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Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

theguardian.com

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Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#121

Post by yoo1I »

tptacek wrote: post #99
Fiahil wrote: post #35

So. Four policemen put 40 bullets in somebody, and that's supposed to be "normal". What the hell?

That the police shot this person at all is a tragedy, but the number of bullets --- a detail reported brethlessly in all police shooting stories --- isn't particularly important. Police training demands they shoot to kill. The notion of using a firearm merely to wound is mostly a TV fiction. Especially with a subject they believe to be armed (as with this case, where someone called 911 reporting a gun), if the police…

> Police training demands they shoot to kill.

Something that is incredibly fucking stupid, and there are plenty of countries who do very well without this misguided use of of lethal weapons.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#122

Post by ido »

Joe8Bit wrote: post #100
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing would be cheaper if they built more of it. Rents in Seattle actually declined this year.

Broadly speaking you're right, but in London in particular housing stock growth has been significant in the last 10 years but it has had consequently little effect on housing price deflation[0]. There are many theories as to why that is, but a personal pet one is that London is lacking in housing stock across the market and as such it is economically more viable to build at the middle and top end of the market where…

Very dense residential areas still seem rare in London, compared to other cities of comparable size (it has lower population density than e.g. NYC, Paris, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo...)

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#123

Post by hughperkins »

Retric wrote: post #59
jemfinch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being not only shot to disable but absolutely destroyed There is no such thing as "shoot to disable" with firearms. Firearms are lethal weapons. They should only be used when deadly force is justified, and cannot reliably be used to "disable" someone apart from killing them.

You can "shoot to disable" though it can often result in death. Which can be useful if your trying to keep someone alive to interrogate. However, US police are flat out trained to kill. Note: Disable does not mean they are unarmed / unconscious, it generally means they can't move quickly and even if they could still be quite dangerous.

Its because compensation for killing someone is on average less than for disabling someone.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#124

Post by raldi »

davidw wrote: post #104
raldi wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens in Europe when someone is seen in a public park waving around something that looks like this? http://i2.wp.com/missionlocal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03...

There are far fewer guns floating around in most of Western Europe, so it's less likely in the first place.

I think this is the key point. In a society with as lax gun control as we have here, police are placed in much greater danger than they are in Europe, and their training is adjusted accordingly, with lethal repercussions.

It also doesn't help that we leave our mentally-ill citizens to fend for themselves on the street, instead of giving them the care they need like most other first-world countries do.

Put the two together, and American police are faced with the very real possibility of facing an armed crazy person any day they report for work.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#125

Post by Xylakant »

tptacek wrote: post #106
Xylakant wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shots fired at persons by the german police in 2014 (total): 46 [1]. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_...

And overall gun crime in Germany is lower by, what, two orders of magnitude? Germany's shot rate isn't lower simply because individual German police are stingier with their bullets.

No, it's certainly not that simple. It's still a very stark contrast that the SF police department fired a years supply of bullets in a single incident. I picked 2014 because it's the last available stats atm, and it's actually slightly above average.

On average, per use of deadly force, the german police fires about 1/20th - 1/40th in terms of number of bullets. One reason for that is that the german police is trained to use deadly force as last resort and rather retreat than fire.

Shooting 40 bullets at a person in a park instead of trying to clear the area is unlikely to happen here. (or anywhere in europe, for that matter)

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#126

Post by NumberCruncher »

tptacek wrote: post #99
Fiahil wrote: post #35

So. Four policemen put 40 bullets in somebody, and that's supposed to be "normal". What the hell?

That the police shot this person at all is a tragedy, but the number of bullets --- a detail reported brethlessly in all police shooting stories --- isn't particularly important. Police training demands they shoot to kill. The notion of using a firearm merely to wound is mostly a TV fiction. Especially with a subject they believe to be armed (as with this case, where someone called 911 reporting a gun), if the police…

If somebody gets shot by the police because of having a gun like taser than, well, it´s exactly the right time to talk about gun culture and gun control.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#127

Post by zeveb »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #84
mc32 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When middle class families move out it's called *-flight. When poor families move out, it's called gentrification. Both are due to economics, some precipitated, not so much by individual bigotry but rather by self interest (the former wanting to preserve value individually in anticipation of devaluation of property, the latter get pushed out due to economics whereby its not viable to remain in a valuating neighborhoo…

I think the difference is choice. White flight is white folks choosing to move out of an area. Gentrification is white folks choosing to move in to an area. No-one else gets a choice. Only the white folks.

> No-one else gets a choice. Only the white folks.

That's not really fair. White flight was a result of mandatory school integration policies, which forced middle-class (i.e., by-and-large white) and lower-class (i.e., by-and-large black) children into the same schools; white folks didn't have a choice about that, nor did those who stayed a bit longer have a choice about the continued decline of their cities.

Poor city folks have the same choice now that white city folks had in the 70s: stay & deal, or flee elsewhere. The sticky point is that it's a lot easier for someone middle-class to afford to move to the suburbs & commute to work than it is for a poor person.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#128

Post by tptacek »

yoo1I wrote: post #121
tptacek wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the police shot this person at all is a tragedy, but the number of bullets --- a detail reported brethlessly in all police shooting stories --- isn't particularly important. Police training demands they shoot to kill. The notion of using a firearm merely to wound is mostly a TV fiction. Especially with a subject they believe to be armed (as with this case, where someone called 911 reporting a gun), if the police…

> Police training demands they shoot to kill. Something that is incredibly fucking stupid, and there are plenty of countries who do very well without this misguided use of of lethal weapons.

If you are saying that it's incredibly stupid to routinely put police into situations where they have less than 5 seconds to decide whether or not they are required to kill someone to protect themselves or their partners, I agree. I think we should disarm most police.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#129

Post by beeboop »

chillingeffect wrote: post #115
BillinghamJ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as shooting to not kill. Officers are (correctly) trained that if they are in a situation which warrants them shooting, they should use all of the bullets currently loaded into their gun. The issue is that in the US, officers seem to come to the conclusion that killing the person is warranted way too quickly.

Source? This source [1] [2], a police detective with 26 years of experience, contradicts it directly: "Officers are told to shoot until the threat is neutralized, down, and no longer a threat to themselves or the public. They are not trained to empty the magazine into a target." [1] http://www.hlntv.com/video/2014/08/19/police-protocol-your-q... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Brooks_%28journalist%29

I think it's possible for you both to be correct. The definition of "neutralized" could be taught to officers as "you are 10000% sure he is dead", which is only done by firing your entire magazine into them. So while not explicitly trained to empty a magazine, it could be taught implicitly. I get the impression there are lots of "gotchas" like this in police training. Evidence in many police shootings seems to suggest emptying their magazine is normal.

Re: Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

#130

Post by laurencerowe »

RodericDay wrote: post #75
laurencerowe wrote: post #67

There's a lot left out in Solnit's article, see: http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/alex-nieto-w...

> Nieto was clearly a man having a crisis, and his purported reaction when approached by police was not that of a rational person. Told to show his hands, Nieto allegedly demanded that the cops show theirs. He then reportedly drew his taser and fired three times. And so he was shot—and shot and shot—by officers who claim they did not realize Nieto was carrying a less-than-lethal device. This is the stuff she should h…

I'm generally sympathetic to Solnit's previous writings on gentrification in SF, but this just seems too much of a stretch to me. Police violence in SF (and across the US) is out of control. They need training in how to de-escalate confrontations without resorting to overwhelming firepower.
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