Why do the police kick the shit out of people?

[madibe]

You have seen the Spanish and Greek protests?

Why do the police kick the shit out of their bretheren / neighbours / fellow humans?

Silly question, but views welcome.

They, after all, could be the next ones on the dole if the cut backs get any more severe.

[emordnilap]

It's their job. They're paid to do it. They'll lose their job if they don't.

Let's face it, as conditions deteriorate, what's the one safe job you'll always get? In the militia. In some areas both now and in the past, it's that or flip burgers, if you're lucky. It'll get worse.

Attack forces are the 1%'s employees. eg Rossport - tax-funded state agencies working for non-tax-paying Shell, beating up protesters, protecting profits, supporting pollution.

[RenewableCandy]

Everyone in life who has ever given me a hard time and about whom I have subsequently found out anything has turned out, in their turn, to have been the victim of some (usually prottracted) unpleasant situation.

I jalouse from this that Police who beat people up:

1. Bully each other
2. Are scared sh!tless they'll lose their jobs and be on the other side the divide soon
3. Ran away from a rotten childhood (to join the police/army, for example)
4. Can't get it up
5. All of the above/summat I haven't thought of

[emordnilap]

A nephew of mine joined the police force because he genuinely wanted to do good, ie, prevent crime.

1. He wouldn't bully, he's not that type, though he could be bullied.
2. Yes.
3. He had an almost idyllic childhood and loves his parents (who I know are brilliant at being parents).
4. I have no clue about his potency or lack of it.
5. They're lied to.

He's a lovely lad and has noble intentions but if he was told to don riot gear and beat up fellow citizens, he would. He's simply doing what he's told, which is what attack forces are trained to do - plus of course he'd be told that these people are, in some way, criminals.

Bless him.

[madibe]

No - there is 'restraining' some one and than there is group vilolence, which is what I have seen recently in Greece and Spain.

I'm interested in what makes these people think they are 'different' and wont find themselves on the other side of the fence.

Is it just group mind feck?

[mobbsey]

I often put that question to TSG units in the 80s.

As it was stated to me, the job of a riot policeman is to go forward and quell the protest in front of them. Of course if you're going forward you don't want anyone you leave behind to get back up and grab you from behind (certainly not before the snatch squads who follow behind with the vans get catchup) -- so they like to leave the people in a state where they're unlikely to get up.

If in doubt sit cross legged with your arms crossed. Legally you're not a threat in that position and if they hit you it's "excessive force" (except in the USA).

[RenewableCandy]

Aha, the question here is, are they ordered, specifically, to beat people up, or ar they doing it for some other, personal, reason, as per my lizt? Please note that I've counted "Police who beat people up" as a subset of a larger set, "Police (all)".

[mobbsey]

Aha, the question here is, are they ordered, specifically, to beat people up, or ar they doing it for some other, personal, reason, as per my lizt?

TSG -- Territorial Support Group (in a Windscale-like move, they had their name changed from the 'Special Patrol Group', SPG, in the 1980s). These are the people who are paid to take on football hooligans, drunken revellers and EDL/neo-nazi types. It's the nearest the UK gets to the 'Robocop' concept.

It's definitely not community policing! These are the types of people who push newspaper sellers to the ground and walk off! (to jobs in the private sector). TSG/SPG have a string of suspicious deaths to their name over the years (anyone remember Blair Peach?, very similar to the Alfie Meadows incident in 2010) -- and were the butt of a lot of comedic work as a result.

Trouble is that when these people come up against non-violent activists the results get messy because they use the same tactics intended for football crowds. Not pretty, especially when you're big like me because they specifically target you as a "crowd control problem".

[Little John]

You have seen the Spanish and Greek protests?

Why do the police kick the shit out of their bretheren / neighbours / fellow humans?

Silly question, but views welcome.

They, after all, could be the next ones on the dole if the cut backs get any more severe.

cognitive dissonance

[AnOriginalIdea]

Why do the police kick the shit out of their bretheren / neighbours / fellow humans?

Silly question, but views welcome.

How do you suggest someone get the attention of those raised in a society which has designed them to not have any? Use the same technique you might on an errant animal I suppose, kick, poke with a stick or cattle prod.

[mobbsey]

How do you suggest someone get the attention of those raised in a society which has designed them to not have any?

As in the examples of Greece, Ireland and Spain, it's called sudden enforced poverty!

[jonny2mad]

You have seen the Spanish and Greek protests?

Why do the police kick the shit out of their bretheren / neighbours / fellow humans?

Silly question, but views welcome.

They, after all, could be the next ones on the dole if the cut backs get any more severe.

Hmm violence can be fun

The main deterrent to people being violent is fear of consequences and empathy with the person you’re beating up.

Get rid of those two things have a culture that encourages violence, and you will get the results you see.

[adam2]

Riots will have to be put down with increasing brutality, initialy in the southern bits of the eurozone and eventually elswhere.

Whilst one might have some sympathy with the rioters, many of whom are suffering badly, and others fear that they will be next to suffer, is anything gained by letting the riots get out of hand?

I doubt that large scale rioting will result in bigger hand outs from Germany.
I doubt that looting and destroying public buildings and public transport facilities will increase jobs or incomes.
I doubt that large scale rioting is going to increase tourism, which was formerly a large part of the national income in the places affected.

Despite the exceses of the banking industry, is anything gained by destroying local bank branches ? and murdering perhaps innocent local staff who had nothing to do with general policies.
Burning down a bank branch simply means that it either has to be rebuilt, at someones expense, or remain closed forever with customers now obliged to travell furthur to use the bank.

The world has run out of cheap oil, and therefore run out of easy credit and perpeptual growth.
No amount of rioting will bring back cheap oil and the good old days.

[extractorfan]

If the police are allowed to beat the crap out of us then we should at least be allowed to call them plebs, or maybe even f***ing plebs, without fear of prosecution or (in the case ot Mitchell) fear of being made to apologise to said pleb.

[jonny2mad]

If the police are allowed to beat the crap out of us then we should at least be allowed to call them plebs, or maybe even f***ing plebs, without fear of prosecution or (in the case ot Mitchell) fear of being made to apologise to said pleb.

whos allowing you or not allowing you ?

I think in a way this is part of the problem. I see people as having inherent rights to self defence much has the founders of america saw the people having inherent rights to self defence, much like the people who won the english civil war saw we had inherent rights to self defence .

If someones beating the crap out of me I'd say that gave me the right to beat the crap out of him, and it wouldnt matter what costume he wore .

Anyway if we are going to have repression and tyranny at some point people will need to remember the english civil war and the american war of independance .

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."


Thomas Jefferson