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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Warrior_Cop

Watch the short clip in https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/rcgkis/u... - American cops get shown Scottish cops' deescalation procedures, and they scoff at it.

"When you say preservation of life, it is… everybody's life. Ours has a pecking order. I'm just being honest."

I'm amazed at the number of people who are answering "this is just the way that it is in America".

I don't live in Adams County, but they are our direct neighbors here in rural southwest Ohio. We like Afroman over here. :)

I think the answer to your question is the warrant that they were serving involved kidnapping and an alleged torture dungeon along with drug trafficking charges. Yes, it may sound ridiculous on the surface, but an informant apparently testified to this and a judge approved it, so that's the warrant they were serving.

If one reads the warrant and considers the possibility that the testimony of the witness might have been true, then their show of force seems much less unreasonable.

Disconnecting his cameras? Stealing his money? That's absolutely not reasonable in any case. Afroman has a lot of support in our rural Ohio community, and we're all cheering for him. :)

American police are trained to be afraid. They escalate situations constantly. They're trained that every traffic stop is LIKELY their last.

I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.

#1 - He's Black.

#2 - That's how the police in America operate now; even for the most common interactions w/the public.

I know this may sound like I'm being an asshole, but I'm not.

Situational training is a joke (based in part on tactics developed in Israel/Occupied Palestine, i.e., for a literal military occupation), load-outs aren't designed around need but as a hand-out to our arms manufacturing industry (laundered through the military), and the cops involved in these sorts of raids are literally chosen to not be intellectually curious enough to question it.

I used to operate a firearms training system. To this day, I wish I'd stolen the videos that they use so that I can prove how ridiculously unprofessional and biased they are.

It's a country with a lot of guns. Police do regularly get shot at when raiding.

And police departments get sent videos of every officer death from around the country and regularly watch them for "training purposes". So it makes sense that they are in a constant state of paranoia.

Not a silly question. If you go back to the 2000s, you'll see the growing militarization of local police. This is partially an economic prop-up where the military can now sell police departments materials/arms/etc. and police departments can buy them. Thus the military needs more. Nice little situation they found.

At the same time as these departments getting more funding, it feels like most departments have decided its better to use taxpayer funds to settle court cases rather than train and be more selective.

One of my favourite little details in Jeeves and Wooster is that British cops are shown as bumbling fools who fit right in with the cast.

Meanwhile American police are consistently depicted as trigger happy, shooting at any minor provocation.

There's a reason we had a few years of heavy anti police protest across the US.

It’s disturbing. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I were pulled over and my window and door is closed. If I reach for the door handle will the cop think I’m reaching for gun? Do wait for him to scream at me through the window? How do I keep from things escalating? Is there a place in the US where the cops aren’t totally insane? SF? Santa Barbara? Maybe Marin County?

Not many people watch them, but there are countless videos of police stops where it's not the police drawing a gun, but the driver of the car pulled over. Often it's not just pulled- it's aimed and fired. Some cops die, thankfully many get hit in the arm and it's non fatal.

It happens so much in the United States that you honestly can't blame the vast majority of at least being ready. That's not saying there aren't cops that are TOO ready and unclip the holster just walking up to the car.

Yes. Kind of. Anything involving home invasion I’ve usually seen them go in like an occupying force. Including the time i called them because a small group was going around the neighborhood trying to break into houses. They show up with bullet proof vests and assault rifles at the ready and pull everyone out of their houses.

Let me outline how broken policing is an institution in the US:

1. Cops are generally stupid and untrained. You just had to watch them testify in the Afroman trial and you might think "geez these guys aren't the brightest bulbs". No, theyre not. But they are also the most average cops;

2. Cops are corrupt. They steal things all the time. "We miscounted the money". Yeah, right. You got got caught stealing;

3. Cops lie all the time. They'll lie on the stand. This happens so often there's a term for it: testilying [1];

4. Cops never go after other cops. In fact, you're generally punished or even killed for going after other cops. It's career suicide;

5. If, somehow, you get charged with a crime, you as a cop have rights the rest of us can only dream about. You're not allowed to interview the suspect for 24 hours. Their union rep must be there and so on. Enough time to get their story straight. Why don't we all have those same rights?

6. Cops aren't trained to de-escalate. They're only trained to escalate, lethally. Cops kill over 1000 people a year [2]. A pretty famous example is the murder of Sonya Massey [3]. Sonya was lethally shot for being near a pot of boiling water. This case was also quite rare because somebody went to jail;

7. Some departments go so far to essentially be gangs. One of the most famous examples is the LA Sheriff's Department [4];

8. Should a prosecutor actually go after a cop, it's typically career suicide. Prosecutors live and die by conviction stats. It's how they get promoted and seek judgeships and higher office. Why? Because for there other cases, their cop witnesses will start missing court dates or even changing their testimony so your cases get dismissed or found not guilty.

A lot of TV is what's called "copaganda". It typically paints police as competent, not corrupt, honorable and not at all the job most likely to commit domestic violence [5].

One exception to this is The Wire, which is a portrayal of institutional failure at virtually every level of American society. For bonus points, We Built This City [6].

It's a much deeper topic why it is this way but unsurprisingly the answer can be overly reduced to "racism" eg the origins of American law enforcement are in slave-catching.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury

[2]: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/policekillings_total.htm...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sonya_Massey

[4]: https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...

[5]: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Built_This_City

I'm not saying what they did was correct, but they were allegedly told that he had a drug operation and a kidnapping dungeon.

In Europe there's a maybe 0.1% chance that any random adult is carrying a firearm. And the vast majority of those are going to be rifles for hunting. In the US, it's more like a 3% chance. And firearms in the US tend to have higher capacity and higher rates of fire. Hence the default militaristic response from law enforcement. Or at least that's one of several reasons.

Considering this was a no-knock warrant, one of the probably causes being kidnapping (shady & possibly corrupt warrant in itself) where they broke down the doors, I'd say they expected some sort of gang activity or something.

A big part of being police is the cosplay of being in the army. Why do you think airsoft is so popular?

When you break into someone's home you want to be ready for people with guns shooting at you.

Politely giving them a few seconds of free shooting before you draw your guns is not a great survival strategy.

Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves.

If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it.

Instead they decided to sue, which made even bigger news. Here they could again have chosen "You know what, maybe this is counter-productive, lets settle/cancel it", and again probably people would have cared way less about it.

Instead, they go to court, make a bunch of exaggerated and outrageous claims, one officer apparently cried as well, all in a public court room that is being recorded, again making it a bigger thing.

Finally, Afroman wins the case, leading to this now seemingly making international news, and the videos continue racking up views.

I know cops aren't known for being smart, but I have to wonder who made them act like this, don't cops have lawyers who can inform them about what is a smart move vs not? Seems they almost purposefully and intentionally tried to help Afroman, since they basically made the "wrong move" at every chance they got.

Yes, but not limited to just that one. https://www.youtube.com/@ogafroman/videos

He also has other videos where he calls one of them a pedofile, questioning their gender (Licc'm low lisa) and more.

So, in the music video, the cops pretty clearly steal something (probably money, as alleged), and attempt to destroy evidence.

They’re facing charges too, right?

Right?

here appears to be his celebration of his victory, pretty catchy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8Ee6pcXvQ

Almost too good to be true. They didn't find large quantities of weed, and afroman had cameras set up and caught it on camera. I mean, talk about landing with your bum in the butter. His career just caught a major reboot.

This might be peak Streisand effect.

I think this all started with cake in the face of a cop not pie!

I love the Afroman story so much. Everything about it.

It does more to expose just how incompetent, entitled and corrupt the average cop really is, something I wish was better known. The cops who brought this suit are basically the biggest crybabies, are too dumb to realize it and too entitled to realize that others wouldn't see it that way. It's fantastic.

Compare this to policing in Japan [1]:

> Koban cops go to extraordinary lengths to learn their beats. They're required to regularly visit every business and household in their districts twice a year, ostensibly to hand out anti-crime flyers or ask about their security cameras. The owner of a coffee shop told Craft, "With Officer Sota, we can say what's on our mind. He's really like a neighbor. Instead of dialing emergency when we need help, we just call him."

American cops are a gang, by and large.

Cops have absolutely massive budgets, from small towns to big cities. Let's not forget Uvalde, where the police department budget was ~40% of the city budget and it resulted in 19 cops standing outside scared while one shooter kept shooting literal children for an hour. Because they were scared.

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walking-the-beat-in-japan-a-hea...

I wasn't gonna run from the cops...

Unfortunately Afroman is not particularly pro-freedom (big MAGA supporter). He seems to support certain rights for himself and not for others.

Hoping it wasn't the SWAT guys. Those guys go hard and everyone is a meth terrorist until zip tied on the floor and proven otherwise. They also tend to shoot your dog. =(

Or claiming you don't know what crime your brother was charged with that led him to resign from the same police department.

The ACLU called it a SLAPP lawsuit. If true, they probably didn't care if they won or not.

That said, going on stand when your opponent has proven they can and will use your words and actions against you in the court of public opinion is a... bold strategy.

>Going on the stand and stating that you "don't know" whether the allegedly defamatory statements you are suing over are true or not is a... bold legal strategy.

if the statement is true, that's a defense against defamation.

if the statement is not believable, that is also a defense against defamation.

it actually was legal strategy designed to dance around the legal strategy behind those questions being asked, taking the air out of your insult

That didn't seem like faux crying. Making fun of her in that way is the hardest to defend IMO, since it had nothing to do with her job performance or relevant character attributes. (E.g. how the other officer had been accused of stealing before, or had a brother resign from the force after being charged with a crime involving a minor).

That said, I don't disagree with outcome.

It is a crime, obviously. Things don't magically become crimes depending on the employer of the perpetrator - that's the whole point of "a nation of laws and not of men."

It's legal for you to arrest someone if you see them commit a felony. It's legal for you to arrest someone under a warrant if you are deputized by a Sheriff of the court (almost never happens, but legal). It's not legal for you, whether you are employed at a police agency or not, to vandalize someone's camera.

The term I learned for this yesterday is “crybully”.

This is not some footage issue, there apparently was a smear campaign online.

FTFA:

> After making the music video, Foreman allegedly continued putting up social media posts with names of the officers involved, the lawsuit states.

> Several of the posts allegedly falsely claimed that the cops “stole my money” and were “criminals disguised as law enforcement,” according to the suit.

> They also falsely stated that the officers are “white supremacists,” that Officer Brian Newman “used to do hard drugs” before “snitching” on his friends, and that Officer Lisa Phillips is “biologically male,” according to the lawsuit.

Civilians, in the middle of the forest: We want our privacy.

This flavor of police: You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place.

Afroman: Here’s a video of cops inside my home.

This flavor of police: Stop being mean!

I would’ve posted to say what I think, but I got high.

> wouldn't they normally bring drugs with them to plant?

Why do you think they were so annoyed at all the cameras?

I guess they assumed that a musician whose whole persona is built around weed would supply the evidence.

> Common enough to be a minor plot point in a current cop show...

You've reversed cause and effect. Cop shows don't base their plots on what is real, they base them on what people will believe is plausible.

Police, and government agents in general, should have no expectation of privacy when doing their job, period. If you have to hide your face then I don't trust you. And yes, that applies to all of ICE.

Yes. Here's an AP article:

https://apnews.com/article/afroman-police-raid-lawsuit-ohio-...

Yes, it's a pretty over the top paper. Feels like you're reading TMZ for stuff that didn't happen.

Yes, it's a right-wing tabloid. Our equivalent of the Daily Mail.

Tip from a “confidential informant”, I believe I read somewhere.

Nah its just that simple. Racism is still alive and well. Don't overthink this.

I've heard "Randy Walters is a son of a bitch, ooooh oooooh, uuh!" the entire day today after hearing the song yesterday, probably the most catchy one to come out of this whole story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4AiuqQpB1U

My mind went to K&P rap confession skit : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14WE3A0PwVs

I made this joke in another thread, but: I keep imagining Afromans court getup as the formal attire for American civil lawyers. Like robes and wigs, suits n ‘fros.

That it's the only type of justice you can ever hope to get in the US, if any at all?

Same. It was such low quality video and audio, but I stayed for the same reason you continue listening to a comedians story

Maybe he’s justifiably paranoid?

He got burglarized before, and got threatened with arrest after demanding police investigate. https://www.tmz.com/2022/08/22/afroman-home-raided-police-oh...

It's a small county with an extreme minority of black people, like a couple hundred or less. It's quite likely he had personally encountered some of these officers before, and almost certain they knew who he was. Within the realm of possibility he saw something like this coming. Small rural sheriff depts are astoundingly corrupt.

Arrests aren't abductions. You can't change the words and suddenly make criminals into victims.

The Constitution guarantees the right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects".

Which means what the Supreme Court says that it means. It's easy to imagine that it means something akin to what people mean by "privacy", but interpreting the Constitution is infinitely malleable so I don't have any idea what it means.

> If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws

Not that interesting. The US government cannot create copyrighted works. Works created by the government are public domain. This is why Ghidra (made by the NSA), for example, has a really odd license, where the parts written by the government are "not subject to U.S. copyright protections under 17 U.S.C.", whereas future contributions by the public are covered under the Apache license.

They don't have the emotional intelligence for that.

They got what they wanted.

Afroman is the exception that proves the rule.

If you aren't a platinum-selling rap star they will abuse you without recourse.

> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.

I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.

> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.

What? You have no idea what you are talking about.

> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.

What? There's lots of antifacist/rather left-wing music that heavily critizes the police and their work. Usually not the one police officer himself but rather the institution as being part of a state who behaves injust (is that a word? non-native here...). I think that's fine and is part of a democratic system.

This wasn’t a 1A case, it was a civil defamation suit. He won because they failed to prove defamation, NOT because the judge threw out the lawsuit because of a violation of constitutional rights.

Separately: saying something shitty or unpopular that you disagree with isn’t someone abusing their rights to free expression. Expressing unpopular viewpoints that others consider abusive is exactly the point of such rights.

There’s a REALLY BIG reason it isn’t “freedom of expression, except for expressing racial hatred”, and it’s not because we like racism. Germany sometimes bans entire political parties that they declare unconstitutional. Now imagine that power in the hands of Trump. You can see what Putin did to Navalny for a preview.

When he started reversing the video around lemon pound cake I really thought the officer was backing up to take a piece lol

I highly recommend watching the video that made the other cop cry.

Well, he probably interacts with them on a daily/weekly basis, or at least other people from their department, and probably don't want to end up on their bad side.

In the end, justice and freedom of expression seems to have prevailed, so doesn't really matter what the judge think/thought in the end.

It's important to remember to thank them for their service.

Yes.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/entertainment/afroman-lawsuit...

Including internationally:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq57557d6p6o

It works here because it isn't a pleasant song about Ohio.

> naming them is perhaps invasion of privacy?

No. The President of the United states is Donald Trump. His address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his phone number is 202-456-1414.

> Lying however would be slander and illegal…

They couldn't prove he did.