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CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

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Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoot first! Ask questions later! mirite?!

Absolutely yes, in this case. I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.

Genuinely confused about this morality. Why is it more correct that the officers "went home to their families" than that this innocent guy died in front of his?

I mean, I can understand arguing that sometimes protective violence is necessary and accepting that tragedies happen. But you're literally taking a side here and saying that police lives are more important than ours. Why?

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#72
post #29

Seems incredibly ill-advised to be publicly discussing what is sure to result in legal action. Even as one-sided as this is, the best he can do is incriminate himself. The other side will wait until due process requires them to disclose their case. At best he's trying to rally opinion (why?), at worst he's just seeking attention, and either way he's just making things worse on himself. As a CEO he just associated his…

Agreeing with ajross above. Indeed, Chris disclosing his legal strategy may prove unwise to his own case, but his experience is becoming common enough to be relevant to anyone who may observe (what they think to be) police misconduct.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoot first! Ask questions later! mirite?!

Absolutely yes, in this case. I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.

>If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.

You should be embarassed of this comment.

>I'd prefer the officers went home to their families.

I'd prefer that unarmed, innocent civilians went home to their families.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> save for the very worst cops (which are in the minority) This is debatable at best.

Try talking to some. You'll be surprised that most are actually pretty good people trying to make a difference in a very difficult job. They see nothing but the worst of humanity day in and day out.

There are no good people, only good systems. The German people didn't turn into monsters in 1938 and become decent people at the end of 1945, they were just participants in a broken system. The Rwandans didn't suddenly become the worst people in the world for a few months in 1994. Perfectly decent people are capable of utterly abhorrent things if their environment is sufficiently toxic.

US police officers aren't bad people, they're just poorly trained and held to very low standards of accountability. They do bad things because they're operating in a system that incentivises them to do bad things.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not excusing the incident but the fuller story is a little more complicated than the police shot someone just because: "The incident happened Thursday when Sanchez's next-door neighbor, Ben Ledford, was allegedly "firing up to 100 machine gun rounds at a home across the street, killing a dog inside the house," CBS Sacramento reported. Ledford surrendered to police, but officers fired at Sanchez after they saw him sta…

Excusable in a war zone, not in a policing action. Then again a man firing 100 machine gun rounds would be almost unheard of in any other developed country, so maybe the US does qualify as a war zone.

There is a bit of truth to that. England and Wales had about 10 murders per million people last year, versus 50 per million for the U.S. The cities that show up in the news, like Baltimore, are at about 500 per million people.

To put that into perspective: Baltimore, a city of just 620,000 people, had a roughly comparable number of homicides as the entirety of England and Wales, a country of 56 million people.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoot first! Ask questions later! mirite?!

Absolutely yes, in this case. I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.

I'm fairly sure you're being ironic, but I don't think it comes through in text very well.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#77
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guy videotaping from his garage. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/dad-im-shot-man-...

To be fair, it probably looked like a gun from a distance. The police were in the neighborhood confronting somebody with a machine gun - not smart to take an action that looks like pointing a gun in a type of situation where one side has decided they need machine guns . It's not to excuse the behavior of the police..., but if you're pointing something at the police from across the street, it's hard to see the profile…

>To be fair, it probably looked like a gun from a distance.

Maybe we could train police to distinguish between rela guns and from the multitude of other things that people might hold. Maybe we could even give them binoculars or something.

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try talking to some. You'll be surprised that most are actually pretty good people trying to make a difference in a very difficult job. They see nothing but the worst of humanity day in and day out.

There are no good people, only good systems. The German people didn't turn into monsters in 1938 and become decent people at the end of 1945, they were just participants in a broken system. The Rwandans didn't suddenly become the worst people in the world for a few months in 1994. Perfectly decent people are capable of utterly abhorrent things if their environment is sufficiently toxic. US police officers aren't bad…

> "There are no good people, only good systems."

Nice quote. Can you recommend some reading on this topic?

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#79
Here are the most recent videos in the playlist linked in that post. Parts one and two of a 'confrontation' with Officer Hans Chapman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtsXYG9b9Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkefVqO9vw

Basically, a couple of guys looking to provoke a reaction, and a cop who interacts with them respectfully and is primarily concerned for everyone's safety.

I wonder how similar the scenario described in the post was to the videos in that playlist...

Re: CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

#80
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely yes, in this case. I'd prefer the officers went home to their families. If you want to go around pointing your phone at everything, you need to stop and think about the consequences.

Assuming it's necessary to shoot at all, aiming to kill is even more rarely the right thing to do.

In real life, there is only "do not shoot the firearm" and "shoot the firearm with the intent to kill". There is no practical aiming to disable or similar with a lethal firearm. There's no difference between the two, and no distinction to be drawn.
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