This was a comment on this diary http://www.dailykos.com/... that got a diary request.
Years ago, just prior to 911, and I'm thankful for that given how things have gone since, I got brutalized by the police, tossed in jail for a few hours and let out in the middle of the night to walk 11 miles home.
Wasn't pretty.
Nor was any of it my fault. I'll leave the case details sparse due to my own time this morning... in short, what happened was my wife and daughter were having a fight over the daughter blowing off a job her mother setup for her to work. A somewhat loony neighbor called in domestic violence, and I arrived home to a mess! I sent everybody to their corners of the house to deescalate things and stepped outside to think about how to sort it all out. That's when the police showed up entirely convinced I was beating on my wife and family.
The conflict boiled down to their demand for entry into my home, my denial, and their refusal to act rationally about any of it.
More for a kiss on the orange dream catcher...
I got thumped good in my driveway, and that's a set piece right there. The moment they attacked, one of them started to say, "stop resisting" like on automatic, and while I was getting bruised up, they would tug on my arms back and forth to make it appear I was doing something.
Truth is, I went limp and asked repeatedly, "are you gentlemen done for the evening?" or "get all that rage out now, so we can talk rationally" etc... variations on that kind of theme.
I was pissed, but I didn't lift a finger.
So here's the interesting part. I finally find the right attorney and we start to talk.
She tells me the older, more expensive way to go, was to hire and evaluate officers and teach them deescalation, defensive moves, ways to subdue and control that aren't lethal, but might hurt, but not do much damage. As the scenario improves, they gain control and can do what needs to be done, and the doctrine was do only what needs to be done.
The idea that policing is a service to those needing it and do no harm is pretty high up there on the list of priorities. Obviously, an officer in trouble can do what it takes, but the means and methods were about marginalizing that trouble.
Let's call that the deescalation, protect and serve doctrine.
What I got caught up in was the escalation of force to control doctrine.
The difference?
Control is the number one priority. Every attempt to get it that does not secure the level of control desired by the officer is met with increasing force, until deadly force.
There is no latch on that, like limits. Technically, they could use deadly force to shut somebody yelling at them up, if said yelling proved sufficient motivation.
And the department hires thugs. Not stable people, not educated people, big, muscle, thugs.
The background of one of my officers was furniture salesmen. Took the course, got armed up, and hit the streets. No joke.
There is another concept here, and it's also being used to damage the public schools, and that is liability management.
They have to yell "stop resisting" no matter what. Even when there is no meaningful resisting. And if it looks like there is no meaningful resisting, they bruise 'em up a little just to make sure that is a hard case to make for the people bruising.
Worse, I went limp at that point in my scenario. I did that because I had a witness and figured I was headed to court and figured they would run the process and that's that. Well, they did, but not helping them arrest me and put myself into a car is "resisting" because they had to do more work than just tell me to do stuff. No joke.
This escalation of force doctrine was their primary case in court. They actually brought up this chart about it and said they were justified in getting control and reached the beating level.
My defense was asking a question about why they wanted entry to my home, the fact that I had foster kids who fear the police in there, and that my wife was perfectly willing to step outside and answer questions, etc...
I won that trial. Probably would not have today. I got my money back and put the whole thing into the past too with a small tort that I could have made much larger, but just wanted to be whole financially.
What they are doing is hiring people who don't really give a shit, and they have managed their processes down to the point of simple monkey see, monkey do execution. It's cheaper that way. No joke.
This guy http://www.dailykos.com/... has figured out how to convince ordinary people on a jury that an officer can do no wrong and is making serious cash doing it. He's scum for that and we all know it.
But it's the change in doctrine and liability management and costs that are driving his business.
And it's those things that drive all these horrible scenarios we see today.
There is the root of the problem. People who were policing prior to the 90's can and should be able to highlight more than I did here and they can and should be able to demonstrate how it can be done, why and how the escalation of force was frowned upon and what factors within policing contribute to the messy and deadly doctrine in use today.