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In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

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Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#41

Post by Qwertious »

justizin wrote: post #24
gokhan wrote: post #7

> The culture that encourages police officers to engage their weapons before gathering information promotes the mind-set that nothing, including citizen safety, is more important than officers’ personal security. This seems like the thing police forces need to change in order to fix the situation.

If wishing made it so. The institution of the police is intrinsically corrupt and unbalanced. This has nothing to do with the fact that your neighbor or your Uncle Joe is a police officer and seems like a perfectly nice person, and joined for all the right reasons, their job is not to keep you safe, it is to keep you under control. All of us, collectively. I know it's a big complex discussion to have about, "if we di…

And yet this is a bigger problem in the USA than in Europe or Australia.

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#42

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

rogeryu wrote: post #30

This reminds me of Sandra Bland who was put into jail for three days because of improperly signaling a lane change. Police in the US is totally out of control it seems.

She was put into jail for committing an unwritten infraction called "Pissing Off the Police"

Most officers feel entitled to a considerable amount of respect and many of them are prone to use their discretion in order to extract revenge for perceived personal insults. This has always been the case. Recently we have technology that increasingly exposes this and other sorts of wrongdoing.

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#43

Post by an_ko »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #37
jessriedel wrote: post #11

This discussion of strategies for reducing the use of force by police is more constructive and sensible than most on this issue: http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/law-enforcements-warrior...

I just took a quick look, but it looks like a great article, might be worth doing a HN submission?

44 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699893

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#44

Post by guns »

mc32 wrote: post #39
jxm262 wrote: post #12

This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.

For sure our police more often than necessary become very aggro. It may have to do with knowing anyone could own and possess either legal or illegal firearms. We need to reconcile gun ownership with the violence it can allow and our desire for less aggro policing. That said police most definitely need to be trained to deescallate rather than automatically double down. We need to seriously emphasize de-escalation.

> It may have to do with knowing anyone could own and possess either legal or illegal firearms.

While this may have an influence, it's important to remember that police officers are also trained to be wary of knives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_KJ1R2PCMM

You can't totally disarm a population, so there are diminishing returns on this front.

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#45

Post by maxerickson »

tajen wrote: post #33
jxm262 wrote: post #12

This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.

What does it mean for us Europeans, who still have, for the moment, more lenient police? Should we expect that America uprises against their own police? Draw a Fergusson every 3 months? Becomes either less economically stable or more economically agressive? Should we expect that US' political influence requires us to step up our police, the same way France escalated an NSA-style law six months ago? It worries me that…

Your reaction is extreme. Working professionals from rich countries that come to the US on short term Visas are not subjected to intense scrutiny. No one is prosecuted for the name on their Facebook account.

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#46

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

letitgo12345 wrote: post #40
rogeryu wrote: post #30

This reminds me of Sandra Bland who was put into jail for three days because of improperly signaling a lane change. Police in the US is totally out of control it seems.

This may be downvoted but she was stopped for not signaling but arrested (according to police statements anyway) for assaulting. This may or not be true but we should reserve judgement I feel while the investigation is proceeding.

Unless more video becomes available or the trooper changes his story, all the evidence we will ever have that an assault took place is the trooper's word. So, a judgement on this is really a judgement on the character of the trooper as to whether or not you think he might lie or exaggerate his account of events in order to attempt to cause a certain result. My opinion of the trooper's character is not favorable in this respect. Without regard to our conclusions about the trooper's character though, we ought to at least be able to agree that it was never necessary for the trooper to order her to exit her car, and thus it was not necessary for Bland to be jailed.

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#47

Post by grecy »

jxm262 wrote: post #12

This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.

> differences in police training from Germany vs the US

To highlight this even more, Police in Germany used only 85 bullets in all of 2001 [1]. Given their population is about 4x lower than the US, the equivalent would be the Police in all of the US using only ~340 bullets for a year.

In reality, The police in the US have KILLED over 400 people this year already.

[1] http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-police-used-onl...

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#48

Post by aikah »

an_ko wrote: post #38
pjc50 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, military forces are bound by international treaties to restrict violence against civilians. Police are not. Normally domestic politics in a free country would regard the random deaths of civilians as a bad thing, but the US racial divide means that enough white people regard black people being shot by the police as a positive outcome rather than a negative one.

> enough white people regard black people being shot by the police as a positive outcome rather than a negative one Could you elaborate? "Enough" for what?

black people = thugs in most white people's minds. Of course there is always one black guy they like,"but he's different hey ?"...

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#49

Post by grecy »

pasbesoin wrote: post #35

There was no report of anyone being harmed -- of any violence occurring. The police escalated the situation to a violent confrontation. Fail. P.S. If they had raised a sudden firefight, where might some of the resulting rounds traveled and impacted, particularly in what might be a fairly population-dense apartment building(s) setting?

They could have landed in a baby's crib, but that doesn't matter - http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-police-used-onl...

Re: In Iraq, I raided insurgents. In Virginia, the police raided me

#50

Post by vowelless »

jxm262 wrote: post #12

This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.

> One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations.

I think that the likelihood of civilians being armed in the US is a lot higher than in Germany, so I can imagine why American cops are a little more paranoid. I've seen cops put a hand on their gun as they approach suspects, which I think is part of the training here.

I wonder how many cops in America get killed in line of duty compared to Germany.

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