Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to stephen clover,
Sure. I'm not suggesting that more women in the Force is the only solution. It's part of a number of things that need to change. If I don't even mention the potential benefits of females in the Force, then that leaves the argument Matthew was making of a certain drop in police quality completely unanswered. But feel free to dispute that females on the force might have a positive impact, or tell me what you think that positive impact would be that I missed. I'm sure there's plenty more things than the one I considered the most important - that they represent the society that they live in, that they bring a perspective to police decisions that has to date been mostly been solely the perspective of big men with crushing grips. Maybe that change of perspective is utterly unimportant, and all the women will be nut-crushing Uncle Toms too. I just don't think so.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Danielle,
In any case, throwing more women at the police force in order to “civilise” it isn’t really effecting culture change, is it?
Hard to say yet, the numbers are still way skewed towards men. See Fooman's link. I'm not much of a fan of quotas generally - I just think that the police force have testing that is highly skewed towards qualities men have, and I question the need for that. Firemen, not so much, but we're not talking about firemen.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I’m sure you’d be one of the first to cry foul if incidences of use of firearms or Tasers increased because officers were not required to meet such rigorous physical standards, but if you don’t have the strength the only alternative is to use a weapon.
I would be quite careful of making the connection between the physical standards and the Taser use. Also, weapon use is not the only other resort. Outnumbering is the main tool in the police arsenal.
Furthermore, we're talking about people who investigate rape complaints, here. That's not a job notorious for the requirement to grip 15 year old boys. It's about doing basic investigative work, which requires no strength at all. When it comes time to arrest some big violent bastards, then sure, call the goons who can crack walnuts with their fingertips, but you're overtalking how important that really is in a huge array of police work. Indeed you're missing the point that even being that kind of person gives you a very different perspective.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Men have to demonstrate 96kg, which is considerably more power; are you all up in arms about that?
I think it’s overkill that they need double the grip strength of a strong 17 year old man, yes.
Take away or reduce the physical testing because it makes people feel good, or lets people through a quota, or whatever, and there are actual, real consequences.
And there are actual real consequences of the testing too, the big reduction in the potential pool, and the exclusion of other qualities that could form far, far more of the day to day job of a cop. Of the cops I know, actually using their strength is piss all of their job, the way they tell it.
Perhaps another way of putting it would help. Clearly having a high IQ would also be of benefit to the police. When you need it you really, really need it. Being not quite smart enough has real consequences. Would it make sense that the average cop should be in the upper quartile for this quality? Should they be twice as smart as the average person, since they also need to be twice as strong?
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
Or will they feel the need to be more blokish than the blokes in order to ensure they have a career?
It's certainly not automatic that they wouldn't be. But so far as rape culture is concerned, I think they'd be less tolerant, just from a perspective thing. Our thoughts about sex are formed quite young, and I'd suggest men are more likely to simply see a rape complaint from a boy's point of view - "would it be reasonable to expect sex in this situation", whereas a woman will more likely have directly experienced the powerful desire to go out dressed nicely and to have fun, and maybe even have sex, if they consent at the time. Even if what happens is that when the coppers are discussing the interview the woman is putting it from someone who was themselves once a teenage girl, that would have a good impact on the decision making. I'm not suggesting men have a rape gene that they have to suppress, just that they have only one perspective, and it is the same one as vast majority of the perpetrators, and not that of the vast majority of the victims.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Matthew Poole,
when you need it you really need it
The question is: Is the need for it the overriding concern for the whole entry to the job? The same argument applies to carrying a gun - when you need a gun, you really need a gun. But that's still not a good enough argument to always carry a gun. Because when you don't need it, perhaps you shouldn't have it. And you can't take crushing grip strength away from people and lock it in a safe. It's something that can be used to hurt people constantly, and it's a really insidious kind of force - you can't really see how hard someone is being crushed or twisted, and there's always the argument that the person hurt themselves by resisting too much.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Quotas in a job which has legitimate physical demands can be really dangerous.
I think that’s overstated in the case of the police. Most of the job isn’t manhandling massive suspects to the ground after a parkour session. It’s going around talking to people, taking good notes, and filling out paperwork. For the violent stuff, they are armed with batons, tasers, pepper spray, body armor, handcuffs, and typically there are guns close at hand, although not usually worn. But they also have their most important four weapons – their radio, their eyes, and the power of their official position, and the fact that they are an army.
Indeed, the high regard the NZ police are held in compared to other nation’s forces comes down to their actual lack of OTT power. They don’t routinely kill people who aren’t a very serious threat. And such resentment as is held towards the police nowadays is often on their tendency to overuse brute force when it isn’t necessary, to manhandle handcuffed suspects, or beat them up more than necessary in the process of apprehension, to yell at them in a threatening way, always much more frightening coming from a big powerful man. Or to just be the kind of person you really don’t want to talk to because they’re scary people, the kind of person you don’t want to tell about having been raped because they themselves are reminding you of the rapist during the interview.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Dastardly Bounder,
Older men are an influence, but I think even bigger are the slightly older boys. At least that's how it was when I was a boy. Which is what a culture is all about. When the Roast Busters were 13, 14, 15 they'd have been getting cues from the older guys, they'd have been going to their parties and seeing them getting girls drunk, hearing them brag of conquests, and getting initiated themselves.
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Russell Brown,
I would not be surprised to find that the three others were somehow talked out of formal complaints.
It would be very interesting to hear how those interviews went. If they're anything like the one mentioned yesterday, then that's exactly what they were doing. To what extent are parents involved? The girl who spoke yesterday told her parents first, who took her to the police - was she interviewed in their presence? Or a lawyer? I can see there's some argument if the children come forward without their parents not to involve the parents if the children don't want that. And also, from a courtroom point of view, to not inform the victims about the other victims, to avoid the testimony becoming tainted.
But this puts every victim in their own private little powerless bubble of isolation, unsure that they might be the only one coming forward. Being a witness in a group is far less frightening, and victims can surely give each other emotional support, and can also spread word as a group to the other kids that might still be being targeted, to let them know what they're in for. Indeed, if they spoke together it might have even influenced the boys themselves - it's way easier to isolate and slut-shame one girl, but when a group of them are saying "don't go near those guys, they raped all of us", then they wouldn't be the cool bullies any more. The girl group supporting the boys might feel a whole lot less sure of themselves when they're 4 girls who actually don't know what happened against 4 girls who do.
I don't know how it works, but since the justice system seems to fail rape victims so badly, there is a strong case that at least putting complainants against the same perpetrator in touch with each other makes sense, just for harm prevention alone.
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Where did this come from, Ben? Not seeing it on stuff or the harold.
Sorry, should have linked
TRIGGER WARNING.
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