In the USA this is a great way to get shot.

put a knee in the back and pepper spray the face next time

"Drink-driving" would be a man cruising around in a giant martini glass. The phrase those boer jabbos are looking for is drunk driving.

brothajahn: put a knee in the back and pepper spray the face next time

A fistfull of Kosher salt in the face works every time.

"The self-employed family man called 10111, the South African equivalent of 999,"

Well, that's easier to remember than 0118 999 881 999 119 725

Three

Ya know, this was one of the first me-cop interactions as a pseudo-adult I ever had. At 16, pulled over and ticketed for trying to get out of the way of a drunk cop in an unmarked that was yawing back and forth, clipping the curbs on both sides.

And when I say drunk, this guy couldn't walk without holding on the car drunk. Slip sliding drunk. Eyes not following head motions without a lag drunk. Knees occasionally buckling a little drunk.

So, of course, I did my duty, went to the cop station (this was before cell phones) and said, "Officer Whassname is drunk off his ass, driving around in that puke green Dodge unmarked, bumping into stationary objects" At which point the desk sergeant looked at me, motioned for a few of his confederates, grabbed me, marched me out of sight of the rest of the paying customers, slammed me into the wall and said "Old whassname's got a problem with that. And one more complaint and he loses his job. He's my friend, so instead of letting you file that complaint, I'm going to make up something, arrest you for it, and chuck you in a cell with a guy that would just love to make your acquaintance" and then he popped me one, then offered to let me get up and leave or try filing a complaint on either him or Whassname.

That sort of set my expectation of cops. I consider it to have been a valuable educational experience, and I keep it in mind whenever dealing with them.

Good.

HotWingAgenda: "Drink-driving" would be a man cruising around in a giant martini glass. The phrase those boer jabbos are looking for is drunk driving.

Not in SA or the UK.

You don't have to be drunk to be over the legal alcohol limit for driving.

Hence DUI, rather than driving drunk.

erewhon: Ya know, this was one of the first me-cop interactions as a pseudo-adult I ever had. At 16, pulled over and ticketed for trying to get out of the way of a drunk cop in an unmarked that was yawing back and forth, clipping the curbs on both sides.

And when I say drunk, this guy couldn't walk without holding on the car drunk. Slip sliding drunk. Eyes not following head motions without a lag drunk. Knees occasionally buckling a little drunk.

So, of course, I did my duty, went to the cop station (this was before cell phones) and said, "Officer Whassname is drunk off his ass, driving around in that puke green Dodge unmarked, bumping into stationary objects" At which point the desk sergeant looked at me, motioned for a few of his confederates, grabbed me, marched me out of sight of the rest of the paying customers, slammed me into the wall and said "Old whassname's got a problem with that. And one more complaint and he loses his job. He's my friend, so instead of letting you file that complaint, I'm going to make up something, arrest you for it, and chuck you in a cell with a guy that would just love to make your acquaintance" and then he popped me one, then offered to let me get up and leave or try filing a complaint on either him or Whassname.

That sort of set my expectation of cops. I consider it to have been a valuable educational experience, and I keep it in mind whenever dealing with them.

I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police. In the UK there is a very low level of police corruption and an Independent Police Complaints Commission to deal with complaints and who investigate every incident where the involvement of the police has led to death or serious injury, or where a weapon has been discharged.

Pert: I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police. In the UK there is a very low level of police corruption and an Independent Police Complaints Commission to deal with complaints and who investigate every incident where the involvement of the police has led to death or serious injury, or where a weapon has been discharged.

There's a reason why you only hear these stories on Fark. The US has a very low level of corruption, too.

HotWingAgenda: The US has a very low level of corruption, too.

I disagree. I live in Mississippi. Recently, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against one of our counties because they were running a school-to-prison pipeline program. Kids were being put in jail for minor things, such as violating the dress code. I guarantee you someone was getting kickbacks for it -- and they'll never see the inside of a federal prison.

And who could forget this judge from a different state who got bribes for sentencing teens to juvenile detention unnecessarily? Happens all over.

Pert: I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police. In the UK there is a very low level of police corruption and an Independent Police Complaints Commission to deal with complaints and who investigate every incident where the involvement of the police has led to death or serious injury, or where a weapon has been discharged.

I find it amazing too, but I reckon it's similar enough over here. My mum worked for the foreign office and quit because no one would do anything about some pretty serious offences she witnessed, including policemen pissing on a suspect. Okay that was a long time ago and hopefully things have changed but when I was hit over the head by a policeman and his massive truncheon, ooh err missus, my lawyer went through the police complaints dept to try and get the CCTV footage, of which it clearly would have been on, as it was right in front of some cameras, but they said "sorry, that might get the police in trouble". It was 12 years ago now, I can't remember the exact excuse, but it was ridiculous. Something about not letting us have it in case it put any other policemen at risk of being in legal trouble. That was after they gave us the wrong tape to begin with.

Then you have that guy a few years ago, a policeman killed the guy in the wheelchair, you just have to look at the lengths the police went to to try and sweep that one away without taking any serious action. It's all the same culture of protecting their colleagues. It has permeated into the body that is supposed to watch over the police.

I will say this though, stories I read on Fark make me think that if I see a cop in America I should cross the road and not make eye contact, but I feel quite safe talking to police in England, despite being hospitalised by one.

Pert: I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police.

What sort of action would you suggest?

tinfoil-hat maggie: Yeah, all of the above in the US you don't mess with cops ever.

These kinds of comments would be more sensible were TFA not talking about south farking africa. A decade or two ago, the kind of shiat we say about American cops to make a hyperbolic point witha silly, over-the-top pseudo-example would, applied to South Africa, have not have been funny in the slightest, since they'd have been an understatement of the literal truth.

So, I'm glad their shiat has been improved dramatically, is what I'm saying, I guess. More power to 'em.

Pert: I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police. In the UK there is a very low level of police corruption and an Independent Police Complaints Commission to deal with complaints and who investigate every incident where the involvement of the police has led to death or serious injury, or where a weapon has been discharged.

People in the US would undoubtedly do something about that type of corruption if it did, indeed, exist.

HotWingAgenda
There's a reason why you only hear these stories on Fark. The US has a very low level of corruption, too.

I'll play. Police corruption is a specific index. United States is 19th in the world. Better then average, but scores poor compared to Europe.
Link

Click on this for stories that can't develop enough rage for the Fark because they are so typical.
Link

I would like see such an index for law enforcement and can begin how to mash those numbers together when comparing the functions of police in other countries with other social rules.

generallyso: Pert: I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police.

What sort of action would you suggest?

Your a democracy arn't you? Start at the ballot box. If none of the current polititions want to do anything about it run yourself.

HindiDiscoMonster: I hate to break this to you sunshine, but Andy Griffith is not real.

Yes. And neither is the reality that Pert lives in. The truth lies in between.

This was a great story and all. But I couldn't get by the ads for the Jennifer Love Hewitt getting neked!!
That was far more interesting. And it's about goddam time!!

Let's see how well that works in the US...

NSFW language link

For some reason, the story I had in my head when I read the headline had the drunk in the back seat handcuffing the cop taking him to the drunk tank to his own patrol car. Best part being there was video of all this going on.

Disappointed again.

HideAndGoFarkYourself: You were 16, did you go home and tell mom and dad how you got the fat lip/black eye, etc??  Did you happen to telephone the county sheriff's office to file a report, or the state police?

I buy a lot, but i'm not buying your story.  Some of it may be factual, like being pulled over by a drunk cop and being given a ticket, but there's no way your story went down as written.  None.

It's certainly farktual though

Norfolking Chance: Your a democracy arn't you?

No but I'll let that comment pass.

Norfolking Chance: Start at the ballot box. If none of the current polititions want to do anything about it run yourself.

Are you going to loan me $30 million to run a campaign?

Maybe you should drive: HindiDiscoMonster: I hate to break this to you sunshine, but Andy Griffith is not real.

Yes. And neither is the reality that Pert lives in.

I know it's hard to believe, but the UK is real. I've seen it. People live there.

NephilimNexus: In the USA this is a great way to get shot.

Also in South Africa, but that just shows how wasted the officer really was. RTA, the officer had pulled a gun earlier that same evening at a nightclub. Mr. George took his time and picked his moment right. I am sure Mr. George made sure the gun wasn't on the officer before grabbing him.

Maybe you should drive: HindiDiscoMonster: I hate to break this to you sunshine, but Andy Griffith is not real.

Yes. And neither is the reality that Pert lives in. The truth lies in between.

What, the reality where people on Fark keep talking about police corruption? Or the one where the UK has various safeguards in place against it?

generallyso: Pert: I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police.

What sort of action would you suggest?

Make it a political issue, allow anonymous reporting of incidents, set up a task force or body with nationwide jurisdiction and a mandate to tackle it, pass legislation that protects whistleblowers...

You know, something rather than nothing.

If it is actually a problem...

So its now safer to do the right thing in Africa than in your home town USA. Thanks, cops.

erewhon: Ya know, this was one of the first me-cop interactions as a pseudo-adult I ever had. At 16, pulled over and ticketed for trying to get out of the way of a drunk cop in an unmarked that was yawing back and forth, clipping the curbs on both sides.

And when I say drunk, this guy couldn't walk without holding on the car drunk. Slip sliding drunk. Eyes not following head motions without a lag drunk. Knees occasionally buckling a little drunk.

So, of course, I did my duty, went to the cop station (this was before cell phones) and said, "Officer Whassname is drunk off his ass, driving around in that puke green Dodge unmarked, bumping into stationary objects" At which point the desk sergeant looked at me, motioned for a few of his confederates, grabbed me, marched me out of sight of the rest of the paying customers, slammed me into the wall and said "Old whassname's got a problem with that. And one more complaint and he loses his job. He's my friend, so instead of letting you file that complaint, I'm going to make up something, arrest you for it, and chuck you in a cell with a guy that would just love to make your acquaintance" and then he popped me one, then offered to let me get up and leave or try filing a complaint on either him or Whassname.

That sort of set my expectation of cops. I consider it to have been a valuable educational experience, and I keep it in mind whenever dealing with them.

Well, it's good that you set that bar low at an early age. It saves you from the depression of having to realize it over several decades.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall not be disappointed....

Pert: erewhon: Ya know, this was one of the first me-cop interactions as a pseudo-adult I ever had. At 16, pulled over and ticketed for trying to get out of the way of a drunk cop in an unmarked that was yawing back and forth, clipping the curbs on both sides.

And when I say drunk, this guy couldn't walk without holding on the car drunk. Slip sliding drunk. Eyes not following head motions without a lag drunk. Knees occasionally buckling a little drunk.

So, of course, I did my duty, went to the cop station (this was before cell phones) and said, "Officer Whassname is drunk off his ass, driving around in that puke green Dodge unmarked, bumping into stationary objects" At which point the desk sergeant looked at me, motioned for a few of his confederates, grabbed me, marched me out of sight of the rest of the paying customers, slammed me into the wall and said "Old whassname's got a problem with that. And one more complaint and he loses his job. He's my friend, so instead of letting you file that complaint, I'm going to make up something, arrest you for it, and chuck you in a cell with a guy that would just love to make your acquaintance" and then he popped me one, then offered to let me get up and leave or try filing a complaint on either him or Whassname.

That sort of set my expectation of cops. I consider it to have been a valuable educational experience, and I keep it in mind whenever dealing with them.

I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police. In the UK there is a very low level of police corruption and an Independent Police Complaints Commission to deal with complaints and who investigate every incident where the involvement of the police has led to death or serious injury, or where a weapon has been discharged.

The Birmingham Six would like a word. There's been plenty of other more recent cases, but that one came to mind first.

For the record, any time I travel in the States, I react like I'm in a police state, particularly with TSA morons, county cops and DEA types. Then I laugh uproariously when Fox talks about "freedom" and "liberty". Americans have sacrificed that for the illusion of security, and aren't even aware of it.

Yeah, I would prefer to be trollin' here, but it's a huge blind spot I can see from my country.

There was a couple of storys here in San Antonio recently. A cop tried to solicit a $500 bribe from some guy to make a marijuana possession charge not happen. He refused and later called the FBI, who ran a sting on the cop and caught him. Another SAPD cop was recently charged and jailed for DUI too... so its not all bad news, sometimes these pigs get punished.

HotWingAgenda: Pert: I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police. In the UK there is a very low level of police corruption and an Independent Police Complaints Commission to deal with complaints and who investigate every incident where the involvement of the police has led to death or serious injury, or where a weapon has been discharged.

There's a reason why you only hear these stories on Fark. The US has a very low level of corruption, too.

Sadly it's absolutely true. No hype, no CSB.

HideAndGoFarkYourself: Pert: erewhon: Ya know, this was one of the first me-cop interactions as a pseudo-adult I ever had. At 16, pulled over and ticketed for trying to get out of the way of a drunk cop in an unmarked that was yawing back and forth, clipping the curbs on both sides.

And when I say drunk, this guy couldn't walk without holding on the car drunk. Slip sliding drunk. Eyes not following head motions without a lag drunk. Knees occasionally buckling a little drunk.

So, of course, I did my duty, went to the cop station (this was before cell phones) and said, "Officer Whassname is drunk off his ass, driving around in that puke green Dodge unmarked, bumping into stationary objects" At which point the desk sergeant looked at me, motioned for a few of his confederates, grabbed me, marched me out of sight of the rest of the paying customers, slammed me into the wall and said "Old whassname's got a problem with that. And one more complaint and he loses his job. He's my friend, so instead of letting you file that complaint, I'm going to make up something, arrest you for it, and chuck you in a cell with a guy that would just love to make your acquaintance" and then he popped me one, then offered to let me get up and leave or try filing a complaint on either him or Whassname.

That sort of set my expectation of cops. I consider it to have been a valuable educational experience, and I keep it in mind whenever dealing with them.

I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police. In the UK there is a very low level of police corruption and an Independent Police Complaints Commission to deal with complaints and who investigate every incident where the involvement of the police has led to death or serious injury, or where a weapon has been discharged.

You were 16, did you go home and tell mom and dad how you got the fat lip/black eye, etc??  Did you happen to telephone the county sheriff's office to file a report, or the state police?

I buy a lot, but i'm not buying your story.  Some of it may be factual, like being pulled over by a drunk cop and being given a ticket, but there's no way your story went down as written.  None.

Sorry, but this one's literal. And it was to the gut. And no I wasn't going to tell my Dad either. There wasn't any good path through that one.

HotWingAgenda: Pert: I see these stories on Fark all the time and am always amazed that people in the US don't do something about corruption and incompetence in the police. In the UK there is a very low level of police corruption and an Independent Police Complaints Commission to deal with complaints and who investigate every incident where the involvement of the police has led to death or serious injury, or where a weapon has been discharged.

There's a reason why you only hear these stories on Fark. The US has a very low level of corruption, too.

It does not. It is just well hidden.

HideAndGoFarkYourself: You were 16, did you go home and tell mom and dad how you got the fat lip/black eye, etc?? Did you happen to telephone the county sheriff's office to file a report, or the state police?

I buy a lot, but i'm not buying your story. Some of it may be factual, like being pulled over by a drunk cop and being given a ticket, but there's no way your story went down as written. None.

You should understand we're not talking last year. This was 1978 in the rural South, about half my relatives are LEOs of some ilk, and I was a mid-teen who innately trusted cops. You didn't hear about all the crap going on like you do today. YOUR expectations are different than mine were. We were brought up on Officer Friendly. My dad did make a repeated point that you couldn't trust cops the way you could MPs, but at 16, it was pretty much all the same to me. You had a problem, you went to a cop and they fixed it. Maybe that seems stupid to you now, but we didn't have cell phones, nor recording devices, nor did the mass media present cops in a bad light, ever. So my level of expectation was that they were knights sans peur et sans reproche.

So I went up there thinking, hey, they should know this, they'll get the guy off the street. Instead, what I got was a series of body shots to my basic assumptions - one, the guy acted like it was MY fault, and attacked me. And not only him, but a group of them. And they weren't concerned that it was true or not, they knew the guy patrolled drunk, but they were going to not only ignore it, they were going to ruin my life to keep him doing it. The fact that making up some crap and tossing me in a cell was a thing they'd even consider had never crossed my mind.

I wasn't mad, I was farking crushed. I not only didn't report it, I didn't tell anyone for years. These days, I don't expect anything good to come of any interaction with a cop, and my reaction would be different. But back then, it was like finding Santa raping your 5 year old sister. I couldn't have been more taken off guard.