About Police Shootings (in America, Duh)

if i have an objection to the conversation about police violence, it is that its being framed in such a way as to suggest that the problem is that white cops are getting away with shooting non white suspects who simply shouldnt be killed given the circumstances

the reality that i see is that american cops have a culture of US Vs THEM and that anyone who does not instantly submit to their dominance must to overpowered forcefully because you know, they are the police. its not like they work for you or anything

in fact, despite the popular slogan, they dont even have to protect you

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/subway-stabbing-victim-sue-city-cops-didn-stop-attack-article-1.1409451

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

while minorities may be the victims of police violence more often than whites, and while racism is undeniably a relevant factor in that, its not the only or imo even the primary factor
now, thats my opinion, and i understand that others disagree and why

all that being said, this is an excellent video on the subject and one that shows respect for all sides and opens the dialogue in a way that i personally found to be pretty tactful

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tP0awqth0XI

the cops where i live changed their slogan from "serving pasco" to "we fight as one"

they have a billboard campaign that says: "if you're selling drugs, we'll be knocking" and it depicts their swat team in full battle gear including shields...

they just recently spent $500,000 on an armored assault vehicle when they never had need of one before

their patches took on a military look as did their uniforms...

in miami the police do target training using photos of mostly black inmates....so they're subconsciously being trained to shoot at people that look a certain way....

law enforcement has become militarized...and they see most of society as the enemy...

OB1Shinobi wrote: the reality that i see is that american cops have a culture of US Vs THEM

With respect, I see that just as much from the citizens toward the cops, even when the police have performed their jobs well.

The whole situation needs healing.

Snowy Aftermath wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: the reality that i see is that american cops have a culture of US Vs THEM

With respect, I see that just as much from the citizens toward the cops, even when the police have performed their jobs well.

The whole situation needs healing.

i agree with you that the whole sitiation needs healing

and im ok with starting from the premise that police are generally good people, who are doing a difficult, dangerous, and under appreciated job

that it is a job vital to the well being of society is obvious

but if the problems are that police are getting away with killing citizens on the one hand, and citizens dont trust police on the other, i think we need to deal with the first part first

no healing can begin until that happens

if cops stop killing american citizens unnessarily (or at least if it just doesnt happen every few days) then maybe we can build a case that citizens should cut them some more slack

i consider myself pro police in the sense that when these things happen, i always want to review the details and say "yeah i would have shot him too"
often i do say that, but way way too often i cannot, and that is the bigger problem

Police lives matter... black lives matter, division creates division. Police behaviour will be dictated by nature of the realistically expected threat. If everyone has a gun, then they are going to behave different then if hardly anyone has one. If everyone has a few carbines, then they are going to go to another level again. I don't think a country can have freedom with weapon access and a passive Police, as the Police need to expect the worst. Those realities aside, it seems the training or procedures are insufficient, and so therefore so is the management. But ya gotta target the problem and worry less about 'reach', as it will never seem like others feel your own pain so don't use that as a main metric.

RyuJin wrote: law enforcement has become militarized...and they see most of society as the enemy...

What bugs me is that the narrative of supposed problems is false.

Take the BLM movement, started on the premise that police are killing innocent blacks at alarming rates with impunity. The liberal media pushes the false narrative while Obama and others fan the flames of racial tension and next thing you know, low information types, black and white, believe the nonsense. Now the UN is coming out and declaring so called systemic and institutional racism in America, wow which makes me think that this was all allowed to get out of control as a pretext for something else.

In 2014 of all blacks killed, 4% were killed by police officers.

Of all blacks killed, unarmed blacks killed by police officers you ask ? 0.6%

From 1980 to 2008 93% of blacks killed were killed by other blacks.

Blacks are 6x more likely than non blacks to commit a murder.

Blacks are 12 x more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.

2013 there were 660,000 interracial crimes commited (white on black/black on Asian/white on Hispanic/black on white/etc..) of those, blacks were the prepetrators of the crime 85% of the time meaning a black is 27 times more likely to commit a crime against a white person than a white on a black person.

NYC 2014, blacks are arrested at a rate 31x higher than whites for murder.

NYC 2014, Blacks are arrested for discharging a firearm in all types of scenarios at a rate 98% higher than whites.

All this emenates from 13.2% of the population.

It goes on and on and on, facts are flipped on their head to fit a narrative. It's funny how all the time you're hearing 'right wing extremist' and all that nonsense, but in fact the radical left is much more violent and has always been more violent throughout history. BLM is a democrat movement.

Anyways, I used to be a lot more anti-LEO than I am now. I came from a small town and most of them were ex-military and they followed the laws to the letter and vacuumed up as much money as they could pulling or busting anyone for anything they could. They'd be in our business all the time as kids, always stopping to ask us who we were, what we're doing and where we're going. There was nothing going on in our small town though and that's why I didn't like them.

Moving to northern CA things are much different, you've got crazy drugged out vagrants roaming the streets panhandling during they day and doing breaking and entry at night. There's gangs and cartel activity, a lot more domestic violence and a lot more natural disaster situations like wildfires, earthquakes and hillslides covering the main roads. Their job is tough and they make the sacrifice for the general well being of the population. Granted they don't have to protect me, but I'm not relying on them to do so.

You see a lot of these shootings become a one sided story, the BLM will chant 'he dindu nuffin!' over and over, but a lot of those 'innocet good guys' have a known criminal history, on drugs, or were felons in possession of a weapon, and just knowing the statistics above is justification to be very careful in these close encounters with potentially dangerous criminals. That is not racism, that is common sense. Some of the police killings are definitely ridiculous and uncalled for, but the victims are not a victim of police brutality they are a victim of their own community's self demise in a sense and it's very sad.

OB1Shinobi wrote: if i have an objection to the conversation about police violence, it is that its being framed in such a way as to suggest that the problem is that white cops are getting away with shooting non white suspects who simply shouldnt be killed given the circumstances

the reality that i see is that american cops have a culture of US Vs THEM and that anyone who does not instantly submit to their dominance must to overpowered forcefully because you know, they are the police. its not like they work for you or anything

in fact, despite the popular slogan, they dont even have to protect you

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/subway-stabbing-victim-sue-city-cops-didn-stop-attack-article-1.1409451

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html

while minorities may be the victims of police violence more often than whites, and while racism is undeniably a relevant factor in that, its not the only or imo even the primary factor
now, thats my opinion, and i understand that others disagree and why

all that being said, this is an excellent video on the subject and one that shows respect for all sides and opens the dialogue in a way that i personally found to be pretty tactful

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tP0awqth0XI

Police job in America is very hard and very dangerous. Many people dont respect authorities, many play pranks and test the police just by fun.... In a country where weapons are alowed many cops die in action, so they shoot first and ask later. Is that right? NO. But first USA needs to change the laws against weapons. Living as a police is not easy and as i said very dangerous in countries like USA.

I think it's quite simple: If one builds up such an army, then one will be looking for opportunities to use it. If one's running a hospital, one will see that the beds are full. If one's running a school, then one will see that the classes are full. And if one is running a police department, then (from the perspective of modern meritocracy), one will see that the officers and equipment are "at work", whatever the prevailing definition will be: ticket quotas, arrestings, crimes generated and "solved". The same goes for the insane private jail business. They need inmates for their cheap labour factories to be profitable.

That whole system has become nuts, feeding back on itself, losing the purpose of the police in the first place. To add on it, it has been hijacked by the interests of a few (say the 1%), because the definition is that police protect *property*. Whoever has the most property, by that logic, needs to be protected most. Most people with little money have no property, but pay to use other's property just to be able to sustain their life, thus the proprietors have to be protected from them. That's a proprietory police logic. Following that narrative, one gets all sorts of in-group and out-group biases that create "us and them". Some parts of black society (but also others, of course), anybody prone to systematic poverty, falls into several of such categrories: Using other's property, the self-feeding bias of crime statistics, some real racial prejudice that still exists (and if it's just a remaining "Ah, I am not quite sure..."), and leading a life with little comfort which is prone to alleviating with some weed every now and then.

Since criminalizing the latter, which was an effective outlet that is expected to be used in such a setting, it is also to be expected that the societal pressure will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy: Of course the samsaric rooting is aggravated in such a situation. How should it be any different. Nervous systems react. Provoke them enough, that builds tension in the system. Then one can wait with battle robots until somebody can no longer handle the crap they're given, shoot them down, and celebrate oneself as a savior.

Prejudice, from a pschological standpoint, will prevail if it is not utterly fought against at every instant, because it is the human brain default. To overcome it needs education. If one's training a police or military to "follow orders", that means uneducating them. Along with that, they become more prone to prejudice. One cannot be so blind not to see that. Apparently that is tolerated as long as those low wagers execute other people's orders. Maybe one could say that the Taylorization of society, in the case of police, leads to increase of prejudice, because one recruits less educated people into specialized teams.

We should really find back to a different understanding of what police should stand for. Right now, they could maybe defend the poor people from the shit they're experiencing day in day out. That's the big problem of society, and if police shall play a role in keeping it together, that should be a substantial part of the mission.

Best
Kc

It's more important now than ever that we, as Jedi, set the example for others to follow. We are ambassadors of peace, tolerance, and patience.

My biggest concern is the future of law enforcement. We shed a bad light on LEO, we make them out to be the "bad guy", then who is going to want to be one? I get paid $8.60/hour as a Police Officer, that is about $56/day take home.

With the ever increasing liability law suits against officers, not departments, you have to get insurance or your personal assets can be taken away for even the most minor mistake in a "routine" traffic stop.

More and more I am hearing Officers doubting. "Is what I do worth it?" "Maybe I should do something else." It takes a special person to do the job, and we are making harder to keep the good ones.

Who is going to want to be a Police Officer in say 10 years? Then what are we going to do?

If the Police force quits, down sizes or does not recruit new people, how are we going to have any LEO out there?

The big toys that some Police departments are getting are excessive. If they need those huge vehicles then they should call the National Guard. We have created a monster with SWAT/SOG.

Of course having a divided country with an "us vs them" mindset, you need Law Enforcement to keep the peace, but that escalates the situation when one of the "us vs them" IS Law Enforcement.

Can we stop referring to black people as 'blacks'. it seems kind of derogatory and my girlfriend hates being referred to as 'a black' she prefers black person. Like Jewish people are jewish people not 'jews'

Ok I was going to avoid this thread because I tend to get annoyed by the standards of both sides of these arguments but to heck with it I gotta test my resolve to remain calm and patient some how right? So I am going to try to make this a level post as both sides are wrong with a huge capital W.

Ok lets start with the authority figures as they ought to be held to harsher standers considering the powers that we grant them. First of all cops need to learn the law and get better training. Why do I say this? Because cops seem to not get very much hand to hand training nor do they seem to know what is legal or illegal. I have seen time and again cops giving out poor legal advice or saying things that are false. Now I know that there are literally hundreds of thousands of laws on the books so how can you know them all? Well fact is that you cant. But you ought to know the laws you are trying to enforce. If you cant paraphrase the code you might want to get a second opinion or think twice before busting someone.

Secondly cops need to stop coming into situations so aggressively. Ill give a personal experience: When I got home from the military I was still on Japan time. So at 2 its 3pm Japan time and I am thirsty and cant sleep. I decide to go for a walk to get a soda or iced tea from the local 24 hour gas station. Half way there I get side swiped without so much as a hello right into a fence. I was going to start fighting as I thought I was getting jumped but I felt the cops shoulder mike hit me and realized who had me. I was then held with my hands on the fence after a pat down and the cop demanded to know who I was and why I was there. I told him the truth and got grilled for another few minutes because this cop assumed that me a well dressed white boy could not be in the ghetto that late other then to buy or sell drugs. Finding nothing suspicious with my words and having felt nothing during the pat down he could search me for he let me go. That soured me on my home town police as it was going to prove to be typical of how they treat people.

Had that cop told me to stop and let him see my hands and spoke to me like a person I would have left that situation just fine and probably even emptied my pockets for him just to put his mind at ease. But no I was treated like a criminal before I was even said hi to and judged based on my skin color and the location. That leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths and cops must fight against it. Now do not get me wrong that officer might have been typical of the local PD but there are still some great guys such as the police Sargent that handled the fact that they were responding to my home invasion call knowing I had a firearm with a very calm and pleasant demeanor. They asked to know where my firearm was just so they felt safe ( well he did two others that he silence started to speak to me like I was a criminal but he took care of it) and then spoke to me to make sure I didn't get hurt by the guy that broke in and generally treated me with respect. That man softened my views and I called the department to tell his boss that he was a credit to them. (something we should all do, if we are going to be critical we should at least give praise where it is due or where is the incentive to behave better?)

Cops hand to hand and weapons retention training from everything I know and see is poor at best. It needs to be upped. This means less money for military gear and more money for more cops and training so that they can work on being more active in the communities and better able to handle less then lethal threats without fear because they know they have good training and good back up. Some of that is on the cops to demand those things and the other side is on the citizens to demand that our money go less to fancy military toys for the cops and more to the training and man power that they need.

Now on to the citizens. When there is a shooting I always hear foolish statements of shoot them in the hand or leg or use a taser it was just a knife. Im sorry but if people are going to speak on these things you must be educated on what the proper use of force is and what proper training is. This is not the movies you are not going to hit a small moving target like a leg or hand under stress while both you and the target are moving during a lethal scuffle. Im sorry but that is a fact. No one but some of the best shots in the world could pull it off and if you are shooting your gun you cannot miss. You cant miss for two reasons the first is that one shot might be all you get and if you miss you could die. The second is any miss puts innocent people at risk of harm from that stray round. Further both the arms and the legs have huge arteries in them that will cause you to bleed out and die just as surely as a shot to a vital organ. So its not even any safer for you really.

Saying that its just a knife or bat and to use OC spray or a taser ignores how those tools work. OC spray takes a minute to kick in and tasers can miss or fail (things like a poor connection or thick clothing can defeat them). If a person is within 21 feet the rule is that they can close the gap and do damage before the average man can draw and fire their gun. That means if this cops misses that bat or knife is now on top of them and it only takes one good hit to be lethal. Thus you cannot play around and risk dying. Because a cop does not only have to worry about going home alive but that person could go on to hurt the people they are trying to protect. They could then take the cops gun and go on to do who knows what. That is not a risk they can take nor should we expect them to.

So in short we must demand education and understanding from BOTH sides. BOTH sides are behaving poorly and refusing to give ground. What we must do is educate ourselves and advocate education for others. We must seek to make compassion drive our goals and motives no matter how bad things seems. Because the fact is that when we make it us against them we make it more dangerous for all involved. So even if we do not want to show compassion we should simply out of self preservation if nothing else.

The dangers of turning police officers into revenue generators.

Best read with the live links at its source: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/police-shootings-traffic-stops-excessive-fines


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I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing
by Redditt Hudson on July 7, 2016

"On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with."

"About that 15 percent of officers who regularly abuse their power: a major problem is they exert an outsize influence ...."

Full article: http://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer

Sounds like a reflection of society then? As those numbers feel very familiar, to how I've seen people behave in various walks of life. Unfortunately at times and depending on circumstance it can mean 85% of people are doing the wrong thing when they needn't be
:S

Here's what Michael Moore has to say: (from Stupid White Men)
* Who gave us the black plague? A white guy.
* Who invented PBC, PVC, PBB, and a host of chemicals that are killing us? White guys.
* Who has started every war America has been in? White men.
* Who is responsible for the programming on FOX? White men.
* Who invented the punch card ballot? A white man.
* Whose idea was it to pollute the world with the internal combustion engine? Whitey, that's who.
* The Holocaust? That guy really gave white people a bad name (that's why we prefer to call him a Nazi and his little helpers Germans).
* The genocide of Native Americans? White man.
* Slavery? Whitey!
* About 20 percent of young black men between the ages of sixteen and twenty- four are neither in 'school nor working- compared with only 9 percent of young white men. Despite the "economic boom" of the nineties, this percentage has not fallen substantially over the last ten years.
* In 1993, white households had invested nearly three times as much in stocks and mutual funds and/or IRA and Keogh accounts as black households. Since then, the stock market has more than doubled its value.
* Black heart attack patients are far less likely than whites to undergo cardiac catheterization, a common and potentially lifesaving procedure, regardless of the race of their doctors. Black and white doctors together referred white patients for catheterization about 40 percent more often than black patients.
* Whites are five times more likely than blacks to receive emergency clot-busting treatment for stroke.
* Black women are four times more likely than white women to die while giving birth.
* Black levels of unemployment have been roughly twice those of whites since 1954.

Every time they catch a serial killer, it's a crazy white guy. Every time a terrorist blows up a federal building, or a madman gets four hundred people to drink Kool-Aid, or a Beach Boys songwriter casts a spell causing half a dozen nymphets to murder "all the piggies" in the Hollywood Hills, you know it's a member of the white race up to his old tricks.

I'm just going to say this:

We can't blame all people who are of the same race or nationality as an individual or organisation who does bad things, that would lead us to even heavier separation in society. Plus, it would be ignorant of us to do so.

Silas Mercury wrote: ...

Anyone can find a zillion bad things about anyone. But my boss is a white guy and a war hero. My secondary boss is an amazing father and one of the most genuine people I have ever met and he's a white guy. My uncle is a white guy and was a FANTASTIC cop.

And Michael Moore... he's a sensationalist filmmaker whose goal is to make back enough money to cover the cost of the movies he makes, plus enough to pay his bills for the next ten centuries if he can.

Never trust anyone with a stake in what they're telling you. He's a used car salesman. Use your brain, do a little research and check his facts. Don't just swallow it.

Karn wrote: I get paid $8.60/hour as a Police Officer.

that seems non sensical to me
i left Austin Tx couple yrs ago and the living wage was basically 10hr

im not doubting, i am expressing unhappy surprise; the job should obviously pay more

Karn wrote: With the ever increasing liability law suits against officers, not departments, you have to get insurance or your personal assets can be taken away for even the most minor mistake in a "routine" traffic stop.

i hadnt heard of this, could you share an example that youve seen?

Karn wrote: The big toys that some Police departments are getting are excessive. If they need those huge vehicles then they should call the National Guard. We have created a monster with SWAT/SOG.

i think that one of the problems is that police are adopting a mentality that looks more like that of an occupying military force than that of being public servants

Br Jon brought another level of nuance into the topic with the way that cops are being used to bring in revenue; when officers are required to act in ways that maybe werent really designed with the best interests of the public in mind, but with ulterior motives such as fundraising or as a bullet point in a political campaign, or whatever, where does officer accountability begin and end?

"just doing our jobs" IS a fair defense, up to a point
we all do our jobs or we lose them, but where are the limits and what are the mechanisms for change or challenge in the event that the expectations placed upon officers are not totally consistent with the public good?

with the Eric Garner case, i dont see someone who died for resisting arrest, i see someone who died for selling loose cigarettes

did the cops do anything wrong in that situation?
imo not exactly; the choke hold can be argued as a wrong but i train in jiu jitsu and we do that all the time
personally i dont think it was that bad the way the officer did it

im more bothered by the fact that he had to be arrested at all, selling loose cigarettes is not a crime that people ought to lose their freedom over, especially when you consider that the police have to use violence to take that freedom away if the person loosing it doesnt submit (quickly enough)

i dont care that he had a "criminal record," and i dont care that other people were selling drugs; HE wasnt selling drugs

if drug dealing is a problem in the area, by all means please do arrest (and choke hold) the drug dealers

i found this to be a pretty good article on the case, it offered some context that was not present in some of the other coverage

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner-police-chokehold-staten-island.html


choke holds are against NYC policy, so you can make that case against the single officer (i wouldnt, personally) but otherwise, the police were doing what they were supposed to do, as were the medical personnel, but isnt the outcome unacceptable in respect to the threat?

i think so