There are at least more and more blog entries about police overreach. It is hard to say if this is because the problem is increasing, or if only awareness is increasing.

Two points about the article.

First, there is no reason she shouldn't be able to sit in a chair beside the road. The photo shows where the chair is - not obstructing traffic, or even a sidewalk.

Second, why the big deal about her being disabled? This may be a ploy for sympathy, with an eye to a civil suit. However, it is completely irrelevant to the question of police overreach.

There are generally two kinds of people whom become police officers.

The kind that want to serve and protect and have all manner of noble sentiments.

and

The kind that get all trippy with power, and become cops to get more of it.

Unfortunately it is a consequence of the tribal nature of human psychology that the good cops are more or less expected to protect the bad cops because they're still members of the same group.

A lot of this comes from the militarization of the police force to fight the "War on Drugs".

I live in a pretty rough part of the world (Israel) which still does not have a Bill of Rights restricting police actions - but I NEVER see the kind of heavily-equipped paramilitary-style police that I see on news clips from the US.

Around here, hummers and flack jackets mean there's been a terrorist incident in the area - not a highway violation or robbery.

I don't think this is anything new. We are in an age of camera phones and camera everything making recording incidents, that years ago would have been dismissed, a part of our daily reality.

While I was married to my ex, a police officer, I witnessed many cringe worthy incidents as well as heard about many. At get togethers there would always be a group comparing stories and many of those stories were about some various way they found their ability to abuse their power or violate a person's civil rights amusing.

Besides my own husband's abuse, I heard stories of other cops abusing their wives and saw how they all covered it up. I've also known of cases where perjury was considered the only way to get a "skell" off the street. It was lovely stuff.

It has been going on for years. The cops actually have more watchdogs in place now but the mentality to protect each other is borne from the fact that the scumbag beating his wife is also the brother who will come to his aid in a dangerous situation on duty.

Robert is right about the two mentalities that become cops. There are some genuinely great people who become officers and believe in protecting and serving the public. But there are just as many if not more of those who have some grudge against society and think carrying a badge gives them some almighty power.

The police have definitely become more militarized than they were twenty or thirty years ago. Certain stories have become almost cliche', like the cop who destroys someone's cellphone for recording a beating, or worse, the cop who kills a mentally disabled or autistic person for not following orders.

The way this latter one usually goes down is that the perp is out of control, and his family calls 911 hoping to get him a 72 hour hold on a psych ward. When the cops arrive, if he has a pen knife, a stick, or some such, and refuses to drop it, he's shot from fifty feet away, under the guise of "officer safety".

What's worse is that nothing ever happens to these guys. The BART cop who shot the kid on the subway a couple of years ago is the only case I can think of wherein there were criminal penalties, and he's out of jail already.

Bullies like this should lose their badges, at the very least, wouldn't you think?

'Second, why the big deal about her being disabled?'

I think it was brought up to underscore the fact that this woman was no threat to the officer. Scleroderma is a horrible disease, someone I know died of it this past December. The skin tightens up all over the body and gradually the esophagus and intestines harden, in those with a severe case. The elbows are often in a fixed position, to have someone strong twist the arm of someone with scleroderma would be very painful.

It is an increasing fact of life.
Officers are scared and resentful of the "Citizens" they "Protect & Serve".
Only Now, they neither protect nor serve.
I have no doubt Kristen is correct, it has been going on for a long time.
But, the contempt for the general public that most departments seem to feel, leaks out more and more.
Ignorance of the law about being photographed in public and a deeper ignorance of law in general,is just the tip of the iceberg.
Look at the Nevada Costco shooting to see the full flower of how bad it is getting.

I refuse to even complain publicly at a City Council meeting about our "Boys in Blue".
Why?
As anyone knows now, they'll have my License plate number and name before the meeting is over.
And for the next 2 (or 3, or 4, or 5) years I'll get pulled over. Just to "Check my registration", or see if I was "driving recklessly".
Every time it happens it will be all above board, and "Fully Legal". And every time it happens both parties will know WHY it is happening.
They'll know they are "getting" me, "teaching me a lesson" for daring to oppose them.
I'll know that the harassment is a clear indicator of what the "could" do if the weren't being so "nice".
Am I paranoid?
Probably a little.
Will I risk my life, livelihood or family well being to find out if "Not All Cops Are Like That"?
NO Way!
You trust the Cops, You try it.
Make waves in Your town about crooked, lazy, or violent cops. See how long it is before you start seeing a Black & White in your rearview mirror once or twice a week.

What is worst about this?
I did not used to be this way. I was a Volunteer Sheriff Reserve Deputy. I know and even understand some of the stress cops are under.
Try doing your job, knowing that EVERY enforcement decision you make could ultimately result in either a Supreme Court case, or your death?
(Miranda Warnings had to come from somewhere, after all.)
Yet my understanding makes me more fearful of cops not less.
I know how tribal they are. I know that vanishingly few cops get more than a few years under their belt before they succumb to the "Us vs Them" mindset that pervades Law Enforcement.
It has always been there, but the Militarization and hardening of trust between the cops and the public, has made the whole situation worse now than ever before.
More and more cops by the actions they take (as reported by Radly Balko, and others blogs) show that there is a growing sense of outright war, between the citizens they are supposed to protect, and the "Long Arm of the Law"

To put it another way there are Sheep, (Citizens) Sheep Dogs who are supposed to protect the Sheep, (Police) and Wolves who prey on the Sheep (Criminals).
There have always been a few Wolves mixed in with the Sheep Dogs.
Now I fear the the Sheep Dogs have become the Wolves.......
They prey on us.

Yet another small sign that our Civilization is on it's last legs.

As the economic noose tightens, we’re going to see more and more of mans inhumanity to man. I saw today that child abuse was up 65% over last year. The pressure on the lower and middle classes is unrelenting.

3 day suspension?!?!?!?!?!?!?
How about being fired and being charged and forced to do the time that she would have had if she was convicted. At least make him spend a night in jail like her.

My brother is a cop and I married into a cop family. This stuff has been going on for years and only is getting so much attention now because the incidents are more provable. While most of the cops I know wouldn't risk their job with the off duty harassment based on someone speaking poorly of cops, they wouldn't hesitate to harass while off-duty because of a perceived slight.

Example 1. My brother was annoyed that every night someone would pass his house after midnight with the radio blasting. He went outside one night and took down the license plate, went to work to trace the number (which is illegal) and then went to a pay phone to call the person to avoid being traced and didn't just ask them to stop or lower the radio but threatened to do damage to the auto and the person.

Example 2. I met my husband's uncle in 1987. He was a highly decorated Detective. He routinely showed different pieces of jewelry and interesting coins, etc. He and his friends in the 1970's routinely took things from dead bodies that they liked. It wasn't till much later that this was an issue addressed by the police department.

Example 3. In 1988, I visited my future husband while he was guarding a prisoner at Bellevue hospital. The prisoner had been obviously been beaten but I was naive at the time and didn't realize it had been the arresting officers. I watched in horror as my boyfriend leaned down and threatened the prisoner and then pushed his broken cheek bone around. I turned away horrified and he laughed at how amusing it was, what he did, and my reaction.

Example 4. At a bbq with cop families, the hostess had bruises on her arm and face. The story was that she fell. She told me privately that her husband beat her up over a perceived slight. I went to my husband and told him what happened expecting him to be upset with his friend or some concern. I was told to shut up and mind my business. On the way home he was furious with me for being nosy and involving myself in his friend's business as now he would have to deal with an angry friend at work. His friend happened to be his Sergeant.

There are so many more examples I could give all equally disgusting. Many of these incidents go back over 20 years so I know this sort of thing isn't new. It is just exposed more often.

I'd also like to point out in defense of the police that there are times force is necessary and there are times that people get killed. It doesn't make the cop a bad or abusive cop. There is more scrutiny now and some cops do feel, rightfully so, that it is harder to do their job because of the fear of being on the news and attracting the interest of Al Sharpton or some other group that will exploit a situation in hope of raising awareness for something.

I was raised to respect the police and think that we should be able to question authority but I remember riots in Tompkins Square Park in NYC where protesters were throwing beer bottles filled with piss and other things at cops. It was pretty bad. When they were arrested they all alleged abuse. Some may have been right but not all those cops in that unit were bad guys. That is something we need to remember.

I have begun to think the privatizing police departments is the way to go.

First, we get rid of those fat pensions. And fire and police pensions are Fat City.

And, we can just hire a new outfit if we don't like the cops we have, at, say, the end of an annual contract. Try getting rid of your police department, otherwise.

If you were a private employer, and money was coming out of your pocket, would you spend your money to harass pot smokers, or ladies sitting by the side of the road?

After that, time to privatize the Great Federal Coprolite Kingdom, the Department of Defense.

When you say privatization of police departments it doesn’t sound too bad. When you think about cops for profit it scares me to death.

I think things are getting more out of control.

Dierdre.....I am curious to know how you could marry someone that you saw do this thing while guarding? How can you ignore someone else getting beat?

Roger-

Why?

If your police force was private, and acting poorly, you could go to your city councilman and say you want to hire a new force next year. You would not be perceived as "anti-cop," just interested in getting a better team on board.

Try going down to City Hall today and saying you would like to fire all the cops. As we have seen, with union contracts, and with the power of bureaucracy, and constant self-lionization PR, it is impossible to get rid of bad apples on local police forces.

Melody, I was being abused by him as well and feared leaving. I wish I had the emotional capability to leave him but I did not. I was stuck in my own pattern of abuse for many years. It is not always an easy thing to explain. Looking back I ask myself the same question.

I also did not see the prisoner get beaten. The fact that the arresting officers were the ones who put him in that condition was not something that even dawned on me until much later on. I was extremely naive and thought police brutality was something that only happened in the movies. My ex was not beating him although what he was doing was equally disgusting.

The Atlanta PD has been crooked for a pretty long time.

I don't know if this is happening more now, or if we just hear about it through the media when it happens, when we wouldn't have before. I think the public exposure is a good thing - it makes it harder to cover something up when there's video making the rounds of the Internet or a story like this getting reposted.

I don't think it's anything new, I just think police brutality has taken on a different dimension. I mean, I highly doubt the police forces in, say, American in the South in the 1950s were bastions of proper behavior, either.

@Deirdre - I'm so sorry you went through what you did, but I'm glad that you were able to eventually leave.

My brother is a cop. He has been put in the hospital rather than use force (more than he already was) against someone. Why? Afraid of getting sued. He has had kids try to grab his gun (until a month ago when he tired of the hopelessness of it, he was the school officer here). He has tasered said kid, and ended up in the news as a "bad cop" story. The street goes both ways on this. Yes, some cops are bad and get away with it. yes, a LOT of citizens are bad and since most cops aren't willing to murder them, the citizens get away with it and even get awarded a fair amount of the time.

Don't say cops are more militarized. The military is much more disciplined about when force is to be used, and military men are much less likely to see events around them as a challenge to their authority or a threat to their security, when it isn't.

To speak plainly, it's just that many, not all, cops are bullies.

Ten years ago the cops in my town were among the biggest assholes in the area. They were bullies and not very good at their jobs. About three years ago, the town hired a new police chief and he started firing people. Even more quit so their record wouldn't be sullied. End result is a police department that does its job quietly and efficiently.

They will continue and get worse. Why? Because what is the punishment to the cop who does this: 3 day suspension. Most likely with pay, so your "punishment" is a 3 day paid vacation. Most would consider that a reward.
And a possible demerit on your record, which might hold back a promotion, bif it wasn't other cops who decided if you got that promotion.

The obvious conclusion is that he thought she was trying to take a movie of him with her phone.

This has been going on a while.

You just thought it was only scumbags getting their due.

Now that there's a better chance it will be you...

It will continue to get worse because cities and counties are using our police forces as revenue agents to make up for shortfalls in their budgets.

Drug and RICO busts mean seizure and sale of private property.

Traffic stops mean ticket revenue.

In New York, the NYPD attracted a supposed better quality of candidates by having rigid requirements for hire. They attracted a mostly white force though, many from the suburbs who had never seen a black person before. One of the suburbs that many of the recruits came from was one of the most segregated counties in the country. So is it much of a stretch to think that brutality would happen. Some of the recruits were 20 years old and scared to death when they hit Crown Heights or East New York.

Fast forward several years and a department that at one time wouldn't hire someone convicted of a misdemeanor has now changed its tune due to losing too many of their best to nearby Nassau and Suffolk who also happen to be among the highest paid departments in the country and what do you get? A supposed lesser quality candidate but a candidate who may have actually seen a black or Puerto Rican before. Though I have to tell you that some of the minority officers I knew were the most brutal. I still can't figure that one out.

I have begun to think the privatizing police departments is the way to go. BOTU at September 19, 2011 9:35 AM

Just think Robocop I, II & III.

Actually what needs to be done is to put an automatic sunset amendment on every single law, including Murder 1, at the federal, state, and local level. If the law has not been cited in the prior five years it automatically goes away.

If it has been used less than X number of times per year it should go away automatically unless there is a super majority vote. That would be for things like murder, etc. There are places in the states that they almost never happen.

The flip side of that coin is the laws that have been violated thousands of times also need to be adjusted for reality. An example would be a 45 MPH zone on a chunk of road that a split highway that the rest of it is 55 MPH. That is a speed trap.

But putting that in front of new legislators would force a challenge of assumptions.

A very interesting set of comments - it's great to have some from people who really know police from the inside.

In the end, problems are inevitable.

Police must be ready and able to use force when required. To be capable of using force on other people, calmly, and on a daily basis, takes a certain type of personality. We need this type of person to be a police officer - other personality types would be useless when force really is required.

Of course, that very same personality type is able to be abusive. Abuses are inevitable - that's just a fact of life. The best hope is that the tribal culture within a police department will be oriented to restrain abuses. There are departments where that works, and others where it doesn't.

What we can do as citizens is to take advantage of today's possibilities - the cell-phone camera - and thereby encourage police to restrain abusive officers.

The only mitigating factor I can think of is to make sure the cops assigned to your area know who you are, and not in a bad way.

You do NOT want them showing up for a shooting in your neighborhood and treating you like any other anonymous person who might have done the shooting.

"Do you feel there's become an increasing climate of police overreach or is this just an isolated incident?"

Really Amy?

The fact is, cops are scum. Period. There are two types of cops, the crooked ones and the so-called honest cops who always cover up for the crooked cops. It is so unusual for an honest cop to blow the whistle on crooked cops that movies are made about it, i.e. Serpico.

My retired Sheriff neighbor LOVES "the brotherhood"!

And why shouldn't he? Every time he gets pulled over for a traffic infraction (a relatively frequent occurrence for him, I'm learning), he identifies himself as a former cop and - voila! - a wink and a nod later and he's beaten another ticket.

As Orwell pointed out in Animal Farm - "Some of us are more equal than others."

I'm interested in the idea of private police, but I haven't fully been able to make it work in my head yet. Someone in society must be deputized to dispense violence... it's a valid need, yet who and under what circumstances is the question.

Government police who are wholly unaccountable clearly isn't a good option (it's the one we have now), yet what restraints and recourse would there be on private police? Would the private instution that could hire the most win? I fear tyranny more with private police than public ones... educate me please.

If you had a private police force, the officers would be of the same caliber as a TSA agent.

Do I need to point out the various ways that this would suck?

Eh, the Bass companies in Fort Worth have their own security, and their officers are of a much higher caliber than TSA. It's harder to be a private (personal security) guard in TX than it is to be a TSA agent. (I'm talking about the private guards who carry guns, not mall-cop-types.) The Bass guys are contracted to provide security to public places in Fort Worth like Sunset Square. I don't live there, though, so I really have no idea whether the private force is more or less militant than municipal cops.

If we commit a violent assault, we go to jail. If a police officer commits a violent assault, he gets a "three-day suspension".

Momof4,

I think your brother is either pulling you leg or unaware of qualified immunity (Section 1983). It's a high hurdle, I forget the particulars, but the cop has to do something so egregiously bad that a judge removes his qualified immunity, and even then another judge or jury has to decide against him. Cops act like being thrown into the legal system is no big deal, but they themselves are scared to death of it (they lawyer up immediately, while asking for their union rep too). Getting sued may affect his career possibilities, may, but seldom his pocketbook.

As for there are good cops and bad cops, how do you tell at any given time? Until after? I've been to a party with HAs and one with another biker gang (the name escapes me), but the party that I felt the most danger in was one that was almost all cops (I have two cops in my family). I could argue politely with an HA (avoiding comments about the club itself) but threats and intimidation were de rigueur with the cops.

I don't understand the culture that creates this, while understanding the challenges of the job. People are more respectful in the military...

I can't fathom feeling scared of bikers. Or cops. Or, for that matter, almost anyone-except the idiot who can sue you and the judge/jury who will buy their shit. I say that as the sister and stepdaughter of cops, the niece and daughter in law of bikers, and the sister and daughter of successful lawyers. And no, a judge does not have to remove their "qualified immunity"-at least not here. Anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time, for the most part.

My brother is not pulling my leg. I LIVE here, and it's a small town. These things aren't secretive. In fact, they're on youtube (see stonypoint HS riots).

People who argue the military is better period don't have much experience with the military (or are members and thus suspect in their views). Bullies exist everywhere. The police force, the military, the school principal. To pretend this is some "blue line" phenomena is facile.

PS the HA's are a joke, as far as "nasty" goes. Truly bad people do not try to draw attention and legend to themselves. Just FYI.

momof4,

Section 1983 is a federal law that covers all police. Doesn't matter where you live. He can't be sued for what he does on the job unless he crosses a line, and that is always determined by a judge. Any lawsuit is first and only the municipality's problem, policemen may be named in suit but that doesn't make them personally liable unless and until their qualified immunity is pulled. This link, http://www.textfiles.com/law/mar90_6.law, as well a general search on "police qualified immunity" might help you.

There's a casino in Laughlin that might disagree with you on HAs, but then the Mongols were involved. There's a bar a couple of miles from me where the Cave Creek president got whacked in a little internecine warfare. Measuring bad by working backward from the worst is an unusual way of measuring bad. So Speck wasn't that bad because Dahmer is worse?

Never mentioned the thin blue line BTW. Had to do with the use of threats and intimidation as a normal technique in dealing with interpersonal relationships.