A Barbarians Issues with Law Enforcement: MISCONDUCT VS DESIGN

The problems with cops and law enforcement fall into two categories, misconduct and system design. Many people will see these problems and think they are bugs in the system when in realty a lot of them are actually features of the system’s design. They are just how the system is built to work.

Many people do not see these issues because they have never actually interacted with law enforcement, never actually given any of it much thought or worse refuse to look at these problems, I hope to change that part below.

Most people when they think of problems in/with law enforcement they think of misconduct. Excessive force, wrongful death or corruption to name a few, and while some incidents can be debated, by the letter of the law these incidents are actually fairly rare.

Now it can be argued that it’s because the government writes itself and cops legal exceptions and special privileges to prevent the legal infraction from happening in the firstplace and some make the argument its because most cops are good.

Problems of misconduct (SOMETIMES)

Excessive force/wrongful death

While this does happen, and more often than we want to think, true incidents of it are rarely covered by the media. The incidents covered by the media typically are cases that are justified force or that leave out extenuating circumstances that contributed to the death and are used to sow discontent when the cops are eventually acquitted in quart. The ones that are actually bad are swept under the rug in order to protect the department when ever possible.

This incident for example while the officer was fired did not receive weeks long coverage like others have in the past and in my opinion is is far worse than many use of force cases that have received non stop coverage. As well this incident raises the question of working extra duty in uniform but then acting as a cop which we cover later. https://nypost.com/2021/12/01/video-shows-arizona-cop-fatally-shooting-man-in-wheelchair/ Many will argue the “just follow orders and you wont get hurt” argument but we will touch on that later as well, but in short, what if you can’t?

Such as in Minneapolis during the riots, The police department special units were conducting bean bag round driveways on any one that was out after a certain hour. While they were supposed to be only targeting rioters, they targeted anyone on the street. What if you work nights, or need to protect your home or business when they are not? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/minneapolis-police-hunting-activists-body-cam-footage_n_615f4c56e4b02bd79fbccaf8

Side jobs, extra duty and moon lighting

In most jurisdictions and most departments they allow extra duty. Jobs that cops can take when they are not on shift for extra pay such as, security at sporting events, and personal protection details. Now for quick clarification, moon lighting I unauthorized side jobs and most departments have policies against this.

Now extra duty is typically put on as shifts by the police department and paid for by them such as major sporting events and conventions which makes sense because while they are private events by law, they are large public gatherings which makes them targets for attacks as well as other crime, though you do not want to pull people off normal shifts to cover them.

However in some instances the department is taking money from a company or organization to cover paying the officers to do that shift. They often have no requirement to NOT wear their uniform and often times request that they do and they often are acting as cops. Essentially the police department is selling enhanced police service to certain organizations or companies that can afford it. This is where these extra duty shifts become a problem. Like the Arizona case above,

Should departments be able to sell policing services to paying companies, or should the cops have to be in Walmart uniform and not act as police if they are working a security shift? Or should the whole practice of Extra duty for out side companies be discontinued?

Corruption

I list this here because corruption like you see in the movies is exceedingly rare. However cops just following orders that contribute to other peoples corruption is another story. I cannot find it now but there was a case of a mayor using the police department to clear out neighborhoods so that his real-estate buddies could buy up the houses. While the cops did not benefit from this they were at best party to it by their “i am just following orders” attitude and at worst willing participants. When I find the case Ill edit it here.

Genuine problems of misconduct

Lack of knowledge of the law

Watch enough incidents with cops and you will see many that don’t know the laws they are enforcing, and some that even just make things up as they go because they can say “its the law” and most people will fall in line. This particular cases started that way, but ends horribly.

This Disabled Veteran accused of panhandling, a victimless crime, and resulted in his service dog getting killed. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/vet-service-dog-tasered-died-arrest-police/

The disabled homeless veteran had his service dog killed by a car after it was unnecessarily tazed by a cop. The arrest went forceful when a cop would not accept the veterans government issued veterans ID. The dog then gets concerned and agitated (not aggressive) because his handler is freaking out as the dog is trained to do and then attempts to calm his handler down.

Now every state that I have trained and worked in says government issued ID, which VA would count as accepted identification, as well, cops can take a Name and Date of birth or social security number and check ID thoguh their PC or dispatch, as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FO_LN-mJHI

SIDE NOTE: 30 minutes in you will see the dogs behavior. If that behavior is threatening to you you should not be a cop. 5 minutes into your first day as a cop you are issued at least three fire arms, body armor, and a host of less lethal weapons because you are supposed to be going up against the worst criminals in your jurisdiction, if a dog scares you to the point that you cannot tell the difference between an aggressive dog and a scared or concerned dog, don’t be a cop.

This incident resulted in no firings to my knowledge and in fact accusations of harassment and coverup by the department against the Veteran. Also no nationwide coverage.

Criminal behavior/history or bad hiring

Law enforcement departments often have a reputation of bad hiring practices, and ignoring criminal behavior of its employees. This is also made worse when cops are allowed to resign instead of charges being filed because they can then go to a different department and get hired again because they have no criminal record, lazy background investigators at the new department or some departments only hire these people, because they no one with other options wants to work at their departments.

In this case a Colorado officer tazes an old man for complying with the order that he gave him. According to the old man he was tazed upwards of 60 times. https://abcnews.go.com/US/colorado-man-shocked-taser-files-federal-lawsuit-las/story?id=99022329 The officer had a record of not only previous incidents but criminal behavior.

According to court documents, the officer who was in a command position at the department, was subject to a domestic abuse case in June 2006. A case was filed against the officer that resulted in a temporary restraining order. In the state of Colorado restraining orders take away your right to own a firearm. Which means that he was no longer eligible to work as police officer. In addition

The officer also was subject to at least three misdemeanor cases, according to court documents, that range from harassment-obscene language/gesture and disorderly conduct-offensive gesture charges to disorderly conduct-fighting in public and menacing charges. All of these charges were dismissed.

According to court documents, the officer was also subject to a criminal case filed in 1997 where he was charged with the Class 5 felony of menacing use of a deadly weapon. Although that charge was dropped, the same 1997 case charged the offcier with disorderly conduct displaying a weapon, where the defendant entered a guilty plea.

In 1998, the officer was subject to another misdemeanor case for harassment in public, according to court documents, where he was found guilty after a court trial after pleading not guilty. He was sentenced to unsupervised probation

Should this person have been a cop to start with let alone continuing to be?

Part 4 of this series we begin down the road of the “problems” that are actually built into the system. This is where the disconnect happens in most peoples brains and where many of the good cop vs bad cop arguments come out of.