The Largest Street Gang in America

[J Scott]

Vikram C. posted in another thread about how many politicians -- due to their stature and position -- believe they are above the law.

This comment reminded me of a great (though disturbing) set of videos I saw a few months ago that I think a lot of people here would find very interesting. Here is a link to the first video that is about 10 minutes long; once it completes, Part 2 automatically starts, and that continues all the way through Part 6.

In total the series is about an hour long.

While it starts out a bit slow, if you can get through the first 5 minutes, I think most people here will really find that it's worth their time to watch (even if you don't like Part 1, it gets more interesting as it goes along):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH9k8L3oDa4&feature=PlayList&p=868DA29421809546&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1

I'm not looking to start any stupid debates with this...though I'm definitely interested in your thoughts if you watch the whole thing...

[Vikram C.]

Good post. I am in Sinagpore airport and the bandwidth is not good enough to watch all of it, but I think the first few minutes is enough.

The funny thing is, cops in America are actually no worse than anywhere else in the world and, for the most part, are professional. The differences that I see between cops in America and in most other countries that I have spent time in are:

a) In most countries, cops and other security services will start out with a polite tone and then become more assertive / aggressive if you do not cooperate. In the U.S., they often start with a somewhat rude tone in their very first sentence. This is even true of other government employees such as immigration officers at airports, security people at the airport screening places, etc. This does create a negative impression of the U.S. when someone first lands here although, after being here for a while, you realize that this style of speech seems harmless for the most part and could just be a cultural thing.

b) The bigger puzzle for me is why politicians and the media overwhelmingly portray the police as wonderful people who sacrifice so much for society, etc. This is quite the opposite of how the police are portrayed in the popular media in most other democracies. In fact, it is quite similar to how the security forces are portrayed in dictatorial regimes. While most cops are professional and do provide society a critical service, this difference in the public's respect for them compared to other countries is quite puzzling to me.

I would not mind figuring this out so if someone has an explanation for it. Is this just a uniquely American thing with no specific reason for it or is there some history behind this?

P.S. I do think the slavish respect for cops probably increases the likelihood of the kind of stuff we saw in the video.