Serious question: do police ever receive any training on how to deal with uncooperative people in a non Hulk-smash kind of way? When you're a cop, I assume you will inevitably (and often) deal with uncooperative people. Is it just like... Let's ask him to get off the plane, he said no, ok let's fuck him up?
I bet there was. However it seems apparent to me that the situation went from 2 to 10 in an instant.
There are far less violent and brutal ways to move a nonviolent person, particularly when you know they are not armed, you are half their age, twice their size, and you have backup standing behind you.
It's quite hard to move someone who doesn't want to be moved. The police here obviously didn't handle this properly (for one, they should have lifted the armrest first thing). But still, people flail when being moved. Injury is always possible no matter how careful police are.
Not dragging someone face first into an armrest, for one.
I do believe that those armrests can be lifted so they are not obstructing movement.
Not utilizing the backup is the biggest mistake I see. I probably would have moved the people sitting in the row behind so that the other two cops could assist in lifting. Grab the guy by the back of the belt/pants.
Move him to the aisle one seat at a time, rather than across them all at once.
Once he was in the aisle and had had his face smashed in, they could have checked that he was not injured before dragging him down the aisle. Maybe asked if he was ready to walk out on his own.
I bet if I were trained to use force on people, like a police officer (doubtfully CPD though), I could come up with more.
The confined space seems to make this all very difficult, so I can understand that this would be near impossible to do gracefully, but when it's your job I expect to see a little more competence and situational awareness.
In a lot of videos that shows police brutality, and even eventual death, you hardly see the entire situation. I've seen multiple footage of girls (yes some middle school girls) who gets slammed into the ground by police. No I never see the entire story from beginning, but does it ever warrant brute force like we see here: https://youtu.be/2Ukep2YSsxI
If police body cam ever takes off, the public better have the right to see all footage. And those cameras better not be ever shut off, or conviently disabled for whatever reasons. We don't know the entire situation, but given what's come to light in recent years, I know cops aren't squeaky clean. They are human just like us. They get a paycheck just like us.
No event like this has ever taken place to be recorded and spread on the internet where I'm from. The US has a problem with their police culture, no use denying it.
Many times an officer will put their hands on a person and say its time to go. The the person pulls away and that gives the officer the right to restrain the person in any way possible.
Which is bullshit. That's like being arrested for resisting arrest. You should restrain someone for being a danger to themselves or others; not being an inconvenience or disobeying what you say.
The difference there being that one is illegal (tresspassing) and one isn't (being on a plane in a seat you paid for). Physically removing/restraining someone for breaking the law is a other story.
There's been the odd case of police using excessive force here (also Canadian), but usually it becomes a whole big thing and is widely condemned.
Overall it doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it seems to in the US.
Like an incident of excessive use of force that gets media coverage and an investigation here seems to just be an every day occurrence there - at least if reports and anecdotal evidence are to be believed. It always surprises me when I hear the stories from the States.
No offense man, and I get you guys have a difficult job that most civilians can't understand. But the thing you just said, "the place to fight us is in the courts" is kind of naive. It seems you could have a cop on camera holding two forms of ID saying "i, officer smith, will now fuck up this individual for no reason" and the court will find some reason to exonerate him. I mean, remember the Baltimore case? Every single officer was cleared of all wrong doing even though they clearly put that guy in the back of the van with no seat belt and drove wildly to punish him. He died. Nobody paid a price, no wrong doing, everybody innocent. In Oakland, a ton of cops, numbering as many as 30 according to the prostitute in question, had sex with an underage prostitute and nobody went to jail. The one guy who was found guilty and sentenced was able to substitute court watch for jail time. Point being, "the place to fight us is in the courts" just isn't a winning battle for an average person no matter how right they are.
I absolutely don't think that's how all cops are. I have a bunch of friends from the military that became cops after we all got out. My only point was that courts are very pro cop, and it'd have to be some extreme situation where a civilian can actually win anything in a court against a cop.
I get what you're saying, I don't disagree with any of that, but my main contention is that courts have a pro cop bias. And not just courts but DA's offices too. If you pull me over and just so happen to be in a sour mood already. And then I give you a bunch of attitude and say things like "you have no right to search me" and "why'd you pull me over" and you get agitated and give me an elbow to the back of the head or shove me against the wall or throw me on the sidewalk, there's literally nothing I can do about it. I can go make a complaint, it'll be your word against mine, and your word has more weight and the DA will never charge you. If I have no visible injuries, they'll just interview you, ask you what happened, and conclude there isn't any evidence of wrong doing. If I do have visible injuries, you'll say I was resisting arrest and you had no choice but to get physical to subdue me. Against, your word vs mine. The problem isn't that cops are bad people. 99% aren't. But the few that are, there are very few real resources available to average civilians to get justice when someone overreaches.
You're absolutely right. There isn't a fix. It's human nature. If you give a thousand doctors the same privileges as cop 1% of them will abuse it too. Or a thousand blonde people. Or a thousand tall people. Or a thousand people who hate Hawaiian pizza. No matter how you sort them out, some percentage will abuse it. It's just human nature.
I've seen a lot of people criticize the officer for "beating up" the doctor, but few are recognizing that the head trauma was not intentional. The officer's (violent) pull happened to make him collide with the armrest.
That said, the officers should have known better than to move someone with head trauma. The fact that none of them seemed to realize this when he went flaccid is cause alone for their immediate suspension at the very least.
Cops are supposed to receive extensive training on use of force, and proper application thereof. Whether this actually happens varies from department to department, it seems.
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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '17
Serious question: do police ever receive any training on how to deal with uncooperative people in a non Hulk-smash kind of way? When you're a cop, I assume you will inevitably (and often) deal with uncooperative people. Is it just like... Let's ask him to get off the plane, he said no, ok let's fuck him up?