The Front Row

I'm not defending any cop who is disrespectful, calls people names or harasses anyone. But I do want to point out a couple things. First, to say it happens frequently is an over-exaggeration at best. Second, cops are the victims of disrespect and name calling far more often then they are the perpetrators. Finally, class and age are not nearly as big a deal as you think they may be in terms of how cops treat people. I'm not going to say cops treat everyone of every age and every class the same, but nor should they. Why should everyone be treated the same when we are all different? That doesn't mean to say cops should treat people unfairly, but until we are all the same, we should all be treated differently.

16 years of experience.

OK then, as someone who owns a home near Public Housing, I thank God every day that we have a good Police Department here in San Francisco. Public Housing is not necessarily a bad thing. Many who live there are deserving and generally need assistance. However, a few bad apples who participate in gang violence require a strong police presence. The shootings have settled down for the most part. However, there is the occasional instance a block or two away. I thank God there are cops, and I no longer drive like a mad man.

I feel Sullinger should show up in court and contest the speeding ticket. The particular officer had a bug up his #^%.

In Ohio, you do not go to jail for a couple hours and then go home. You must stay overnight until being seen by a judge.

gtown, I consider several of the examples you listed as "genuinely wronged by a cop." I would also include being stopped or detained based on your race or even appearance, being arrested for a minor crime or property crime when reporting as a victim of violent crime, having an officer lie about what happened, an officer uses excessive force against you, an officer plants evidence against you, having your call for aid be ignored by an officer as a few more examples.

I agree that socio/economic class and age and other factors have a lot to do with how cops treat people. I also believe the level of respect demonstrated towards an officer has an equal amount to do with how individuals are treated by cops. Although professionals and required to be incredibly thick-skinned, cops are human beings dealing frequently with dangerous situations.

I disagree with you that "being disprespected, name called, generally harassed, all types of lesser, non-criminal forms of being wronged happen relatively frequently." In my experience as a prosecutor, if this is occurring, or if questionable stops are occuring, shoddy investigating with evidence being mishandled, etc., the prosecutors and the judges start recognizing the weak links fairly quickly. That is because we scrutinze the cases and also because the clients are telling their attorneys what happened and motions start getting filed and it rather quickly turns into an obvious problem with a particular officer. That gets back to law enforcement hierarchy pretty quick because prosecutors and judges don't like incompetent or bad cops tainting cases. Similarly, cops that go around regularly doing what you described will soon have a personnel file full of complaints and that isn't going last long either.

I have no doubt cops make these types of mistakes regularly for various reasons, but in my experience it is the exception not the norm. And in my experience if you treat cops with respect, you will be treated respectfully in return.

I think part of it is just semantics. I say "frequently", you say "regularly" and it represents a gap in assumption as to how often it happens, but I don't think we're at opposite ends of the spectrum. Also, when I say frequently, I don't mean the majority of the time. I mean that there are daily hundreds of thousands of interactions between police and civilians and I'm 100% sure that things like what I described are a daily occurance. What percentage I wouldn't even guess at, certaintly nowhere close to 50%, but I think it happens often enough for me to claim frequently.

But I do think you are over estimating the number people that are willing to file complaints, especially on relatively minor things. Most people are just going to be like "that was some bullshit..." and keep it moving. I don't think a police officer being disrespectful and an officer being shoddy with evidence are comparable, and you as a prosecutor are about 100X more likely to find out that a cop is tampering with evidence then you are to find out that he's being a disrespectful jackass, especially if it's happening to younger people or some other marginalized group.

Most people if they're told to shut the f-up by a police officer, they're just gonna shut the f-up. Planting evidence, I agree, that would be under a microscope. Questionable stops though? Not if they're not even giving tickets. If they're just stopping people and making it clear that they aren't welcome in that neighborhood, no one is gonna file a complaint on that. I've never even thought about filing a formal complaint against a cop, and frankly most of the time, even when they've been a dick, a complaint isn't actually warranted. Me thinking that a cop was rude, and me thinking I know why he was rude specifically to me, doesn't amount to a complaint 99.9% of the time, nor should it. If your civil rights are still intact, you keep it moving.

Even the times where I feel like I could've filed a complaint, I never really considered it, and I feel like I'm in the majority on that. I've had an officer tell me and my friends to get out of the car, get back in the car, get out of the car again, and then told me to not come around, all without giving me a ticket or saying why I was even stopped in the first place. That complaint just was not going to be filed.

But again, my issue was with your the categorization of who "most people that have a problem with the police" are. You don't think my description of "frequently" is accurate and I don't think your description of people that have a problem with the police are or the notion that only a few people have truly had bad interactions with the police is accurate.

Well, I think I've pushed my luck with this conversation about as far as I could. Really impressed that this never devolved. theKnife, GrayMatter, keep doing what you're doing, you sound like 2 of the many good ones. And I really do feel where you guys are coming from. I have a cousin who was a prosecutor in Cleveland Heights, one that was a homicide detective in East Cleveland, an Uncle that's been on the Muni bench in Cleveland for about 30 years and have worked on criminal cases pro bono myself. Be easy. Go Bucks.