In video of the April 18 encounter, Frank Tyson can be seen lying motionless on the floor of a bar for more than 5 minutes before police check him for a pulse.
The Canton Police Department in Ohio has released body camera video from the night a 53-year-old man died after he repeatedly told officers “I can’t breathe” as he was handcuffed with his hands behind his back and he was pinned to the ground.
In video of the encounter on April 18, the man, Frank Tyson, can be seen lying motionless on the floor of a bar for more than 5 minutes before police check him for a pulse and about 8 minutes before CPR is started.
In the nearly 36-minute video, police respond to the scene of a single-car crash to find a downed power pole and an unoccupied vehicle with the driver’s side door open and an airbag deployed.
Because the power of inflicting pain without consequences is the main reason why most people become cops.
I don’t believe that for a second. People get into policing for all kinds of reasons. But the common denominator is that the barrier to entry is very low these days, and they expect to be hiring people with intelligence below a certain level. It has been explicitly stated as such by a number of police departments around the country.
When your entire workforce is filled with grunts just following orders they don’t generally have the best critical thinking skills.
Are there some people who get into it for the reason you mentioned, probably. But, if you think everybody joining the police is doing it for that reason, you’re sorely mistaken.
Totally agree police departments need better candidates but that intelligence thing is not true at all. The one case that started that rumor was just a police department doing age discrimination against a candidate, and covering their asses in the lawsuit by using intelligence because it’s not a protected class. It was never about intelligence - it was age discrimination.
What police departments need is better training, a smaller mandate (i.e., mental health professionals need to be called to those types of events), and a big enough cultural change that normal people at least consider doing the job, like firefighters.