The Police are NOT your friends: Police State at the lower class.....

[RadioRaheem84]

How anyone could think that at the lower rung of society that there is not a de-facto mini-police state is beyond me! I used to think that the Police could be potential comrades because they're working class, but that notion has been vanquished from my conscious. The Police are not out there to protect and serve the public, unless the public is wealthy.

Friend and I carpooled to work on Wednesday and we arrived early so we decided to get something to eat and cut through a rather rough neighborhood to get to the place we like. We're cruising, taking our time and then we notice a cop following us for a while. We just assumed that he was suspicious of the vehicle, since it's a nice car, in rough part of town. The cop tailing us for a good two minutes made my friend so nervous that he didn't make a full stop at the Stop sign and refused the right of way to another driver causing them to honk at us. Well that was enough for the cop to turn his lights on and pull us over.

We figured, no big deal right, we have nothing on us. No warrants. Nothing.

Well, the cop did his "what are you doing here", "where are you going", "anything illegal in the car" routine. Soon enough, he was asking us to step out of the car, asking us to search our person and the car. We agreed and co-operated.

I kid you not they searched the car for almost half an hour, tearing it up to no end looking for narcotics. They called two more cars and four more cops to help them look for further. Popped the trunk without asking my friend. Just ransacking the shit out of it.

The had their a-ha moment when they found an over the counter allergy medicine pill in the back ashtray. They came back to us and asked us what the pill was. We were relieved, because they thought that they planted something on us but they had to call poison control to verify that the allergy pill was not a narcotic. A fucking over the counter homeopathic Whole Foods bought allergy pill! Called a police officer over to test the thing with a mini-lab on the back of my friends car.

Finally, after all that they finally told me to scram but put cuffs on my friend because he had a Failure to Appear to Court Warrant from 2005! They were aching to take him to jail. He asked the cops if I could take his car but they refused to let me and called a tow truck and hauled his car to the impound.

From what he says of jail:


Spent four hours in a holding tank with what looked like 80 people, the jail was disgusting, no beds, chairs, nothing just a concrete slab lining the walls to sit. People were using their shoes as pillows, it was freezing and inmates were huddled up like turtles in their shirts.
Just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, the door opens up and they dump ten more guys in the tank! OK, at this point he thinks that it could not get any worse as they have to obey the maximum occupancy rules. Nope. One hour later, the door opens up and they dump ten more guys in the tank!
So at this point there are over a hundred dudes in there, standing room only, with some inmates finding a little left over room to sleep next to the toilets.

Finally after four hours, he gets booked. After booking, he gets sent to another packed tank for six hours. He called me from the tank and told me to bring some money to bail him out but I told him to just save his money and that he would be out the next morning for time served. He also received some good advice from the inmates, insisting that at he plead not guilty for an old ticket that the cop would probably not show up to trial for anyways. Finally after spending the night in jail he went before a judge and took the advice and pleaded not guilty. The judge told him that his trial would be set for 10am the next day! He freaked out and called me again to bail him out, but I re-asurred him that had he plead 'guilty' in a city jail that he would have served at least a week in jail to pay off the fine.

Make up of the inmates: Largely African American, Hispanic, and poor White people. Many of them were homeless and picked up by the cops like The Tramp from the Chaplin films. Others were arrested for the most piddly of things like Public Intoxication, panhandling, traffic tickets, starting a fire to keep warm in a park, sleeping in a park bench, etc.
One guy told him that he was arrested for getting drunk at his house. He goes outside to take out the trash, slips and lays on the sidewalk for a couple of mins, because he is piss drunk, and a cop comes by and arrests him not ten feet from his own house for pubic intoxication!!!

Everyone had one thing in common: poor.

Cells were cramp, small and stuffed with four inmates. The blankets; filthy, unwashed. Poor guy came out sniffling with cold once out.

He spend a total of two and a half days in jail over a traffic ticket in some of the dirtiest conditions he's ever encountered.

Point is, the jail/prisons system is inhumane, unsanitary and unnecessary.

The police are NOT comrades, I don't care how nice or working class they may be, the American legal/judicial system is so bad that their job enforces them to be anti-working class.
They were looking for any excuse to toss my friend in jail but settled for the warrants. They didn't even give him a ticket for not making a full stop at the Stop sign!

While I sympathize with police for being working class, their job and system makes them be extremely hostile to working people. The system leaches off the misery of the working class as they're left paying for the city's ailing budgets.

They're saddled with legal costs, court fees, fines, bonds, etc.

I don't know how anyone could not see that at the lower rung of American society, there is a de-facto, mini-police state already.

[Tim Finnegan]

Honestly, I'm coming to believe that the very term "police state" is redundant: all states are maintained by the police in quite the same manner, it's simply a question of how much force is applied, and to what extent it is levelled against you, personally. No surprise, then, that those who most enthusiastically cry "police state" tend to be white, upper-middle-class liberals...

[RadioRaheem84]

Honestly, I'm coming to believe that the very term "police state" is redundant: all states are maintained by the police in quite the same manner, it's simply a question of how much force is applied, and to what extent it is levelled against you, personally. No surprise, then, that those who most enthusiastically cry "police state" tend to be white, upper-middle-class liberals...

Excellent point. Apparently, it's a "police state" when it starts affecting middle to upper middle class white people. But for the most part, it was fine when the cops were hassling minorities and low income whites in the 70s, 80 and early 90s. But once that started stretching into the middle class to look for money, then they start complaining about human rights.

It's pathetic.

No one listened to blacks and other minorities, and poor whites about the crazy system until it finally starting knocking at their doors too.

[Pretty Flaco]

I've had people tell me before that the police don't discriminate. They've always been well to do. Not necessarily white though. I had an asian guy I know, who oddly was christian and republican (or at least that seemed odd to me), tell me "the police will only target you if you've done something wrong and you only have to worry about the police if you've done something wrong."
I think I've seen enough of how the cops work to know that that's bullshit.

[RadioRaheem84]

It's complete bullshit that cops only target you if done something wrong.

They will look for your ass and will try to get something to pin you on.

So do not act like they're trying to help you out.

[Octavian]

The police work on the basis of a heard mentality where locking people up is their idea of a job well done. The only uses they serve are social control and protection property.

[No_Leaders]

Yep, thats the way the piggies work. They're there to protect the interests of the state, and will not hesitate to crush dissent, just look at any protest whether it's here in the states or in other countries. The only difference is what someone stated before which is some use more force than others, but either way they're trying to intimidate, and crush any dissent. It's obvious who's side the police are on, you can see it everyday how corrupt they are and will not hesitate to abuse their power.
To quote a choking victim song "No copper will be safe till they are dead and done now. Let's lay em down low, let's hang em up high, Let's take all of these piggies, and have them crucified!"

[Summerspeaker]

The police strike me as more akin to coordinators than workers as their job centers on controlling workers (and the occasional boss who steps too far out of line). They're like low-level managers, but with guns.

[Hexen]

The Police are nothing more than tools used by the bourgeoisie to keep the lower classes in line. Hence the term "To Serve and Protect" which actually means To serve the capitalists and protect them from the lower classes (us).

[Pretty Flaco]

If I'm not mistaken, the formation of police forces was propelled by the revolutions of 1848. So their original purpose was of course to keep the status quo rollin

[Hexen]

If I'm not mistaken, the formation of police forces was propelled by the revolutions of 1848. So their original purpose was of course to keep the status quo rollin

Hmmmm.....Just I thought....

Just a mere coincidence.

[L.A.P.]

When you actually stop and think about it and look around, it's bizarre how much ghettos resemble miniature anarcho-capitalist war zones.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Of course the police aren't your friends. They're the guardians of capital, and they're professional liars.


inmates were huddled up like turtles in their shirts.

Haha, this same situation actually happened to me when I had the privilege of visiting a holding tank. It was freezing in that place, and I only had a t-shirt (they said they would give us blankets but never did), so I withdrew my arms into my shirt and laid on it to retain any heat I could. Man. That place sucked.

It seems like the punitive society that is America sucks an ever-increasing rate of people into "the system" every day, though. The majority of my friends have been arrested and/or having criminal records, mostly for minor crimes such as drug possession, public intoxication, disorderly conduct etc. It's kind of become a reality of working class life at this point...I was able to bail myself out with a few hundred dollars I'd gotten from some work I did, other members of the underprivileged aren't so lucky.

Occassionally the charges are more serious, though...one girl in a (court-mandated) class I took was facing serious felony charges for cocaine possession. She was a nice person in her early 20's who had been near the top of her class in high school and college, from a "middle class" family in which she was the favorite child or whatever, and now she was essentially looking at her life being ruined from a felony charge. Because the system isn't done with you after you get released from jail, or get off probation, or pay your fines: nope, it's going to ruin your life. And the police are helping execute it's orders, so no, they're definitely not "friends".

[Tim Finnegan]

If I'm not mistaken, the formation of police forces was propelled by the revolutions of 1848. So their original purpose was of course to keep the status quo rollin
I'd say that you're reading that back to front. The police force represents the form taken by state law enforcement (something as old as the state itself) in bourgeois capitalism, something which was not established as the basis for political as well as economic life in much of Europe until after 1848. It's no coincidence that those police forces pre-dating '48 emerged in Britain, the Netherlands and France in the early 19th century, the only true bourgeois states at that point.

Which is not, of course, to suggest that state security forces exist for any other reason than the defence of the status quo, simply that this wasn't a concerted scheme but the natural role of any state security force.

[RadioRaheem84]

The situation with the police and jails for the working class has reached the point of lunacy.

One story from an inmate that my friend told me about was how the cops were responding to a noise complaint, called the owner of the house out, and arrested him on the spot for PI (public intoxication)!

The cities and counties need money, so they tend to use the working class to fit the bill that the rich refuse to pay.

How bad is it in other countries? The situation had me so hopeless that I really want to leave and work abroad in order to avoid the absolutely brutal police state at the level I am living in now. It's almost impossible to avoid the cops in lower class America.

[Queercommie Girl]

America is worse than most countries in Europe in this area.

[RadioRaheem84]

I figured that was the case. At the lower rung of society, the US mirrors a third world country.

[Decommissioner]

I get harassed by cops often, but I have yet to be taken to jail. I often attribute this to the fact that I am white. Proof of this being a couple weeks ago at a party. My friends and I decide to go out to a car to listen to some music in a parking lot close to where the party was happening. Soon after cops drive by and see people sitting in a car and use that as an excuse to create a situation out of it, so they come up doing their normal routine, asked if we had been drinking (we had, and admitted so), and so on. They asked the driver for his insurance and went back to the car to run our liscenses looking for any bad records. When the dispatcher confirmed all of our records were clean, we just hear a bunch of laughter and then our liscenses got thrown at our car.

At this moment a "nice" cop came up and took the key out of the ignition for my friend and advised him to keep it out (probably since having the key in the ignition could count as a dui), once he left the "bad" cop came up and started cursing us, telling us how lucky we were to not be going to "fucking jail" and this and that, told us to go back to where we came from and leave the car. Afterwards the "nice" cop picked up our liscenses that they previously threw in our direction and handed them to us, and we walked away.

I often wonder, if we had been a group of minority kids, would we have been shown the same kind of mercy? I highly doubt it. I doubt we would have gotten the little hookup from the sympathetic cop, we most likely would have been searched.

[Ligeia]

How bad is it in other countries? The situation had me so hopeless that I really want to leave and work abroad in order to avoid the absolutely brutal police state at the level I am living in now. It's almost impossible to avoid the cops in lower class America.

In Germany, not as bad. I've never seen anybody get arrested for being drunk in public or being loud in public or whatever else. Even if someone denounced you for being either one and called them, the police would just tell you to consider people around you and that's all.

Then again, in the late 90s (in some European countries in the early 90s) the penal system has changed somewhat and still keeps doing so. Influenced by the N.Y. model. Trying to implement harder policies, more penalties for less, and especially lesser focus on reintegration and anti-stigmatisation.
From time to time, you get stuff in the news like minority-youths beating someone up, or young demonstrators and then suddenly a new policy change in the penal system is discussed (harder punishments).

But all in all, it's still not as bad.

[Il Medico]

I actually haven't had too many problems with the police. I think this is because growing up I learned to avoid them like the plague.

[RadioRaheem84]

Avoiding them is a good idea when in the States.

In the States, the cops lie without impunity to get what they want out of you.

They specifically target low end people in order to make money out of them here.

For instance, there is no crack-cocaine task force or crystal meth task force here in my city, but there is a huge DWI (driving while intoxicated) task force that waits outside of certain bars to catch people for drinking and driving. It becomes a huge money maker for the city.

There are no cops waiting outside of known drug houses and meth labs, but there are a ton of cops waiting outside of certain targeted bars with a lot of people. Every night they pick up at least five DWI and a couple of PI's.

[-marx-]

A few run ins I've had with fascist cops: (you should know that I am and have always been poor as all fuck/working class and a drug user of various substances and I do not dress like your average person and this took place in Australia)

Me and my friend Leon and his girlfriend (they are Vietnamese and I'm Caucasian) were walking thru Richmond in Melbourne (a Heroin dealing area and primarily Vietnamese and Chinese people live in the part we were in) on our way to get some lunch when some undercovers pulled us up.
First thing they said to me was "what are you doing here?", "You're buying Heroin off of this guy aren't you?". And I told them what we were doing but they searched me (all clothing ,sox and shoes included) and my backpack and him and his G/F and just wouldn't let up on the Heroin thing.

They separated us and questioned us, asking our names and each others name etc to see if we really knew each other. Anyways once they were satisfied we had nothing on us they told us to go and told me not to come to Richmond anymore! Can you fucking believe that? Telling me I'm not allowed to go to a certain suburb!

Anyways, it was their loss as we both had a shit load of Heroin on us! :D And they didn't find it. Regardless of whether or not the area was known for Heroin dealing the fact remains that all three of us were discriminated against because we were different races.
They accused him of being a dealer simply because he is Vietnamese and was with a white guy, and accused me of being a junky/dealer because I was white and was with a Vietnamese guy. If we were both Vietnamese the incident would never have happened.

Prior to this incident we were walking down Victoria street (Richmond again) and some uniforms pulled us up, this time they didn't even mention drugs and after I.D checks all they kept saying was that we were gay and on our way to his place to fuck while they all grinned and laughed at us. Fully putting shit on us for being gay (which we aren't, I'm Bi and he's straight). I mean what the fuck was that about? Are they the 'gay police' or something!?!?!?

Way back in 2000 I was living in a cheap as shit hotel with my girlfriend and we were so fucking poor (unemployment was our only income) that we started selling some of our stuff occasionally to have money to eat, pay rent and do stuff rather than just sit in our room wasting away staring at the fucking walls.
Anyways after about 3 months of selling a few things we didn't really need anymore all my transactions must have rang alarm bells on the pawn shop registrar (police check all pawn store transactions periodically) and they came knocking on my door.

They briefly questioned me, I told them the deal (the truth) and they arrested me on suspicion of receiving stolen goods and attempted fraud. Took me to the station and went thru the motions of fingerprints, interview, etc and they then searched my wallet. Inside I had 2 receipts for loans I had gotten from a pawn store on some stuff I intended on getting back.

So they no only charged me with the false 14 charges (7 attempt to defraud, 7 receiving) but also charged me for the two loans too. Claiming the same shit as the other charges (stolen property/fraud) equaling a total of 16 charges.
I got police bail which is where the police let you out of jail with no money or surety being given. I got a court date for 1 month time. Anyways after 5 adjournments over 6 months and 7 years of not turning up to court (I got sick of it all and skipped the state as I was intent on not bending to their fascist ways) I eventually cleared it up and got found guilty on all charges and got a 3 year good behavior bond and a $2,000 fine. The only thing that kept me out of prison was the fact that I did turn my self in, although 7 years late, I was given credit for it by the magistrate.

Got a $300 fine for not wearing a seat belt in a parking lot just before I stopped the car just last year! Wouldn't have happened if I was driving a BMW or Audi in place of my beat up 1991 Ford.


There's numerous other incidences where I have been profiled by police as one thing or another and searched. I was even illegally strip searched in the fucking street once in front of all society to see.

Australian cops, if I have to generalize them, are fascist, racist and prejudiced fucking ****s.