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“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

salon.com

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Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#41

Post by JulianMorrison »

alexvr wrote: post #17

In order to stay safe from the government, 1. Don't buy sparkling water if you're a college student 2. Don't bet with friends because an arbitrary threshold of about $2k warrants your execution 3. Don't tell American citizens that their government abuses its power, or you'll be charged with espionage 4. It's probably a bad idea to bear arms these days, because saying "Officer, I have a weapon in the trunk of my car"…

Also don't be black, poor, trans, or a sex worker (and if you're black, poor and trans, you'd better dress like a nun, or the police will read you as a sex worker). People in those categories usually don't even make it as far as an outraged Salon article.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#43

Post by kdeberk »

etherael wrote: post #24
kdeberk wrote: post #11

To me it seems that there are a lot of issues at play that led to the death of this man, but temporarily ignoring the fact that it seems hypocritical for a state to both punish gamblers while promoting a state lottery, it appears necessary that SWAT teams are required to arrest people within their own homes given the fact that people are free to own weapons and use those for protection. I'm not saying that firearms n…

This argument is spectacularly stupid because based on the rise of exactly these kinds of incidents, you could justify the production and distribution of automated turrets to negate the use of current SWAT tactics. You can't just stop at the perceived consequences of your supposed equilibrium point, you have to follow it all the way to the logical conclusion. If this keeps up and/or accelerates, it's only a matter of…

> This argument is spectacularly stupid because based on the rise of exactly these kinds of incidents, you could justify the production and distribution of automated turrets to negate the use of current SWAT tactics.

Then it's a good thing that most states have laws that prohibit owning fully-automatic firearms then.

> You can't just stop at the perceived consequences of your supposed equilibrium point, you have to follow it all the way to the logical conclusion.

Don't be absurd. If I use a semi or fully automatic weapon to protect myself against police brutality, it will only ensure that I won't get out alive.

Nice slippery-slope argument by the way, do you work at FOX News?

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#44

Post by timmaah »

sgaither wrote: post #9

We have to ask ourselves: where is the money? Our rights aren't being lost to a sprawling military-police state just because there's a Big-Brother wannabe conspiring to destroy the constitution. Police departments grow the same way our project departments grow in engineering companies: by managers arguing for bigger budgets and spending more, sometimes wastefully, to justify bigger budgets come next fiscal year. Thes…

Just think of how fun the bottom 1/4 of the U.S. will be once the border patrol gets to double its numbers.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#45

Post by dmix »

jonknee wrote: post #27

The article's photo is from the 2012 RNC in Tampa, FL. Despite an army of police with all the equipment a paramilitary outfit could wish for, there were almost no arrests. In total for the week there were 2, far fewer than there would have been in a normal week. A year later and they're still riding around in their RNC purchased bicycles, cruising in RNC speed boats and zipping around in RNC bobcats. The high-tech CC…

They did the same thing in Toronto after G20 in 2010 (where 700 were arrested).

The police petitioned to keep all the CCTV cameras and all the equipment they spent millions of dollars on to prepare.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#46

Post by llamataboot »

GFischer wrote: post #37
llamataboot wrote: post #15

Reposting this from the killed-dog-thread. It certainly won't help when the SWAT team is already in your home, but for the creeping sense of out of control cops everywhere: "Most of us carry video cameras in our pockets now. Filming police needs to become ubiquitous. There should be no police officer in the United States that doesn't know that at any time they could be being filmed and held accountable for their acti…

I don't live in the United States, but the LAST thing you want to do over there is to film an officer. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2008566,00.ht... By the way, my father recalls from when my country was a dictatorship that "you couldn't take photos of police or military, or you were arrested". Democratic U.S.A. is doing the same..

You may be harrassed if you film cops, but it is plainly legal[1], and the courts have recently begun to be more aggressive about slapping down municipalities that try to restrict it.[2] Normalizing it will go a long way to keeping police from thinking they can harass activist-types that are filming cops. I have been filming cops with copwatch groups from the days we had to carry big shoulder mounted video cameras.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glik_v._Cunniffe

2) http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/05/7-rules-for-recording-...

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#47

Post by skore »

dllthomas wrote: post #32
matwood wrote: post #30

After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. All the more reason to never speak to the police. Ever. What happened to 'protect AND serve'? The police have made their jobs harder by syst…

Wouldn't this be reason to never speak to anyone, ever? It doesn't sound like Baucum identified himself as a police officer.

No, I think the logic is straightforward: If talking to "anyone, ever" can become a fatal problem involving the police, that makes talking to the police directly an even worse option. "You shouldn't talk to anybody, especially not the police."

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#48

Post by ryguytilidie »

wavefunction wrote: post #7

Again and again we see questionable or outright illegal police shootings of dogs and people and nothing ever comes of it. The responsible parties are never charged with manslaughter or even fired. I want to support the police, but the thin blue line bullshit has to stop! I get that police work is often dangerous but individuals that have shown poor judgement are retained on the force. That police officer that shot th…

I think the thing that frustrates me the most is that in situations like the one you describe where developmentally disabled guy is killed and there were 100 ways to avoid it. Those ways simply are ignored after the fact because people feel such a need to defend the cop that they can't even acknowledge that they might have done something wrong. It creates a situation where improvement is pretty much impossible, because to improve one generally has to admit that there is a problem.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#49

Post by kdeberk »

maxerickson wrote: post #28
kdeberk wrote: post #11

To me it seems that there are a lot of issues at play that led to the death of this man, but temporarily ignoring the fact that it seems hypocritical for a state to both punish gamblers while promoting a state lottery, it appears necessary that SWAT teams are required to arrest people within their own homes given the fact that people are free to own weapons and use those for protection. I'm not saying that firearms n…

If the crime involved is not violent and the suspect has no history of assaulting police officers (or perhaps any history of violent acts), it should basically be a criminal act for the police to initiate the use of force during the apprehension. You are making a huge leap from the presence of weapons to the use of violence against other people.

> If the crime involved is not violent and the suspect has no history of assaulting police officers (or perhaps any history of violent acts), it should basically be a criminal act for the police to initiate the use of force during the apprehension.

I think I agree.

> You are making a huge leap from the presence of weapons to the use of violence against other people.

I think police officers has to put their lives on the line. I'm not saying that SWAT teams have to use violence, I'm only saying that police officers should come prepared with semi-automatic firearms and body armor if there is a suspicion that the suspect will be armed.

Re: “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

#50

Post by macspoofing »

llamataboot wrote: post #15

Reposting this from the killed-dog-thread. It certainly won't help when the SWAT team is already in your home, but for the creeping sense of out of control cops everywhere: "Most of us carry video cameras in our pockets now. Filming police needs to become ubiquitous. There should be no police officer in the United States that doesn't know that at any time they could be being filmed and held accountable for their acti…

This may be one beneficial side-effect of Google glass and related products.
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