I, for one, get tired of the constant refrain of hero worship while these guys say that there number one job is to get home safely.
They are afforded terrible powers to intervene in, and disrupt, someone's life. That trade is made under the assumption that they do a dangerous job.
A benefit is afforded to them due to the responsibility that they bear.
Obviously, they want to have as much power with as little danger as possible. They want to maximize the benefit the receive (largely being above the law and a middle class existence) and minimize the repercussions of what they owe for it (possibly being in danger).
Its the same in other areas of American life where elites have abdicated their responsibilities but have become accustomed to the benefits afforded them to the point that they think it's owed to them. That has to change.
I think this should be taken a little bit farther, and we should say that their number one job is not to kill anybody at all. Sometimes they have to, but it's not acceptable just because the person they kill is guilty of a crime, even a heinous crime. Killing should only happen when it is the only possible way to stop an imminent life-threatening situation. Any use of lethal force should be viewed as a great failure, even if it may sometimes be a necessary one. Even if one believes in the death penalty, killing as punishment should only be carried out by the justice system after a fair trial.
Amen. I would go as far to say Police should serve and protect lives, period, including, if not most importantly, those they arrest. Unfortunately being a gun society is likely what makes this impossible. There is a kill or be killed mentality. If the worst weapon we had was kunf-fu we'd hire Jet Li and be done (though he does appear to dodge bullets).
> Their number one job is not to kill anybody innocent
No, that's what you want their number one job to be. Their number one job is to punch the clock and claim their pension. I relate it to the phrase "to protect and serve." The words "protect" and "serve" are nowhere in the job description for police officer. The motto was devised by the LAPD in the 50s, probably for PR reasons.
> Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers’ actions “on point.” It’s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me.
> I noted that the officers could have sought information from the apartment complex’s security guard that would have resolved the matter without violence. But he played down the importance of such information: “It doesn’t matter whatsoever what was said or not said at the security booth.”
It sounds far, far worse than:
> I, for one, get tired of the constant refrain of hero worship while these guys say that there number one job is to get home safely.
It honestly sounds like they are so self-centered that they only care about their arrest stats/job performance + personal safety. They care nothing for anyone else's safety if it gets in the way of their job performance numbers. That is a horrific concept, honestly.
> It honestly sounds like they are so self-centered that they only care about their arrest stats/job performance + personal safety. They care nothing for anyone else's safety if it gets in the way of their job performance numbers. That is a horrific concept, honestly.
If you think of them as undisciplined teenage boys in over their heads, given a job for which they have not developed sufficient levels of mental maturity and responsibility, it kind of seems less nonsensical.
> Rhoads, the Fairfax County police lieutenant, was upfront about this mind-set. He explained that it was standard procedure to point guns at suspects in many cases to protect the lives of police officers. Their firearm rules were different from mine; they aimed not to kill but to intimidate. According to reporting by The Washington Post, those rules are established in police training, which often emphasizes a violent response over deescalation.
Another teenaged boy in over his head.
Honestly, I lay very little blame at these people's feet. If you keep moving up the chain of command, eventually you will get to someone with the mental capacity to know this is wrong, and this is where the responsibility lies. Or, if this person's peers are so corrupt that he is literally powerless to do anything, then you move up one more level. Somebody somewhere is responsible for the way this is being handled, but it ain't the guys at this level. Expecting effective police policy to be set (at least entirely) at the local level is....unwise.
I'm not sure how the idea that we hand undisciplined teenage boys firearms and power over the rest of the population any less horrific than what I described.
I'm not saying it's not horrific, it just to me kind of makes this otherwise surreal state of affairs make sense. A grown man who doesn't know how to responsibly wield power to me seems extremely similar to a teenage boy not knowing how to properly behave with new strength and freedoms. Put a bunch of these similar people together with no responsible authority to control them, and you often end up with toxic and dangerous cultures.
Personal safety is the #1 priority of any emergency worker. If you don't keep yourself safe, then that's one less person to be able to help out. Add to this that there isn't an endless stream of people both willing and able to do the job in the first place, and also that training takes a fair while, and it's clear that self-preservation is a requirement for emergency workers.
By all means, question police methods. But to snidely chide them for putting their personal safety first suggests that you don't really understand their job at all.
I'm not being snide. I'm saying that they want to minimize the negative aspects of their arrangement with society while maximizing the positive aspects.
Positive aspect: Cops have a benefit of the doubt that other citizens don't have when it comes to the use of force.
Negative aspect: They stop someone that resists arrest.
If you are trying to maximize the positive things you get from the job and minimize the negative you will treat every person that resists arrest as if it were life threatening.
When you add up the benefits that actually accrue to the police (and not just from asking them... like other conservative organizations they generally are very sensitive to perceived losses of authority) you see that they get a middle class life, authority over the physical safety of people around them, and higher burden of proof required to convict them. They also maintain one of the only government sanctioned unions so they have greater economic democratic power as well. They are super-citizens and they have come to believe that the deference paid to them is in fact owed to them. They have convinced themselves that their lives are always in danger in every interaction so they are owed greater deference by society. Its my contention that the danger's they face are not immediately present in every interaction and that they have actually been involved in creating the policies that put them in the situations where danger is greatest.
Its time that they stop taking for granted the powers and position that society bestows. Its also time for us to decriminalize some of the behaviors that the police depend on to bolster their position politically.
> Personal safety is the #1 priority of any emergency worker.
They created a dangerous situation that required guns drawn by not contacting the building's management with an ex-military guy that might have reacted violently.
How the fuck are you going to argue that meshes with personal safety is #1?
> By all means, question police methods. But to snidely chide them for putting their personal safety first suggests that you don't really understand their job at all.
Or, I am capable of thinking beyond talking points and realizing the police actively create a dangerous situation by not even bothering to contact the building's management.
I'm sorry but its ridiculous that they didn't even bother to confirm with the property owner that someone was trespassing.
Could you please reference where I said that the specific activity in the article was some form of best practices? Or where I even mentioned (or even implied) the article at all in that first response to you?
You've created your own contradiction, by the way. In this frothy rebuke to me, you've claimed that the police in the article do not care about their personal safety much, yet the first comment you made is bitching about them putting their personal safety as a priority.
Perhaps you should do some of this 'thinking' you so proudly throw in my face?
> Could you please reference where I said that the specific activity in the article was some form of best practices? Or where I even mentioned (or even implied) the article at all in that first response to you?
Given I was responding to specifically what happened in the article, you are taking my response out of context if you are applying it to anything other than the population of the police in the article.
> You've created your own contradiction, by the way. In this frothy rebuke to me, you've claimed that the police in the article do not care about their personal safety much, yet the first comment you made is bitching about them putting their personal safety as a priority.
> It honestly sounds like they are so self-centered that they only care about their arrest stats/job performance + personal safety. They care nothing for anyone else's safety if it gets in the way of their job performance numbers. That is a horrific concept, honestly.
I pretty much baldly stated they care about job performance numbers more than anyone else's safety. I also focused on job performance over their personal safety. I think the issue here remains you just didn't understand I'm talking about "job performance is #1" followed by personal safety as #2.
> Perhaps you should do some of this 'thinking' you so proudly throw in my face?
I pretty clearly said "job performance is #1" and you are insisting otherwise. I just didn't say it literally which is why I guess you got confused?
> I pretty clearly said "job performance is #1" and you are insisting otherwise.
No, I'm not. I was talking about the part of your complaint where you were saying that police shouldn't particularly care about their own safety.
> you are taking my response out of context if you are applying it to anything other than the population of the police in the article.
The part of your comment I responded to was directly after a quote from a comment talking about the issue in general. Similarly, your comment was also general - after all, if you were specifically talking about the event in the article, it would have been in past tense.
Anyway, arguing about arguing now. Time to sign off.
What happens to the concept of service? Public service is not meant to be completely and perfectly safe. Hell, life doesn't come with any guarantees.
How does being in a constant state of stress and fear about life help you in preserving your life?
You're telling me that it's ok for a police officer in civilian life in the U.S to pull out a gun and intimidate a person like this article's author who did foot patrols deep in enemy territory, patrolling those very people who would initially have gladly watched him being gorily dismembered by IEDs or worse.
The concept of service is what you're forgetting. There are some jobs, some careers which can never be adequately compensated for in material benefits or guarantees of life.
You do it because of the intangibles- your values, your society's welfare, you country's welfare.
And service never ever comes with a sense of entitlement on the part of the person serving. Entitlement to life even.
The only thing that matters is getting the job done right. If this is expected of your military, why shouldn't it be expected out of police officers or any other emergency worker or any other public servant?
It's the mark of a better society that realizes what public service means, values it, respects people who've served their society and still expects and holds up the highest standards of service from service members and not just the military.
"Priority of life" was developed for an 'active shooter' situation, not day-to-day policing. It also doesn't suggest that an officer should take a bullet for someone else, bodyguard style. It's talking about who to protect first, and emergency workers are lower on the list because they have chosen to be there and they generally have the training to deal with the situation.
Okay, you win. So let's apply the priority of life to the scenario described in the article.
Are there any victims? No.
Are there any innocent bystanders? No.
Are there any non-police responders? No.
Are there any police? Yes.
Are there any 'bad guys'? Yes.
So, running down the list... in the situation where the police are apprehending someone... hey, police welfare does come before apprehendee welfare. In the article's scenario, police welfare does come first.
The guy asleep in bed is an 'innocent bystander', not a 'bad guy'. If officer safety was actually the motivating concern here, then they absolutely would have spoken with security (if for no other reason than to get a quick idea of the apartment layout).
The guy asleep in bed is a 'bad guy', as those police saw the situation. Yes, they were wrong and stupid. But that was their interpretation of the situation.
If their "number one priority" is to be safe, they should pick a different line of work.
"I was in fear for my life" has become a justification for just about anything they want to do but it usually factors out to "I got scared so I just started shooting". Its hard to find that heroic.
It's more of an offer-and-demand thing. If you don't treat veterans well (and, I mean, get your expectations a lot lower, not look at their actions too hard, and so on), no one will do that job. I know I wouldn't.
This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.
When I did my compulsory military duty in Germany I ended up being military police. We had a lot of interactions with American MPs due to the US military being stationed there.
We always joked about how they behaved like movie action heroes, always ready to use force. We were trained to avoid confrontation at almost any price. When in doubt, retreat.
I guess it's a different view on law "enforcement".
Huh, why don't criminals in Germany exploit this, always threaten confrontation and have their run of the city?
EDIT: Granted there's a big difference between trying to deescalate when possible and raiding a sleeping guy's apartment on bad info.
EDIT 2: This was an honest question and I felt like I got good answers despite the downvoting. Big thanks to everyone who took it at face value or applied the principle of charity, rather than just assuming I'm some kind of disruptive monster. http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html
Because the German cops are not push overs either. If somebody will attack them they will fight back. But by trying to deescalate first you set the tone for the interaction.
Most of the recently published police violence in the US seems to come from really trivial situations, not from criminals. I watched the Sandra Bland video. The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too and I see a lot of people doing that too). She responds in an aggravated way. Instead of trying to defuse the situation he makes it worse by telling her to put out the cigarette. Why would you do that? This sounds like a pure ego-trip where the cop wants to assert his total dominance. He could have given her a ticket and just left.
> The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too and I see a lot of people doing that too).
It's worse than that. The cop tailgates her, waiting for an excuse to pull her over. His excuse is that she fails to signal while switching lanes (to create some distance between them.) He was going to pull her over no matter what.
This may have been a trivial situation for the cop, but for black people travelling out of state, it's a nightmare.
Edit: this is true, it is Bland's car turning right onto the thoroughfare as the officer drives away from his first stop. It doesn't appear that she comes to a full stop or that she is using her blinker when she turns. This is probably what caused the officer to actually pursue Bland so quickly after finishing his prior stop.
This doesn't explain or justify any of the rest of the incident though.
Remember that the police have far more resources available. Once someone demonstrates that they're actually a threat, the police still have the option of applying superior force but they have far more options for controlling when and where that happens and ensuring that innocent bystanders aren't needlessly exposed.
One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases, which seem to be becoming less common because it's not worth the safety risks in an urban environment and modern tech + resources make it unlikely that anyone can actually escape for that long. Sure, that'd make for a crappy movie but it's safer for everyone involved.
"One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases"
If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made.
Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor of mandatory police body-worn cameras, along with a right of citizens who are on the receiving end of a police encounter to obtain and review the footage. There's always the worry that the camera would be 'accidentally' turned off by the police, or that the footage would be lost if it showed anything embarrassing to the police, so to make them effective, you probably need a change in the law such that any discrepancy between the officer's version of events and the citizens is AUTOMATICALLY decided by judge/ jury in favor of the citizen if the 'mandatory' video footage is for some reason unavailable.
While I favor body cameras, I don't think your reasoning here holds up. Even if we assume cops only favor their own safety and power, we would expect to see this policy around high speed chases - they are dangerous for the cops as well.
"They are dangerous for the cops as well" - That's true..but hasn't it always been true? Car speeds haven't meaningfully changed in the last 40-50 years, so it's likely that the danger to civilians and police hasn't particularly changed either. So, if it's true that police agencies are encouraging less dangerous means of achieving the same ends, why now and not before? The change suggests some other factor, and my supposition is that widespread video footage of these chases may have played a role.
Eh, maybe. I think decisions need less explanation when they're the right one. Why now? Maybe they just figured it out. Hanlon's razer, &c.
If we need to explain "why now", that's still a question with your hypothesis - high speed chases have been dangerous for a long time, but they have also regularly been filmed for some while now.
"One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases"
If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made.
Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor of mandatory police body-worn cameras, along with a right of citizens who are on the receiving end of a police encounter to obtain and review the footage. There's always the worry that the camera would be 'accidentally' turned off by the police, or that the footage would be lost if it showed anything embarrassing to the police, so to make them effective, you probably need a change in the law such that any discrepancy between the officer's version of events and the citizens is AUTOMATICALLY decided by judge/ jury in favor of the citizen if the 'mandatory' video footage is for some reason unavailable.
I don't think automatically ruling in the civilian's favor is a good idea because as we all know, tech breaks sometimes. I'm quite certain the body cameras exceed the standard definition of durable goods but they, like any other complex electronics, are susceptible to shock, moisture, fatigue, etc. and can break. All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor.
All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor.
I think there's a middle ground somewhere between "toss the case because the bodycam footage went missing" and "lock up the cop and throw away the key"
Judge each person's criminal case on their own merits. If neither the civilian nor the cop can be proven to have committed a crime, they should both go free.
Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct. This cost will be borne by the police department (and thus the government it belongs to, and thus the public of that area) rather than by the individual officer. This will help encourage the department to keep their stuff in good working order and make sure their staff aren't deliberately disabling the cameras.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of deliberate tampering. The tech is not flawless and this kind of outcome is really not fair to either side. The camera only shows 1 point of view and if for X reasons it is used to judge the officer or the civilian as the overwhelming evidence then it can have severe consequences for either or both sides if it does work or does not work.
Example: civilian makes grandiose claim that is untrue and that cannot be refuted due to the camera malfunctioning. Officer is punished.
Example: civilian makes legit claim that cannot be proven due to camera malfunctioning. Officer successfully convinced court that camera failed to work and it's nonfunctionality was not preventable due to outside circumstances. Officer is not punished and civilian does not receive justice.
Absence of evidence is evidence of tampering. It is not proof.
The popular phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wrong. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. How strong that evidence is depends on just how much you'd expect to find evidence if the thing were actually true. For example, if you go looking in my garage for aliens, the absence of evidence is pretty compelling evidence for the absence of aliens in my garage, but it's extremely weak evidence for the absence of aliens in the universe.
When it comes to cameras, the question in how often they fail on their own compared to how likely tampering is, and any relevant context which might modify those basic probabilities. If the demonstrated MTBF is 10 years and your cameras are failing on average once every year then something is going on, for example.
Your mention about punishing the officer makes me wonder if you actually read my comment, though. I explicitly suggested that a camera malfunction should not be considered sufficient to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar for a criminal case, and that while it should work for a civil case, the cost there would not be borne by the officer.
Absence of evidence is evidence of tampering. It is not proof.
The popular phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wrong. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
When it comes to cameras, the question in how often they fail on their own compared to how likely tampering is, and any relevant context which might modify those basic probabilities. If the demonstrated mean time between failures is 10 years and your cameras are failing on average once every year then something is going on, for example.
Your mention about punishing the officer makes me wonder if you actually read my comment, though. I explicitly suggested that a camera malfunction should not be considered sufficient to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar for a criminal case, and that while it should work for a civil case, the cost there would not be borne by the officer.
The actual popular phrase is "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" and that is NOT what I was referring to. The absence of evidence is still not evidence of tampering unless tampering can be proven. A hair fiber belonging to a suspect that is found at a crime scene is evidence that the suspect was there. A lack of a hair fiber of a suspect at a crime scene is not evidence that the suspect cleaned up their hair from the crime scene. Bleach on a floor at a crime scene is evidence of an attempt to clean it up. Does that make sense?
I'd argue that body cameras have not been around in wide circulation long enough to provide any meaningful data on their failure rates. Also I can safely assume they have some sort of warranty on them but that does not prevent a handful of defective ones from making their way into active use amongst law enforcement personnel.
Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct.
This is the passage I was replying to and you paraphrased another user's comment regarding a default judgment in favor of the civilian if the camera malfunctions. A malfunctioning camera does not necessarily prove a deliberate tampering and to hang an entire civil case judgment on that is not giving the losing side a fair shot at winning their case. The officer is employed by the department and a judgment born by the department in reference to the officer when the officer did not do anything wrong can have adverse consequences on their career and by extension, their life, far more than you are giving credit to.
Given that BWCs (body-worn cameras) weren't even significantly tested in the U.S. until 2012 and are still not what most people would agree is considered "widespread" then we can hardly conclude much of anything about their failure rates in active use.
Lack of a hair fiber is both evidence that the suspect was never there and evidence that the suspect was there and cleaned up his hair afterwards. How much weight it lends to each depends on context (i.e. if you have a lot of other evidence that he was there, then then cleaning theory is much more likely) but it does support both.
Look at it like this: beforehand, there were three possibilities: the suspect was never there, the suspect was there and left behind hair, or the suspect was there and cleaned up. (You might add more, like the suspect being bald, but the general approach is the same.) If you then do a thorough search for the suspect's hair and find none, that removes the "left behind hair" possibility, leaving you with the other two. The probability of each is increased compared to before. How much each one increases depends on the context.
As for civil cases, I don't really see the problem. All you need to show for a civil case is that your version of events is more than 50% likely to be true. Even if body cameras fail on their own with great frequency, the odds of one failing naturally right at the critical moment when an officer supposedly abused a civilian are extremely low.
I also don't see why we can't make good estimates of body camera reliability right now. They're not magic. They're just electronics, not fundamentally different from a GoPro or similar. How often do those fail? The rates should be much the same.
There should also be weight given to the nature of the failure, of course. If a capacitor exploded, it was probably "natural causes." If it was mysteriously smashed, with a tread pattern that matches the tires on the officer's squad car, that ought to be enough to win a civil suit. Other circumstances will vary, but I'd say the number of cases where you have a "mysterious failure" that really is a legitimate electronics failure will be low.
It's a fact of our justice system (and indeed any reasonable justice system) that if you murder somebody but there isn't any way to prove it, you go free.
How many cases have there been of the police taking lives of civilians who were in the right and can prove it but were given no chance? How many time does evidence and video have to be conveniently "misplaced"?
Likewise how many cases were there where civilians filed complaints against officers which ultimately led to demotions, terminations, otherwise good cops not being able to get promoted, etc.
I'm completely 100% for the body cameras and for transparency but I also understand that they shouldn't be the only evidence used to decide guilt or innocence and should not hold more weight over other pieces of evidence.
I should have clarified I'm assuming worst case scenario where a cop shoots a civilian and kills them. The camera malfunctioned so the cop couldn't prove that for X reasons the civilian was a deadly threat then the cop is charged with murder and automatically convicted due to the video evidence not being there to support their claim and due to the civilian automatically winning due to the previous poster's proposition.
Why would the cop's life be ruined? There are already way too many cases where police body cameras "mysteriously malfunction", often on multiple officers at once. There need to be repercussions for such behavior. This is just an extension of innocent until proven guilty. If cops want to make arrests, they should make sure their camera is working. They would never go out without a functioning gun, radio, or car.
> We always joked about how [American MPs] behaved like movie action heroes, always ready to use force.
I am in no way challenging the validity of your report. I'm offering this anecdote to put USian police training (or the lack thereof) in perspective.
I've heard from my father -an officer in the US Army-, and from many others who have reason to know that a HUGE part of an MP's training is in de-escalation and peaceful crowd control.
MPs are drilled over and over and over that the presence of a club, firearm, or -say- riot gear dramatically increases the tension of a situation and that they have to immediately and continually work very hard to bring that tension back down.
Some folks who have served as MPs have had opportunity to review the training procedures of some police departments who have been receiving military crowd control (and other) equipment. Many of those former MPs have gone on record with their serious dismay at the absence of even vaguely proper crowd control and de-escalation training.
If well trained USian MPs behave like action heroes; ready to use force at the slightest provocation, how are comparatively poorly trained USian police officers likely to behave when given identical equipment?
US is a third world country with a first-world layer on top. A more concrete difference is that there are a lot of people in the US with guns and bad attitudes. (A lot of Americans don't know it because the layers don't mix much.)
So, US cops are right to have a different basic stance than German cops.
That is not to defend the actions described in the news article. And there certainly is a big problem with militarization of cops in the US.
If I knew your philosophical leanings I could construct an example that would be quite common -- but for all I know you think it is not exploitation to offer jobs for minimum wage with no benefits that offer only 19 hrs a week of work (no benefits) but demand 24/7 availability.
So let me use a more extreme example. When individuals are suspected (NOT yet proven) of illegal immigration they are sent to a detention facility. There they are not allowed amenities like fresh socks or telephone calls unless they work for them at the rate of $0.13/hr. This is happening today to many thousands of people (http://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425511981/at-low-pay-governmen...).
I bet the excuse (if an excuse exists at all) is the obvious "nobody is forced to work"/"we provide (bare minimum) amenities to anybody that wants them" circular reasoning.
The cost also comes in the ignorance of that third world part who have poorer access to education and opportunities.
They are third world because they are ignorant. And they are ignorant because they are third world.
Sometimes small incentives go a long way toward getting people further ahead. Sometimes they may shine by means of sports. But not everyone can be saved by sports. :-)
Well I don't know exactly how we're defining who is and who isn't a third world American, but the reasons for poverty are a lot more complicated than being "ignorant".
Mental illness, trauma, stress, physical disability / injury, side effects of living in a bad neighbourhood / neighbourhood targeted by law enforcement, trends in the local economy, etc. are some of the multifaceted reasons that people and families end up in poverty.
> differences in police training from Germany vs the US
To highlight this even more, Police in Germany used only 85 bullets in all of 2001 [1]. Given their population is about 4x lower than the US, the equivalent would be the Police in all of the US using only ~340 bullets for a year.
In reality, The police in the US have KILLED over 400 people this year already.
I don't think the amount of bullets used by the police in different places can be meaningfully compared without knowing the number of bullets fired at the police.
Edit: a sister comment cites numbers according to which almost 8 times as many police officers are killed in the US than in Germany per capita. Of course the real question is how many are attacked; if the police is better at gunfights than the criminals it is not a cause for alarm, rather the opposite.
Don't overlook the very likely strong coupling between the bullets fired 'at' and 'by' police and how it likely goes both ways.
People want to shoot at police because police shoot at people so often is probably just as true as the converse.
This is likely both true at the macro and micro level. That is, police behavior escalates individual situations into shootings which otherwise, with better training, could have ended peacefully.
_And_ with the culture of police quick to use force, people are more inclined to acquire weapons and use them during criminal activity.
Police positions on the usage and scale of force is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A violent, forceful police will create a violent, forceful criminal.
Which side you believe has more to do with your internal bias. Do you believe that police are violent because criminals are or do you believe criminals are violent because police are?
It's neither, though. It's a systematic problem with a systematic solution. Placing the blame isn't important, finding the solution is. You can do a little by trying to help people out of the situations where they're motivated to crime. You can do a lot by helping police nudge the outcome of interactions towards peaceful solutions.
The media whipping everyone into a frenzy over every contentious interaction doesn't help anybody.
People want to shoot at police because police shoot at
people so often is probably just as true as the converse.
Could you add some more detail on this point? I'm having difficulty thinking of a situation I could be in that would be improved by me shooting at the police?
I mean, even if they're honest good guy cops surely they'll call in backup and arrest you and make a really enthusiastic effort to put you in jail for a long time? And that's the best case - if they're bad cops it can only be worse?
Admittedly, my status as a british middle class white guy might mean I don't know what dealing with the police is like for other people.
I'm not sure what he's getting at except maybe that penalties for some crimes are so severe here in the states as to incentivize escaping apprehension by any means necessary. I'm thinking about something like drug trafficking where you can go to prison for life.
In general, though, I would agree with you that there can't be many situations in which your life would be improved if you shot at a police officer. By my observation any time someone does that it has the effect of enraging every cop in the land.
The idea is to get away. In the long term the police might be more enthusiastic to catch you – and that long term might only be 10 minutes. In the short term though, in this instant, the police are already chasing you. They have you cornered and you don't see a way out of this without surrendering.
You've seen on the news people just like you getting killed in the street by police. You've known people who have been beat bloody in the exact same situation. Even if they don't kill you in the street, you have 30 years in a harsh prison ahead of you.
You have nothing to lose.
---
The idea is to teach police to keep subjects calm and try to convince them that surrendering really is the best outcome. People full of adrenaline don't always make the best decisions. Maybe they've been taking drugs, they've probably got a whole lot of stress in their lives, and possibly some mental illness as well. In a lot of places they're conditioned to think of police as the enemy, and in this situation they're really afraid.
a situation I could be in that would be improved by me
shooting at the police
Two situations:
1) a situation where you believe there's a reasonably chance the police are going to shoot you and cover it up. Shooting them keeps you alive.
2) you have committed a minor crime, for which the sentence is sufficiently harsh that you are willing to add murder to the crime to prevent being sentenced. If a cop attempts to apprehend you and you shoot him, your situation is improved in that you are not apprehended and may not have to go to jail at all. Ratios of punishments for different crimes matter as well as the absolute value.
> make a really enthusiastic effort to put you in jail
The point is that in the USA even for minor things people expect to be shot at more than anything else. If you're going to take a risk and do something really gainful, you take it for guaranteed that the cops will shoot at you and make a point to shoot first.
I'm unable to figure out what point you are trying to make with the link to the Brown shooting, unless you last read that page several months ago and are unaware of the new information that has been added since then.
Often not reporting on a problem would be exactly the right thing to do.
This is a discussion we as a society are not having, and I believe we should. We had free mass media for long enough already to know that the general population can - and far too often does - go batshit insane thanks to news stories[0]. It's not enough that the reporting itself screws availability heuristic badly, the standard practice of journalism now consists of twisting the story (sometimes even outright lying) to maximize readers' outrage.
And no, one can't say it's the responsibility of the reader to not be fooled; news-induced dysrationalia is systemic, it is predictable.
Reminds me of a thing I read today, a reply on Quora about child soldiers posted by an ex-Marine[1]. Apparently, the primary military value of children is pissing off westerners. Military groups using them let journalists photograph kids with guns, maybe even some dead ones (doesn't really matter who killed them), and wait for the outraged civilians to push against their own countries' war efforts.
[0] - why are we having this "War on Terror" again?
To be fair, far fewer people own guns in Germany than they do in the US. Police in Germany likely carry weapons to deal with knives and other close range weapons, while police in the US carry weapons to deal with long range weapons.
>
To be fair, far fewer people own guns in Germany than they do in the US.
Call it 9/10 in the US and 3/10 in Germany[1]. Note that this is number of guns, not number of people owning guns. Not sure how that changes the odds of any one person having access to a gun.
Perhaps more interesting is the number of verified homicides commited with a gun[2]: ~4/100 000 in the US, 0.2/100 000 in Germany. So one could guesstimate the odds of encountering an armed potential murderer in the US is about 4/0.02 ~ 200:1 -- or 200 times more likely for an US cop than for a German cop.
Not sure how valuable such macro-guesstimations are, really. But hey, numbers.
> police in the US carry weapons to deal with long range weapons.
I'm not so sure. Doesn't the typical US patrol officer carry a pistol, possibly with a shotgun for backup? If the aim really was to take out a single shooter (potentially in a crowd) surely something along the lines of an mp5 would make more sense?
Police in Norway has also been generally armed now, and waltz around with glocks. It strikes me as entirely useless -- the number of situations that can be defused/resolved with a somewhat poorly aimed 9mm bullet doesn't seem to justify the increase in weapons available (all you'd need to get them off a pair of cops would be a hunting rifle -- or a mob).
No, it's based on some hand-waving about "terror threats" due to us helping NATO alienate people in the Middle East. The "threats" are classified (but really dangerous, ok, trust us, wink-wink) -- and no one's tried to explain how moving the handguns from lock-boxes in the police command cars to the hips of random patrol officers are supposed to help counter these "terror threats".
I was recently at a music festival with some ~3000 people -- and a couple of police officers with handguns. I have a hard time divining a scenario where those guns are going to help. If the aim was to be able to shoot attackers, at least some snipers at an elevated vantage point with low-power ammunition might have had a chance at taking someone out without endangering the crowds too much.
On the other hand, if the crowd went mad an rioted, you can be sure that the end result would've been that someone in the crowd would've ended up in possession of those guns.
How often do police kill people who are obviously armed? Many of the police killings I've heard of were perpetrated on unarmed people. It seems disingenuous to dismiss concerns about police violence because the civilian could have been a gun owner. What matters is whether the killing could have been avoided if the police had reacted differently.
What does it mean for us Europeans, who still have, for the moment, more lenient police? Should we expect that America uprises against their own police? Draw a Fergusson every 3 months? Becomes either less economically stable or more economically agressive? Should we expect that US' political influence requires us to step up our police, the same way France escalated an NSA-style law six months ago? It worries me that a friend country's police goes more totalitarian, but are there actual consequences on us?
It's an open question. For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US (and even declined free tickets to a very important tech conference in my field) because of your unpredictable trigger-friendly police [1] and your guantanamo-friendly interviews at border control [2]. I wonder it your unstability could reach me in Europe.
[1] Being a foreigner, I'm not protected by your constitution and the officers haven't sworn to protect and serve me.
[2] I do believe an intent to go to a conference could randomly be recategorized as seeking work, which is illegal, and using a false Facebook name could be recategorized as identity theft. I do believe it's therefore possible to be retained at your border for an undefined amount of time, with no record and no rights to a lawyer. I do believe I'd be upset in this situation and I could end up sentenced for life in your prisons.
For what it's worth, I feel the same way as you do about the US, and I'm a US citizen. I've told friends that I may return to the US "when the US becomes a democracy again."
Unchecked police brutality is just one of a complex of problems I see in the news: The private for-profit prison industry that lobbies for more and longer incarcerations, the bail-and-debt system, civil forfeitures, plea bargaining, the unabashed wiretapping and widespread weakening of 4th Amendment rights... if you describe the US system of "justice" to a neutral party, he will guess you're talking about Russia or maybe North Korea.
To answer your question, whether that state reaches Europe depends on whether the US' war of the rich on the poor spreads to Europe. The statesmen of the US are cheaply purchased pawns of various rich industries, and law & order are replaced by high-tech feudalism. If Europe finds itself ruled by corrupt evil clowns like the US is, then we'll see similar conditions here.
That said, I have no idea how it will go. I have no knack at all for predicting politics. I'm betting on kicking the bucket before shit hits the fan.
The next US response will be gradual de-escalation of its police aggressiveness.
The beginning of the end of the war on drugs, body cameras, attention being cast on asset seizures and minimum mandatory sentencing - it has become obvious to most of the population that over the last 30 years the policing system has gotten out of control. You know it's understood to be bad when the president is openly discussing how much worse imprisonment is in the US than other countries, and becomes the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.
Except that it is possible this will become politicized. If one party becomes identified as the party supporting prison and law enforcement reform then the other party will then by default have to be the party opposing that. Then when THEY get into office they will oppose reforms. I hope this politicization does not happen but I am worried it may.
Your reaction is extreme. Working professionals from rich countries that come to the US on short term Visas are not subjected to intense scrutiny. No one is prosecuted for the name on their Facebook account.
You need to be a bit more careful with sweeping generalizations like "no one." Here are two cases just off the top of my head that almost perfectly contradict what you wrote.
While those incidents are obviously outrageous, refusal at the border isn't the same as prosecution and certainly nobody was sentenced to life imprisonment.
I grant part of that. But now _you_ have to tell me: How do you claim to know that no one was arrested and suffered life imprisonment? The point you seem to be missing is that you have no way of knowing!
This is the "wonderful" thing about the Patriot Act: Even as an American citizen, you could be disappeared and shipped to a foreign country for torturing... and there's a good chance no one would find out, for years, maybe forever. I don't think you have an idea of how significant this is. America does not operate under the rule of law.
>The border guard then escorted him to his car and made sure he did a U-turn and went back to Canada.
>To their surprise, however, when they arrived at L.A. International, they were not only detained and questioned at length by U.S. authorities, but were swiftly -- after a night in the cells, naturally -- plonked back on a plane back to England, and barred from entering the United States again.
I'm not sure what you mean. They were each returned to their respective countries.
> For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US
I have never been to the US, and although a trip to California would be an obvious to-do in my profession, the main reason I don't consider it is the death penalty.
It sounds so unattractive to visit countries stuck with such laws. Despite all the nice things they have to offer.
It might be easier to understand from a European perspective. [1]
> I have never been to the US, and although a trip to California would be an obvious to-do in my profession, the main reason I don't consider it is the death penalty.
Don't kill anyone and you'll be good.
Or perhaps you're actually concerned about false conviction, which is a different problem and no less bad when someone spend the rest of his life in prison
> It's an open question. For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US (and even declined free tickets to a very important tech conference in my field) because of your unpredictable trigger-friendly police [1] and your guantanamo-friendly interviews at border control [2]. I wonder it your unstability could reach me in Europe.
This seems excessive to me, you're not going to run into the cops going to a tech conference. I've lived in the US for the past 5 years, and never had any issues with police or border control. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that the part of California I live in (Orange County) is safer than my home country in Europe.
In Europe you are more likely to have lightly if unarmed cops because its more acceptable to have troops with fully automatic weapons deployed. I still remember quite a few pictures of such at airports if not on the streets
The majority of what you have been told by your media are "narrative" stories that are removed of all actual facts and details (to fit the narrative). Its pure politics.
For example, in the Ferguson case, you where told that the police officer (Darren Wilson) saw Michael Brown, and for whatever reason, just murdered him on the spot, by shooting him through the back of his head - all while Michael Brown was doing nothing wrong, and holding his hands up.
I'm assuming the later was "modified" in the produced story by all the left-leaning news outlets because it was too stereotypical / and the narrative must be protected. If you don't believe it, check the crime seen photos and the court records - I did.
And that's about 5% of the falsehood story. I could go on and on.
> Should we expect that America uprises against their own police?
Cops kill a reported 500 or so people every year. Maybe twice that much in real numbers.
The majority of those people are violent criminals - some of which are firing at cops, using knifes to stab cops, garbing at cops' guns, using vehicles to run cops over, etc.
Why would anyone that is not delusional with the political media spin revolt against cops?
That newsmax.com article is fascinating. The first three facts in their list have no relevance to the legitimacy of the shooting. They are clearly trying to paint Michael Brown as a bad person who deserved to die, and they aren't even being subtle about it. The fact that he had just stolen something has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether Darren Wilson acted correctly when he fired his gun.
One thing I have never seen anyone bring up on either side is the question of why Officer Wilson, believing his life to be in danger while sitting in his car, did not simply drive down the street to eliminate the danger, then reassess the situation from safety.
Wilson may well have been in danger, even mortal danger. He still did the wrong thing by responding with lethal force when he could have removed himself from that danger. As a result, he ended up killing one of the people he was sworn to protect.
OK, so why aren't they trained that way? Unless a criminal represents an imminent threat to the public, the police should prioritize safety above getting their man.
> The fact that he had just stolen something has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether Darren Wilson acted correctly when he fired his gun.
The fact that his physical description, the event of the strong-armed robbery, and the report of the stolen item, was brought-cast - which led to the events that followed - is not relevant?
How is it relevant? The question is whether Darren Wilson was justified in using lethal force. The standards for the use of lethal force by police do not, to my knowledge, contain any mention of previous criminal activity by the suspect.
The typical standard in the US is that lethal force is only justified when the person represents an immediate danger to others. I personally think it should go a bit farther than this and also explicitly state that lethal force must be the last resort, i.e. that the person must not only present a danger to others, but that lethal force must be the only way to stop it. Either way, the fact that Michael Brown had just stolen stuff doesn't come into it.
The points in the article dispel the myth of the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" story. It obviously did not go that way at all (e.g., such as not even being shot in the back of the head).
The earlier events might, or might not, be relevant to the use of deadly force in a court of law, but they are relevant to my point of the narrative, of the story told to the public - the original comment you are relying to.
And yes, garbing at a cop's gun, trying to wrestle it away from him, and then later charging at him like a bull - is justifiable use of deadly force. And the previous events can be used to show the mindset of the individuals.
These things happen quickly, and there is no restart of the game.
They may be relevant to your point of the narrative, but my point is that the key question is whether Wilson was justified in his use of deadly force, and the earlier events are not relative to that. That is why the portion of my comment which you quoted says "...has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether Darren Wilson acted correctly...." (Emphasis added.)
Grabbing at a cop's gun may justify deadly force, but it wouldn't have happened if Wilson hadn't drawn it in the first place. It is the drawing of the gun which is the key event here. If he had simply stomped on the gas pedal instead then this whole controversy would have stopped before it started.
> It is the drawing of the gun which is the key event here. If he had simply stomped on the gas pedal instead then this whole controversy would have stopped before it started.
5. Wilson said when he tried to open his car door, Brown slammed it back shut, then punched Wilson in the face.
6. Fearing another punch could knock him out, Wilson drew his gun, he told the grand jury, and Brown grabbed the gun, saying "you are too much of a pussy to shoot me."
Like I said, these things happen quickly, there is really not much time to think and analyze. When you feel that your life is in danger, you just respond. Some people get tunnel vision, others don't even form memories.
Some other things that would have prevented this - is every single action that Michael Brown took.
The fact that Brown could have prevented his death by changing any of his actions is true, but irrelevant.
Imagine you insult a person's mother, and in response he gets upset and shoots you. I say, if you hadn't mouthed off then you wouldn't have gotten killed. Is this true? Absolutely. Does it make your death justified? Not in the least.
The fact that these things happen quickly and that you "just respond" is not an excuse for using deadly force when it's not necessary. Police are supposed to be the ones protecting us, not the ones getting us killed. That he killed Michael Brown when he didn't need to is an abject failure on his part. Maybe it was a failure caused by a lack of time to think and a failure caused by an innate response, but it's still a failure. I also have to wonder why Wilson got so close when opening his door in the first place, to someone he knew might be dangerous. If he felt at a disadvantage because he was seated in his car, why not stop some distance away, get out, and confront the suspect on a better footing?
You don't get to engineer a dangerous situation, then use deadly force to eliminate the danger and call it good. The fact that the other person participated somewhat still doesn't justify it. If Wilson had taken more care before he was in the middle of a fight then he wouldn't have been in the position to "just respond" with deadly force in the first place.
> , and why it matters that it's soda and not ice tea.
It matters that it was a manufactured lie.
The "ice tea and skittles" was also mentioned every time the name Trayvon Martin was mentioned. Every. Single. Time.
So it must have also had a great importance to everything and everyone.
And the point was to show how these stories are manufactured by removing facts, and replacing them with the narrative... A young 12 year old kid just getting some ice tea and skittles on a bright sunny day - murdered by a white racist who had no injuries, was not arrested, was not handcuffed and taken-in, etc (all points proven false).
> Sorry but you're going to need to explain why having watermelon soda is a shoot-on-sight offense
Why would I have to explain it? What you just said is completely made up, and you are the one saying it. Trayvon was shot because he was beating Zimmerman's head into the pavement. They both made mistakes, it escalated. And everything that was reported was spun to the narrative.
I'm not familiar with the specific product pictured, so maybe it is a soda, but if you show a can with the Arizona Ice Tea trade dress to 100 people, 99 of them will describe it as "ice tea".
There's no grand conspiracy to make the world believe that it was ice tea and not soda, you have invented this. (I assume you really are passionately concerned with the difference between soda and tea and not just trying to talk about a black kid liking fruit soda and watermelon as a way to engage racist stereotypes to dehumanize him.)
Whether he was going to drink it or mix it with codeine is immaterial to the events that led to his death so why even bring it up?
edit: you are right, it is coming off looney. Ice tea, soda, watermelon flavored fruit punch or juice, ... the point has been made - a stereotypical-flavor juice drink is converted unanimously to "ice tea" by the media (by 10 out of 10 outlets) for the narrative's sake.
For the other 95% of the story, start with the 2nd link above, to see just how ridiculous Zimmerman's character was built-up.
Then check Trayvon's twitter screenshot for how he conversed and what drugs he liked (lean). Check the pictures found on his phone of him holding a gun and talking about selling it. Him being expelled from school. Burglary charges. See the conversations he had about being in some type of a fight club and making people bleed, etc...
Or how about the recording that was played for weeks non stop on CNN -
> Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
Which actually turned out to be -
> Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
> Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
> Zimmerman: He looks black.
The media did a number on that story. It wasn't a conspiracy, it was political spin. Which is what the media in the US does. They do not report facts anymore.
This constant editing of old comments is getting worrisome. There is a perfect threaded comment system available here, why not let us use it? This is just corny.
That Breitbart story was part of the first 5%, right? It wasn't very convincing either, especially not in an argument about media narratives... Anyway, as I recall it Mr Zimmerman's photo and his Peruvian heritage was reported early on in mainstream media.
It seems to me you don't have a lot of convincing arguments for your initial sweeping claims. It was an unfortunate event. An innocent man was killed. Let's just leave it at that, ok? None of your arguments have any bearing on this fact, no matter how much you try to smear Mr Martin (btw, you could easily forge such a narrative out of my life, as well).
> This constant editing of old comments is getting worrisome.
I've edited 1 comment to expand it.
I also correct spelling mistakes when I see them.
And sometimes, within the first 10 minutes, I might add a sentence to the current reply.
> It seems to me you don't have a lot of convincing arguments for your initial sweeping claims. It was an unfortunate event. ... None of your arguments have any bearing on this fact, no matter how much you try to smear Mr Martin.
Smearing Zimmerman by the national media is not worrying, but reporting the facts of the case is to you?
Zimmerman's racist character was fabricated. Trayvon's innocent character was fabricated.
Come on. You rewrote the comment totally, to the point where earlier replies don't make any sense. You did this with your other posts to, though not as aggressively, adding points, fleshing them out. It's weird. The discussion gets ever weirder. Oh, now you did it again - to concede the fact.
Anyway, on topic: There is a photo of me holding a gun. I have been reported to the police. I have used medicine recreationally. I have had trouble with teachers, being something of an unruly kid to them at times. It's easy to paint most anyone in such a light.
Why should I get shot close to my home? What is it that you're arguing, in fact?
Do you see how easy it is to get trivial details wrong? Now imagine if you were actually upset about the death of a human being; it would almost seem insignificant that it was juice instead of ice tea.
The majority of what you have been told by your media are "narrative" stories that are removed of all actual facts and details (to fit the narrative). Its pure politics.
What's the narrative? To what end?
And that's still leaving allot out.
You were there, I presume? I mean, obviously _any_ recollection of a complex course of events will leave out a lot, but the way you phrase it makes it sound like you know more about what happened. Care to shed some light upon this?
And a watermelon soda is an ice tea
Now this is getting interesting. Do you argue that there is a widespread media cover-up to hide the fact that Mr Martin bought a certain kind of soda that might be used with cough medicine? I can't even...
And that's about 5% of the falsehood story. I could go on and on.
Am I correct in my understanding that you claim to have knowledge of lots of errors in the reporting of the killing of Trayvon Martin, but you only tell us about the watermelon vs ice tea... thing? That's weird; why not give us something more substantial, something that's, you know, actually convincing (or at least, something that is... anything)?
Cops kill a reported 500 or so people every year. Maybe twice that much in real numbers.
Yeah, no. It's 500 reported killings during the first 6 months of 2015 already. Killings by police in the US are way up during the 2000s.
You're not convincing. If anything, it sounds like you are stuck in a narrative. Please provide something more substantial from your other 95% of truth.
I am not a US citizen, a supporter of the militarization of the police, or their unchecked use of power, but your third (numbered) point: "[1] Being a foreigner, I'm not protected by your constitution and the officers haven't sworn to protect and serve me." is incorrect. All persons on US soil are protected by the US constitution, whether citizens or not.
Your (confusingly) similarly enumerated point earlier "[1] and your guantanamo-friendly interviews at border control" is also flawed, as there is no possible way (of which I am aware) for US Customs and Immigration to send you to Guantanamo Bay without the assent of the country you are leaving. US C&I can turn you back, or temporarily detain you, and have a great deal of latitude with respect to questioning and searches, but you are always protected by the US constitution and possibly the laws of the country you are attempting to leave depending on where you are being questioned. The reason that people were allowed to be transported to Guantanamo Bay is that they were captured as unaffiliated combatants (who are allotted few rights in the Geneva Convention,) within the borders of a country whose sovereign granted the USA custody, and allowed deportation for detention without conditions.
> One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations.
I think that the likelihood of civilians being armed in the US is a lot higher than in Germany, so I can imagine why American cops are a little more paranoid. I've seen cops put a hand on their gun as they approach suspects, which I think is part of the training here.
I wonder how many cops in America get killed in line of duty compared to Germany.
I don't want to argue with anyone, but I've always felt if police officers were given better training, and maybe required a bit more than a high school diploma, say an AA in psychology; we wouldn't have these posts? By better training, I mean less paramilitary emphasis?
I'll admit, I'm tired of the endless pullovers--for no reason other than driving an old car, or out past 10:30 p.m.
I'm tired of the Revenue Collection(that's not their fault! We need to tie income to violations in the United States, or lower fees altogether?) A rich man get a ticket--he tell the wife at dinner. A poor man gets a ticket; it just might be the last straw?
I'm just tired of being scared when they are around!
I don't think things are going to change for a long time. All I rely on is dash cams at present. No need for spending more than 20 bucks at Amazon? Those cheap ones work, and last a long time. Buy two--in case one breaks? I had on going over a year now. I haven't been pulled over since? Maybe I don't do out like I used to, or they see that little screen flip down?
When I was growing up in LA in the 80s, several family friends were cops in rougher areas like Hawaiian Gardens, etc. I recall hearing multiple times that engaging with violent force was discouraged because they never knew what kind hellfire was going to erupt. They proceeded with extreme caution and did not act like warrior cops. If there was any doubt, they backed way up.
Now, I'm well aware of the sins of LAPD in that era, but with regard to use of violent force and this damned finger-on-the-trigger mentality, I really feel like this has been a post-2003 evolution in tactics. It wasn't always like this. I don't remember being nervous about getting shot during a traffic stop. Hell, I can even recall two distinct occasions where SWAT was deployed to my house because I had hit the emergency button on my phone (rediculous, I know). In those cases, guns were drawn, but they weren't aimed and extreme caution was taken.
Kinda funny. I was about 10 and after the button was hit, it went on speaker and dispatch was listening for ~10 minutes trying to figure out what was going on.
The vast majority of U.S. guns are in private collections and don't kill or threaten anyone.
The U.S. doesn't have a gun problem; we have a violence problem. If one magically made every single firearm disappear tomorrow, the murder rate would still be ridiculously high, because we'd still be finding ways to murder one another.
And highly restricted. People are not allowed to carry, concealed or not, unless they are on their their way to and from hunting, for example. At home they have to be locked up in a safe. And so on.
For sure our police more often than necessary become very aggro. It may have to do with knowing anyone could own and possess either legal or illegal firearms.
We need to reconcile gun ownership with the violence it can allow and our desire for less aggro policing.
That said police most definitely need to be trained to deescallate rather than automatically double down.
It is called the Tueller Drill and the distance is 21 feet. Within 21 feet, a knife-wielding attacker stands a very good chance of stabbing the defender due to the time it takes the attacker to cover 21 feet vs. the defender unholstering, aiming and firing their weapon.
Lets try a metal experiment, you have your knife and 3 enemies attack you at the same time. How many can you neutralize from 5 feet with your knife ? Suppose you have special training and you can throw your knife and kill one of them, you still have 2 ... Try the same mental experiment when you have a firearm in your hand ...
You can inflict much more damage with a firearm even without special training (not everybody can throw a knife and do some damages).
That is a poorly specified, unrealistic thought experiment with lots of hidden variables.
Everything hinges on who attacks first. The weapon is secondary.
Knives are extremely dangerous and more difficult for your assailant to control at close range, and it doesn't seem like you have an appreciation of that.
If you have a gun and if you decide to attack first, maybe you can shoot two or three of them, disabling them, before they can kill you. I've never been in combat, but I don't think that kind of scenario is likely to happen in the real world. Also, even fatal shots are not immediately disabling unless they're to the CNS. Slashes across the arms can readily disable someone in a way that shooting them, even in the chest, won't, unless you hit their spine or some critical nerve or muscle area.
Guns are vastly superior if you have the advantage of distance. Otherwise, not so much.
The context of the thread was police officers being trained to be wary of knives. Imagine two comparable traffic stops where in one case the "perp" has a concealed knife, and the other has a concealed gun. A single officer in each case faces a very comparable risk at close range. I'd argue that at three feet, the officer is much more likely to be killed by a concealed knife than a concealed gun, assuming that is the perp's intention (and the perp has already been asked to get out of the car).
5 feet may not be enough for you to shoot more than one person even if you have your weapon already drawn. When fighting opponents at close range you'd probably be more successful with your knife - especially if you know how to handle one. It's easier to hit with a knife than with a bullet in close quarters, and as 'harshreality suggests, you can disable your opponents in ways the gun wouldn't let you, by cutting through their nerves.
Irrelevant. Let's try a mental experiment. Let's say a cop is performing a traffic stop and asks the driver to step out of the car. If the driver steps out and jams a 6 inch knife into the cop's neck, how much does it matter that the cop could theoretically shoot 3 people?
If you are being attacked by three people, you probably shouldn't start by throwing a knife at one of them. You will probably then have two people, one of them armed with your knife.
In Switzerland almost every adult male also doesn't have any ammunition for his rifle at home. So realistically the worst police officers can expect is to be being hit over the head with that rifle.
Disclaimer: I'm from the neighboring country to the north. I know nothing.
I _thought_ that you're supposed to have some ammunition at home though? 'Taschenmunition' or something? Like, say, 20 rounds?
Let's ignore the standards for storing those, but my impression is that
a) ~a lot~ of people in CH have rifles _with_ ammo
b) ~a good number~ of kills at home in CH happen using said rifle ("Cheating wife? Thank the military for the rifle right here" or - on a different end of that scale - "Life is unbearable, but the state provided me with a convenient way to move on").
Thanks a lot. I feel old, both for learning that my information is absolutely outdated and for not .. asking Wikipedia about it, before I posted here. :)
"Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers’ actions “on point.” It’s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me."
That is dereliction of a police officer's duty. The entire purpose of a police force is to investigate potential crimes, and then, if it is determined that a crime has occurred, to arrest those involved. This man, a shift commander, is literally saying that their policy is to shoot first and ask questions later. He should, at a minimum, be fired. Additionally, if he has actually structured his department in a way that has officers arresting people without prior investigation, he and all others carrying out this policy should be criminally prosecuted for false imprisonment.
This was the line that stuck out to me as well. What a bunch of disgusting hypocrites. What happened to serve and protect? What about innocent until proven guilty?
In the US the Police are a "Guns & Badges" Culture thru & thru. Only the truly "macho" are regarded with respect.
There is no concept of de-escalation.
The bigger problem is that the policies & incentives are built to reinforce this. They get promotions/assets based on forfeiture laws, weapons based on Pentagon Surplus & publicity based on Shootouts. No one ever got promoted for not shooting a (potentially innocent) suspect. Very very rarely does a cop get prosecuted for pulling a gun or inflicting other violence.
SO put a bunch of arrogant, power seeking people in a system which glorifies violence & rewards forfeitures. What else do you expect?
I wonder if this influences the civilian population too, by promoting the idea that the only way for citizens to protect themselves is by being prepared to shoot their way out of any situation.
I'm both disappointed and not all that surprised. I grew up here, and this is the product of something that has been brewing for twenty years.
The citizens here are to blame. The police are just giving the public what it wants. It's a county full of McMansions and extreme paranoia. Lots of upper middle class people terrified that their fragile existence might be upset by [Mexican immigration, terrorism, <insert fear here>].[1] I'm not sure if 9/11 was a turning point per se, but planes crashing into the Pentagon in neighboring Arlington didn't help.
It wasn't always like this. When I was growing up you'd almost never see a Fairfax County cop. Vienna was always a police state, but the small-bit speed-trap kind. Today, there are cops crawling around Tysons (where the biggest danger is rowdy teenagers).
[1] It's notable that this story takes place just across the Potomac from where those parents got in trouble with the police for letting their kids walk home less than a mile from school.
"Lots of upper middle class people terrified that their fragile existence might be upset by [Mexican immigration, terrorism, <insert fear here>]"
It probably doesn't help that your average Northern Virginia McMansion is owned by a .gov / defense / national security contractor who under a variety of scenarios might see himself on one indictment / target list or another.
> The citizens here are to blame. The police are just giving the public what it wants. It's a county full of McMansions and extreme paranoia
Your comment makes it sound like the fear and paranoia are a natural consequence of the environment and the US citizens are responsible for this kind of police force.
Fear and paranoia exist in the US primarily due to the media portrayal of certain events and the fact that political parties and certain corporate interests have a lot to gain from cultivating this mentality in the population.
> [1] It's notable that this story takes place just across the Potomac from where those parents got in trouble with the police for letting their kids walk home less than a mile from school.
Yes, for example the safety of children in the US - I have not seen any statistically significant evidence to support the statement that they are less safe today than they would have been 50 years ago. This is a very likely case of media and culturally induced paranoia.
> It's notable that this story takes place just across the Potomac from where those parents got in trouble with the police for letting their kids walk home less than a mile from school.
It's interesting to compare the different fears people are cultivating nowadays. We have many people fearing that if a child is not near its parents or a teacher at all times, the kid is at great risk of getting snatched by predators, to the point that parents that know this is nonsense and let their kids get out of their sight have concerned strangers calling the police, and child welfare services investigating their fitness as parents.
And as you also noted, we've got upper middle class and above people thinking that someone is going to be coming for them in their homes.
In a comment on another thread a few days or a week ago, someone linked to an article explaining how it is reasonable for a woman, any time she is in a place with men, to fear sexual assault or rape. The author did some hand waving math to show that statistically a woman encounters several rapists per day. Every man had to be treated as potentially her rapist and so she should plan accordingly (keeping in public places, making sure someone knows her plans and can call the police if she is late, and so on).
Here on HN, the impression I get is that the first fear (child predators everywhere) is believed to be greatly overstated, the third (rapists everywhere) is a reasonable thing to fear, and the middle one (not safe in our homes) has not been discussed enough (that I have seen) here for me to figure out what the majority thinks of it.
I took a brief look at the numbers for the child predators everywhere fear and the sexual predators everywhere fear. It's kind of annoying, because different sources give different data, but from what I could find it looks like (1) the probability of some random child being abducted for the purpose of sexual molestation in a given year is about the same or a bit higher than the probability of a given random woman being sexually assaulted in that year, and (2) the probability of #1 where the abductor is a stranger is about the same or a bit higher than the probability of #2 where the sexual assault is a rape.
For comparison, both of the above are higher than the probability that a given random person in the US will be injured in an automobile accident in that year, but only by a factor of around 2 or less.
I think we have too many people living in fear over things whose risks they have greatly overestimated.
"I understood the risks of war when I enlisted as an infantryman. Police officers should understand the risks in their jobs when they enroll in the academy, as well. That means knowing that personal safety can’t always come first. That is why it’s service. That’s why it’s sacrifice."
I think that sums it up well. Many police officers do indeed act like they don't understand the risks or even purpose of their own jobs. Policing has become an end in and of itself. It's no longer about protecting and serving but about policing and arresting and jailing. It doesn't matter if there is no crime, people will be arrested. It doesn't matter if there is serious crime, low-level offenders will be the primary target. And of course, nothing is more important than officer safety. These officers are cowards who should be ashamed of themselves. They don't have an altruistic bone in their body and probably wouldn't lift a finger to save a baby out of a burning building. It is the citizens' lives that matter, that the police are sworn to protect. It is the citizens they serve. But that indeed has been lost.
Given all this, is it any wonder that much of the population no longer trusts police, many from negative personal experiences? The author is right. Until there is a huge shift in the way police treat citizens, this problem of trust will get worse. For many, it is a problem of hate, and in many cases, rightly so.
Yet the police and many other people insist that the change has to come from citizens. If only we give up our guns. If only we give up our freedoms. These things just make the problem worse by blaming the victims and forcing the citizens to give up even more for the well being of the police.
There is no movement from the pro police camp, and it's been their turn for decades now. Until there is, hate and animosity from the community will continue to grow.
A) because they can, and
B) because it counts towards SWAT gear maintenance
To expand on point B, I would not be the least bit surprised if police departments' beancounters actually kept tabs on the average cost of SWAT gear maintenance costs. Higher number of conducted raids means a lower bolded number in metrics spreadsheet.
... which actually brings up another item. Do the personnel on a raid get paid dangerous duty bonuses?
I don't think the article said it was a SWAT team conducting the raid.
I mean, I could see some off-hand justification by saying that they get to practice for real raids in an unfamiliar situation... but raids are prone to inciting over-reactions and media attention, which clearly doesn't provide long term value.
Part of why the militarization of the police is so scary is because most of that equipment is given under a "use it or lose it" clause. So they have to use their tanks, otherwise the federal government will take them back.
So, they have to find "reasons" to use them even if they aren't necessary. Maybe one day in the far future they might be useful, but in the meantime they're basically toys.
Two years ago, I was in the US for a month and volunteered to chauffeur two Chinese students to a Celtics game as an outing (I was working for a homestay/education consulting company at the time).
On the way back at night, driving through a small town in central Massachusetts, I passed a cop car, going at the speed limit. The cop immediately pulled out and began tailing me, but did not turn on his lights.
I tried to maintain a constant speed, a couple miles above the 35 mile per hour speed limit, since I know cops treat excessively slow speeds as an indicator of drunk driving.
Eventually, after 15 minutes of being tailed, I hit my foot a bit too heavily on the gas, and went to 45 miles per hour. He instantly turned on his lights, and pulled me over.
The officer was extremely skeptical when he got to the car, especially since the name on the car's registration was my company's, not mine, and I had two minors in the back. After some questioning and prodding about where we had been and what we had been doing, he let me go with a warning.
I shudder to think what would have happened if I had pulled over in the same situation, but black. The officer was serving no sort of duty except to troll for problems where none existed.
I haven't returned to the US since: it turns out there are many places I can live where I don't have to have nerve-wracking interactions with hostile law enforcement, ever.
So because of one isolated incident you think all cops in the U.S. act this way and therefore will never visit again? You think what you see on TV isn't just handpicked? and is actually representative of the thousands of pull overs cops perform daily? You think every single black person pulled over gets shot?
This excuse ("bad apples") is getting pretty old. One anecdote can be discounted. Tens and hundreds of them in the past several years are a bit hard to ignore. US cops are bad. Face it.
No, but when the plural of anecdote is enough to incite riots in cities and communities, inspire trending hashtags, movements all over a country, enough to put the problem in the International spotlight, it's almost as good.
If the actual data were pointing to the completely opposite conclusion, there would be someone arguing for that. Nobody is.
A Similar thing happened to me in Australia. I was visiting a friend in another city. Since I was unfamiliar with the route I was driving a bit slowly (about 5 to 10 km under limit) looking for my turn off. An (unmarked) car was behind me. There were two lanes of traffic. The car sat on my tail so I slowed down further to let them pass. Nothing they continued to sit on my tail so I sped up again. As soon as I sped up siren comes on I get pulled over 'for driving erratically'. The police officer asked to see my license. It shows my address listed as a different city and she accepts my explanation of being unfamiliar with the road and lets me go.
It felt like entrapment at the time tailing someone with the intent to pull them over.
Around here Police shootings are rare. The exception is one of our states, Victoria. It has kind of turned into a bit of joke on the media - "don't go to Victoria or you'll get shot by the police" sort of thing. There's an article here: http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/poor-training-and-bad-tactic...
I sometimes find ex-military folks analogies between their wartime service and situations in civilian life rather forced, but this analysis is exactly right. I used to ask myself why the Israeli Defence Forces would risk innocent palestinian civilian lives to kill the terrorists who hide among them by using drones or airstrikes instead of the kind of techniques they would no doubt use if the terrorists were surrounded by Israeli civilians. The simple answer is that the life of an Israeli civilian is considered (by the IDF) to be worth more than that of a palestinian civilian.
The same was clearly true in the United States' early approach to counter-insurgency in Iraq, as described in this piece, where the life of an American soldier is clearly much more valuable to the US Government than those of the Iraqi civilians we went to 'save'.
The sad thing is the comparison I would always quote was "what would the police do in the United States, if you had a dangerous criminal surrounded by civilians?" They probably wouldn't use an airstrike, they would probably use some other technique with a higher risk to the police, but a lower risk to the civilians they are sworn to 'protect and serve'
This article (and lots of other data) suggests that is changing: if everyone is a suspect until proven innocent, there is no need for police restraint. The worse that can happen is a dead 'perp' I guess...
> The simple answer is that the life of an Israeli civilian is considered (by the IDF) to be worth more than that of a palestinian civilian.
It's important here to draw a philosophical distinction between the claim that the lives of some groups are more important than the lives of others, and the claim that a particular person or organization has a greater duty to some groups than others. It's perfectly consistent to think that each parent has a greater duty to protect their own children (possibly at the expense of other lives), and that each military has a greater duty to protect its own civilians, without actually thinking that anyone is more intrinsically valuable than anyone else.
I think that's a reasonable analysis, but incomplete. If a nation state occupies territory that does not belong to them (for whatever, possibly well-founded reasons), and therefore controls, by force, the lives and freedoms of the inhabitants, then I would argue that along with the authority that force gives them, comes a 'duty of care' towards the civilians of the occupied territory, at least equal of that owed their own citizens.
[EDIT] -----
To quote Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State regarding the possible invasion of Iraq:
'You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,' he told the president. 'You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all.' Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.[1]
------------
I agree that a parent has a greater duty of care to protect their own children than someone else's children. However, to extend your analogy, if I have someone else's children staying at my house, then I am literally 'in loco parentis' ("in place of a parent") for those children. I would argue that I have a duty of care to those children and their parents that is AT LEAST equal to my duty of care towards my own children.
A better analogy might be that of a school. Maybe the kids don't want to be there, maybe their parents don't want them in that school either, but once the children are there with the teachers 'in loco parentis', surely it is unacceptable for teachers in that school to take actions that make it safer for the teachers by making it less safe for the children? For example, would it be ok for the teachers to carry tasers to protect themselves in case a child attempts to assault them?
> I would argue that I have a duty of care to those children and their parents that is AT LEAST equal to my duty of care towards my own children.
Well, first this would only plausibly apply to dangers that have to do with you taking responsibility for the children. Is there is some exogenous risk that has nothing to do with where the children happen to be at a given time (a condition that is not analogous to the middle east) then you probably don't have duty to them above and beyond the normal case.
Second, and more importantly, if a choice really must be made then parents are empirically always going to choose their own children, and this is perhaps something you need to weigh when you let your children leave. Even in the extreme case where I am a parent directly responsible for putting my own and other's children at risk (e.g., I take them on a dangerous hike), I'm going to save my child before others. Note sure if that's moral, but that's the way it is.
> would it be ok for the teachers to carry tasers to protect themselves in case a child attempts to assault them?
Here I think there's a risk of conflating the outside-group/inside-group distinction we've been discussing with the adult/children distinction. I agree that teachers need to err on the side of putting themselves at risk rather than children, but this comes more from the fact that we all have greater duties to all children (regardless of relation) than we do to adults, because children are both more vulnerable and more innocent (in the sense of being less responsible for their predicament).
And I would argue that in a trade-off between police or military safety vs civilian safety, civilians are similarly "both more vulnerable and more innocent (in the sense of being less responsible for their predicament)" than the military or police that interacts with them.
It's a common but mistaken way of thinking. If the IDF instead resolved that its remit was to protect both Israelis and Palestinians from harm, then conflict would be reduced and more Israeli lives would be saved.
weak ass downvote. It is not perfectly consistent, nor logical, to say that violent actions toward people by other people in favor of particular people don't assign intrinsic value to all of those people.
But it is something a lot of people tell themselves because it makes it easy to sleep perfectly consistently, every night.
Disclaimer: Not my native language, I might miss nuances and misinterpret things - and I certainly come from a different belief system, a different culture.
For me though, this article raised important questions - but those were nearly impossibly hard to read due to the constant 'I served in Iraq' analogies. I flagged the submission for that.
I don't believe that Iraq was a 'Good Idea™' and I have zero respect for someone that was there. I did like the parts about his unit being somewhat less disconnected from the local population, but .. if you start at -100 you can't get too high, really.
For me, these analogies were, while probably important for the author, utterly distracting, annoying and disgusting. If you want to talk about the police in the USA, do that. The time served in Iraq is not relevant and - at least for this person right here - doesn't lend you credibility or sympathy either.
For me, those things don't belong together. It feels like a cheap "I'm a veteran, here's what I say" thing (and the notion of "veterans" is already quiiiiite hard to get over here).
> I don't believe that Iraq was a 'Good Idea™' and I have zero respect for someone that was there.
It isn't like members of the armed forces get a vote or a choice on the matter of whether they got to go to Iraq. I have coworkers that went into the National Guard to help out their home state in cases of natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, etc), but unwillingly wound up in Iraq. Blindly holding such a large group of people with zero respect because of a reason out of their control seems to toe a moral line that would make even racism seem reasonable (hence why you may draw extremely negative responses for saying this).
> For me, these analogies were, while probably important for the author, utterly distracting, annoying and disgusting. If you want to talk about the police in the USA, do that. The time served in Iraq is not relevant [...]
Then you are honestly missing the entire point of the article:
1) That the domestic police force's mode of operation is just as bad as the military force's mode of operation at its worst, and
2) The military force wizened up and changed tactics to better succeed in its larger strategy; so while the domestic police force is not currently changing, it should not be impossible for the police force to follow suit.
It seems entirely reasonable that a group of people allowed to use force on their own community would do so with more caution than a group of people using force on other/external communities. I would argue that drawing comparisons between the two is relevant and not distracting. Having someone like Alex Horton do so is insightful even if not a statistically representative sample size.
It seems like you did miss the main point of the Iraq angle.
The author was drawing an explicit parallel with the failed tactics and attitudes used early on in Iraq with the same tactics and attitudes now being copied by police in the US. The US military learnt it's lesson and changed its approach - he's wanting police to learn the same lesson.
He thought it worth mentioning not for bragging rights but because he'd personally experienced being both sides of a raid, as well as experiencing the relevant long term effectiveness of both sets of tactics.
I felt it was a useful insightful contrast for someone like me who lives somewhere far removed from the US, Iraq, armed police, veteran worship culture, or anything military at all.
Serving isn't for everyone, and I don't expect you to understand it if you haven't. But either way your attitude is as discourteous as it is pretentious, and you have added zero value to the conversation by shooting your mouth off on the subject.
America's fighting forces will continue to carry out their mission, day in and day out, just like they always have. I have a feeling they'll do just fine without the backing of the German nerd contingent.
It changes over time, and ranges anywhere from the use of force to achieve an objective all the way to simply humanitarian. Sometimes a mix. (delivery of supplies + security) The world is not in a steady state, so as our needs change over time, so does the mission.
> I used to ask myself why the Israeli Defence Forces would risk innocent palestinian civilian lives to kill the terrorists who hide among them by using drones or airstrikes instead of the kind of techniques they would no doubt use if the terrorists were surrounded by Israeli civilians
Generally, the former occurs in places where the IDF has no access other than by air or by long range shelling. If the latter occurred, it would likely be in a place where the IDF has full surrounding access and so could use techniques like snipers that can be directed more specifically at an individual.
> The culture that encourages police officers to engage their weapons before gathering information promotes the mind-set that nothing, including citizen safety, is more important than officers’ personal security.
This seems like the thing police forces need to change in order to fix the situation.
The institution of the police is intrinsically corrupt and unbalanced. This has nothing to do with the fact that your neighbor or your Uncle Joe is a police officer and seems like a perfectly nice person, and joined for all the right reasons, their job is not to keep you safe, it is to keep you under control. All of us, collectively.
I know it's a big complex discussion to have about, "if we didn't have the police, what would blah blah", but instead of recoiling from fear, it's important to address the facts.
My German wife says this is (to a large part) a direct consequence of the fact that the US has a much larger population of people with nothing left to lose. Middle class workers working off a mortgage in suburbia are a lot less likely to become violent killers than underprivileged folk who have precious few career options outside of drug dealing in gangs.
Check out the historical murder rate of Appalachia in the US.
Extremely high gun ownership, extremely low murder rate. I grew up there, deep in poverty, everyone owned guns, and the murder rate was on par with the best of Europe per 100,000 people.
The difference? Cultural. Where I grew up, people simply did not believe in killing each other, period. Desperation was widespread, yet there were no gangs, there were no drive-by shootings.
What you call "people [not believing] in killing each other" is a phenomenon that calls for an explanation. I believe that explanation is simply that there's nothing to be gained from killing a desperately poor person. Appalachia (and other poor rural areas) have no gangs because there's no way to make a profit on organized violence. Gangs and the associated violence happen in cities because that's where some of the people, at least, have money that they can spend on drugs or prostitution or simply be robbed of.
That's an absurd extrapolation. Please try to follow along here! I'll repeat it slowly for you:
Because there's (in general) little to be gained from robbing people in this area, there are no or few violent street gangs and other forms of organized crime like you'd find in various cities where there's a more colorful mix of rich and poor. Lacking an organized criminal element, Appalachia presents not significantly more (nor less) danger to well-off tourists than any other area where poor people live and a few will -by statistics- be criminals; and considerably less than various cities, certainly various neighborhoods, where robbery and other violent crime are common and more or less an "industry."
The thing is, military forces are bound by international treaties to restrict violence against civilians. Police are not.
Normally domestic politics in a free country would regard the random deaths of civilians as a bad thing, but the US racial divide means that enough white people regard black people being shot by the police as a positive outcome rather than a negative one.
Enough that whenever it happens, there are plenty of people keen to manufacture justifications for it being the dead person's fault. If hundreds of Americans were being shot every year by terrorists, there would be an outcry and a demand to invade somewhere. If hundreds of Americans were being killed every year by a faulty product or staff negligence, there would be legal outcry and improved procedures and quality control.
Reducing deaths caused by police requires recognising that every death caused by a police gun - which includes those of violent people with criminal records - as a failure of process.
In the US, most homicide victims are killed by another person of their own race, not by the police. This is true for whites, blacks, hispanics, etc. for the simple fact that races tend to segregate into neighborhoods. For all I know it's also true for non-racial demographics such as homosexuals. Simply put, if you're killed, it's most likely by someone you are related to if not by family then by proximity. This doesn't get a lot of media attention or create a lot of outrage, even though the numbers are much, much higher than police involved killings.
Just to take one example: Hundreds of people kill each other every year in cities like Chicago. Thousands more sustain non-fatal injuries. Sometimes dozens are killed in a single weekend. Homicides and shootings are way up, but police involved shootings by contrast are way down. This does get some local media attention but there is comparatively little national media or public outrage over this compared to relative few killed in police involved shootings.
We have a much bigger problem with citizens killing each other than with police killing citizens. That's not to say that police are perfect, or not often overzealous, or that they shouldn't be held to a higher standard. But the reality is not nearly what is being portrayed by many media and political organizations.
"Enough" in that you have people on HN saying pretty much that most of the black people who get shot and killed by police deserved it and that black people are stupid violent criminals so it's no wonder they get killed so often, and that if only they were docile and compliant in the face of police harassment they wouldn't get shot so much.
It's fucking weird seeing that stuff on HN, and it's scary to think how those thoughts look in other less restricted forums.
It's the 21st centuary and there's only just a US president prepared to say "black lives matter". There have been a string of killings by police of innocent black people, and juries refuse to convict.
There's a difference between the way you phrase it and the objective fact that most people who are killed by police are in fact people with lengthy and often violent criminal histories. Not all, of course. But most.
First of all, so what? Somebody with a lengthy and violent criminal history still has just as much of a right not to get killed by police as I do. Only if there is an imminent threat to life which lethal force is required to stop should the police use it.
Second, while true it can still be racist. For an example in a slightly different direction, take a look at Sandra Bland. The whole business started when she got pulled over while driving. One could say that it was totally legitimate to do so, because she did in fact commit a traffic infraction. I would say that it's still bad behavior by the policeman and most likely racist behavior, because it was a trivial infraction that tons of people commit every day, often in front of police, and almost never get pulled over for it.
In the case of victims of police shootings being violent criminals, that may be true for victims of all races, but the violent criminal history is emphasized much more for black people. So even if the histories are there for all races, if the histories are only brought up as justification when the victim is black, then the phrasing you object to is still accurate.
A vast majority of the people shot by the police in 2011 were men between the ages 25 and 40 who had histories of crime. Overall, people shot by the police were much older than the typical first-time arrestee. A significant number of the people wounded and killed by the authorities were over fifty, some in their eighties. In 2011, the police shot two 15-year-olds, and a girl who was 16.
The police shot, in 2011, about 50 women, most of whom were armed with knives and had histories of emotional distress. Overall, about a quarter of those shot were either mentally ill and/or suicidal. Many of these were "suicide-by-cop" cases.
Most police shooting victims were armed with handguns. The next most common weapon involved vehicles (used as weapons), followed by knives (and other sharp objects), shotguns, and rifles. Very few of these people carried assault weapons, and a small percentage were unarmed. About 50 subjects were armed with BB-guns, pellet guns or replica firearms.
The situations that brought police shooters and their targets together included domestic and other disturbances; crimes in progress such as robbery, assault and carjacking; the execution of arrest warrants; drug raids; gang activities; routine traffic stops; car chases; and standoff and hostage events.
Women make up about 15 percent of the nation's uniformed police services. During 2011, about 25 female police officers wounded or killed civilians. None of these officers had shot anyone in the past. While the vast majority of police officers never fire their guns in the line of duty, 15 officers who did shoot someone in 2011, had shot at least one person before. (This figure is probably low because police departments don't like to report such statistics.) Most police shootings involved members of police departments followed by sheriff's deputies, the state police, and federal officers. These shootings took place in big cities, suburban areas, towns, and in rural areas. Big city shootings comprised about half of these violent confrontations in 2011.
> you have people on HN saying pretty much that most of the black people who get shot and killed by police deserved it and that black people are stupid violent criminals so it's no wonder they get killed so often
I haven't seen anyone say anything so nasty, but I have seen the FBI's crime statistics:
Blacks make up 13.2% of the population, yet are arrested for 49.4% of the murders (3.7x their share), 32.5% of the forcible rapes (2.4x), 54.9% of the robberies (4.1x), 34.1% of the aggravated assaults (2.5x), 38.5% of the violent arson (2.9x) and 31.9% of other assaults (2.4x). The numbers for whites (77.1% of the population) are 48.2% of the murders (.6x),
Now, it's important to note that the explanation is almost certainly due to poverty and class; class in America being unfortunately highly correlated with race. It's also important to note there are almost certainly structural factors which protect some whites from being fairly arrested and lead to some blacks being unfairly arrested.
Given those violent crime statistics, is it not understandable that people in a potentially violent situation fear more for their lives when facing a random black, who is approximately 6.1 times more likely to commit murder than a random white?
And in fact, adjusted for the racial disparity in homicides, the police are 1.7 times more likely to kill whites than blacks; adjusted for the racial disparity in cop-killing, the police are 1.3 times more likely to kill whites than blacks[1].
'Black people' are not 'stupid violent criminals,' and anyone who says so is a racist idiot. But a higher percentage of black people are violent criminals, and thus it's no wonder that a higher percentage (but fewer absolutely, and fewer adjusted for the higher rate of crime!) get killed for violent crime.
Now, how does one reduce the racial disparity (by reducing the rate of black criminality to that of white criminality, not vice versa, I hope)? That's really tough to answer. Maybe it has something to do with ending the War on Some Drugs, which takes fathers away from their families; maybe it involves basic income, which would eliminate poverty; maybe it involves school choice and/or vouchers, to enable blacks to escape terrible schools and get good educations; maybe it involves using social persuasion to reduce the culture of violence (fat chance when that culture is so highly profitable!).
Now that whites are far more directly endangered by police, one sees articles like this pop up all the time.
"In a very real sense, the 'middle class' is not an economic category, it's a social one. To be middle class is to feel that the fundamental institutional structures of society are, or should be, on your side. If you see a policeman and you feel more safe, rather than less, then you can be pretty sure you're middle class. Yet for the first time since polling began, most Americans in 2012 indicated they do not, in fact, consider themselves middle class."http://gawker.com/ferguson-and-the-criminalization-of-americ...
The author still argues in favor of policing. (Just like he doesn't question whether he had any right to invade another country.) Advocating that police return to his side, against the common domestic enemy.
"nothing ... is more important than officers’ personal security"
I'm not sure this is true. If it were, why would they put themselves into potentially violent situations? It seems to me the priorities are
1. Make the arrest.
2. Officer safety.
3. Public safety.
4. Justice.
In that order. They are related, to get 4 you sometimes need 1-3. But not always.
'Militarised police' is correct, because this corresponds exactly to what we'd want of our warfighters.
1. Carry out the mission.
2. Be safe.
3. Keep 3rd parties safe.
4. Be ethical and moral.
It's a far cry from 'to protect and serve'. Personally I'd be happy with a squatter in an empty apartment getting away more often in return for not deploying an armed raid with no confirmation based on a single report.
For Violent Crime in 2011, it ranked 46th of the 50 states. Property Crime was 43rd.
The Federal & State Incarceration Rate was 13th, and general funds spending on corrections (2008), it was ranked 11th highest.
Sometimes Europeans are alarmed by the high US incarceration rates, with our 700-800 per 100,000 over twice most other countries. If you want your eyes to just pop out of your head though look at the state by state numbers. (The US is a big place, and all social trends are not perfectly distributed.) Louisiana incarcerates over 1400 of its 100,000, four to fourteen times most other countries. The one thing you can say for Louisiana, though, is that it also has over double the national murder rate. So maybe it has other endemic problems that are running both numbers up simultaneously.
Virginia's up there in incarceration with 900-1000 per 100k, but it doesn't have the violent crime stats that could even attempt to excuse it. It has below average homicide and violent crime rates.
It's a high incarceration state for no damn reason.
> He explained that it was standard procedure to point guns at suspects in many cases to protect the lives of police officers. Their firearm rules were different from mine; they aimed not to kill but to intimidate.
That's nuts. At least they haven't gone that crazy in Norway - the police instruction on firearms are still: "Only aim at someone you're authorized to kill" -- eg: someone posing an immediate threat that can't be avoided by de-escalating the situation (so it's not enough for someone to threaten to kill a police officer, if that officer can easily back away and secure the area/wait for backup -- but more along the lines of someone aiming a gun at someone).
And this makes more sense to me too: Everyone is entitled to self-defense if they fear for their life -- if someone threaten you with a deadly weapon -- be that a knife or a gun, it's entirely rational to try and kill them in order to save yourself. You might of course serve out the rest of your life in prison if you make the wrong call -- but you'll be alive.
Just because someone is a cop, doesn't mean they can't be(come) a murderer. This is why it's so important for police to practice restraint. They work for us, not against us after all (or should, anyway).
This reminds me of Sandra Bland who was put into jail for three days because of improperly signaling a lane change. Police in the US is totally out of control it seems.
She was put into jail for committing an unwritten infraction called "Pissing Off the Police"
Most officers feel entitled to a considerable amount of respect and many of them are prone to use their discretion in order to extract revenge for perceived personal insults. This has always been the case. Recently we have technology that increasingly exposes this and other sorts of wrongdoing.
Don't they? I always thought that the current outrage was more along the lines of, "Look guys, we're supposed to be past this 'killing black people for being black' thing, and anyway we can all see you doing this stuff now, so why are you still doing it? Seriously, stop it already!"
I certainly could be wrong, that's just my vague impression.
Unless more video becomes available or the trooper changes his story, all the evidence we will ever have that an assault took place is the trooper's word. So, a judgement on this is really a judgement on the character of the trooper as to whether or not you think he might lie or exaggerate his account of events in order to attempt to cause a certain result. My opinion of the trooper's character is not favorable in this respect. Without regard to our conclusions about the trooper's character though, we ought to at least be able to agree that it was never necessary for the trooper to order her to exit her car, and thus it was not necessary for Bland to be jailed.
The disturbing part of the Sandra Bland incident is that police officers see nothing wrong with the way she was treated. And her death being ruled a suicide was vindication for them.
I know this is a generalization and that I should probably cite sources. But you are welcome to find discussion forums on your own.
I once used to believe that the problem in the US is that guns are so widely available, but today I'm not so sure about that anymore, because there are many very safe countries that rank high in number of guns per capita like Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Canada and Germany.
In Switzerland every male has a military type machine gun and two magazines at home and in my country, Austria, there are regions that rival Texas in terms of gun ownership.
Today I tend to believe that this might be a problem of city planning (and preventing ghettos). The US has cities that are much larger than the largest cities in the countries cited by me. But I might be wrong here.
Anyways, I do not doubt that police in Austria and Germany would act no differently than in the US if they had reason to expect that they could be shot every time they stopped a car. Thankfully this is not the case.
People in this thread forget - Europe as a whole existed for far longer than US. USA is home for booming business, and not only IT business. Unfortunately as a consequence - "bad" people use weapons to fight for their place under the sun, that's why police here works with high violence expectations first. This soaks into mentality, because humans are built this way. That's how you get officers who ready to taze/shoot for minor traffic violation.
So solution is not remove guns, but remove "bad business". How to do that - different question. Legalization vs Extermination - yet to see which one is more efficient.
The rules about every male having a weapon and ammo went away in 2007 or so. There is a lot of regulation there about who can have a weapon or buy ammunition.
Well, Switzerland still ranks very high in terms of gun ownership. (4th place in the world)
My point is that the mere availability of guns can't be the only reason.
This is most likely a very complex problem with many different issues that have to be tackled. Better police training, preventing ghettos, hopeless economic situation for people of certain race, racism - these are all issues that will have to be tackled to get this under control.
Just taking away the guns wont solve the problem I fear.
> Well, Switzerland still ranks very high in terms of gun ownership. (4th place in the world)
If you're insisting that the situation with firearms in Switzerland resembles that of the US you are either ignorant, obtuse, or dishonest. They are not even remotely comparable.
I'm not sure city size is specifically the difference. The U.S. does have large cities, but the citizen-violence and police-violence problems aren't limited to those. For example, none of these states have any cities as big as Vienna (2.5 million), yet they are among the more dangerous states: Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, Alabama, Indiana.
Quite possibly. But while tackling racial biases and avoiding historical violence is a noble undertaking, he focuses his efforts describing the effects of police attitude.
There was no report of anyone being harmed -- of any violence occurring. The police escalated the situation to a violent confrontation.
Fail.
P.S. If they had raised a sudden firefight, where might some of the resulting rounds traveled and impacted, particularly in what might be a fairly population-dense apartment building(s) setting?
Very carefully worded. The original article never said anything about Special Weapons and Tactics, which is what the chief denied using. In fact, the whole point is that this procedure is decidedly normal.
I wonder if the majority of cops become more empathetic after reading pieces like these and take extra precautions not to become those cops under public scrutiny?
Or do they just get even more set into the us vs. them and we know what's better for the dumb masses mindset?
I would love to hear an actual cop's opinion on how the recent media coverage has affected his/her individual performance and the overall performance of the police force in general.
The solution in the US is supposed
to be US democracy.
A first step is freedom of the press
so that citizens can become informed.
A second step is for problems to be
exposed in the press as in the OP.
A third step is for citizens in the
area with such problems to inform
their elected officials that the police
need better supervision to solve the problems.
Fourth, with enough concern from voting
citizens, the political supervision
of the police needs to tell the police
chief, etc. to clean up their act.
If problems continue, then the mayor,
etc. needs to get the Chief of Police
a new job, say, cleaning the sidewalks
with a toothbrush -- "Get'm nice and
clean, now, y'hear. Good to see you
doing well at the work you are best
suited for.".
With more concern, lawyers, including
the local prosecutors, can bring legal
cases against the police. As in
Baltimore now, a few serious legal
cases against the police can
calm down the whole police force like a few
million pills of Valium.
Net, via our democracy, the power,
essentially all of the power, really
overwhelming power, is fully in the
hands of the voting citizens. All
citizens have to do is find a
sympathetic candidate and pull a lever
in a voting booth.
With any kind of serious activity
by voting citizens, police arrogance
can disappear like a snowball
in a hot July in Vegas.
The police need to be worried now:
Somewhere in the US is a billionaire
who believes in the US Constitution
and is ready to spend a little money
to set up police sting operations,
have hidden cameras recording everything,
make a really big public story about the
abuses, have teams of lawyers
filling the court dockets with every
legal case they can come up with,
and then organizing some political
activity to get the politicians on
board.
The story for the police? Simple:
Clean up your act on your own or the voters,
politicians, and lawyers will do it
for you.
Too much of the police have talked to
themselves too much and talked themselves
into believing a lot of nonsense reasons
why they should treat the citizens like
dirt. Well, that treatment and those
reasons won't cut it, not for even a minute,
once the sunlight shines on the situation --
instead, voters, politicians, and lawyers
have the power, overwhelming power,
and will stop the nonsense.
Every time you aim a gun at an innocent persons' head without first doing due diligence before escalating, you increase the chances of an accident or misunderstanding which results in an innocent person dead.
Which we hear about all the time. So WTF?
In any event, why would a squatter merit such a hostile response?
I wholeheartedly disagree with that. Alexandria, maybe. But Fairfax County is pretty large: it encompasses Annandale, Springfield, and Centreville. Springfield has a heavy latino population, and Centreville and Annandale have like a 25% Asian population. Annandale even has a section called "Little Korea" for pete's sake.
To be fair, though, Alexandria is not fair from Arlington, and about the only people who can afford to live in either of them these days are trust fund babies.
I live in Alexandria and I can assure you that I am not a trust fund baby. Only child of a single parent with no college education, self-taught web developer with a decent income.
It is a diverse area. My neighborhood is single-family homes and I would wager half of them are just scraping by. Two blocks in either direction and you'll see abject poverty or McMansions nestled on too little land next to military housing from the 30s.
The author's recommendation that the police build up community relationships to increase trust and reduce unnecessary confrontation reminded me of a book, Fixing Broken Windows [1], that made a similar recommendation for what it called "community policing".
It blows my mind that the police would not check with the management office security guard as to whether the unit was currently occupied...what if it had been rented that day?
this feeds into a problem that is a corollary to the above, which is the whole see something/say something mentality with no repercussions for those that call the police on others...
To understand all of this, a great FB page to follow is CopBlock (disclaimer: not affiliated with them but a great news source). The way the police in America act today is borderline Orwellian, or perhaps it's already crossed that line.
Can this be the consequence of liberal gun ownership laws in the US? When anyone police interacts with can carry the gun it makes perfect sense to act as if they did. Hence excessive violence in trivial cases.
I read these type of people walk the fine line that separates criminals, the propensity for violence and murder while wearing a uniform doesn't fix psycopathy. Not to say all police officers are built this way, and certainly there are elements that I can observe as an outsider that makes American style policing to be particularly and overwhelmingly lethal and excessive. I have a hard time buying the liuetenants response that this is the norm. What kind of fucked up policy allows guns drawn officers with questionable safety margin to kick out a suspected squatter? It raises even more questions like, what if the author was African American? Or maybe he had tattoo on his face? If people wearing a uniform are free to choose a response in their own thinking, how much of past fatalities by police force were caused by trigger happy and blood thirsty individuals that are clearly psychopaths? How can the public trust enforcers who more than coincidentally use excessive force before the usual buckshot is laid out? It must be truly terrifying to be American, and stories like this makes me inclined to keep my Canadian citizenship. Not taking the higher ground, we've had exactly such police brutality, but almost in most cases they've resulted in criminal conviction. On the other hand a super lax and incompetent police force like those in Korea or Japan is equally frightening, but much less than a trigger happy, God knows what type of disorder suffering badge wearing individual will react in high stress situations, especially one that is escalated entirely by themselves.
The issue is in USA only police kill if you don't obey them (follow their verbal commands), possibly due to reduced middle class.
Here is a hypothesis: to lower the issue, either the US citizens increase gun ownership or police don't carry guns; till parity.
Data point: Stanford experiment. More middle class and power balance. Then they'd be polite, like in the rest of the world.
On you tube, you can see police outside of USA interactions... and there is 'pushing' and such involved and sometimes their feelings get hurt. In USA, if you don't obey or hurt their felling: you are dead.
I am baffled how he can even compare the military raids done in Iraq to the experience he mentions. Of course I'm not saying it`s not a harrowing experience, but it didn't end up with him dead, or worse yet jailed in some obscure military jail without any recourse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_to_the_Dark_Side
This article doesn't add up. Even highly-paid local government servants (i.e. the police in this case) aren't usually this stupid.
What it's claiming is: if someone calls up the police to report that a squatter is occupying a neighboring apartment, there's a SWAT raid on that apartment?
Nope. This was either in a very high-security zone, or there was some other extenuating circumstance.
Here's my guess at why they didn't bother with asking the security guard or management, and just went with the word from a neighbor. The neighbor is a high-ranking member of the local SWAT organization.
They are afforded terrible powers to intervene in, and disrupt, someone's life. That trade is made under the assumption that they do a dangerous job.
A benefit is afforded to them due to the responsibility that they bear.
Obviously, they want to have as much power with as little danger as possible. They want to maximize the benefit the receive (largely being above the law and a middle class existence) and minimize the repercussions of what they owe for it (possibly being in danger).
Its the same in other areas of American life where elites have abdicated their responsibilities but have become accustomed to the benefits afforded them to the point that they think it's owed to them. That has to change.
EDIT: for clarification and spelling.