Asking America’s Police Officers to Explain Abusive Cops

Very interesting article in the Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf (via Radley Balko’s morning links):

The radio show This American Life recently broadcast a number of stories on policing. They’re collected in the episodes “Cops See It Differently,” Part Oneand Part Two.

The episodes illuminate why police and their critics often see the same events very differently. For example, one anecdote concerns a man in the back of a police car who told his arresting officers that he was having trouble breathing. They ignored him. He died. Many who watched the video saw callous cops who placed no value on a human being’s life. But police officers who watched the same tape saw two cops who thought that their seemingly healthy arrestee was faking, as so many people fabricate medical conditions to avoid being taken to jail.

These differences in perspective are useful to understand, even if one…