Like with their violence against the public, police officers get a free pass.

Not only that, when society (and especially their superiors and the local governments that supposedly supervise them) give them a free hand to commit violence against other citizens, they feel entitled to inflict violence. If they can beat and tase someone for 'resisting arrest' - when the only thing that happened was someone either disrespected a police officer or did not immediately comply with an unlawful police order, they have a mindset that violence is appropriate and sanctioned for any disrespect. So when they receive disrespect at home, they see the spouse as just another citizen - someone they can beat with impunity.

x wife of a police officer in Tennessee said her cop hubby love to beat and torture people especially AA and other minorities.She went on to say he enjoyed the power he had over people and got off on seeing people beg him and his cop friends not to beat them.She said his sexual needs where sick disgusting things were he like to tie her up and pretend she was hooker and she needed to be punished for her sins.He told her their was no better feeling then seeing someone begging not to be beaten and tased .I guess you could say he was on a power trip or he is one sick cop.

I'm sure there are plenty of sicko cops. Just like positions of authority over children draws pedophiles, positions of power over the public can draw control freaks. I think many police departments realize this and try to do psychological testing, but I'm sure some get through, especially in small jurisdictions.

And she liked it.

If she liked it, she wouldn't be his EX-wife.

Police can beat, taze and gun down anyone with impunity.

Is anyone at all surprised that little to no scrutiny is given to their domestic violence streak?

C'mon.

Let's not be naive shall we?

Police can beat, taze and gun down anyone with impunity

Years past I was working with some African-American workers who had to listen to some really stupid coworker say "the police are justified in their SWAT raids to control drug abuse". In that instance the Indianapolis, IN, SWAT team had killed an 80+ year old African-American woman. The SWAT said "She had a gun" and all that non-sense. It turns out the informant lied about the address, the police shot first, and then planted a gun on the dead woman. In any sane nation that's called Felony murder and conspiracy. America is no longer sane.

Most of the SWAT got away with it, the city had to do a pay out, and the dead is still dead. So it goes.

The worst thing is we give American police departments tanks and weapons formerly used in Iraq. I get near physically ill when some police chief says "if this gear can save one of my officer's life..."

You're not a citizen. You're a subject. Atlantic is just figuring this out.

My house was searched two weeks ago on an anonymous tip.

http://bergmannity.com/shit...

No one got shot, but it was a harrowing affair for someone as utterly boring as I am.

I remember one evening as I got ready for bed, there was a loud banging on my front door. I pulled on some pants and answered the door. There were three police officers standing on my porch. They immediately began interrogating me in a forceful tone of voice about who owned the house and how long I had lived there. I politely answered them and kept asking them what address they were looking for. Finally they answered me and they were at the wrong address. Our town has a central avenue and streets are divided into East or West, with the numbers rising as you get farther away from this central point. I am a couple of blocks away from this dividing line and live on West ____ Drive rather than East _____ Drive.

Once the address was cleared up, the whole tone changed. The officers spoke in friendly voices, apologized for bothering me, and were gone in seconds.

I was shaken. And I wondered why they took such a confrontational tone to begin with. Surely even guilty parties are more cooperative if you approach them in a friendly respectful way. I felt immediately scared and defensive, although I was innocent and had no idea what crime they might be investigating.

I was also surprised that the patrol officers didn't know their way around town better. My house is only a few blocks from the police headquarters and city hall, on a major street in our town. The house has been standing for nearly a century, my family have been the only occupants, and my grandfather served as our town's mayor and my grandfather served as postmaster--both while living in this house.

You're lucky that they just didn't break in and shoot your dog, or you. You're probably white.

I hope you wrote all of this up and sent it to their commander, the city council and the news.

I believe so many of the people in law enforcement and customs have been in the military that it permeates where they work and their approach to "customers" and their relation with the public. It is something we could do better but, on the other hand, if there were less guns out there there would be less fear among them; hey, they get shot every once in a while.
But someone has to be in law enforcement otherwise the choice is chaos.

Yeah, I saw the same thing in the Post Office. It was really cliquish and they were really arrogant.

Read your post, and from the start, I was wondering, "where's the search warrant?" Glad to see from the end of your post that you've learned your lesson, but how positively wrong that these guys presumed that you would consent. Well, I mean, you did, but hell, they shouldn't have even asked.

The -only- reason I consented is because I was unsure of the warrant procedure, how involved my landlord would have been, and his propensity for retaliating in petty ways for perceived annoyances.

Indeed, in all the cop shows I've watched over the years, I've never seen the issue of renter's rights raised. E.g., can your landlord consent to a search of a home you have signed a lease to? I'm 100% certain this was settled by the courts decades ago, but I don't know the answer, so I understand your uncertainty.

Indiana? Not surprised.

Yeah, a bizarre state for sure!

The "judge, jury, and executioner" and "I'm above the law" attitudes seen in many LEO's today were not always part of their makeup. There was a time when the neighborhood cop was seen as a friendly protector and was armed with a pistol and nightstick, not body armor and other military hardware. Of course, modern-day perps are also better armed, but police forces have tended toward quasi-military organizations, and, IMO, acting as if the US is now an undeclared war zone. Thus we get repeated Fergusons.

To those LEO's who complain that they don't get enough respect, I would say that they cannot demand respect, it must be earned.

Although it is now obligatory, I'll say anyway that most police earn our respect. The whiners you mention may expect deference from the press, community leaders and activists, to say nothing of people they detain. The former cohort have jobs to do, and reporting on the accountability (or lack) of police accused of misconduct is part of it.

As for the latter, I'll never forget (but cannot cite a link to) a Los Angeles Times story of a rogue anti-gang team in Rampart Division finally brought to heel after years of killing, crippling and framing people. When one member's home was searched - probably with less damage than a civilian would be entitled to - his wife said it was a horrible experience; she felt "violated!"

Imagine that.

As a healthcare worker, I am accountable to numerous agencies and professional groups for how I treat the public. Although my industry experiences more physical assaults than most (I've been attacked numerous times by pissed-off, unstable people), I better have a damn good reason for saying or doing anything that makes someone mad. I won't get the deference from judges and juries that police are accustomed to. Institutional expectations are too low, as we see from this article. Maybe because too little goes the other way. Are not police, especially in big cities, denied sufficient counseling benefits for the psychological stresses of their jobs? Ex-cop author Joseph Wambaugh always said a cop's worst danger is exactly this, much more than the physical hazards.

They not only commit domestic violence, they protect their own abusers. Try to get a cop to arrest a cop.

I was once pulled over by a plainclothes state police lieutenant who was clearly intoxicated. I called 911 for help and when other troopers arrived, they were very hostile to me and refused to acknowledge the condition of the drunk trooper.

Try to find a prosecutor to bring charges. Cops and prosecutors work closely together to bring cases to trial and that close working relationship creates a conflict of interest.
In extraordinary cases, a presumably neutral prosecutor from another jurisdiction might be asked to investigate but most cases are not extraordinary and those cases get swept under the rug.

This is why the top priority for progressive activists has to be getting control of the DA's offices. DAs need to be prosecuting criminal cops -- they are the worst, most dangerous criminals in pretty much every jurisdiction, and any DA who doesn't prosecute them is derelict in their duty (and in fact such DAs are racketeers). There's practically no point in prosecuting anyone else if you don't prosecute criminal cops.

Americans tend to be a fearful bunch with an authoritarian streak when it comes to law and order, so they let the police get away with a lot. In the minds of many Americans, you are committing heresy simply by raising this issue. It's pretty twisted.

Not only domestic abuse, but illegal steroid abuse as well. It's rampant in public safety professions and most often the cause of that uber-aggression that people are finally, finally documenting on YouTube as a public service to us all.

I'd like to see the entire NYPD tested for steroids and I'd be willing to lay money on greater than 75% of them abusing the 'roids. Florida cops as well. Oakland cops. You can see it in their moon-shaped faces and over-developed bodies (and loss of hair or shaved head) and in that insanely aggressive behavior to the most innocuous situations.

Police departments really need to do random drug testing on their officers. But the problem is, their behavior is condoned by their superiors, by the county justice system, by indifferent citizens, until it is their turn that is. If they can do testing in sports, if they can do testing at Home Depot, they ought to test our public safety officials on the street as well.

Being crazed on steroid abuse and being heavily armed is no way to protect the public's safety.

Well, maybe if we can finally get the NFL to do something about HGH first, we can get momentum going...

Police in general are often sociopaths, so it is not surprising that they abuse their wives and children when regular citizens are unavailable. The military also has similar problems with abuse.

"The military also has similar problems with abuse." The Army takes domestic violence very seriously. As with any large organization, you will have leaders that don't do the right thing but as a whole we get after it. Any domestic violence incident that hits the blotter is reported to the installation commander. Soldiers are moved out of the home into the barracks and required to attend counseling, Depending on the nature of the incident, Soldiers are given nonjudicial punishment, court-martialed, or separated. I don't have enough experience with the other services but I imagine that they take a similar approach.

Navy brat speaking...

Same thing here, but especially among the enlisted ranks there has always been a culture that leaned towards abuse. No shortage of friends growing up who weren't beat by their dad for one thing or another. It showed on some of the women too - can't act out on the job so you take it home with you and act against those you can. Granted, the military does treat this seriously, but that doesn't stop in from happening.

" but that doesn't stop in from happening" Oh, absoutely. We are a microcosm of society. I'm always a bit defensive about some of the unrealistic expectations of prevention put upon the military regarding problems that affect our entire society.

Lately the same could be said for the NFL and college "rape culture" for that matter.

This policy is a stark contrast with the typical police response described in the article above. It would be good if the cops adopted some of these army policies on responsibilty, along with the surplus tanks and riot gear.

Strange, I don't see 5 or 600 posts outraged about abusive cops or military! Wonder why? Black men are easier targets, perhaps. You're a bunch of bigoted hypocrites.

Why do you feel the need to interject race into the issue?

Maybe the reason we don't see large numbers of posts about other abusers is because they are little people and not multimillionaire celebrity athletes who court public attention with their every word and deed? If that fact bothers you I suggest you take it up with the brothers involved.

Any excuse will do.

yep! i noticed that too

Some of this has to do with the cultural definition of acceptable standards of masculinity in this culture. Aggression and the willingness to resort to physical violence are commonly seen as part of authentic "manhood" in many parts of American society.

Another part has to do with the occupation of police officer- of necessity, the police typically have to curtail their worst aggressive impulses on the job, where they're in public and accountable. But humans store rage and frustration like capacitors, and they have a way of discharging it on targets of opportunity when they can't find a more appropriate place to do it. To the people in a line of work like this: get a heavy bag to work out on. Seriously.

Another part has to do with the drugs particularly favored by some police officers- alcohol and steroids. Both are bad news in terms of enabling violence.

"the police typically have to curtail their worst aggressive impulses on the job, where they're in public and accountable."
Err... What!?!?
You haven't really been paying attention over the last few years have you. What I quoted above is largely wrong, or at least wronger than it has any decency being in a free society.
Your point is kinda lost due to the falsity of that one line there. It was a decent point, but it's rather overshadowed by that statement.

I think you're negatively stereotyping police officers. I've actually gotten to know some of them.

In my experience and observation, most police have better character than most of the people that they have to arrest.

I worked for many years as a cab driver. I got a lot of drunks who were 86ed by bartenders who had found them too obnoxious to allow them to stick around, even in the company of other drunk people. They handed me their problems. I got to expect it. All in a day's work, part of the job. The fare was typically paid in advance, when the passenger was going to be particularly non compos mentis. Some of them were real a-holes. I usually managed to drop them off before they became intolerable.

But on rare occasions, maybe once a year, they were too much of a problem for me to deal with by using diplomacy. So I handed that problem off, the way the bartender had handed it off to me. To the police.

The police have to deal with people in that last category- too obnoxious to know how to act on a 15-minute ride home- just about every night. Sometimes, several times a night.

That's what I think about, when I think about police work.

It's wrong to stereotype. Anyone. It's the default way for human brains to work, but it needs to be counteracted. Not just in the case of black people, or LGBT people, or women. Stereotypes also need to be counteracted about Millenials, and Baby Boomers, and college professors, and Southerners, and Californians, and government workers, and farmers, and oil rig workers, and cabdrivers...

People who work at McDonald's are not all stupid. Public school teachers are not all lazy time-servers after a pension. Police are not all thugs.

A very fair comment. However, as we see in this article, assuming the facts are as stated, police do seem to have some problems.

Furthermore, police are generally immune from accountability for their problems.

This is not as it should be. Especially when people are ending up tazed, beaten and dead because of it. The impunity of the police must come to an end. The present state of affairs is unacceptable.

Other people have pretty tough jobs too. They don't get to let people die or inflict suffering on people just because their jobs are tough. Neither should police.

And just to be clear, what I mean is that police DON'T curtail their worst aggressive impulses.

That's what I meant. I don't think that that is what I wrote. My bad.

Police in most departments feel more scrutiny and pressure to curtail their worst aggressive impulses on the job than most of the people they arrest.

There are 800,000 law enforcement officers in the USA. A truly oppressive law enforcement regime wouldn't be paying out tens of millions of dollars a year to aggrieved citizens in civil lawsuits. They'd be paying nothing.

I went to college at a school that housed the area police academy. I had many classes with future cops & a lot of interaction with those attending the academy. I really can't recall any who were decent human beings, & know of many who became officers in the area & beat the crap out of their wives often. None were arrested. They joked that they were just 'letting off steam'. I got my criminal justice degree, because I was so far into it I didn't want to start over, but I never even tried to work in the field. My experience with that group of people has fueled my distrust of police in every community I've lived in. By & large, cops are thugs who want to be able to legally beat others up, & if they get lucky, maybe have the chance to shoot somebody. Our system is broken, from the bottom to the top. It will be a major factor in the cause of this country's next civil war.

they wouldn't have hired you anyway

You are correct. I did go through the interview process at 3 departments. The 1st 2, I scored too high on the IQ part. On the 3rd, I dumbed it down & was offered a position, which I turned down.

How exactly do they tell you your IQ Is too high? It's not that I don't believe you—I can see them rejecting someone for this, but I'd think it difficult for them to say, "sorry, son, you're too smart to work here.

They give a battery of tests. IQ, personality, social type, etc. I happened to know the resource person at the 1st department. He told me they won't hire someone with a high score on the 1st, as they wouldn't be open to 'following orders in every situation'. This was the mid 90's, not sure how many of those they still do, other than a psych evaluation.

Thanks for highlighting this. I was aware of it, as we a few years ago had a policeman & wife murder/suicide in my local library parking lot, but I didn't know how systemic it was. Hopefully reporters/people will keep bringing it up and there will be a change in the matter.

It took a lot of time for abuse by clergy (of all types) to be taken seriously and now (though far from perfect), that's much less likely to be swept under the rug. More recently, woman teachers who prey on young teenage boys are less likely to be laughed off (e.g., "Wish she was my teacher when I was 14!") and are slowly, but hopefully surely, starting to get jail time.

It's the old water/stone thing. It will take a lot of time, but with consistent pressure, you can make a dent. This will be particularly hard b/c you can argue police officers in law & order America get more deference than even clergy, but we can hope.