Their purpose is to protect property over people
if i’m not mistaken (sure i’ll double check after i post this) the most recent ruling by SCOTUS (Parkland High School cop who dipped out during a mass shooting or something like that) basically just reinforced several previous decisions with regard to a cop’s duty to protect us - the way it’s put by the court almost sounds reasonable: that an officer’s duty is to society at large and not to any particular group or individual member of the public. but we know what that means and we sure know how it works in practice.
i caught some snippet of a discussion of the court ruling on the radio, and though interesting, it changed nothing to know the actual reasoning used by the court because um, how does a cop go about protecting “society at large?” if that’s their duty then it means it’s never their duty to protect anyone in need of protection in any given real life scenario.
and so it can be said that sensationalizing this issue is really more truthful and objective than just reporting the court’s own words.
Do note that while police historical existence is about property rights, the police have no legal obligation to protect any single individual is mainly an US and common law thing. While most of the worlds police have no duty to take a bullet for you, in majority of the world police still have an legal obligation to help anybody in need. At least when on duty and answering an distress call, in some places even off duty in a crisis situation. USA really is an outlier and their relationship between police and the public are especially antagonistic.
If really put to the test, I doubt police outside of the USA would be any different.
Nowhere an average police officer is willing to die for a random civilian on the job, that’s true. Also the profession pulls “a certain personality type” amongst it’s ranks no matter where you are. But US policing really is something else and a clear outlier. I look at France and their singling out of immigrants and actions of the riot police. They are still really fucking tame when it comes to how I see US police and how trigger happy, sadistic, cultish and seeming unaccountable they are.
The more power you have, the more it can corrupt you. People who enjoy abusing power will gravitate to positions that let them abuse the powers given to them. Give police abroad the kind of power USA police have, and it will be the same.
Likely developed that way because of settler interests (US and Canada) and slavery (US). From what I understand, some of (not all) the police force in the US historically developed out of “slave patrols” (I think to do with catching runaway slaves and such). Then you have the fact that in both the US and Canada, LE would need to have been pretty violent to be as genocidal toward the indigenous as they were / are. And to this day, typically the worst stories you hear with US cops is them murdering black people; probably because indigenous nations are on reservations, you don’t hear so much about them getting gunned down. Though I remember reading about Canada, them having problems with cops being horrible to indigenous people in modern day.
And in the US, some cops are in literal gangs.
So anyway yeah, there’s the capitalist layer of things and then there’s other factors that make some places worse too.
“I ain’t seen nuthin”
@Korkki Cops here in Canada are pretty rotten too. Not as bad as the States, but statistically the second-worst.
They were never with us to betray us.
But how will I feel safe if police aren’t empowered to beat people they deem criminals to near death??? You would rather let CRIME RUN RAMPANT?!
I don’t get why people call the police. They’re a rather untrustworthy bunch in most countries.
