How important is it to respect the police, meaning following orders and treating them with decency? I often see videos of people allegedly mistreated by the police and it often starts with the citizen being rude and/or refusing to follow orders. And then I see a huge outcry of people defending them. Should the police just leave the citizen alone if he/she fails to comply?
Btw, I think it's extremely important for the police to respect citizens.
So what? People are rude, cops are rude, does not automatically excuse excessive violence. And the most stupid things I ever hear is police officers who are beating someone around the head to stop resisting. Every person who is hit in the head tries to protect his head from the blows. To demand people to do things that are leaving them incredibly vulnerable to attacks is not really a logical order to give from a police officer. Now if someone is having their arms forced behind their back it is mostly proper to tell people to stop resisting, when however they are already under physical attack from the police it is not a logical order.
Also, if three police officers cannot hold a tiny female under control to put on the handcuffs, they are not fit for purpose. Choking or beating someone around the head is not a proper tactic or tool to have people stop resisting. If someone fears for their life they resist. It is almost an automatic reaction of people when assaulted to resist and save their life.
Choking out suspects, beating them with batons to the legs, being beaten with fists to the head, would you not try and protect yourself from further harm?
From what I have seen from a lot of videos, is that some US police officers have terrible conflict resolution skills and often make cases that could have been solved peacefully into a violent altercation.
Training and other ways of fining people, there is no need to always arrest people and book them for stupid offenses like jay walking, speeding, broken taillight. Because sadly that causes too many people to have to sit in jail for hours or days/months if they cannot afford bail. Just fine people, give them a ticket, no need to sign it and let them leave. If they want to contest the ticket that is possible but that makes the officers life a whole lot easier, keeps police officers on the street instead of going to the station and filling out paperwork for a jaywalker/speeding driver.
A good police officer can decompress a situation in which there is no need for violence, bad officers are unable to do that.
And give people proper commands, have one person give orders, not have one officer shout "don't move or I will ****ing shoot you" while the other one shouts "get out of the car or I will shoot you". That is not a situation that is safe for either officer or the suspect.
Most police officers are pretty decent people, sadly a good number of them are not or else they would not have to be paying out hundreds of thousands to the victims of police brutality or to the family of someone killed by the police.
