Nothing like watching COPS to throw into high relief the ignorance of the American
citizen, and how much that’s relied upon by police to get work done. I think the proper
response to every question a cop asks is “get a warrant”; watching people
consent to searches when they should just shut up amazes me. If the police can’t get
a warrant, don’t let them in. The attitude of “if you’re a lawful citizen, you
shouldn’t mind a search“ is total bullshit. This isn’t (yet) a totalitarian
state.
Of course, all of this is predicated on having a run-in with the police. The sheer
number of pretense stops is astounding; I knew a guy whose response to being pulled
over was to press his license, insurance card, and registration against the window.
At the time, I thought it was over the top. Now, I understand his position. Hey Rich,
you’re right and I’m wrong.
The sheer ignorance of police regarding firearms is shocking as well. I can’t count
the number of times I’ve watched police display poor weapons discipline on the show;
four cops standing in a circle around someone with guns drawn. OK, the bad guy lunges,
two police shoot each other and two shoot the suspect. They’re no better with recovered
weapons; one of the Las Vegas episodes has a police officer recovering a 1911 from
a car. He waves it around covering all of the other police while trying to figure
out how to unload the gun. The chatter from ignorance about the capabilities of the
guns they recover is in large volume as well; one suspect had an SKS with a bunch
of shit bolted to it (bayonet, folding stock, cheap-ass red dot sight) with stickers
all over the stock. The officer who recovers it ascribes all sorts of abilities to
the owner due to his selection of firearm, when clearly no such abilities flow from
mere possession.
Now, on the other hand, I’ve watched lots of COPS episodes and I’ve only seen two
arrests which I thought might have been over the line in terms of how the suspects
were subdued. In one case, the suspect has just led police on a high speed chase and
crashed out in a van. One of the officers who tackles the suspect begins kidney punching
him after he’s down; after he’s cuffed, the officer is still so angry he can’t coherently
talk. From the camera angle, however, it wasn’t clear that the suspect was giving
up his hands and it may have been that kidney punches were the fastest way to get
the suspect to comply.
The other case was an officer responding to a call for backup at a bar fight. He shows
up and asks if someone is under arrest. When the other officer says yes, the
second officer sticks his leg in front of the suspect and pushes him over onto the
ground. The splat from the faceplant was quite loud. I’m not willing to say it was
over the line, though, because apparently the suspect had been fighting and beating
multiple parties just before.
What this means is I have seen hundreds of arrests on COPS that I thought were a-ok.
The police saw what was up, executed the arrest, and were done with it. I’m absolutely
certain these arrests are the vast majority of detentions in the US today, and that’s
just fine by me.
