Is Russian Police Bad?
Breaking Stereotypes…
The inevitable bias
In my experiences of asking questions about Russian’s impression towards russian police, so many people describe Russian police as monster or bad people. I asked them why, they said they treat people unfriendly, illegally catch people, or punishing people just for their own good.
But when I follow up the question and ask
“well… do you have these experiences by yourselves?”
Most of them say no, they get these impressions from friends
“cool… have you also asked your friend about what is the good part of Russian police?”
Most of them told me why should they do that they already heard that Russian police is bad
“But… Are you sure?”
A lot of times in our life we seek answers corresponding to our original belief, for example when we are tasting our favorite ice cream, instead of asking our friend how does the ice cream taste(neutral), we would ask
“Ice cream tastes good right?”(positive)
The flaw, the downside of asking biased question is that we create limitations and lure people to answer correspondingly to our “expectation”.
Nowadays, we have so many remnants of beliefs, in another words — stereotypes that influence our lives. These were true, and some might still be true in 2020, but the way for us to know the truth is to find the opposite side of our original belief.
“Try to debate our own belief to know the truth”
Next time instead of asking “police is bad in Russia right?” Try asking “how is your police experience in russia” And even though people answer you “russian police is bad”don’t take the answer as it is, but try to debate it by simply asking why and ask them
“is there any possibility that you’ve heard or experienced that russian police is good?”
In my experience Russian police treat me so good
Not only a retired young russian police show friendliness by letting me ask him questions on whatsapp, multiple times russian police also automatically ask if I need any help. Helping me cross over the road, hitchhike me to hostel, warning me to travel during covid19, showing me interesting places to visit.
It makes me realized…
Police is just a normal human who can be subjectively good or bad
Over 8 experiences of direct interaction with russian police, I realized that each of them has no difference from my russian host.
Shouting, being lazy , complaining, working, smoking, resting, laughing, all these things I saw it from host and police.
The mistake I’ve made is that I judged police “very bad” whenever hearing my russian friend told me “Russian police is lazy and likes to shout at people.”
But during introspection, I focusing on scrutinizing the judgment people gave to police “ lazy… shout at people…”
WAIT!
Isn’t everyone is doing it? Even the most perfect person do it sometimes.
So the argument about police are lazier or shout at people more often, welll ummmm….
It’s highly debatable
Unless we are truly focusing on observing Russian police, researching information about the difference between Russian police and other countries police, or measuring how much lazier, how frequent Russian police shout at people than normal people.
We cannot make conclusions just by listening or seeing something for 13 seconds.
If we see police are chatting loud, laughing — is it possible that they are just relaxing during work just like normal people? doest it mean they are being lazy?
If we see police shouting at people — is it possible that the person who is talking to police is behaving wrongly? we see them shouting at once does that mean they shouted once in 1 hour?
Policeman is Scapegoat
After asking so many Russian about their impression of Russian police, I realize a pattern.
Most of the people who are tired at the moment or seemingly unhappy at the moment tend to blame police or say something bad about police. On the other hand, people who are joyful and relaxing at the moment tend to say “ I don’t know actually, I never face with police before” or “I’ve heard Russian police is terrible,but I mean ultimately they are still helping us right?”
I learned from their answers that we tend to link our state of emotions to the perception we are having.
Is police the real trouble maker?
Or maybe it’s the state of ourselves, it’s our mentality that affects how things are?
Policeman can be people’s father mother or friend
I often heard Russian people say bad things about government, politician, president, police.
Once I have chances to talk with police, and people who work for government. I realized they are more like a “normal human being” than I thought.
I was so surprised that they are not as bad as my imagination. So I started to introspect.
“Ummmmmmm, what causes my imagination, what causes such a negative comment about police and government people?”
“Ahhh because of my surrounding, because friend, strangers that I’ve interviewed with, and my russian host usually has bad impression towards them”
And now instead of receiving information from television, friend’s conversation and internet, I focus on seizing the chances to directly talk to them. What is my realization after conversation?
None of this judgment, criticism can be found on them.
At least not as evil as people told me.
In fact, after talking to police, I started to admire them. Because a lot of them are people’s father, and hero. Several times police told me they don’t have the chance to spend time with their family because they are helping people from dangerous situation or helping people to filter out illegal “bad” people.
A lot of times the answer I get from asking “ how do you celebrate birthday. Do you celebrate with your family or friends?” Police often told me
“How the hell I could, most of the time I missed the chance to celebrate my birthday because of work, yeah I do celebrate, after 3 weeks later”
System problem
Once I asked my russian police friend Sergey. What do you think about people’s negative impression of Russian police.
Sergey told me: if people really follow the laws? Do we still need to exist?”
“But is it possible that law is too strict and old?” I replied
“Well, if that’s true then it’s not our problem isn’t it”
The conflict between Russian police and Russian people are the same as “narrow road problem in vladivastok”
Narrow road creates problem for both drivers. It’s not 1st driver’s fault to drive at this narrow road or intentionally block 2nd drivers way. It’s because vladivastok didn’t have this amount of driver before, so several years ago people needn’t build wide road.
It’s because the road is naturally too narrow that creates conflict!
Back to this example, maybe it’s “Law’s” problem, maybe some law should be updated by government, some even need to be deleted. Police is just the puppet, the instrument of goverednment to maintain the law.
If we want to solve the problem once and for all, it’s better to focus on the root system. In fact, I doubt everyone who doesn’t know about this concept, but often we still tend to blame the person — the police who is also the victim the negative consequence of system problem.
202009 eric(naruto) Fethiye
