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The problem with American cops doubling down on mistakes

I have written many blog posts about the absolute disgrace that's the American police and their police culture.

American cops literally consider their own safety more important than the safety of citizens, which makes them absolute pathetic cowards, and there are many, many examples of this (one blog post about this here). Way too many times they also assault, injure, maim, paralyze and even kill people who have done nothing wrong (an example blog post). They also have an astonishing ID fetish, often going to absolutely insane lengths to get the ID of a completely innocent person who has done absolutely nothing wrong (such as, for example, dispatching a whopping 7 police cruisers and 9 police officers in order to get the ID of a completely innocent bystander, and nothing else, in a completely non-threatening non-dangerous situation where no crime of any kind has happened or is even suspected of having happened. They just wanted his ID, that's it. It goes beyond insanity. Complete lunacy.)

There's also the widespread problem of cops not only lying in their reports when they do something genuinely wrong and abuse their power, in other to cover their asses, but the general attitude of American law enforcement that they are all a "brotherhood" (their exact term) and thus they always defend each other and have each others' backs, and there's very little to no stepping on others' toes. In fact, there are several documented cases (even getting to TV news) of some cop criticizing another cop of wrongdoing (eg. unnecessary violence towards a suspect) and getting harassment, discrimination and outright demotions as a response. And not just from the cop that was criticized, but from other cops, including superiors.

One additional problem that I have not written a lot about is the typical reaction of American cops when they make a mistake, such as for example arresting the wrong person, or stopping the wrong car, or raiding the wrong home. While this is not nearly as common as all the other things above, it's still way, way too common to be acceptable, and speaks of a detrimental culture in American policing.

In one example some police precinct was staging a stake-out, where they sent a package to the porch of a suspected drug dealer, and then watched the place in order to see who would pick it up. There was apparently some confusion, and a car drove by, and the cops thought that the driver had picked the package and was driving away.

The cops stopped the car and immediately went into full aggression mode. One of the cops opened the door of the car and violently ripped the driver out of the car, started choking him and then punched him in the face several times, before proceeding to handcuff him.

A bit later they checked the house and noticed that the package was still there, untouched. It turned out that this was just a completely innocent bystander, simply driving down that road, and he had absolutely nothing to do with the situation.

What should have happened in this situation is that the cops should have immediately freed the man, apologized to him, given him some contact info in order to contact the police precinct or its lawyers or something, in order to make a proper complaint if he wanted, and sent him on the way.

But, of course, that wasn't what happened. Instead, they called a canine unit in order to sniff the car. And yes, they called the canine unit after it had become clear that it was just a completely innocent bystander who had absolutely nothing to do with anything (ie. it's not like they first called the canine unit and then found out he was innocent. They called the unit after they found out.) They kept the completely innocent and beaten up man detained in handcuffs while waiting for the canine unit to arrive and do the sniff, which took quite some time.

The dog found nothing. So surely now they would just let the man go? Of course not. The cops proceeded to search the man's car anyway, completely illegally. They had absolutely no legal reason to search the man's car. They had no legal reason to have him detained in the first place, nor having called the canine unit. On top of all that, the dog didn't find anything, yet they still proceeded to illegally search the car, just to try to find something. All the while knowing perfectly well that it was just a completely innocent bystander who just happened to be driving by, and that they had made a mistake.

You can see a video about this for example here.

There are also many examples of cops raiding the wrong home, because they either got the wrong address or misread the address. Once again, mistakes may happen (although there should really be systems in place to double-check and triple-check that addresses are correct before cops go storming in). The problem is what happens when they find out that they had the wrong address.

Sometimes they just say "oops, our bad" and leave. Othertimes the homeowners aren't so lucky.

I remember one particularly egregious case (can't find a video about it right now, as there are so many hits when trying to search for this) where the cops raided an apartment, found out that they had the completely wrong address and that the people in that apartment were completely innocent of any wrongdoing and had absolutely nothing to do with who the cops were actually looking for... yet the cops, even well after knowing perfectly well all this, even after knowing that they had entered the completely wrong apartment, still proceeded to keep the inhabitants handcuffed and searched the entire apartment.

Watching a video about that (with bodycam footage and all) was just jaw-dropping: The cops very clearly realize that they have the wrong address, yet still proceed to rummage through the entire apartment after that realization, while keeping the completely innocent inhabitants handcuffed, for absolutely no reason. They couldn't even tell what they were looking for.

The reason why they do this is very clear: They are trying to CYA. In other words, Cover Your Ass. Yes, that's an actual acronym, with that meaning, used by American cops (they can be heard using that acronym in several bodycam footage videos). If they can find something illegal when doing these searches, they will try to justify their mistake with that. Never mind that illegally obtained evidence is inadmissible in court, but they literally don't care.

This is corruption, pure and simple.

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