Why do so many people always defend the police no matter what they do?

They do not. You are generalizing.

Police perform a difficult and necessary job in our society at great personal cost (they have very high divorce and suicide rates), but they do not have license to violate the law. And I do not support those that do.

I don’t think that most people do.

@marinelife why do so many people always not: why do people always… I’m not generalizing

I think @poisonedantidote is generalizing. I just happen to think it’s a worthwhile generalization from what I have seen. I have even had personal experience with this. I had a really bad police experience, and when I communicated it to people I knew, their knee-jerk reaction was to support the police.

So many != All

The use of “always” is directed at the “so many / some / not all”.

EDIT: at a push you can say im exaggerating, but the claim that im generalizing does not make sense

Because like any other beliefs that make up one’s world view, it is easier (for some) to minimize the dissonance between their belief and what may be a contradictory reality by discounting the reality. If they accepted a reality contradictory to their belief, then they would experience a degree of suffering until the belief changed to more closely match the reality.

Also, some people are just so thoroughly conditioned to kowtow to authority that they can’t imagine reacting differently. Sort of like training an elephant by chaining it to a post, and then later replacing the chain with a thin rope. After awhile, the elephant just doesn’t imagine the possibility of breaking that bond.

Could be because they are looked at as the proverbial good guys so any violent act they do must be justifiable?

Because they think the police are going to protect them….ignorance basically.

The presence of the Police is merely a reflection of the lawfulness or lawlessness of the community they serve. If they are getting under your skin there must be a reason for this.

Can you cite an example of a police officer shoves a stick up some guys rear end before beating him to death, then being supported by “so many people”?
Sounds pretty extreme.

@filmfann – Do you remember Abner Louima? I met plenty of people who supported the police’s actions in this case, which included shoving a plunger up his ass.

@tom_g Abner was not beaten to death afterwards.
Yes, it is terrible, but it doesn’t meet the example in the OP.

Because some people think the police = the law.

The law must be good, because, well it’s the law and you don’t get into trouble by following it.

Therefore the police must be good because they are the law.

I love fallacies.

There’s a certain subset of the population that is wired to respond well to Authority figures, and in a way view who they obey as a large part of their personal identity. When your personal identity (or those whom you respect) is/are threatened, it provokes a very strong, loyal response.

Interesting writing about Authoritarians (in the U.S.) here.

Wow, I’ve never heard anyone sticking up for police brutality of the sort you just described.

The police are there to protect the people. They’re authority, and so many have faith in them. Even if a cop does something shitty, some people might try to find a justification, since we don’t like the idea that those who defend us could actually be crooked.

Sad truth is, some are. I’ve never defended any cop that I saw/heard of being an ass. Many people speak out against crooked cops and police brutality, actually. Problem is, most people aren’t in favourable positions when it comes to doing something about it. :/

I often stick up for the police because I think some of what people perceive as “police brutality” is police trying not to get killed. When you put yourself in harm’s way over and over again, you’re really likely to be killed unless you employ the utmost caution.

A kid in my local area recently committed suicide by cop. He anonymously called the police saying that his car had just been stolen by an armed robber. He gave his own license plate number and described his own physical attributes when asked to describe the robber. Then he drove around crazily for a while until a policeman saw him and gave chase. The kid drove onto a dead end road, got out of the car, brandished what appeared to be a gun, pointed it at the cop. The cop shot him dead. The kid’s “gun” turned out to be a pellet gun.

People cried police brutality. I read the comments on the online news article. It was only a pellet gun, they said. Someone even asked, why didn’t the policeman shoot the gun out of the kid’s hand? The point is, if the cops take the extra 10 seconds to closely analyze the gun pointed at them, or if they try to pull some impossible stunt that only happens in movies instead of aiming for center of mass, we won’t have any police officers anymore.

However… as I cannot imagine that the actions you described could ever possibly pass as self-defense, I object to the police’s behavior in that case. I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t.

Each case stands on its own merits. Know all the facts, before making a decision.

The news media normally only tells one side of a story.

Is this “down the police day”???

We are raised with the notion that the police are the good guys. Most of the time they are. And it’s not unheard of for people to cry “police brutality” to shift the odds in their favor.

I think this is a loaded question. You make it sound like PO’s are out to hurt and civilians just back it up.

Police have a right to defend themselves with the training they are given. If it was your son or daughter and it was a war would your views be different?

Of course they cant beat ppl to death but I guess then you’d rather the PO to just stand back and take whatever gets thrown at them w/out maintaining order?

Its obvious we have laws of order and police put their lives on the line everyday to keep that order.

My BF was a police officer and is now a detective…he tells me always to be careful and that my personal safety is always number one.

A police officer that doesn’t follow code is subject to losing his job no matter what civilians think. The next time you are in danger will you dial 911? They are commited to public safety and they will help you no matter what. So unless they break their own code and ethics they deserve to be treated properly.

Forty, fifty years ago, in the 1950s and early 1960s, police were never seen as bad guys. Even when I was growing up, I was always taught that the policeman down the street was my friend. To this day, I respect the police for the extremely hard and stressful work they do.

Can you imagine getting yelled at and cursed with every 4 letter-word, everyday on the job? Imagine facing the threat of violence everyday, every hour on the job. Facing stupid people who want to fight you, who are deliberately obnoxious and vile and evil. Imagine working long night shifts while investigating extremely risky and life-endangering situations. Your life could end at any minute. And then you go home to a worried spouse and the threat of a doomed marriage because of all the stress that you bring home, like witnessing a bloody murder scene or a horrific traffic accident where some child gets decapitated. That’s the life of a police officer, folks.

Now you tell me why I am on the side of the police?

Sure there are bad apples out there in the police force, but there are bad apples in every profession. And considering that police face so much stress and shit in their work, can you really blame them as a whole when some of them “do” go astray? I certainly can’t.

It’s really a shame that this generation has such an overall negative view of the police. I don’t defend the actions of some errant, corrupt police officers, but I also don’t put down the police force as a whole. The majority of police officers are good and honorable, the very ones we rely on and can depend on when we find ourselves in trouble. And in this violent, ugly world, they need our support, not our perpetual criticism.

Thanks to the police union in my hometown, cops can easily make over 100k and the chief is making close to 300k. When they don’t get what they want, they try to intimidate city council members, the most recent case of this being pooling together to win an auction to buy the house next door to the city manager. They refuse to investigate home robberies unless you manage to call during the robbery. They see no problem to take up 4 parking spaces when on break. when i was beaten black and blue, they took my parent’s word that i was a clutz and had did an array of stupid things to have such bruises. Honestly, I have no respect for cops. I’m willing to change my opinion, but I need to see good cops first. Cops that are cops for the sake of upholding the law. Not cops that are cops for the sake of money and power and who do the bare minimum to keep their job.

@King_Pariah not even if you call during a robbery….when I was pregnant with my son I came home while some guy was robbing my house, I called the police (at the police station located across the street from my house), and they still took nearly 2 hours to respond. I called them 3 times while waiting…2 of those calls were before the guy even realized I’d come home.

The responding douche bag that eventually showed up, never even got out of his car, didn’t want to look at the window the robber entered the house thru…my neighbor was kind enough to follow the robber on his bike and give me the address of the house he ran to. When I gave it to the cop he went there, knocked on the door and when the lady who answered told him “he’s not here”, the cop said “okay” and walked away…..

@King_Pariah Come to Webster. We have an excellent police force. It’s interesting to see how the union brought forth corruption like that.