Talk about your negative experiences with the police/law enforcement

[Fuzzybigfoot]

There's a lot of anti-police sentiment going around the forum lately, which is to be expected given recent events.  However, I was wondering if any of you yourselves have had bad run-ins with the police or other law enforcement agencies (like college cops, security agencies like the TSA, or maybe even border patrol etc.)


I'll go first.  I got yelled at by a TSA agent for accidentally going through a metal detector too fast when I was 11.  Afterword, they scanned me with a metal detector to make sure I didn't have a bomb.  I admit, I actually cried a little bit after it happened, since I was so scared of being labeled a terrorist.  This was less than two years after 9/11, see.

 

[Fuzzybigfoot]

No one? 

[retromike22]

I haven't had any negative experiences.

[bedstuy]

No one? 

You don't even have your own negative experience to be fair. 

[Fuzzybigfoot]

No one? 

You don't even have your own negative experience to be fair. 

Thanks for the support. 

[MaxQue]

To counter Fuzzy, my experience with TSA was wonderful. They were telling to relax, take my time, being sorry for being unable to pronounce my name, explaining me where my door was even if I didn't asked them, trying to tell jokes...

Canadians customs officers, otherwise... A bunch of rude, dumb and uneducated people.

[Sol]

I actually once was handcuffed and forced to the ground in a case of mistaken identity. Of course, 5 minutes later, the police realized their mistake and left.

[Ebowed]

I have an intense dislike of airport security, stemming from an incident when I would have been about six or seven years old, flying from Los Angeles to Auckland, and the sniffer dog went crazy over my backpack, spilling my belongings all over the floor, some items getting broken, all to find a grape that had been served to us on the airplane.  The woman who explained why this was a 'good thing' as I was noticeably distraught, ignoring the fact that they were breaking my stuff.  It cemented in me that authority figures lack a certain respect for the regular joe.

But as an adult in Australia, my experiences have generally been ok, although the police do treat you with a certain callous disrespect that is hard to ignore.  A friend of mine was walking around the central train station at 3:30 am and just happened to have a spray paint can in his bag (after searching through it for drugs just because he was out late) - they accused him of graffiti even though they had no evidence that he had done any graffiti in that area, and he is still being dragged through court as he pleaded innocent.

The most personally important incident to me is something that I went into detail about in another thread the other day - when I was mugged a few years ago, and the police kept asking me what he looked like, and I gave them a highly thorough description, but they kept asking me "what did he look like" and smirking a little bit.  "He's indigenous if that's what you're asking," I replied, and like that the conversation went severely downhill.  "It's okay to call him Aboriginal," the policeman responds, and that was probably our last point of agreement.  I won't relay the rest of it here but suffice it to say that these pricks were delighted that two white boys had been mugged by this fellow.  We ended up dropping the charges before the evening concluded, but they raided his home anyway.

We knew the perpetrator, as he lived three or four houses down from us.  We'd moved to the neighborhood 4 months ago and felt unsafe that evening (as he did threaten to return to us), but in retrospect, it was an isolated incident and if I had had any idea what the police were going to do (basically look for any possible combination of charges to ensure that he got a prison sentence) I think I would have approached it differently - perhaps tried to talk to him the next day when the alcohol had worn off, and see why the original misunderstanding had occurred.  Yes, I realise this is not a luxury one normally possesses when they have been mugged, but the guy didn't need to be separated from his kids and family for another six months or year.  Going into the station, we were hoping for a restraining order or something.  The police made it sound like only real pieces of shit had protective orders against other people, and didn't help us with that, instead trying to book the guy for as many things as they possibly could.

These days, as I watch the police walking around with guns strapped to their waists just to check whether you have a valid train ticket, I am reminded of this encounter and feel a sense of discomfort.  It is common for me to suddenly go from feeling safe to unsafe when I see a police officer, and I generally don't have anything to hide.

[Torie]

Got shoved around, and to the ground, unnecessarily by the Sheriffs in jail for my DUI. They didn't like my asserting my rights to a blood test, and didn't like me hobbling around in my medical shoe due to recent toe surgery. Nor did they like that I pointed out that they had told me I would be out in about 8 hours, and now it was going on 15 hours, and then they threatened to hold me in the tank for the legal maximum of 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds. They only calmed down a bit when they found out I was a lawyer. After that experience, I came to the opinion that there should be video cameras in jails - not to monitor the prisoners, but rather to watch the cops and record their actions. Indeed, the jail sheriffs were so gratuitously brutish, that I brooded about just what they would do to the Hispanics in Santa Ana when nobody was watching, when unleashed and they got out on streets (they start off with jail duty).  Clearly whatever psychological fitness tests they give to these guys, are totally inadequate to cull out the amoral and sometimes sadistic bullies that slip through the net. I tried to get an appointment with the County Sheriff to discuss it all, but to no avail, and I got deflected by other issues in my life, and moved on.

The whole incident still bothers me though - a lot. I sometimes fantasize about being elected county sheriff, and then cleaning out the Augean stables otherwise commonly known as County jails of those badged denizens that contaminate them, or causing rather drastic behavior modification thereof.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

My experience with police has been nothing but positive. My brother, on the other hand, had a gun pointed to my dogs head and the police came to our house and yelled at him for breaking leash laws (which he actually didn't btw) and leaving the scene! We have reason to believe the other party involved was a cop.

Also, a homeless man entered our house during a hurricane and refused to leave until my dad threatened him with arrest. The police chided my dad for being selfish (selfish my ass; more like being sane) and then refused to take the man to a shelter, saying "we are not a taxi service." The man broke into an abandoned house down the street and ended up living there until the bank kicked him out. Of course the police acted in that case .

[traininthedistance]

No one?  

This forum is like 95% sheltered white male teenagers.  You expect to find a motherlode of bad experiences with the cops?

Seriously, though, I've never had one myself; but I've barely had any interaction with them period.  I do know that, back when my GF got hit by a car a month and a half ago, she called the police to take down a report and then they a) took an hour to get there (which meant of course that the other witnesses had left), and b) didn't seem to take her seriously/not understand what she was trying to say, which obviously upset her.  She had a positive opinion of cops before then, but it has degraded now in response to that (and, of course, to events in the city and country at large).  Her thought was, "if they're going to be dismissive of a nonthreatening small white woman like me, I can't even imagine how bad minorities have it!"

Obviously even that is small potatoes compared to what many other people face (though, if she had been seriously injured– which thankfully it wasn't, as it turns out, but we were worried for awhile and it is much worse for many similar victims of traffic violence– those potatoes wouldn't be so small), but it's the best I've got.

[bedstuy]

No one?  

This forum is like 95% sheltered white male teenagers.  You expect to find a motherlode of bad experiences with the cops?

Seriously, though, I've never had one myself; but I've barely had any interaction with them period.  I do know that, back when my GF got hit by a car a month and a half ago, she called the police to take down a report and then they a) took an hour to get there (which meant of course that the other witnesses had left), and b) didn't seem to take her seriously/not understand what she was trying to say, which obviously upset her.  She had a positive opinion of cops before then, but it has degraded now in response to that (and, of course, to events in the city and country at large).  Her thought was, "if they're going to be dismissive of a nonthreatening small white woman like me, I can't even imagine how bad minorities have it!"

Obviously even that is small potatoes compared to what many other people face (though, if she had been seriously injured– which thankfully it wasn't, as it turns out, but we were worried for awhile and it is much worse for many similar victims of traffic violence– those potatoes wouldn't be so small), but it's the best I've got.

Is hitting someone with your car a crime now? 

I've had friends with similar problems with the NYPD.  Often someone gets mugged or jumped by random people and for them, it's this traumatic, horrible thing.  But, for cops, it's just another unsolvable crime that they see all the time. 

I think there's a disconnect because cops feel like, what are we supposed to do?  Are they going to dispatch Sherlock Holmes or the Mentalist to investigate? 

[morgieb]

I'm white and not American. I haven't had bad experiences with law enforcement to speak of.

[traininthedistance]

No one?  

This forum is like 95% sheltered white male teenagers.  You expect to find a motherlode of bad experiences with the cops?

Seriously, though, I've never had one myself; but I've barely had any interaction with them period.  I do know that, back when my GF got hit by a car a month and a half ago, she called the police to take down a report and then they a) took an hour to get there (which meant of course that the other witnesses had left), and b) didn't seem to take her seriously/not understand what she was trying to say, which obviously upset her.  She had a positive opinion of cops before then, but it has degraded now in response to that (and, of course, to events in the city and country at large).  Her thought was, "if they're going to be dismissive of a nonthreatening small white woman like me, I can't even imagine how bad minorities have it!"

Obviously even that is small potatoes compared to what many other people face (though, if she had been seriously injured– which thankfully it wasn't, as it turns out, but we were worried for awhile and it is much worse for many similar victims of traffic violence– those potatoes wouldn't be so small), but it's the best I've got.

Is hitting someone with your car a crime now? 

I've had friends with similar problems with the NYPD.  Often someone gets mugged or jumped by random people and for them, it's this traumatic, horrible thing.  But, for cops, it's just another unsolvable crime that they see all the time. 

I think there's a disconnect because cops feel like, what are we supposed to do?  Are they going to dispatch Sherlock Holmes or the Mentalist to investigate? 

It is a misdemeanor, and rightly so.  At least, in this case it certainly was, as she was crossing the street in the crosswalk, with a walk signal, and the driver hit her while making a left turn onto said street without looking or yielding. (As for the extent of the injury, again it's pretty mild as far as these things go, but she couldn't walk for awhile and is still going to physical therapy.)

There are two big things the cops could have done: a) shown up faster, so that the other witnesses could have stuck around, and b) actually known this law and applied it.

[windjammer]

I'm white and not American. I haven't had bad experiences with law enforcement to speak of.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

None.

Even that only time I've got frisked and fined (rather loud drunk behavior), they were quite friendly and nothing short of professional.

[Hash]

I've rarely interacted with police anywhere. The few bad experiences have been with customs agents - although CBSA agents are generally fine if not very bright, US customs are generally rude and unpleasant morons.

Being a young expat male, I never had any problems with Saudi police or customs, and customs in every country I've been to have ranged from decent to actually rather pleasant (in Cuba and Jordan).

[Indy Texas]

Minor in Possession. Ruined my life. Nine months more of this crap to go. It's what caused me to decide that my second major would be Criminal Justice. Aside from that, traffic related stuff, and only one relating to me (I have a friend who's a speed demon).

So basically you broke the law and were pissed that you got caught and were punished. How does majoring in Criminal Justice resolve that?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Minor in Possession. Ruined my life. Nine months more of this crap to go. It's what caused me to decide that my second major would be Criminal Justice. Aside from that, traffic related stuff, and only one relating to me (I have a friend who's a speed demon).

So basically you broke the law and were pissed that you got caught and were punished. How does majoring in Criminal Justice resolve that?

You could make an argument that the sentence doesn't fit the crime.

[Hatman 🍁]

Nothing major. A black lady cop once yelled at me for not wearing a helmet, despite there being any law against an adult not wearing a bike helmet.

[bedstuy]

No one?  

This forum is like 95% sheltered white male teenagers.  You expect to find a motherlode of bad experiences with the cops?

Seriously, though, I've never had one myself; but I've barely had any interaction with them period.  I do know that, back when my GF got hit by a car a month and a half ago, she called the police to take down a report and then they a) took an hour to get there (which meant of course that the other witnesses had left), and b) didn't seem to take her seriously/not understand what she was trying to say, which obviously upset her.  She had a positive opinion of cops before then, but it has degraded now in response to that (and, of course, to events in the city and country at large).  Her thought was, "if they're going to be dismissive of a nonthreatening small white woman like me, I can't even imagine how bad minorities have it!"

Obviously even that is small potatoes compared to what many other people face (though, if she had been seriously injured– which thankfully it wasn't, as it turns out, but we were worried for awhile and it is much worse for many similar victims of traffic violence– those potatoes wouldn't be so small), but it's the best I've got.

Is hitting someone with your car a crime now? 

I've had friends with similar problems with the NYPD.  Often someone gets mugged or jumped by random people and for them, it's this traumatic, horrible thing.  But, for cops, it's just another unsolvable crime that they see all the time. 

I think there's a disconnect because cops feel like, what are we supposed to do?  Are they going to dispatch Sherlock Holmes or the Mentalist to investigate? 

It is a misdemeanor, and rightly so.  At least, in this case it certainly was, as she was crossing the street in the crosswalk, with a walk signal, and the driver hit her while making a left turn onto said street without looking or yielding. (As for the extent of the injury, again it's pretty mild as far as these things go, but she couldn't walk for awhile and is still going to physical therapy.)

There are two big things the cops could have done: a) shown up faster, so that the other witnesses could have stuck around, and b) actually known this law and applied it.

That's really terrible.  I think NYC drivers are severely under-policed and think they can get away with anything.  Did she get their insurance information and identification?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Nothing major. A black lady cop once yelled at me for not wearing a helmet, despite there being any law against an adult not wearing a bike helmet.

The cop from Pineapple Express?!?

[Keystone Phil]

This has already been a great thread for a bunch of privileged children to whine about their "traumatic" experiences with authority! I look forward to more entries! Maybe even a map or two!

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

This has already been a great thread for a bunch of privileged children to whine about their "traumatic" experiences with authority! I look forward to more entries!

Police can be dicks from time to time, but I have a friend who likes to jump into the bushes when they pass by....and he wonders why he gets stopped all the time.

[Indy Texas]

This has already been a great thread for a bunch of privileged children to whine about their "traumatic" experiences with authority! I look forward to more entries!

Police can be dicks from time to time, but I have a friend who likes to jump into the bushes when they pass by....and he wonders why he gets stopped all the time.

Is he a Black?