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If you see the cops, start recording

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Re: If you see the cops, start recording

#211

Post by camgunz »

Yetanfou wrote: post #199
camgunz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an argument activists have made for years in favor of gun control. The prevalence of guns in US society has made us objectively far less safe.

There are two things to this: Compare the rate of gun-related crime in a country like Switzerland (where guns are readily available and many people have been trained to use them) with that in Germany (where guns are as rare as hens teeth among the non-criminal contingent of the population) and you'll notice that Switzerland does not suffer unduly under a wave of gun crime. Why not? What is it in Swiss society which m…

Oh, yeah I think these comparisons actually are interesting. I'm not aware of any good studies about the root causes of gun violence in the US, but I'd be interested in reading them. My totally unsubstantiated guess would be that we have higher rates of mental illness, inequality, drug/alcohol abuse (which are mental/physical illnesses but important to call out separately) and access to firearms than almost every other western society.

> The other part on the gun control question is the age-old adage that in countries where guns are outlawed only outlaws have guns. They're not exactly hard to come by after all.

That's true, and it's also true that guns aren't the only horrible weapon you can use against someone. But that accepts the premise that a lot of gun violence is one person using a gun maliciously against another. While that does happen, in the US most gun deaths are either suicides or accidents.

And besides, while I'm sure it's not a problem for connected criminal enterprises to get guns, I'm confident we can create a system that would foil a kid amassing weapons for a school shooting. Degrees matter.

Re: If you see the cops, start recording

#213

Post by jakelazaroff »

kgraves wrote: post #180
jakelazaroff wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's even still looting in NYC, there's not much of it. Every single protest I've been to has been peaceful. The unprovoked assaults by the NYPD on those breaking curfew this entire week have happened during peaceful protests.

> If there's even still looting in NYC, there's not much of it. Please, you need to look beyond NYC. The riots/looting has been happening across the US. I agree that there have been peaceful protesting, but you cannot deny that there have been riots and looting across the US. Some black businesses have also been affected by this. There is no justification for it.

I'm not claiming there is no looting anywhere. But why should we expect that other police departments treat peaceful protestors any less violently? Do you think the NYPD is just especially sadistic?

Re: If you see the cops, start recording

#215

Post by jki275 »

staticassertion wrote: post #152
sremani wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know before hand if a domestic violence case does not escalate out of hand? How would you access the danger or lack there of in a particular situation before walking into it?

Let's go with this. Every domestic violence case may turn violent - and, again just for the sake of argument, we'll assume that this requires the use of deadly force by the police, so we arm them with deadly weapons. If those cases are extremely rare, and stats I've seen show they are, there is still no need for the weapon in the other cases. We can go ahead and disarm the other officers, and have a small portion mai…

DV cases are rare? On what planet? Police deal with DV cases continually.

Re: If you see the cops, start recording

#216

Post by Sylamore »

CJefferson wrote: post #3

Anyone have any good suggestions for android recorders? Preferably something which will start uploading somewhere (dropbox? A server of my choice via ssh?) ASAP

OneDrive will sync your photos/videos - in my experience even deleted ones will get uploaded as long as there's a data connection.

Re: If you see the cops, start recording

#217

Post by viklove »

chrisco255 wrote: post #206
cwkoss wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what percentage of police dispatches do they arrive on scene while an armed suspect is still there? I would guess it's significantly lower than 50% Sure, send armed cops to handle situations that force is likely to needed. But cops don't need guns to take down police reports. Rape victims don't need armed officers to take down police reports. Property crime victims don't need armed officers to take down police rep…

Unless you can tell me ahead of time which police reports are going to end in violence, I suggest you reconsider your thinking. Sometimes something as innocent as a speeding ticket turns into a shooting. Watch some episodes of actual police incidents. Drunk people can be armed. Domestically abused people can live in dangerous neighborhoods with gangs present. Sorry, a camera is not going to defend you from the Latin…

> You tell me why Ciudad Juarez is one of the most dangerous cities in the world but El Paso, directly across the U.S.-Mexico border is relatively safe. That's policing.

Lol, it's not because police are engaging in shoot-outs with the cartel. It's because we have a judicial system that will not stop going after you, and that is all done non-violently.

Re: If you see the cops, start recording

#218

Post by mamurphy »

mcguire wrote: post #190
mamurphy wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any person of conscience wants 0 (or at least less, moving towards 0) police brutality. I also think most people would avoid taking a job where they could be judged and imprisoned for a close-call mistake (that the jury believes was) made months or years earlier in a tense, dangerous situation, with no support to defend themselves. Many incidents aren't clear cut - the clear cut ones pull at our heartstrings because…

Let's be honest here. There are no "close-call mistakes" in the situations which have caused outrage. The problem is that the officers involved have excessive support to defend themselves. If changing that causes some people to "avoid taking a job", good. The public has an interest in them not being in that job.

>There are no "close-call mistakes" in the situations which have caused outrage

I agree with you on that! As I said, "the clear cut ones pull at our heartstrings because they are so egregious."

The problem as I see it is that it's hard to tailor a bright-line policy that creates increased personal liability for police for their clear abuses of power and brutality, that doesn't also create increased personal liability for their close-call, reasonable mistakes. Some of the "5 demands" I have been seeing seem like reasonable starts [0]; none that I have seen focus on increased personal liability.

>If changing that causes some people to "avoid taking a job", good.

I would guess that you and I have drastically different estimations of how large an exodus from policing the wrong kind of policy change could cause. We need police reform, but we also need police.[1]

[0]For example, https://i.redd.it/e5ka53eb5k251.png

[1]See, for example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23410144 "Montreal once had a 16 hour police strike, creating a natural experiment in what happens without police..."

Re: If you see the cops, start recording

#219

Post by chrisco255 »

viklove wrote: post #217
chrisco255 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you can tell me ahead of time which police reports are going to end in violence, I suggest you reconsider your thinking. Sometimes something as innocent as a speeding ticket turns into a shooting. Watch some episodes of actual police incidents. Drunk people can be armed. Domestically abused people can live in dangerous neighborhoods with gangs present. Sorry, a camera is not going to defend you from the Latin…

> You tell me why Ciudad Juarez is one of the most dangerous cities in the world but El Paso, directly across the U.S.-Mexico border is relatively safe. That's policing. Lol, it's not because police are engaging in shoot-outs with the cartel. It's because we have a judicial system that will not stop going after you, and that is all done non-violently.

Mexico has a judicial system, too.

Re: If you see the cops, start recording

#220

Post by Yetanfou »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #159
Yetanfou wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. The US is saturated with firearms so it would be foolish for the police not to carry. In the UK the situation used to be different and to a certain extent still is, the police used to be unarmed (are they still?). It should be noted however that the number of knife crimes there is high - people tend to use the weapons at hand. This has led to a call for a ban on pointy kitchen kniv…

"Saturated" is a poor description. Police definitely need guns available, but do they need them on their hip all the time? They often have shotguns in their cars because, sure, sometimes it's important. But they don't patrol with a shotgun in their hands. Guns aren't so prevalent as to need that.

Of course they need them on their person, having a gun in the trunk of the car does exactly nothing when confronted with a situation where having a gun can be the difference between life and death - that is some victim's life or that of the police officer. Do they always need to have them on their person? Probably not but there is a certain symbolic value in having armed police spread around society. The value here is that those who are intent on committing crimes can never assume that they will be safe from harm, no matter whether they are. The police is the long arm of the law whether you like it or not, the job can involve violent confrontations. It is a good thing to have police officers train in non-violent means of defusing situations and such is nearly always preferred over the violent alternative but the fact remains that sometimes violence is the only alternative - other than giving up and letting someone who is more violent take over.

In Sweden - where I live - there is a specific class of police called 'dialogpolis' (dialogue police). Their task is to use non-violent means to try to defuse situations, especially those around demonstrations and political manifestations. They are unarmed and wear civilian clothes but are recognisable by their yellow vests with the word 'dialogpolis' on the back. This part of the police corps was started after rioters and looters left large parts of the centre of Gothenburg in shambles in 2001 [1]. Dialogue police can only function in the presence of 'monologue police', i.e. the regular, uniformed and armed type. They are the carrot to the normal police's stick. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of this type of policing and they're often mentioned in a derogative way, partly due to the fact that they often seem to go too far in their attempts to ingratiate themselves with criminal gangs - grilling sausages and playing football does not seem to keep the gangs from committing violence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Summit_2001

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