The Chutzpah of a Police Union in Santa Ana, California

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/the-chutzpah-of-a-police-union-in-orange-county-california/400502/?single_page=true

by jseliger • 11 years ago

128 58 11 years ago

theatlantic.com

CWuestefeld• 11 years ago

Instead, they opted for a raid during business hours with guns drawn.

I disagree with the War on Drugs, but I understand the political process that keeps us saddled with it despite its obvious stupidity and counter-productivity.

But I can't understand the police's change in strategy, so that paramilitary force becomes the default approach, rather than something that's wielded when the situation seems to demand it.

stormcrowsx• 11 years ago

They look like a bunch of kids pretending to play Call of Duty in real life. Wearing masks, guns drawn, breaking doors, and all of it is not even necessary. They could have sent one detective to go talk to them.

Semiapies2• 11 years ago

Sending a detective doesn't get a bunch of guys overtime pay.

baseballmerpeak• 11 years ago

They do it because they can. However, if you start killing cockroaches with sledgehammers, you are likely to leave some dents in the floor (i.e. collateral damage).

hackuser• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure the strategy hasn't changed. The change is that a broader segment of the public is now aware of it due to the new widespread technology to record and distribute video. It's similar to black American's experiences of policing, which has always been that way but now people who never would have seen it are (more) aware of it.

eevilspock4• 11 years ago

It's combination of genuine ignorance, willful ignorance (serving one's political agenda), and subconscious suppression of truth (cognitive dissonance, serving one's preferred ideas about who the good guys and bad guys are).

Video is helping with the first, but as can be seen by many people's reactions to all this stuff, doesn't work as well as it should for the latter two.

scott00• 11 years ago

I think it's a coping strategy formed in response to an absurd mission. Going by national stats on drug use, I would guess that most cops have, at least at some point in their life, been friends with drug users and tolerated drug use, if not participated themselves. But they now find themselves in a situation where they are ordered to oppose it. The psyche hates hypocrisy, so it constructs an alternate narrative: the war on drugs isn't about drugs, it's about violent drug dealers and drug users. That's a cause worth fighting for, and one that would make sense to fight using military tactics.

In other words, kicking doors down makes cops feel like righteous warriors, writing tickets in pot shops makes them feel like asshole tattletales. They pick the strategy that makes it easiest to live with themselves. It has nothing to do with the optimal strategy to counteract the violation of law.

gohrt• 11 years ago

Police aren't that philosophical about it. They divide the world into "us" and "them" like the rest of us (crudely, inaccurately, unfairly), and trip on the high-powered tools they have to attack "them".

Police abuse plenty of people even without "drugs" in the picture.

Bug guns are fun toys.

tedks• 11 years ago

This is way too deep of an explanation. I mean, for one, Freudianism is about a century dead at this point, "the psyche" isn't "constructing" anything.

Do you think the cop who said "I was about to kick her in her fucking nub" is constructing a deep narrative about how she's a just warrior fighting for righteousness and the American way?

I think the most insightful part of this whole video is when they use the battering ram (ineffectively) on the pull door in the beginning, TWICE, and then just open the door.

There is nothing deep there. They just want to feel dominant because they've long ago overcome the instinctive aversion to conflict humans feel. Human nature, or rather, human evolution and culture, is not predisposed to violence, and the only way to construct people like this is through extensive training, over the course of years, and continued throughout their career, to mold them into remorseless killing machines. This training takes away the nausea of seeing a human life extinguished and replaces it with the adrenaline of a successful kill.

This mindset is far from accidental -- do you think the people who run police departments would allow something that seems this uncontrollable just happen? It's not like there's a huge labor shortage right now or anything, police departments could easily fire enough people to make examples. But that doesn't happen.

No, this is not a quirk of psychology, this is not a coping mechanism. This is a conscious choice by your leaders to build exactly this world. This is the world they are voting for. A boot, kicking a disabled woman's amputated leg, forever.

S_A_P• 11 years ago

The problem is that the second the word "drugs" are mentioned the police think they are dealing with a colombian/mexican lord or drug Scarface by default. The "war" moniker needs to be dropped asap

lujim• 11 years ago

They do it because the paramilitary force strategy is fun for them and they get away with it under the guise that they are in huge levels of danger. When the danger level really does ramp up you end up with a stand off where none of them would dare kick down a door for a raid.

fapjacks• 11 years ago

That's an easy one, and you don't even need to be a cop to understand the answer: It's way more exciting and fun to kick in doors and rush inside a building with guns drawn.

rm_-rf_slash• 11 years ago

If you insist on being above the law to uphold it, what are you standing on?

Semiapies2• 11 years ago

Your guns and your union.

eevilspock4• 11 years ago

Chutspah? That's a very, very generous characterization of these cops in my opinion. Tyranny, law-breaking, cover-up, abuse of power and assholes are among the words I'd use.

auntienomen• 11 years ago

Thugs.

StavrosK• 11 years ago

It's used sarcastically. It takes balls to be this brazen in your tyranny.

mariuolo• 11 years ago

Shameless perhaps would be a more suitable word for it?

MaysonL• 11 years ago

It fits with the classic example: someone who murders their mother and father, then asks the judge to show mercy to an orphan.

antod2• 11 years ago

That description referred to the Police Union that was defending them by calling the footage illegal, rather than the actual cops themselves.

amyjess2• 11 years ago

Scott Walker was right: public servants should be forbidden from unionizing.

bilbo0s• 11 years ago

You must not be from Wisconsin.

Walker believes every public servant... (Other than Police and Firemen)... should be prevented from unionizing.

logfromblammo4• 11 years ago

I feel I should note that Walker exempted police unions from his union-busting.

And I disagree. The size and scope of the entity representing the employer and the size and scope of the entity representing the employee should be similar in scale. It's the only reasonable way to curtail abuses arising from imbalances in political power.

For government workers, there is effectively only one employer. It is entirely reasonable for those employees to band together into one union. Or three. Or ten. That tenth one might not be all that effective, but collective bargaining as a labor cartel should be equally accessible to everyone, regardless of who their employer may be.

If one union behaves badly, it should be perfectly acceptable for the employer to blacklist their members from future employment or contract renewals. In the case where the union is defending the indefensible--the open and notorious police misconduct seen in the video--the right thing to do would be to just stop employing their members.

In trying to save the jobs of a handful of bad cops, this union is damaging the collective reputation of all police in the entire country, along with the criminal justice system. The behavior in the video is reminiscent of Hollywood motion picture depictions of organized crime crews shaking down business owners for protection money.

Not all unions are bad, but this one sure is.

amyjess2• 11 years ago

I feel I should note that Walker exempted police unions from his union-busting.

OK, eww, yeah, Walker was wrong then.

Fundamentally, forming a union is an act against your employer's interests. When your employer is a private entity, that's not a big deal. It's a dispute between two private parties, let them hash it out amongst themselves.

But when your employer is the government, forming a union is an act against the public's interests. Public servants should never, ever be allowed to act against the public's interests under any circumstances. And this goes double when your job is a fundamental part of public safety. It's why Reagan fired the air traffic controllers: because such a group going on strike is a direct attack on public safety. Imagine if there was a police department that actually did their jobs instead of choking black people to death on the streets; now imagine that "good" police department suddenly went on strike because of a pay dispute. Imagine how many people calling 911 for domestic violence, home invasions, etc. would be completely and thoroughly screwed.

Police unions simply are incompatible with public safety.

ZanyProgrammer• 11 years ago

I bet the response from a lot of mainstream American leftists will be: whatever the union does is fine, because by definition unions are supposed to support their members.

eevilspock4• 11 years ago

You oversimplify leftists in the same way some leftists oversimplify anti-union sentiment.

mikeash3• 11 years ago

I don't think I have ever seen anyone express that sentiment except to ridicule it, as you have here. And at least in my section of the community, "leftism" is so common that it's assumed to be the default.

nkurz3• 11 years ago

It's interesting to note that Dan Weber appears to feel the 'defend all actions' is obviously correct, while you say your community feels that it is obviously wrong. Presumably he would say the opposite about his community. I don't know either of you, but I wonder if there is less consensus on this issue than either of you believes. Or are you two in fundamentally different communities?

danielweber2• 11 years ago

Unions are supposed to support their members, and legally defend them. If it wasn't the union making this crazy request, it would be the cops' lawyers.

And that's not a bad thing. Proper legal defense is an extremely important and fundamental right, even for the people we dislike. Adequate legal defense is often how people end up needing to protect themselves from crooked cops.

If this crazy request is honored, then something is broke.

nkurz3• 11 years ago

There is a difference between supporting any illegal action committed by individual union members, and supporting the interests of the members as a whole. I'd think (hope?) that there is a degree of egregiousness where the union would realize that they are hurting the group as a whole by defending the corrupt individuals. By contrast, the defendants' lawyers are allowed to concern themselves only with their clients.

jMyles• 11 years ago

The difference is that we, as the taxpaying public, have no choice but to fund this organization (the "union") because our civic entity (the police force) is obliged to hire only from among its membership.

I don't care what these cops or their privately-funded lawyers say.

But I do care that I have to fund this idiocy.

logfromblammo4• 11 years ago

Unions are supposed to act in accord with their own charters or constitutions. Unions are supposed to support the interests of their entire membership. The union could have, upon watching the video, expelled the cops seen in it for gross and egregious violations of the union's standards of professional conduct. The former members would still be able to use the collectively negotiated clauses in their contracts that protect them from unjust disciplinary actions.

If the union does not have standards of professional conduct that would allow them to expel a cop for blatant, open, and notorious destruction of private property, unlawful conversion, spoliation of evidence, deprivation of rights under color of law, and grossly unprofessional and unethical conduct, why the heck would any county or municipality hire any of their members?

Most unions can kick you out when shown good cause, including for actions that are neither illegal nor unethical, such as joining a competing union.

This is probably something the union should have backed away from, as it makes their entire membership look like they support corruption in policing.

RockyMcNuts• 11 years ago

A lot of people respond to videos of police malfeasance by blaming the victim who must have been a bad guy and somehow provoked it. Confirmation bias is a powerful thin.

elektromekatron• 11 years ago

Unions are also supposed to kick out members who bring them into disrepute.

njharman2• 11 years ago

Chutzpah is the very much the wrong word for this behavior. It's arrogance. Maybe use audacity if you're afraid of being accused of bias for calling a kettle, black.

ars• 11 years ago

That's kind of what Chutzpah means. What does the word mean to you?

talideon• 11 years ago

I've always understood it to mean 'audacity', but without any necessarily negative or positive implications.

a_c_s• 11 years ago

Chutzpah is exactly the right word.

"Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts', presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to". In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and condemnation. In the same work, Rosten also defined the term as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan". Chutzpah amounts to a total denial of personal responsibility, that renders others speechless and incredulous ... one cannot quite believe that another person totally lacks common human traits like remorse, regret, guilt, sympathy and insight. The implication is at least some degree of psychopathy in the subject, as well as the awestruck amazement of the observer at the display."

- Wikipedia (because The Joys of Yiddish unfortunately isn't online) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah

antod2• 11 years ago

Chutzpah referred to the union defending the behaviour not the behaviour itself.

yohann305• 11 years ago

While I was watching, I was wondering if these guys were tugs disguised as police officers. I felt frightened by them. Aren't they supposed to be our role models, show the good from the bad. An unethical behavior: "do as i say not as i do" They need to go back to Police school...

caseysoftware• 11 years ago

Why doesn't a company have the right to record their public areas 24/7 without authorization? It seems like that's a reasonable right for security and safety of everyone involved.

Also, if those recordings are deemed "illegal"and dismissed because the cops didn't know, does that mean any jerk who robs a store with hidden security cameras can claim the same?

fweespeech• 11 years ago

All by itself, this potentially dangerous, totally unnecessary show of force was troubling. The pot business was accused of a mere misdemeanor. There was no need to surprise patrons—some of whom were ill—with guns in their faces. But needlessly endangering the public was just the beginning of the dubious conduct. A surveillance camera recorded officers disconnecting the shop’s surveillance cameras. Under the impression that they’d got them all and were only accountable to fellow police officers, the cops discredited themselves in footage destined for YouTube:
On-duty police officers appear to be eating edible pot products—OC Weekly transcribes words they spoke while egging one another on. (“Those candy bars are pretty good,” one said. “I kinda feel light-headed though.”) Other dialogue offers a number of insights into the subculture of this narcotics unit. Take the woman with an amputated leg that police encountered on entering the dispensary. “Did you punch that one-legged old benita?” one police officer asks another. The other cop laughingly replied, “I was about to kick her in her fucking nub.” These are people Santa Ana taxpayers empower to use lethal force at their discretion.
The lawsuit argues that the video doesn’t paint a fair version of events. The suit also claims the video shouldn’t be used as evidence because, among other things, the police didn’t know they were on camera. “All police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks,” says the suit.
The dispensary also did not obtain consent of any officer to record them, the suit says. “Without the illegal recordings, there would have been no internal investigation of any officer,” the suit says.

Its pretty clear behavior like this and:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9948255

Is simply, horrifically common among law enforcement. :/

willow9886• 11 years ago

Sickening. Standard operating procedure for a militarized police force that is rarely held accountable.

bigmofo• 11 years ago

Most shops and location that have audio/video recording equipment have sign indicating that such activity is taking place. So, I don't think that the officers could claim that they were not informed. Also, the mere visual presensense of such equipment implied notice of such activity.

Macsenour• 11 years ago

They took the equipment down so they knew it was there and recording them. Not getting all of them COULD mean that since they thought they got them all, that they were no longer being recorded and now safe. Safe meaning reasonably assured of privacy.

Don't think I'm agreeing with the behavior at all, just voicing a thought.

jackpirate• 11 years ago

I've added this to a git repo where I maintain a list of "Shit that happens in America": https://github.com/mikeizbicki/american-shit

eevilspock4• 11 years ago

If you really want this to take off as a crowd-sourced compilation of the High Crimes and Misdemeanors of America, you need to switch to a wiki format. One long list with a single organization hierarchy won't scale in terms of structure, usability or amenability to collaboration. And before you embark on that, double check whether there isn't already such a wiki out there, and contribute to that.

One of the projects on my todo list is a site that allows a group of people, especially people who aren't great writers on their own, or don't have the time to be, to "make a case", to collaboratively and systematically build that case and hone its articulation.

If successful it would be a kind of Wikipedia/GitHub of arguments. So instead of everyone trying to re-explain or re-argue a point each time there is a need, they could link to the canonical explanation. So instead of off-the-cuff and incomplete, or un-expert and flawed arguments, a point of view's "best foot" is always put forward.

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

Archive.org URL of video: https://archive.org/details/SantaAnaPotShopRaidSparksInvesti...

Torrent: https://archive.org/download/SantaAnaPotShopRaidSparksInvest...

The Chutzpah of a Police Union in Santa Ana, California

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