he threatens to kill them because they don't "respect" him? they "insulted" the police by not showing him complete humiliation?

you'll be angry with me for saying this, but it's not really that new. weak, bullying cops with small ___ and racist/sexist attitudes with a badge, harshing on kids? wow, that never happens. to white kids, that is.

or does it? that's what this video suggests to me. welcome to the world of DWB, or walking "too gay" down a public street at night. either way, the cops have your number.

I know there's a taboo against saying this, but I think most cops are fucking assholes. I don't think it's "a few bad apples." I think most cops are assholes.

I think there needs to be more widespread education about how to positively deal with police officers. I've had a run-in with some university police officers before (apparently Harvard frowns on burning cardboard clocks at 3 AM on Daylight Savings Time Day in the Yard), and we were subjected to similar bullying, though certainly not as severely as those kids. I wish I had read up on my rights before the encounter, and I would have asked the police officers involved for their badge numbers. At one point there was even a very eccentric magnate, who had apparently been banned from entering Harvard property, who ran a little organization called StalCommPol to be a watchdog for HUPD. The problem of police bullying is a very real one, and while there are plenty of programs aimed at portraying police officers as "the good guys", many encounters with these people are negative, instilling rather a fear of the police than trust. I propose calling them "servants" rather than "officers", since that's what they are. They exist to serve ME, to keep ME safe. I am not indebted to them. I pay taxes.

True, the profession of Law Enforcement sometimes attracts people with pathological urges to dominate the powerless. However, it wouldn't be too surprising to run across another video of that selfsame a-hole cop taking a bullet to save a convenience store clerk. Same crazy, malfuncted brain, different situation.

In this case, the guy might be caught up in overcompensating for the silly clown costume he has to wear. He must be aware of how unflattering it is.

I hope the clerk makes it okay.

...what's up with the cheerleader shirt? Think maybe he should have a chat with the wardrobe department? Oh, shit, that was real. Nevermind.

There is nothing quite like a 14 year-old white boy with a skateboard to make a chubby Baltimore cop go ballistic. It's a mad world.

++++

A few months ago, a cop in an unmarked car almost clipped me and my boss as we were walking across the street, in a marked crosswalk, going to lunch. I saw the car approaching from over a block away as we stepped into the street, and as I always do, I kept my eye on it...as he approached, he wasn't slowing down, he was speeding up, to the point that we were literally just a few inches over the center line and within a foot of being hit when he reached us. By this point, I had stopped in the street and turned to stare him down...again, this is what I do to people who are being assholes when I'm trying to get across the street. He immediately threw on the brakes; we continued on across the street and he came to a stop on the other side of the intersection, flipped on his lights and started backing up. My boss went white; he said, "Jennifer, that's a cop and he's coming back here!" I say, so what the fuck is he going to do, give me a ticket for giving him a dirty look? And I'm standing there on the sidewalk, arms crossed, when he backs up even to us, cranks down the window, and in the snottiest tone you can imagine asks, "Is there something I can help you with?" By this time more people who were approaching the restaurant have stopped to see what's going on; I reply, "No sir, I'm just wondering what in the world you're doing speeding up when you can see people in front of you trying to cross the street. You of all people are supposed to know better than to do things like that." The cop stutters for a minute, then says, "I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going that fast." I said, "have a nice afternoon" and turned around and walked in the restaurant. My boss was shaking for the next 30 minutes; he said he thought I had flipped the guy off or something and was about to get arrested. I said, don't be ridiculous, I would never flip off someone in a moving vehicle when I'm on foot, but you know what? I'm allowed to do that, too. I don't have to pretend the guy's not an asshole just because he has a badge. And would he have put his lights on and backed up if he wasn't an asshole?

Of course, if I had flipped him off, I'm sure he would have hauled me in just to fuck up my day.

Sadly, this jerk in the video is representative of a not-insignificant number of police officers in departments all over the country. I hope the kid sues his ass off.

...how many of us have had recent encounters with needlessly bullying cops. I did. A few bad apples, indeed...

At least he didn't have a taser. It looked like his superiors shunted him to the bottom of the respect-barrel, what with the weird uni and the teeny tiny copmobile.

....job.

The kid's lucky; here in Utah he would have already been tasered, and the cop would have been told he was doing a good job. The YouTube video of that guy who was tasered by the Utah Highway Patrol is famous, but that cop got cleared by the UHP, no problem. Even at that, the guy was lucky too; among Utah cops its usually shoot first and ask questions later, and know you are going to get away with it. A right-wing Utah state senator (is there any other kind?) just introduced a bill in the Utah lege to make all records of encounters with the police unavailable to the public.

Chris Buttars' bill, here?

Isn't he on a hot seat for making racist comments too?

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0

i was told by someone i trust on this: Roids. people using roids often freak out like this, just like any other ODing or high drug users. lots and lots of Tuff Guys are using roids today. The whole 'natural strong body' stuff isn't in fashion anymore, and men aren't afraid to try "supplements" of lots of different types. i believe congress is having some hearings on a related matter right now.

jocks, cops, 'security' professionals, military folk, plain old bullies and Tuff Guy wannabes. in the venn diagram there is a lot of overlap between those groups, and the culture of roid use, particularly among the young, is growing in at least some of them.

... Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time? Speaks to the moment. Your Roid concept reminded me of that.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

that's a nice book. i liked 'handmaid's tale' too. not enough of that being written today. octavia butler is gone, tepper is still around, but we need young voices doing that work.

over time unless you're very fortunate in your daily life.

As a young and very bratty USAF trainee, I made life hell for a cop a lot like this guy -- in fact, a friend and I were the main reason he ended up riding a three-speed 27'' bicycle on his patrols, wearing shorts and armbands, instead of in a Volare patrol car in a regular LE uniform -- on a regular basis. He helped: he was arrogant, overbearing, underbright, and generally a nuisance (not just to us, either; his superiors disliked him enormously).

(Hint: never ever ever ever ever chase a pedal-bike with a Volare, and if you don't break the six-cylinder four-door car on a 3' high concrete culvert when you're too stupid not to do that, remember that motorcycles can dodge trees at a lot shorter angle of attack than underpowered overweight patrol cars can, particularly on wet twisty roads in the dark.)

I don't know what ever actually happened to him. I know I stopped seeing him around the base about a month after they moved him to bike patrol. He may have been short in the war anyway; or somebody may have nailed him (never ever ever ever try to face down a car with a pedal-bike) in traffic.

He was the exception, back then -- being held up as a bad example pretty regularly cannot have done his temper or his psychological adjustment much good, in retrospect, but at the time we all thought of it as a bit of poetic justice.

We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0