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

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

#231

Post by vacri »

Kylekramer wrote: post #62
akiselev wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah it's all much worse in other places. We're still "better" than all the dictatorships and authoritarian governments in the world, and that makes it all just fine and dandy. The only people losing sight of reality are the ones deluded into thinking that America/ns is/are immune to what appears to be a fundamental feature of power: corruption. By point 3 he meant actions by USG whistle blowers with access to cla…

There is a problem with broad statements like the grandparent comment. College students buy water everyday without trouble, people own guns without being harassed daily, people makes bets daily without any trouble, people make joking threats daily without incident. There is plenty bad going on without the need for exaggerations and outright lies. If you want reality to change, you have to accept reality. Skewing it t…

There is some irony in chiding someone for hyperbole while claiming 'at least it's not as bad as some other places', an argument that can be made of almost any aspect of the human experience.

I mean, if you set the bar as low as "better than living in a dictatorship" instead of "comparable to western democracy -foo-", you're engaging in some pretty solid resetting of the frame of reference.

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

#232

Post by alexvr »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #41
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.

What a sad truth, especially the last part

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

#233

Post by ryanSrich »

sneak wrote: post #221
Nrsolis wrote: post #184

I knew Sal Culosi. He was a nice enough guy that used to hang out at Fast Eddies Sports Bar in Fairfax, VA. I saw him there often just tending a beer and minding his own business. If you can believe it, he was an optometrist at a Wal-Mart that just measured eyeballs and wrote prescriptions. If he was a bookie (as alleged) then I never saw anything that gave him away. I followed his story in the paper and was surprise…

It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments. If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that! It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops. Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsib…

Cops have no legal obligation to protect you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

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

#234

Post by merraksh »

But the Occupiers, who tended to be young, white, and middle-to upper-middle-class, knew social media like few other demographics. They knew how to live-stream video directly to the Internet. They all had smart phones, so police couldn’t suppress incriminating video by confiscating one or two or ten phones—someone was bound to have video of not only the original incident but also of police trying to confiscate phones to cover it up.

Looks like another good use of Google glasses, if used by protesters en masse.

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

#235

Post by PavlovsCat »

saraid216 wrote: post #223
sneak wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments. If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that! It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops. Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsib…

It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. If you're accused of a crime, you deserve maximum legal effort applied for your defense.

> It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens.

Heh. First off, it's cops killing people, and then being squeamish about it (very contrary to how they'd deal with a civilian guilty of the same thing) that make people use these words.

Secondly, there are of course many factors that go into stuff like this; many benign like simple solidarity, some potentially sinister, like being involved in things you'd be shunned for by most of society - such as killing unarmed people and then lying about it - which is an incredibly powerful bonding agent.

> maximum legal effort

But here too, this means very different things on both sides of the "blue line", doesn't it.

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

#236

Post by vacri »

hammerzeit wrote: post #171
btilly wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the abuses don't have good statistics around them. I personally know a guy who was put into a private jail on trumped up charges and denied bail. He fought in court, won, and has been presented with a large bill from the private jail. The kicker? The DA, the sheriff and many in the police force are investors in the private jail! Can you say "conflict of interest"?

That sounds terrible, I'm sorry for your friend. Systemically that's broken and represents the potential for massive abuse. That said, I assume you'd agree that anecdotes don't constitute data, and that we shouldn't develop strong beliefs on the backs of them. To assume the prevalence of something on the basis of loud anecdotes leads us to being easily manipulated -- in the absence of data I believe should keep our p…

Data is only as good as the interpretation of it. You've just handwaved away a police homicide rate of an order of magnitude because the general homicide rate is also much worse. Other western democracies are bunched around a homicide rate of around 1.0/100k (Germany is 0.8), and the US is a clear outlier at 4.8. Having double the proportion of this significantly higher homicide rate is not something to claim as 'proportionate' and hence not a particular concern for the issue at hand.

One wonders at what point you would consider it 'ridiculously disproportionate'? 10%? 20%?

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

#237

Post by akiselev »

runarb wrote: post #85
akiselev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans vote for those who are tough on crime. I think CATO estimated (on the high end) about 40,000 SWAT/paramilitary raids a year and the public perception is that the targets are all criminals. To them this is just "acceptable collateral damage."

Unfortunately this is more being dumb on crime. Just think about all the criminals they could have investigated insted of thus amatur rides. Her in Norway its can sometime take 10-20 minutes just to get thru to the police if you have an emergency at night. I hope the local SWAT time at least is out chasing real cals and real criminals instead of shutting security guards and raiding the local veterans clubs for some $…

There have been incidents like the Oaksterdam raid where the DEA took up all SWAT resources for a raid of a civillian, unarmed (and legal state-wise) marijuana cooperative. Meanwhile, there was a school shooting minutes away. [1]

The reality is that crime is falling in the United States and has been for a while (Freakanomics has a decent piece about the relationship of crime and the availability of abortion, with a time lag in the former that showed a correlation with the latter) and I think this paramilitarization is an attempt to fill up budgets and give reasons so that they aren't reduced in the future.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/oakland-sc...

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

#238

Post by learc83 »

tsotha wrote: post #203
nnnnni wrote: post #12

Isn't the first story in the article a clear case of entrapment? The cop encouraged the guy to do something and then killed him for it.

Entrapment laws are a defense from prosecution, and they're different in every state. Normally it's only entrapment if the cop is enticing someone to break a law he wouldn't have broken otherwise. In this case if the guy was betting on games every Sunday the jury probably would have taken a dim view of an entrapment defense. The shooting is another issue. The cop is saying it wasn't deliberate, and that's probably tr…

I don't know the applicable state law, but from the story he was betting 50 dollars on games every Sunday. The cop spent several months pretending to be his friend and convincing him to bet more and more.

It seems to me that he would never have bet anywhere near that much without several months of persuasion by the police.

Therefore, if it weren't for the cop pressuring him it is very unlikely he would have ever broken that particular law.

Granted it's a moot point, because as you say entrapment is a legal defense and the would-be defendant is dead.

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

#239

Post by hondje »

saraid216 wrote: post #223
sneak wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments. If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that! It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops. Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsib…

It's rhetoric like this that makes cops feel obligated to protect each other from other citizens. If you're accused of a crime, you deserve maximum legal effort applied for your defense.

Don't try and blame police corruption on people complaining about police corruption and hating corrupt police, its obviously neither the cause nor a contributing factor. Just deflecting blame to the victims.

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

#240

Post by unethical_ban »

yogo wrote: post #225
sneak wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shit like this that flies in the face of all those "but most cops are not bad guys" arguments. If an organization fights to protect bad guys, I don't care how much good they do: they are complicit in furthering criminal behavior. And they're in a position of trust, at that! It's an open secret that cops lie to protect other cops. Why do we allow this? Any other person in a special position of trust and responsib…

These things are still pretty rare. Unfortunately, once you start raiding barber shops and pool halls with so much heat something like this is bound to happen. I still find it to be an honorable job with honest guys that put their lives on the line; however, statistically there's always going to be some hot-headed trigger-happy guy involved. Plus even if they're not on the force they're in some neighborhood as the un…

People would be more forgiving to individual departments and officers if ever there was fair punishment and contrition for crimes committed by law enforcement. There is always an excuse or a legal loophole, with no admittance of guilt or evidence of self-reflection.
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