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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”

#321

Post by GeneralMayhem »

tsotha wrote: post #309
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Fallujah, being an example of SWAT team over-reaction On a nationstate level. the more direct problem that there is no a preponderance of ex-soldiers, weapons, and an entire industrial base massively expanded and looking for civilian roles now everyone can see wars winding down and this kind of thing will be more prevalent. All the forces mentioned in the article (including "militarisation" are conspiring in a…

>True. Fallujah, being an example of SWAT team over-reaction On a nationstate level. That's so daft I don't know where to start. There's no such thing as an overreaction in war. >the more direct problem that there is no a preponderance of ex-soldiers, weapons, and an entire industrial base massively expanded and looking for civilian roles now everyone can see wars winding down and this kind of thing will be more prev…

>There's no such thing as an overreaction in war.

There is when we (a) don't know who the enemies are and (b) live in a post-Geneva world where the international consensus is that yes, there are lines that can never be crossed.

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

#322

Post by morgante »

Given that the police have decided to, essentially, wage war on the people why don't we try fighting back? The majority might not care, but "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world." (Margaret Mead)

Dump money into personal lawsuits against officers committing negligent attacks such that they are financially ruined. Attend town meetings and demand sever cutbacks in the budgets of police departments acting this way. Put lobbying dollars to work and get change from the top down.

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

#323

Post by Wingman4l7 »

seiji wrote: post #61
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…

Is there a service to record live streams online (easily, cheap/free) from phones? The key is to send the live stream out for storage. Common "we'll sync after the video is recorded" services are no good if you get your phone destroyed half way through trying to record.

I just read about a service that covers this use-case (sorry, I can't for the life of me find it now). It streams low-quality video to a server to cover for the eventuality that the phone is destroyed. I'm pretty sure it was some sort of open-source software that wasn't Bambuser.

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

#324

Post by etherael »

wdewind wrote: post #257
ryanSrich wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cops have no legal obligation to protect you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

You make it sound much worse than it actually is. The court ruled "a government and its agencies are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen." If the opposite were held true any person who was ever the victim of a crime could sue the government agency with jurisdiction for damages. Warren does not hold that the police have no duty to protect yo…

You mean say a cop is hiding behind a steel door while you go toe to toe with a knife wielding crazy?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/to_serve_but_not...

Nah, never happens.

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

#325

Post by wutbrodo »

lostlogin wrote: post #320
shef_hauwanga wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This cannot be stressed enough. Anyone who enforces a rule through violence but is not subject to that rule is nothing more than a thug.

This made me laugh. Applying this rule to the US is hilarious. The collection of Gitmo detainees, drone victims, the tortured, the extraordinary rendered, bombed, shot and otherwise victimised non-US citizens that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Uncle Sam came knocking over their countries probably aren't smiling with me.

You're really surprised that citizens of a country expect to be treated better by their own government (which, in essence, is the expression of their own will) than non-citizens are? For examples of this, see literally every society that's ever existed in the history of mankind.

That's not to say that any of the things you mentioned are ethical or that I agree with them at all, but it's not too difficult to see the difference between being victimized by an external force (which is essentially just garden-variety "humans are shitty"-ness) and being victimized by an entity that is supposed to represent you.

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

#326

Post by MattyRad »

morgante wrote: post #322

Given that the police have decided to, essentially, wage war on the people why don't we try fighting back? The majority might not care, but "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world." (Margaret Mead) Dump money into personal lawsuits against officers committing negligent attacks such that they are financially ruined. Attend town meetings and demand sever cutbacks in the b…

While that would probably work to some extent, it doesn't really solve the mentality of violence or outright ignoring Constitutional rights. (Assuming people have money to dump, which is not usually the case)

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

#327

Post by cheald »

drblast wrote: post #265
adambratt wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in an actual dangerous situation the cop would have the choice to either run or to fire his gun and lose his job. Would you really want someone to protect you at the risk of losing their job?

I think that if this were the rule, this would be understood going in, and it would be fair. The nature of police service would change. Why should being an officer be a lifetime career? We ask people in the military to protect us at the risk of losing their lives, why is it so much to ask for a cop to risk his job? Edit: I'm coming from a military background and the lack of accountability there is disturbing too. I t…

> Why should being an officer be a lifetime career?

Because it's an occupation that takes training and experience to do well?

But by all means, if you want a bunch of untrained newbies running around with guns and the legal standing to use them on the citizenry, your idea's a great one.

The problem isn't police using their guns. It's the Blue Wall of Silence when they do.

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

#328

Post by cheald »

mathattack wrote: post #182

"In January 2011, the Culosi family accepted a $2 million settlement offer from Fairfax County. That same year, Virginia’s government spent $20 million promoting the state lottery." Lotteries like this are a tax on people bad at math. How is this morally superior to an office pool? Though I do think viewing this as a "hit" enters the realm of tinfoil hats,

There's no question of "morality" here. The government just wants the monopoly on gambling.

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

#329

Post by swordswinger12 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #288
coldtea wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is precisely it: its not economically beneficial to be involved in politics That was the case at other times and places too. And their solution to that, was to shame citizens that only cared for what's economically beneficial. The solution is to make active participation in politics (= active citizenship) a virtue that people want to be identified with in the same way being "in fashion", "in shape" or "rich" i…

A huge, enormous part of this is having a vigilant press. It's impossible for everyone to individually do investigative reporting on every relevant issue. You may be able to shame people into reading good investigative reporting but first somebody has to write it. That is really where we've failed today: People get their news from outlets that run stories about Obama's birth certificate and what color Phil Zimmerman'…

>Phil Zimmerman

Did you maybe mean George Zimmerman? That would be a more topical example of media stupidity.

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

#330

Post by jlgreco »

saraid216 wrote: post #319
darkarmani wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Wait, what? If citizen's lied for each other in investigations, they'd be prosecuted. What, the Internal Affairs division just doesn't exist? Does it not have enough power? Is that what's really being argued here? Or is this just feel-good we're-the-good-guys they're-the-bad-guys rhetoric intended to undermine what capabilities they have, cause them to feel threatened and insecure in the midst of the citizenry they…

> What, the Internal Affairs division just doesn't exist?

In fact yes. Many police departments do not have "Internal Affairs". Where they nominally exist, they are rarely staffed by a separate group of people, rather "internal affairs" work is handled by the same people as everything else. The same people behind the same silent blue wall...

Hollywood depictions of "Internal Affairs" are largely a "Hollywood thing".

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