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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26622 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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It's not as if innocent people are trained in the proper ways to make themselves look non-dangerous to police.

The cops and their apologists give out such advice all the time. Most of it is humiliating, because what makes you look non-dangerous to police is an abject display of submission. Some of it is actively dangerous legally because it involves answering their questions.

Most of it is humiliating, because what makes you look non-dangerous to police is an abject display of submission.

Can you elaborate on this? Generally, police just want you to:

  1. Keep your hands visible. Is keeping your hands casually at your sides humiliating?
  2. Don't, without being instructed, reach for anything or walk to an enclosed location (e.g., into your car or home, within which might be a weapon).
  3. I guess, uh, don't say that you're going to kill them? I don't know, I'm having trouble finding a #3, honestly.

Is standing/sitting there with your hands casually at your sides (or on your steering wheel) until the conclusion of the interaction so humiliating?

For the very small proportion of encounters with police that involve the officers' guns drawn, they may ask you to walk backwards and get down on your knees or get flat on the ground with your hands out to the sides. Do you consider that humiliating? This is done to minimize the subjects' ability to put up effective resistance. It's to decrease the likelihood that they have to fucking shoot you! I'm terribly sorry if you feel like you're playing the hokey-pokey for that brief moment that the vast majority of the population will never even encounter in their entire lifetime.

get down on your knees or get flat on the ground with your hands out to the sides. Do you consider that humiliating? This is done to minimize the subjects' ability to put up effective resistance. It's to decrease the likelihood that they have to fucking shoot you!

I never have been in such a situation, but I imagine that I would in fact find it quite humiliating to be forced to kneel or prostrate myself in front of my assailants. The fact that they are (presumably) insisting on it to assuage their own fears wouldn't really factor into my emotional reaction.

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