#myNYPD Twitter callout backfires for New York police department

[DGuller]

I think being generally confident and friendly with people/officials one encounters helps to illicit trust and confidence on their part.

[CountDeMoney]

I think being generally confident and friendly with people/officials one encounters helps to illicit trust and confidence on their part.

Yeah, that's a pretty foreign concept.

[Eddie Teach]

Also, I'm sure he meant elicit.

[mongers]

I think being generally confident and friendly with people/officials one encounters helps to illicit trust and confidence on their part.

Yeah, that's a pretty foreign concept.

It seems to work for me.


Hell at demos, I'll go and talk with the police, but not in the smart-arse way that many younger protesters trying to make a point do. 

[garbon]

When is trust forbidden?

[mongers]

Also, I'm sure he meant elicit.

Yeah, good catch; been a long day for me. 

Oddly being somewhat deaf, I tend to pispronounce some works, and illicit is one of those worms, I guess I end up making it sound more like elicit.

[derspiess]

Hell at demos, I'll go and talk with the police, but not in the smart-arse way that many younger protesters trying to make a point do. 

  What do you do, make small talk?

[derspiess]

When is trust forbidden?

When it's about something illicit

[MadImmortalMan]

Actually the same for border crossing.

Oh god yes. Don't fuck around at border crossings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_3dDNPwJTU

[mongers]

Hell at demos, I'll go and talk with the police, but not in the smart-arse way that many younger protesters trying to make a point do. 

  What do you do, make small talk?

Sometimes yes, often it's a good way of finding out useful information.

Other occasion you hear some interesting stories; a while back I was visiting a protest site in Parliament square, before the legislation banne all gatherings there, I think it might have been called climate/protest camp or peace village?
And actually the most interesting conversation I had there, wasn't with the ragtag collection of protesters, though plenty of them were a varied and genuine lot, but it was with one of the government security guards there, who was a Portuguese national, he had a far more engaging personal story to tell and his political views about Europe were worth listening to. 

[Sheilbh]

In all of my various encounters with coppers, be it late night in some city centre, at demo or with regard to motor vehicles, I've never had a single problem, though I guess there's always a first time.

I think being generally confident and friendly with people/officials one encounters helps to illicit trust and confidence on their part.

Same. I've never really had a bad experience.

But I'm white, British and middle class so my experience is probably different than it normally is.

I always feel like the police have improved a lot - the way they police Carnival, Pride and most demos always seems really good to me. But then whenever there's something serious it always seems to come out that the Met lied about their version of events. So I don't know.

[mongers]

In all of my various encounters with coppers, be it late night in some city centre, at demo or with regard to motor vehicles, I've never had a single problem, though I guess there's always a first time.

I think being generally confident and friendly with people/officials one encounters helps to illicit trust and confidence on their part.

Same. I've never really had a bad experience.

But I'm white, British and middle class so my experience is probably different than it normally is.

I always feel like the police have improved a lot - the way they police Carnival, Pride and most demos always seems really good to me. But then whenever there's something serious it always seems to come out that the Met lied about their version of events. So I don't know.

Well yes now that I think about it, those are probably the most telling factors with me as well. 

[Malthus]

I never had trouble with cops here in Toronto, even as a long-haired, scruffy, pot-smoking teen whose hobby was hanging out late at night with gangs of buddies getting high.

Either the "being White" thing worked its magic, or "being generally polite and non-confrontational" did; or, alternatively, I was just lucky in the cops I encountered.

[sbr]

I haven't had any terrible experiences with cops, even the one who arrested me (DUII) was decent.

I was 17 and with an idiot friend (he was ~20) driving around downtown Portland; we had a 12 pack of beer and he made the dumbest illegal left turn in the history of dumb illegal left turns.  The cops were on our ass in seconds and we got pulled over right in front of Pioneer Square on a summer Friday evening.  The cop asks for our IDs; I hand him my Oregon Driver's License that clearly shows I turn 18 in ~3 months.  He says to me that I am lucky that I am 18, or else he would have to call my parents and they would have to come get em released or something.  That was weird, but I agreed with him.  He then told me that it might be OK for an 18 year old to drink on Army Bases, but it was not OK here in Downtown Portland.  I have no idea why he might have thought I was in the Army, but my hair was very, very short, almost shaved., but I gave him a very polite "Yes, Sir!" and he handed my ID back.  He then made us pour all of our beer out on the side of the street, with hundreds of people milling/cruising/walking by.  The whole thing was funny, even at the time.

I also got a jaywalking ticket in Arizona.  We were drunk and were crossing a major street at a crosswalk.  A really cute girl stuck her head out the window and asked how to get to some bar, so I stopped and gave her directions.  By the time I was done I had to run to beat the green light and missed it by about half a second.  Again, of course there was a cop there so he gave us jaywalking tickets.  He was a bit of an ass, and I argued with him that I beat the light and wasn't jaywalking (and that the chick was hot and I HAD to stop), but he just gave me the ticket and sent me on my way.   The court date was the day after I went out of town so I blew it off and eventually had my driving privileges revoked for jaywalking.   

My driving habits seem to attract police attention more than usual so I have also had a number of interactions with the cops over minor moving violations.  None of them turned out bad, but I have never had the cops ask to search my car so I never really had to refuse them something they wanted.

[CountDeMoney]

I never saw the need to fuck with people any more than was necessary at any given moment, but that was just me.  Not everybody saw it that way, and yeah, there's the asshole aspect of the culture.  I usually tried to make the average encounter as easy as possible, because my very presence was an escalation in situational tension, and I didn't--and still don't--believe in unnecessary escalation for the sake of escalation.  That's not being proactive.  That's not being productive.  That results in unnecessary paperwork and ass beatdowns.  But sometimes attitude beget attitude, and people look for unnecessary confrontations, and get themselves a ticket when 3 minutes earlier they would've just gotten a warning, or get a warrant check because of their hateful vibes and surprise! there's a child support warrant, or their mouths get themselves locked up when they don't follow instructions, like being told to leave the fucking house you don't fucking live in.

Now, there were known shitbags, and they were treated like the shitbags they were whenever we came across them, because that's what you did:  jack them up so often and so hard, they stay off the streets or could get locked up, because that's what the old people and the parents of little children in those shitty neighborhoods deserved.  But those were the regulars, and they were a usually small sample of everyday encounters.

Contrary to what all you little shits may believe, I really didn't fit in with the culture of fucking-with-people-just-to-fuck-with-them (bail bonds, now that was different), and I was overqualified anyway.  Took me a couple years to figure out that Dad was right, as usual.