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Police Homicides in the United States

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Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#181

Post by dadada07 »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #86
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think Black Lives Matter would be an organized resistance group, no?

It's an organized resistance group, but it's not what we need. Just the name Black Lives Matter is loaded with racial connotations that don't help the situation. We need to focus on police demilitarization everywhere and with everyone, not just around a single race.

Black Lives Matter does want demilitarization everywhere and with everyone.

You're getting hung up on the name.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#182

Post by southphillyman »

ryanlol wrote: post #110
makepanic wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a small note, the person that shouts the instructions is Sgt. Charles Langley but the shooter is Philip “Mitch” Brailsford. via https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/0...

Someone ought to make a website naming, shaming and tracking these people. Maybe the courts wont punish them, but it shouldn’t be very hard to ensure that the label of MURDERER will follow them for life.

Due to the complexities of race and politics in this country your idea could have the opposite effect. Two specific examples come to mind: The multiple successful fundraising efforts by George Zimmerman. (Not sure of the legalities of citizens arrest but I believe he was effectively acting as law enforcement as a neighborhood watch member) A recent FOP (Fratenal Order of Police) fundraiser in Philadelphia for a officer who had been fired for shooting an unarmed man in the back. There is a significant population of people in this country who will support police either because they believe the victim should have been killed regardless of circumstances or simply because they blindly support the police and always give them the benefit of the doubt

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#183

Post by sjg007 »

foepys wrote: post #150
sjg007 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's highly unlikely anyone will shoot at a cop in the USA as well, especially during a traffic stop.

There are enough videos on the internet where exactly this happens to US officers. I don't want to link any because they are often very graphic but you can find one in 10 seconds on youtube. I dare you to find a single article about something like this from Germany or even the EU.

Just because there are videos and it happens doesn’t mean they happen enough for cops to be afraid.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#184

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

dadada07 wrote: post #181
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an organized resistance group, but it's not what we need. Just the name Black Lives Matter is loaded with racial connotations that don't help the situation. We need to focus on police demilitarization everywhere and with everyone, not just around a single race.

Black Lives Matter does want demilitarization everywhere and with everyone. You're getting hung up on the name.

It's not just me. It's just not a good organization to stand behind to focus on the demilitarization of the police. It's too racially motivated to gain popular support.

"Black Lives Matter is an international activist movement...that campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people... The U.S. population's perception of Black Lives Matter varies considerably by race... former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, has accused it of racism." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#185

Post by Feniks »

maxerickson wrote: post #178
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would do more harm than good IMO. There is a large proportion of the population that does not want this done, and would actively fight against any attempt to remove their constitutional right to bear arms. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. I think focusing on mental health and inequality/poverty alleviation is a more viable option in our country than weapons removal.

I think the method matters. Building support for amending the Constitution and then doing that would undermine the argument about arms being a constitutional right. Of course that could happen in parallel with policies that fit into current law and have a more immediate impact.

The Constitution talks about militias. Not individual citizens. The Supreme Court ended up INTERPRETING the Constitution so it ended up what we have today.

Needless to say 90% of US gun owners wouldn't make it in the military and thus would not be allowed to bear arms. Problem solved.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#186

Post by megaman22 »

ci5er wrote: post #98
stoolpigeon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a Puritan mentality. It's the fact that any person they interact with could be armed. The reason many other countries police deal with violent criminals in a different way is because it is very unlikely those criminals will be armed. Where I live (Hungary) there is almost no gun violence. The few instances I'm aware of that do involve guns are things where violent groups are involved like organized crime or…

1) Where did you live in the US? I'm in a medium-ish sized metroplex (whatever that means) of about a million people, and I never hear live fire. 2) Why would you worry about a (remote) gun-shot that you heard? By the time you hear it, you will be already shot-or-not. If not - why worry?

It'd be ridiculous to call in every gunshot I heard...

1.) November just ended, and so deer hunting season. There's still black powder season ongoing, plus rabbit, coyote, and game bird seasons.

2.) There's a rifle range two miles away. Then there's a Sig Sauer training facility to the other side. It's pretty common to hear automatic weapons fire.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#187

Post by arca_vorago »

michaelt wrote: post #131
vidarh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example I tend to give is the case a while back where someone was wielding an axe. Two police officers went after him, and the axe-wielding man was shot and killed because he went for one of them. Success, surely? He protected his partner, who might have been harmed. The way something like this would likely have gone down somewhere like the UK would be that the first responders would have called for reinforcement,…

I wonder if some of the preference for violence in the American policing tradition goes back to Western films - where outlaws are wanted dead or alive, a quick draw is the main thing a lawman needs, and the climax of the film is the lawman meeting the bad man in the street, drawing first and shooting him dead.

There are so many comments worth responding to in this thread, but this one in particular raises my ire. Are you really trying to reduce policing tradition in America to western films? How about the real west, where self defense was a way of life. I don't want to be too combative but I seriously don't understand peoples inability to understand the principles of self defense as a natural human right, and yes that includes killing when applicable. It just reeks of a naive liberal mindset when people try to say you shouldn't shoot someone who breaks into your house in the middle of the night. Police don't have a duty to protect you, and very often will not protect you, and most of the time will just draw chalk lines around the bodies.

Its your own responsibility to protect yourself and your loved ones or other people who can't protect themselves, that's a fact, and it's high time the anti-gun crowd pulled their heads out of their ass, because a gun equalizes an otherwise unequal situation.

God made humans, Sam colt made them equal. I'm an atheist but the principle still stand. This goes for one of the most vulnerable classes of humans as well, women.

As a combat vet I have some major issues with the militarization of police, and their poor training/methods, so I got a bit ot. If we were to have a real conversation, I think we would be better served to talk of the pinkertonian origins of policing, or the CIA/FBI influence on it (eg. OccupyWall Street snipers), and the general lack of punishment of oath breakers, or the thin blue line.

Instead far too many use it to pivot to a session of anti-gun circlejerking.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#188

Post by maxerickson »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #180
maxerickson wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the method matters. Building support for amending the Constitution and then doing that would undermine the argument about arms being a constitutional right. Of course that could happen in parallel with policies that fit into current law and have a more immediate impact.

> Building support for amending the Constitution and then doing that would undermine the argument about arms being a constitutional right. My point is that this isn't possible. There is _not_ popular support for these kind of changes, and if you think there is, I implore you to spend some time talking to people from the Midwest. There absolutely would be armed resistance to these kinds of changes, assuming an amendme…

I live in the Midwest and understand the challenge. The first step to passing an amendment is obviously creating the conceptual space for that to happen, and gee look where we are.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#189

Post by tomalpha »

sjg007 wrote: post #183
foepys wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are enough videos on the internet where exactly this happens to US officers. I don't want to link any because they are often very graphic but you can find one in 10 seconds on youtube. I dare you to find a single article about something like this from Germany or even the EU.

Just because there are videos and it happens doesn’t mean they happen enough for cops to be afraid.

I think the point being made is that however rare it might be in the US that it’s even rarer to the point of non-existent in Germany (or the UK etc).

Edit: things don’t have to be very common for people to have deep seated fears and want to try and avoid it (however much they might or might not be overreacting doing so).

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#190

Post by indubitable »

revelation wrote: post #164
indubitable wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lengthy line between condemn and condone. One of the police shootings I find completely and absolutely condemnable is that of Charles Kinsey in Florida [1]. And that was perhaps a nervous breakdown of the officer. Apparently when asked why he shot his immediate response was, "I don't know." In this (Daniel Shaver) video, I think you have to consider the context. If this was a normal scenario and this guy wa…

This is not all how this is handled by sane police forces. Only in the US do they keep stumbling into these "extremely unfortunate scenarios", do they, and therein lies the blame.

You have to keep in mind when looking at data is that the US, relative to the countries you're probably comparing it to, is very large. So you need to look at rates of events - and not quantity of events. How often did other police forces need to respond to something at all analogous to an individual pointing a rifle out the window of a hotel in populated areas and then repeatedly trying to reach behind his waist even after instructed not do so? Perhaps most importantly, violent crime in the US is much more common than other places in the developed world. So that changes the probability determination for what's probably going on in any given event.

We can look at this this on a national level where we're already in pretty bad shape with a murder rate of 4.9 [1] compared to less than 1 for most of Europe. But where things get really insane is when you start breaking it down to where these events are often happening. Crime, especially violent crime, in the US is very centralized into a number of relatively small areas. For instance these [2] are the crime data for Ferguson, Missouri where Michael Brown was killed. In the year Michael Brown was killed, their homicide rate was double the US average. It's now skyrocketed to 42.8. To give some context to that 42.8 the murder rate in Mexico is 16.35. In Columbia it's 26.5. There are actually only 5 nations with a murder rate higher than Ferguson. And you'll find that these extreme rates of violence tend correlate pretty well to areas where the reported police violence is also coming from.

So the point here is that comparing how the police function in countries with little to no reason to expect extremely dangerous scenarios (or outcomes) to countries where such expectations are perfectly justified is not really logical. Here's an interesting thought experiment. Swap the police force of [less dangerous nation] with the police force of the US. Would you expect the behavior of the US police force in the now much more safe nation to change? What of the police from the safer nation now placed in a nation where people randomly killing police is actually a thing?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

[2] - http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Ferguson-Missouri.html

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