With 'Big Brother' becoming more & more prevalent, why does Police Brutality continue?

Question

Video Nasties Put Heat On NY Cops

NEW YORK (AFP) - A New York man is clubbed in the street. Another rammed off his bike. Another beaten. Luckily, it's all on film. Unluckily, police are the ones seen doing the beating.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) encourages witnesses to shoot footage of crimes -- but officers were less happy last week when the camera turned on some of their own.

In the first of three incidents, a hulking cop body-checked and sent flying a cyclist at a pro-bicycle rally known as Critical Mass.

In the second a policeman bludgeoned a man on the ground, held down by another of New York's finest, the thwacks almost as loud as the man's cries.

Passersby filmed and published both incidents, the Times Square bicycle body check alone getting 1.2 million YouTube hits.

Finally, a 28-year-old man named Walter Harvin claimed to have taken a bloody beating from police while handcuffed in the entrance to an apartment building.

This time, the action took place in view of a security camera and the film is now with police investigators, the Daily News reported.

Local media gave the furor saturation coverage, reflecting passions around the NYPD, an almost legendary body in a city famous for a violent past and complex patchwork of ethnic neighborhoods.

The NYPD insists it backs the work of video snoops.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly last week announced New Yorkers will soon be able to send video and text directly to the traditional emergency 911 telephone number.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/uspolicerightsmedia;_ylt=AsjqUH87SzmBVGb4_GLIDbADW7oF

Answer 1

The irony of you question confounds me.  Big Brother holds power through intimidation.  Police brutality is actually encouraged in that type of society.  

Take East Germany for example.  The boarder guards had loaded weapons not to stop an allied invasion.  The weapons were loaded to ensure no one left.  They would leave their post one at a time so that

there was always someone around to provide security.  

Chop-Chop square is another fine example.  Saudi Arabia still conducts public executions/mutilations for people that violate Wahhabi law.  Is there a better way of holding power than executing people for illegally staging a revolt?  I think not.  

Intimidation is the only tool Big Brother has.  The perception of police brutality is a must.

Answer 2

Too bad they didn't film the crimes that the criminals (who some do desreve the beating)  commited against an innocent person.

We are far too lenient on our criminals (they have more rights than the victims) and that is why we have so much crime. No consequences.

Answer 3

There will always be bad eggs, but by and large police brutality is much less today that it used to be.

Consider only 40 years back, many police here in America would beat up black people for fun, many times even accidentally killing them while they did it. They NEVER got in trouble for it, in fact the departments they worked for probably encouraged it.

Go even further back, to Ancient Rome, the police there carried spears and would impale you if you even looked at them funny. No one would bat an eye.

It's true police brutality still exists today, there will always be bad eggs, but in all these cases where the police brutality happens these days, the officer always gets fired or punished.

It used to be encouraged.

So, I would say we have come quite a ways.

In fact today, many cases of police brutality are mistaken. Today officers have to be very careful with what they do. If an officer is being attacked, and he fights back, the media will always edit out the part where the officer is being attacked, and make it look like the officer is the aggressor.

Why? Because police brutality stories sell like hot cakes.

Answer 4

There will always be violators of the law.  Bad apples in every line of work.  It is just with the fact that there are more and more cameras out there, that the incidents are now coming to light.  Not that long ago, there were still instances of police brutality, but no cameras catching it, so the public did not know.  

Hey, I have an idea.  Lets use cameras to catch all the bad guys, bad cops, and citizens breaking the law.  

Answer 5

It is not "a few bad eggs" which ruin it for the good cops.  It is the process of socialization into a police sub-culture, which tacitly upholds violence and force as its core beliefs.  It is the culture which no one sees until later when a video taped beating gets shown on the nightly news.  This culture is powerfully enforced and it is extremely difficult for officers who do not believe in this form of violence to stand against it.  

The training of police officers is severely lacking in the ability to think critically about situations, so officers are trained to react, even though almost all people would never harm the police.  Most criminals who resist arrest are attempting to flee, not engage violently with the police.  Police would fare better to understand the structural dynamics of social settings, more than how to fire a weapon.

The police department use the "rotten eggs" scenario as a scapegoat, so that the deeper systemic issues of power and violence will not come to the surface.  Anyways, I think police work is still needed in society, just that the police are "one" voice, not "The" voice in society.

Answer 6

There will always be cops who somehow slipped through and got hired who are not the best of the best.  However, in a lot of "brutality" cases the camera only shows the aftermath of what transpired.  They did not see the suspect pull a knife or punch the officer or the fact he was beating on his wife to within an inch of her life.  It's all perspective.  When the media and public see one half of the story and not the other, they can only believe what they see.  The public wants to be safe, but they are the ones that complain about little things and always think police are in the wrong.  Then when policy dictates we can't do something you complain about that too.  Once you tie our hands up with so many restrictions, how can we protect you?