
Police use of force policies can help to end police violence - js2
http://useofforceproject.org/
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kmonsen
Almost all of this is completely non-starters if we don't end the blue wall of
silence and qualified immunity.

The first autopsy in this case came back blaming existing health conditions
and other causes (someone standing on his neck). If there had not been a video
the cop would never have faced any action. That report, while possibly
factually true, was written in a way to make it possible for the police
officer to get off.

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aspenmayer
There’s no excuse for policing that doesn’t accommodate existing (when being
stood upon by the neck) or pre-existing health conditions. If the insurance
companies don’t get to discriminate on these grounds, why do the police? The
police and those defending their actions are basically saying the bar for
acceptable police use of force for the general public is as much as deemed
necessary by the individual officer in the field, up to and including killing
a person. All for a nonviolent offense. To say that he died because of his
health conditions is to say that “healthy” people wouldn’t, and so the
officer’s use of force was therefore within acceptable limits.

I guess the public doesn’t find that acceptable any longer. Good for them.

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ineedasername
I'm not sure pre-existing conditions are so cute & dry. Given violent subjects
unwilling to deescalate means some level of force (which should be the
absolute minimum possible) may be needed, and any use of force risks bumping
into pre-existing conditions. How do you know the person with a gun that
you're chasing has a heart condition? Minimal force might mean tasering, and
when you taser them there's a risk of cardiac issues, but what is the lesser-
forcen alternative when de-escalation fails? (Though tasering is used all too
frequently for very little reason)

~~~
aspenmayer
Simply because police declare a constitutionally-protected protest activity
unlawful doesn’t make it so. The police are an authority to make the call, but
they aren’t the last call on unlawfulness, and they don’t have unlimited
lawful uses of power to disperse peaceful assembly. The Geneva Conventions
still apply to individual and collective police conduct, as treaties we have
signed and ratified are equal to the law of the land under the Constitution.
And ultimately, citizens have a right to protest. The police aren’t a part of
the Constitution. Police in early America didn’t exist as such. The closest we
had were colonial slave catchers.

Ultimately, we have direct democracy and direct rule all the time already,
right now. It’s just unevenly distributed. Private citizens self-organizing to
shield, shelter, protect, and share free speech with protesters, inside their
homes, to escape police brutalities outside, all proves that the state needs
the people’s authority, not the other way around. The police, private property
representatives, politicians, and laws exist as an escape valve, short
circuit, methodology, and framework for such a democracy to exist as it was
able to be conceived of administered upon its founding. These are not bad
ideas or implementations. But we should have more of a say in how our country
is run at every level. With current technology, we have the means to enact
instant direct democracy with no politicians, only bills, amendments, and
voters; with instant implementation, and with instant lawsuit argument and
just-in-time adjudication. The question is, do we have the will?

~~~
ineedasername
I don't disagree with really much of anything you said, but my comments was in
regards to the inability to perfectly take pre-existing conditions into
account and still perform their job of protecting the public from violent
suspects that don't respond to even the best, most perfect de-escalation
techniques. A person attacking a bystander, or a cop for that matter,
especially with potentially maiming or lethal force, may have to be dealt with
using police force. That force, even when it's the minimum necessary to
protect the public, may nonetheless trigger a pre-existing condition, and I
don't think there is any realistic way of avoiding such edge cases.

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mehrdadn
It seems to me there are cities in that list with lots of red boxes that
nevertheless haven't had significant problems with use of force by their
police. I guess you can probably find room for improvement everywhere, but it
seems potentially counterproductive to just treat them all the same way and
assume the requirements listed are necessary or sufficient for reducing police
violence?

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Someone1234
Strongly disagree.

"Use of force" policies are how we got into this mess. Essentially it is the
honor code, where police can change it on a whim without oversight or public
accountability, and when they're violated there's no clear framework.

We should completely scrap "use of force" policies and create use of force
LAWS, with special prosecutors and civilian oversight. Police shouldn't be
policing each other. In fact police should be members of the public with
limited additional powers, or "police are the public and that the public are
the police" as Peel said.

Doubling down on a toxic idea is wrongheaded.

~~~
optimiz3
Laws tend to lag technological capabilities. There have been rapid
developments in lethal and non-lethal methods of force. Policy is needed for
when it may be difficult to update laws and more agility is needed. There's a
balance.

~~~
Someone1234
Good? Allowing additional modes of force should be slow and conservative, not
rushed out into the field as quickly as possible in the name of "progress."
We're talking about policing, not a Silicon Value startup.

"Move fast and break things" shouldn't apply to members of the public, as the
police test their new gadgets.

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rowawey
This is pie-in-the-sky for most cities right now. Municipalities must vote for
enacting community-led policing boards that set law-enforcement policies,
benchmarks, goals, and hiring standards. It will take time to change their
individual departments, but it will work.

See also: Michael A. Wood, Jr.

[https://youtu.be/Ndg-JGmYryA](https://youtu.be/Ndg-JGmYryA)

[https://youtu.be/BopwzJ-9G0Y](https://youtu.be/BopwzJ-9G0Y)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-33293421](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33293421)

~~~
ghthor
This seems like a great idea on paper, but I fear that adding more bureaucracy
to the situation only introduces a new way to strangle our society.

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corporateslave5
The statistics show a rapid decline in police violence and do not support a
racial bias in violence

~~~
antoncohen
This isn't true. Each year about 25% of people killed by cops in the US are
Black, while Black people only make up 13% of the US population. The amount of
people cops have killed has not decreased, at has stayed steady at about 1,100
for six years[1][2][3].

In addition to that, 20% of the people cops shoot at are unarmed[4][5].

[1] [http://useofforceproject.org/](http://useofforceproject.org/)

[2]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-
shootings-2019/)

[3] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-
interactive/2015/jun/...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-
interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database)

[4] [https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/xwvv3a/shot-by-
cops](https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/xwvv3a/shot-by-cops)

[5] [https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a3jjpa/nonfatal-
police-s...](https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a3jjpa/nonfatal-police-
shootings-data)

