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The Human Toll of Flashbangs

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Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#201

Post by antimagic »

exprL wrote: post #183
antimagic wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, French police carry sidearms... And if that's not enough, during periods of elevated risk of a terrorist attack, you even get soldiers walking around with semi-automatic rifles in squads of three.

This interests me (in a slightly off-topic way): do the soldiers really switch their service weapons to a semi-automatic model in order to patrol, or are all the rifles within the military police (etc.) semi-automatic only?

It's not military police, it's just plain ol' soldiers. Which kinda freaks me out, because I spend my time wondering exactly what their rules of engagement are, and how well they have been trained in them. At least they always have the safety engaged when I check...

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#202

Post by CWuestefeld »

fixedd wrote: post #174
tinco wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being irrational now. Of course cops need to be and feel safe. They are just humans, humans equipped with guns. Anything you can do to make sure they don't fire those guns prematurely should be done, after all, they're for protecting us. Calling it an armored tank is exaggerating. It's basically a mobile barrier that can carry a bunch of officers. There's all kinds of nice stuff you can do with them, and frank…

>...I think it would be kind of embarassing for a town if they couldn't get a robust all terrain vehicle to some location within a reasonable timeframe. When I went to high school in this general area (15+ years ago) they used run-of-the-mill SUVs just fine.

What is it with police and SUVs, anyway? What police function is best served by an SUV rather than a sedan? The primary use cases for police automobiles are (off the top of my head): A) get to a disturbance quickly; B) intercept traffic violators; C) transport prisoners. Except in really exceptional rural areas, none of these will be enhanced by SUVs, and in general, those SUVs perform these functions worse. In particular, they're bad at moving fast and maneuvering, which is required for (A) and (B).

Several years back, near where I lived in NJ, there was a police officer killed on duty. He was reacting to a complaint about drag racing - while he was driving an SUV. He attempted to pursue one of the drag racers, and rolled over his vehicle. Trying to chase a drag racer while you're in an SUV is stupid.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#203

Post by Zigurd »

happyscrappy wrote: post #180
morganvachon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction. Sometimes not even sold, but given. There are government programs where police departments can ask for used military gear and get it at no cost (i.e. no impact to their budget). This makes the departments especially eager to acquire…

While we should be on guard for police abuses let's not pretend it is anywhere near Mao or Stalin.

If you're white.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#204

Post by Retric »

dalke wrote: post #177
Retric wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ignoring the value of an early pension with Heathcoverage that can easily add 30+% to base pay. Also, coders rarely qualify for overtime so that can be a 50% pay cut right there based on 1.5x to 2.0x pay during overtime. Now adjust for cost of living and taxes which hammer the Bay Area coder's the disposable income and things don't look nearly as good as you might think.

You are correct in that I didn't include early pension. I also didn't include stock options. It's very hard to do a full cost analysis. I would be pleased if you could present better numbers. Spooky23 specifically excluded the Bay Area ("coders outside of the Bay Area") so your point doesn't apply.

Sorry, that was less clear, the same thing that hurts bay area Developers are just as relevant in other areas.

Sure, the bay area is a very expensive area, but so are NY and DC which also have lots of software developers. Police are paid more in high cost of living areas, but they are also far more widespread spread.

Consider Virginia: Northern Virginia has higher cost of living and a disproportionate share of developers. The police in that area are also paid more to compensate, but if you look at things state wide you’re going to miss out in a massive cost of living discrepancy.

As to pension numbers I don't know of a good way to calculate that. http://ballotpedia.org/Public_pensions_in_West_Virginia EX: Deputy Sheriff Retirement System lists $113,574,000 for 954 active members. So 100k per person. But there are active inflows and outflows of cash it's not directly calculable with those numbers. Per the U.S. Census, in FY 2011, employer contributions to West Virginia state and local government pension plans were 5.01 percent of all state and local government direct general spending. http://ballotpedia.org/Public_pensions_in_West_Virginia#cite... So pensions being ~10-20% boost to base salary seem to be in the right ballpark on average, but Police get early retirement so 20-40% of base salary seems more appropriate.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#205

Post by CWuestefeld »

pjc50 wrote: post #134
girvo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus... that's completely indefensible. Now, I don't live in the US, and I only see the bad stuff that happens through the media, but I truly can't see why the police need to do things this way...

The answer that hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread: racism.

Since white folks are also victims of police violence, I don't think your explanation can carry much of the weight.

To be sure, the media crows about this as the problem. But I think that's more a sign of a dysfunctional media than a real insight.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#206

Post by zo1 »

happyscrappy wrote: post #188
king_jester wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be living under a rock to not have read one of the bazillion of stories about policing and racism that have come up since last fall, but for a great overview of the subject I highly recommend The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [1] [1] www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431/

Police need to try harder to ignore the statistics of who commits crime. Just because one group is statistically committing more crime that should not affect their dealing with an individual who is innocent until proven guilty.

It's only a problem if unreasonable, excessive and unwarranted violence is used by the law enforcers. They should use every available indicator of crime in order to focus on problem areas. The alternative means that we're willingly sacrificing safety, peace and security in order to not offend, and that I find absolutely distasteful and negligent.

Of course, 100% innocent until proven guilty; I'm not saying we should convict/target people without merit based purely off of race/age/obesity/hair color.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#207

Post by grkvlt »

pjc50 wrote: post #132
Normati wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn't work in England when they wanted to arrest a terror suspect, so they secretly followed him to work one day, then shot him dead as he entered the train station. It turned out he was a plumber, not a terrorist.

Context: this was two weeks after the Tube bombings in London. It was a tragic error, but it is absolutely not routine. Wikipedia has a convenient list of UK mainland police shootings, which happen less than once a year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_U... (The word "mainland" there excludes Northern Ireland, where the RUC behaved as an occupying force with the support of the army until th…

If you want an idea of what a western 'police state' would look like, then Northern Ireland, say Belfast between 1970 and 1995, is a good proxy. Police and soldiers on patrol togetrher, an official shoot-to-kill policy, military checkpoints, internment without trial and conviction without jury, all that good stuff.

That was all in the name of terrorism and was orders of magnitude worse that the policies that have been put in place in the UK and USA since 9/11, for the next round of terrorism. So until we are at 'Troubles' levels of policing, I think the GWoT policing responses have actually been pretty restrained.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#208

Post by TeMPOraL »

happyscrappy wrote: post #180
morganvachon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A large contributing factor is the military industrial complex spewing out death tech at an absurd rate, and with nobody to blow up with it all it just goes to police forces at auction. Sometimes not even sold, but given. There are government programs where police departments can ask for used military gear and get it at no cost (i.e. no impact to their budget). This makes the departments especially eager to acquire…

While we should be on guard for police abuses let's not pretend it is anywhere near Mao or Stalin.

It's not "police abuse" anymore, it's police murdering people in broad daylight, for no reason whatsoever (e.g. see that video of a homeless person being shot). And around the whole country, military-grade equipment is widely deployed, to be used against civilian situation.

That scares the shit out of me, and I don't even live in the US. Maybe your government is nowhere near Mao or Stalin, but all the required pieces of oppression are being rapidly put into place, so be very hopeful that two elections and a terror attack from now someone won't decide to actually use those tools.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#209

Post by TeMPOraL »

amirmc wrote: post #162
tinco wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being irrational now. Of course cops need to be and feel safe. They are just humans, humans equipped with guns. Anything you can do to make sure they don't fire those guns prematurely should be done, after all, they're for protecting us. Calling it an armored tank is exaggerating. It's basically a mobile barrier that can carry a bunch of officers. There's all kinds of nice stuff you can do with them, and frank…

I find that logic utterly distorted. Give a bunch of humans guns, the right to use deadly force and then for some reason worry about making them 'feel safe' -- oh, and also absolve them if things go wrong (or even if they break the law), as we've seen in recent US news. I think they're already safer than most people. What cops really need is better and more substantive training, not equipment to hide behind.

No, tinco is right about officer safety. You really want those "men with gun and right to use deadly force" to feel safe, so that they don't exercise their killing license prematurely. When the officers feel safe and thus sure of themselves, they're more likely to follow proper procedures instead of being afraid of their own safety.

I'm not saying that you should give them armoured troop carriers though. You want them to feel safe, not invincible.

Re: The Human Toll of Flashbangs

#210

Post by [deleted] »

base2 wrote: post #145
jburwell wrote: post #2

The use of flash bangs by law enforcement is horrifying. These tools were design for to support direct action missions by special operations forces, and are, essentially, burning thermite [1] (e.g. able to melt through an engine block). To be clear, a direct operation mission is the use of lethal force to kill or capture one or more individuals or perform high risk hostage rescue. In these types of military operation…

Military grade stun grenades don't use thermite. Military stun grenades can barely burn anything(I have tried many many times but that's another story). hearing about people getting getting third degree burns has me wonder what are they building these things with for law enforcement usage.

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