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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”

#271

Post by jleader »

akiselev wrote: post #237
runarb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

There's debate about whether increased availability of abortion really accounts for the decline in crime; one alternative hypothesis is that reduced rates of childhood exposure to lead (mostly from leaded gasoline and the resultant exhaust) is at least as responsible.

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

#272

Post by wavefunction »

hammerzeit wrote: post #140
wavefunction wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (US residents) haven't posted annotated lists because this is in our face via newspapers and TV news and viral videos passed around on the Internet. http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/29-black-p... Here's one take, which is focused on black folks shot and killed over the past year. Note how many were armed.

I'm american as well. When TV news and viral videos and newspapers make us feel like terrorism or kidnapping is more prevalent than it actually is, we call it sensationalism. Why is this any different? Is it because it confirms things you already believe to be true? I looked at the list you provided, and tried to correlate it against the Wikipedia list. Many of the dates etc don't match up but I tried. A number of th…

Well, believe what you want to believe.

I have friends who are police officers so it's not like I hate cops. I do hate the fact they close ranks and protect the bad ones though.

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

#273

Post by [deleted] »

hammerzeit wrote: post #140
wavefunction wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (US residents) haven't posted annotated lists because this is in our face via newspapers and TV news and viral videos passed around on the Internet. http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/29-black-p... Here's one take, which is focused on black folks shot and killed over the past year. Note how many were armed.

I'm american as well. When TV news and viral videos and newspapers make us feel like terrorism or kidnapping is more prevalent than it actually is, we call it sensationalism. Why is this any different? Is it because it confirms things you already believe to be true? I looked at the list you provided, and tried to correlate it against the Wikipedia list. Many of the dates etc don't match up but I tried. A number of th…

[deleted]

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

#275

Post by [deleted] »

beedogs wrote: post #259
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…

> In the end, I think the cop got a 3 week suspension. AFAIK, he's still on the FCPD. And this is why I don't trust cops at all.

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by jimbokun »

mikeash wrote: post #87
Ovid wrote: post #23

Is this really the America that America wants? The article mentions one case where a judge refused to issue a search warrant for a narcotics investigation and instead the police brought representatives from the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and raided the place with a swat team to conduct an alcohol inspection. What did they find? Two sample bottles of beer that weren't labeled as samples and a bo…

Sadly, yes, it is the America that America wants, as far as I can tell. I think this is where efforts to fight these problems fall down. They're almost all based on the assumption that the populace doesn't want this stuff to happen, but that the government pushes it through by abusing power, subverting democracy, etc. But from what I see, this is not the case. Most Americans want this. Whether it's gun-wielding mania…

"No, I don't know how...."

A lot of these same Americans are betting on football and in NCAA pools, play poker, drank when they were underage and likely have underage kids who drink now.

So if you want them to wake up, it must be driven home over, and over and over, and over again, that these are the kinds of activities that could result in a SWAT team breaking down their doors, and maybe them or their good friends getting shot.

I think the main obstacle will be an unwillingness to comprehend that things have really gotten this bad.

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

#277

Post by darkarmani »

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.

Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted.

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

#278

Post by madao »

It is actually kind of sad, coming from Australia, Police are usually seen as a force of good. Granted we do not have as much corruption in this sense as America does but sadly these sorts of positions are built on power and violence (eg non compliance) I think the question you have is if the police stop protecting their own people when they are trying to do their jobs how will they attract new police? as a profession where you will have someone that will be in that sort of job for 10-20 years+ getting sacked does not really mean you will be able to get into another police force (quite the contrary) you will most likely end up in a very low end security position.

This is not really a justification of all the shit they do rather an attempt to explain the insanity.

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

#279

Post by jlgreco »

llamataboot wrote: post #242
yogo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Give someone assault weapons, train them to believe that they are fighting for good, and remove all legal and moral contraints and watch how quick they turn into a "bad apple". It's not a personnel problem, it's a structural problem. See Stanford Prison Experiment, etc.

Put a bad apple in a barrel, leave it there for a short period of time, and observe that all the apples are now bad. Rotting apples release ethylene gas which is a ripening agent. Through the release of this gas, bad apples will "spoil the barrel" if they are not diligently weeded out and disposed of. Bad cops don't release ethylene gas. The mechanism that rot uses to spread through a police organization is called "The Blue Wall of Silence".

I love the "bad apple" metaphor because when you remember to say the whole thing it becomes clear that it is actually an argument against ignoring issues in an organization because only a few people are the "cause". If a police department "only has a few bad apples" then (according to the metaphor) those bad apples must be removed swiftly and decisively or the integrity of the entire department will be compromised.

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

#280

Post by VladRussian2 »

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.

yep, as they say - being black is a probable cause.
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