Carlos speaks out about Racism and Bengals

[CJD]

(08-28-2020, 08:25 AM)Sled21 Wrote: In actuality, the only real benefit to going into Police Work were the pensions. You work shitty hours for mediocre pay, but at the end there were fairly decent pensions. Most departments have gone away from those pensions now, so there is really no attraction to the job. I did it for decades, and steered my son away from it because I saw where it was going. Having authority over people is definitely NOT a perk, because every time you use this authority to take away someone's freedom you are subject to lawsuits. You have to be right every time, or your either dead or sued. I was lucky enough to get through my whole career policing in the inner city without having one lawsuit against me. That said, I had complaints. You cannot do that job without receiving complaints, because by the nature of it you are always pissing people off. So you can't really look at the number of complaints, you have to look at the number of complaints that were justified. 

As I said, the authority is not supposed to be a perk, but it is treated as a perk by some of the people the job attracts (those who want authority). The obvious stereotype is the bully who graduates from high school and, once they become eligible to serve in the police, want to continue bullying people. I don't think the police department is filled with these types, but I'm sure it makes up some percentage of the force.

And I imagine qualified immunity helps with the civil lawsuits that abuse of authority may cause, as it creates a fair amount of gray area in which a cop may not be held responsible for his abuses or incorrect actions. 

As for the complaints, that's a fair point. I guess I assumed that internal affairs would not file obviously false or "retributive" complaints. I'd have to see how many complaints the average police officer gets.  In the article, it says another officer there had 6 complaints against him so its not like every officer is walking around with 10+ complaints against them.