always thought he was a Montana velociraptor, because of his red bandanna, but he must be Dutch. Hoodah Thunkit?!

Not talking about the near-universal corruption seems to be one of he unwritten rules of journalism these days. I wonder how that happened?

KayTei, #30: Henry over at Crooked Timber linked this post and there is some discussion there as well. Over there I wrote:

Respect for the law has to start with the people at the top, or there will be no respect for the law. It has to start with the people who enforce the law. So law has to be well-made, and it has to apply to the great as well as the small.

And it is not and does not.

Well put.

Love, C.

I really can't think of anything more beautifully self-referential than a cuddly velociraptor in a red bandanna saying "Strange but true" in Dutch.

I am not saying they were correct in their judgment or their choice of action, but I think it likely that they thought this.

Thanks for the chance to test Google Translate. It fails the colloquial test.

I've seen city government fire the police chief and bring in a replacement who wasn't beholden to the existing power structure. The new chief was shut out of all operational decisions, was harrassed and disrespected by both patrol officers and commanders, and was finally forced out of office by being blamed for the lack of action of the rest of the force. It may be that the only real solution is to remove the entire top 4 or 5 tiers of command and replace them from outside; though where you'd get the replacements is an interesting question.

...said Eugene J. O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “The Police Department is a very angry work force, and that is something that should concern people, because it translates into hostile interactions with people.”

Now after they've been dismissed, after all the internal due process, they *might* be entitled legal representation in court provided by the union or they might not. It would depend on whether firing them after due process terminates their relationship with the union.

After their union membership is terminated, defending them would be murky at best. I've got a complex personal relationship with the police. I depend them for certain protections in my daily job. But on the flip side I get this throb in my head every time I see one run their lights just to coast through an intersection or have the FOP sticker obscuring their licence plate knowing they'll never ever get pulled over for speeding or other minor violations, but I know they'd pull me over if I put an ACLU or similar sticker over part of my licence plate. I have too many family members with peace protesting arrest records to be complacent when I see cops.

I'm not defending cops who do bad things. I am trying to speak out because I see people repeating the meme used by union busters that implies that unions shouldn't defend members who 'we all know' did bad things. Everyone should be entitled to innocent until proven guilty. After that well probably time to stop defending them so voraciously.

Unions, or at least some unions, don't want to have troublemakers. We have a union local where I work, and there are people they've tried to get rid of. (I work with one of those troublemakers. 'Backstabber' is one word I'd use as a description.)

The whole idea of "they've been doing it for years" is an excuse. A lot of things were done for years that were also wrong. It is a bs argument to try and condone behavior. It is one thing for a union to defend their members. It's another to form a protest and intimidation squad to shutdown discussion and reporting of it.

* Not by itself, at any rate. Sometimes there are sound underlying reasons why things should be done a certain way, but the phrase alone is not a substitute for having sound underlying reasons.

There's a difference between that and what's happening in New York, though. When I say "have their back," I mean that a union exists to level the playing field between worker and boss. I mean union representation, legal counsel, a witness and a voice that can't be silenced. When I say I'd do my part, I mean I'd remind them to request representation, call the union myself, attest to what I've seen.

If the police union is providing a lawyer, that's just as it should be. If the police union is coordinating protests, well, that I'm not so sure about. Others have more eloquently expressed the issue that troubles me: the protesters don't seem to be asserting the innocence (either moral or legal) of the accused, just that cops are special and deserve to keep doing wrong.

Is it up to the union to be aware of that? I don't know. I could see how a responsible, highly ethical union could be surprised by that sort of response. I don't for a moment imagine that this particular union was surprised by this response. I would bet my shirt they knew exactly what they'd get when they called for a protest. They know their boys are guilty, and they know their membership knows that and will defend them anyway.

Add that to the extent of public awareness of the case and to the media intimidation that actually happened, and I have to ask what they thought this protest would accomplish? The case is already high-profile, so it wasn't to gain visibility. Their own membership doesn't seem to think the indicted cops are innocent, so they can't be trying to show the other side of the story or convince the public. I'm left with the troubling suspicion that they called this protest just to intimidate people.

(I'm not totally opposed to any union ever using intimidation. If you're the CNT in 1936 or the United Mine Workers in 1920, you have enemies who quite literally outgun you and there's value in a show of force. It serves that goal of a level playing field. NYPD is not outgunned, nor under any threat of violent reprisal. Instead, they're the ones making that threat.)

More charitably, perhaps the union's intent was just to close ranks, get their people all feeling like they and the union were all together against the world. I can understand why that would be appealing to union leadership, but it's still poisonous. Of course it's fine if you're the United Mine Workers, but for a police union? Loyalty to the law or the public good* must come before loyalty to their own. The fact that it rarely does is one of the worst things about our policing culture.

*I'm not too sure which. There are strong arguments either way. If that dilemma was the most serious question in American policing, well... "One of those good problems," hey?

Sigh. New police chief hired just last week, maybe they wanted to get it out of their systems. On the off chance he can rein the Denver cops in.

I'm keeping the Occupy Denver folks in my prayers.

Except they've limited the list of just who their brothers are.

We didn't make the cut.

The powers that biz have long found it convenient to ease the police towards paramilitary status. In the shortish term, this can streamline the tedious process of obtaining popular... consent... to Proper Authority, quite drastically.

They may or may not detect in this and other recent shenanigans certain signs of where that particular tactic usually leads by its nature. Eventually, the security community begins to wonder why it should let those nogoodniks push them around, either.

I wonder whether this sort of thing might make Proper Authority start to wonder a bit about whether their own prospects, further down this road, are really very encouraging at all.

And I wonder, I really do, exactly how politicians would set about turning back from a democracy-style security state, with the best will in the world. It might actually be harder than liberalizing some kinds of tyranny. All that I'm really confident of is that the sooner it starts, the easier it's going to be.

We see this down here any time DCPS fires someone: the union response is always that this is political warfare and tyranny even in cases where, say, nobody seems to argue that a teacher was having sex with students or stealing things - this is both annoying and ensures that the union has far less credibility and support when they protest anything legitimate because they've repeatedly show that group loyalty matters more than the actual facts of any particular situation.

And you know? If there were such a demonstration, nurses or teachers holding the same view still isn't as scary or inappropriate as cops.

I used to work in the legal department of a large union (not one that represents cops, to my knowledge), and we saw this scenario with painful regularity:

1) Member does something dumbass, like stealing from work or not showing up or using illegal drugs on the job, which gets him fired.
2) Union files a grievance.
3) Union and management throw paperwork back and forth until it gets to having to go in front of a judge/arbitrator.
4) Union decides the guy is not going to prevail, given that he was (say) caught red-handed shooting heroin in the men's room when he was supposed to be on duty, and drops the grievance.
5) Guy sues the employer, and also files a DFR suit against the union.

Devin @57: And of course if a teachers' or nurses' union did such a thing, the usual suspects would crap flaming bricks about how this proves that unions are evil, evil, evil and teachers/nurses/whomever are spoiled.

No. The only alternatives to dividing people into cops and non-cops are (a) no cops, or (b) everyone is a cop, both of which are obviously impractical.

We need a reasonable and non-corrupt way for cops to relate to non-cops and vice versa because the division itself is unavoidable. This isn't it.

There are many indications in North America that this has broken down, and not only the negative ones (consider the massive military-style funerals for police officers who die in the line of duty, which set out a symbolic barrier between the police and the public). The most serious one, globally, is the effective rejection of civilian oversight by police forces, whether evidenced by this sort of contempt for the judicial process or by a resistance to systematic oversight by and answerability to civilian boards.

How this broad and problematic police culture is to be corrected, I don't know: it would require a massive and sustained effort addressing not just the running of police forces but also the education and formation of police officers.

Unfortunately, my manager had other priorities; he wanted to keep impressing the clients and suppressing bad news. So every report got "improved".

My stress level's way down since leaving there.

I am not looking forward to the first-ever simultaneous G8 and NATO confabs here next May.

That's a really good example of what I mean by "tone at the top." If the Guys in Charge are not on-board with improving compliance and ethics, there is generally little that their subordinates can do to change things (short of whistleblowing and hoping the Guys in Charge get replaced with someone more ethical).

So any change typically has to start at the top and work it's way down.

Meh. I was actually trying to get the word order right. (Dutch word order is both ferociously rigid and totally inexplicable.)

Google Translate never works well with complex Dutch by native speakers either, though. Again, word order in sentences is too large-scale for its token-parsing to deal with.

I should go back to googoo gaga Dutch. Or give up.

Drat. I thought you were referring to Emma Peel.

I've for a long time suspected - based partly on my experience of living in Turkey, where I struggle to read a newspaper despite having a reasonably good grasp of both grammar and vocabulary, and partly on memories of schoolboy Latin and Greek - that one of the hardest parts of learning a foreign language is accustoming oneself to recognising and reproducing the alien shape of its sentences.

Also, I have to say that while (or because) I'm a non-Batavophone 'Bij Making Light is de discussie geen wedstrijd; probeer niet meer om het te winnen.'sounds like an excellent summary description, and I'm in the process of committing it to memory.

Crazy(en zeker tot een bepaalde maat omdat zij ook een volwassen studente van Nederlands is... en ook allang geen perfecte Nederlands kan)Soph

I am always impressed with people learning the language, especially since both pronunciation and grammar are weird. And there is a plethora of rules that native speakers are not even aware of, as a former colleague kept reminding me of.

I can only imagine how difficult trying to practice Dutch can be. I know I always have to make a conscious effort not to switch to English even if I know the person is trying and wants to speak Dutch.

Unions whose members are getting screwed over by crooked or shoddy or brutal employers look like the good guys, because in that case, they are. Unions whose members are trying to get away with crooked or shoddy or brutal stuff look like bad guys, because they are.

Like other organizations that become power centers--different levels of government, NGOs, international organizations like the UN, NATO, IMF, WTO, World Bank, etc, labor unions, small and medium-sized and large corporations, churches, newspapers, private clubs, etc--they can be heroic in one situation and monstrous in another, sometimes even at the same time.

Reality is complicated. The same church can be feeding the hungry and schooling poor kids in one place, while keeping pedophiles in position to molest kids somewhere else. The same government that shows up with helicopters and field hospitals after a tsunami and saves thousands of people in one place, can carry out a politically-motivated invasion and trigger a civil war that kills hundreds of thousands of people somewhere else. And the same organization that keeps honest policemen from being forced to work unpaid overtime can also defend crooked policemen, just as the same organization that keeps teachers from being screwed out of their pensions can fight to keep incompetent teachers in their jobs.

I've had my own run-in with the NYPD back in the early '90s. I found myself on the ground, in handcuffs for no real reason. It did cause me to move to a better neighborhood within the month.

FWIW, last week one of my wife's co-workers got to spend the night in the clink for contempt of cop. Released without charges, lots of witnesses, lawyer retained, complaint filed. The Seattle PD is probably just as bad, if not worse than the NYPD in terms of contempt for the general public.

Here are some results from a recent survey as reported by the Seattle PI
The survey also revealed concerns about Seattle police officers. Fifty-eight percent of people said police misconduct is a problem. When it came to specific types of misconduct, two-thirds said excessive force was a problem in Seattle, and 62 percent said racial profiling was a problem.

Bear in mind that Seattle is the whitest major city in the US, and the portion of people who think that the police have a racial profiling problem is huge compared to the actual racial minority population.

(As an FYI, the Larry posting above is a different Larry...)

Portland police posting photos of people arrested at Occupy Portland on Facebook.

via Boing-Boing

"What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit; once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers."

Of course, as any Andrew Vachss reader can tell you, there's another group that generally doesn't think of themselves as civilians: criminals.

Maybe if more cops read Pratchett there would be better policing?

There is a robust industry that posts mug shots on the web and then charges a fee to take them down. Mug shots are public record, but it looks like some jurisdictions make it a lot easier for the blackmail companies to operate.

For example: http://phoenixmugs.com/.

And there is a difference between "I never imagined this would happen" and "I am upset that this has happened." I can certainly imagine earthquakes, but that doesn't prevent me from expressing sympathy for the victims when they occur. Nor does expressing that sympathy, and discussing earthquake mitigation methods that should have been implemented, mean that I have somehow ignored all previous earthquakes.

What Fade Manley @80 said, plus a dose of this.

Of course, the sort of commenter who only slows his browser down long enough to toss that kind of reflexive prose into the window rarely cares enough about others' contributions to click on links. So let me excerpt a relevant paragraph from the referenced comment:

If we spend our goddamn lives sneering at one another over whether we were angered or amazed or appalled at exactly the right time or not, we'll have wasted our goddamn lives. So stop it. Do we want to trade knowledge and understanding, or do we prefer to spend our time on this earth looking for chances to lord it over others based on others' moments of naivete or ignorance? I assure you, we're all naive and ignorant about a lot more than our precious self-images, at any given moment on any given day, would like to admit. The chances for one-upmanship are never-ending. But ask yourself: Is that kind of thing what you want out of your one and only life? Is it what you want at the end of all things?

You want to join the conversation? Welcome. Try respecting your fellow commenters; you might learn something from them.

You want to assume everyone here is naive about the ways of New York's Finest, while you, with your one incoherent anecdote, are the soul of wisdom? Drive on by, sunshine, because I'm in a terrible mood and not nearly as averse to pulling you apart, clause by clause and badly-placed comma by badly-placed comma, as the angels of my better nature would like.

It is a fantasy, and something unreal, and they're only Goblins.

And Southern trees bear strange fruit.

Perhaps it's just my own struggle to not give in to that same darkness. Maybe I should just get another cup of tea into this sick bod of mine. (Ik voel mij zo zielig....)

Crazy(Still, you won't get too annoyed at me if I started popping some popcorn? Just in case?)Soph

Oddly, the strategy to destroy that business entirely is obvious, but not much comfort to its involuntary customers--post the mugshots on a site and refuse to take them down regardless of payment.

This would be annoying if it came from a long-time commenter; as a likely drive-by, it inclines me to shrug and say "who cares what some random internet fucktard thinks?"

That said, if abi gave in to her baser (in her opinion, not mine) nature and proceeded to shred this insect thorax from abdomen, I too would be pleased to watch.

A diet of grilled troll is like a diet of McDonalds food--it *feels* like you're being nourished, but really it's just empty calories and an unhealthy amount of salt and snark.

Part of the point is that people (both drug dealers and police) frequently behave badly because they can’t imagine anything better, not because they have a strong desire to behave badly.

Having said that, my guide for this sort of thing is very, very simple. Indeed, it's much the same as my guide for making any substantive contribution to a conversation, albeit lacking one element:

Be clear, specific, and, if factual, correct. Adopt a consistent tone throughout the entire comment, whether or not it's your standard posting tone. (My pissed-off tone is generally crisper than my usual.) Address what your interlocutor actually said rather than a straw version of it, however much it would be easier to deal with the straw. Be clever and memorable if the Muse is amenable, but if she is not, at least avoid being foolish and clichéd.

The only thing that's missing is the secret to contributing well to a conversation, which is a much more healthy thing to spend one's time doing. It's a twofold mystery, this:

1. Love the people you are talking to.
This is my particular phrasing, and I know it's too oogly for a lot of people. Find another one, then, for the process of finding something about them that you admire, like, or care about, some way that you can enter into their experience of being the hero of their life's narrative.

2. Show it.
Again, this doesn't mean to be all gushy or complimentary, unless that's the established nature of the relationship. So I'll tell Xopher that I love him, but not albatross, because that's just not the way we work. But I trust that my sincere admiration of each of them, and my delight that they're in the conversation, shows in the things I say to them anyway.

http://www.mcso.org/Mugshot/

Ich aber sage euch: Liebet eure Feinde;

Thank you, abi, and especially for this: "It's not good for me to indulge in that kind of anger. In many ways, being devastatingly cutting when I go about it is even worse, because being good at something brings a pleasure that causes one to want to do more of it."

"Ladies and gentlmen, set basers to 'rend'."

I so heart ML.

Now now, there'll be no needling on this thread.