[LowKarmaAccount]

Unless you have a real emergency and need assistance, it's best to avoid the police whenever possible, even if you've done nothing wrong. Local police forces have many officers that are poorly trained and believe that they have plenary power or act as if they do in any situation. Of course, this isn't true about all local police officers, but if you don't know which officers are the good ones, you should just avoid all police whenever possible. Even large "local" police departments have very negative reputations in America; especially the NYPD, LAPD and Chicago PD.

I think that that stories on HN about FBI abuses of power are popular because people expect more from the FBI. It's comforting to think that there is a highly trained law enforcement group that can intercede when a local department is incompetent or inadequate, and the realization that the FBI can be just as bad or even worse than local law enforcement is disheartening.

[angersock]

This is a really distressing trend, right?

The growing size of cities and the creation of suburbs (especially those which do not support walking) have caused the beat-cop to become somewhat deprecated--in my home city right now there is a shortage of officers and dwindling pensions for the ones that are still on board.

So, instead of having Officer Bob the friendly cop who patrols your street, you have nameless squadcars driving seemingly at random--much like the beetles of Bradbury's literature. You have cops that are never seen, and when they are seen they typically are bad news.

This, taken in combination with the horrific perversion of justice that can occur in our adversarial system, causes a very definite sense of the "other". We have trouble feeling bad for these cops, because in a way they do not blend in with their community in a meaningful fashion. We do not help them, we do not like them, and they generally seem to return the favor.

Worse, we see an increasing attempt to bolster the average power of the cop with tools grossly out of proportion to their intended function in society: note that the two officers in this video appeared to be carrying submachineguns. What. The. Fuck.

With police seen as distinct from our communities and friends and families, and with government increasingly aloof in regulations and faceless bureaucracy, I very much fear for the next decade of the American experiment.

[abraham]

The police were originally on scene for an armed robbery. Since the where there because of someone with a gun it makes sense that they officers would be well armed themselves.

[machrider]

Probably good advice in general, but when you post a comment like this (or upvote it) on a story about police abuse, it comes off like blaming the victim. The man in this video did nothing wrong and now his dog is dead.

*edit: I should note that he was performing a valuable civic service by documenting the actions of the officers (as were the people in the car recording this video). We wouldn't be able to have these discussions without people brave enough to record our public servants' (mis)behavior.

[mixmax]

If the best advice in the US is to avoid the police you've got a very serious problem. It sounds like travel advice from a third-world country.

[llamataboot]

We do have a very serious problem. We have a paramilitary force patrolling our streets, largely fighting a fictional "war on drugs" and locking up whole swaths of our population. The poor-ish, brown-ish swath.

[bmmayer1]

This. Completely true.

[famousactress]

It depends on what you're optimizing for. If for your personal safety, short term comfort, or the rapid erosion of basic constitutional rights... yep, it's best to avoid whenever possible.

[mikegagnon]

> Unless you have a real emergency and need assistance, it's best to avoid the police whenever possible, even if you've done nothing wrong.

You are assuming everyone's objective function is to minimize harm to themselves.

If you want to deter the police from using unreasonable force during an arrest, you can do that by filming them.

[nsxwolf]

I was about to post a similar comment. Your advice is very good, and hasn't yet been heard by enough people to have the knee-jerk "victim blaming" response attached to it.

Edit: Oops, poster above did in fact throw down the victim blaming card. Indeed, the man did nothing wrong, but he could have a live dog right now by simply avoiding the police.

[wavesounds]

I think many of us would like our police to be more like Andy Griffith. We pay their salaries and elect their bosses so I don't see why we couldn't have this kind of police force if we put in the time and effort to reform them.