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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

#141

Post by sbov »

chucksmash wrote: post #93
justizin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> .. which clearly doesn't provide long term value. The police are not interested in long term value. They want action, they want to play with their toys. It is simply not more complex than that.

That's a mighty broad brush you are painting with there.

It's a pretty good explanation.

Part of why the militarization of the police is so scary is because most of that equipment is given under a "use it or lose it" clause. So they have to use their tanks, otherwise the federal government will take them back.

So, they have to find "reasons" to use them even if they aren't necessary. Maybe one day in the far future they might be useful, but in the meantime they're basically toys.

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

#142

Post by sudioStudio64 »

tessierashpool wrote: post #139
sudioStudio64 wrote: post #106

I, for one, get tired of the constant refrain of hero worship while these guys say that there number one job is to get home safely. They are afforded terrible powers to intervene in, and disrupt, someone's life. That trade is made under the assumption that they do a dangerous job. A benefit is afforded to them due to the responsibility that they bear. Obviously, they want to have as much power with as little danger a…

Their number one job is not to kill anybody innocent, and they are terrible at it. Source: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...

great book.

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

#143

Post by evan_ »

powertower wrote: post #95
tajen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Draw a Fergusson every 3 months? The majority of what you have been told by your media are "narrative" stories that are removed of all actual facts and details (to fit the narrative). Its pure politics. For example, in the Ferguson case, you where told that the police officer (Darren Wilson) saw Michael Brown, and for whatever reason, just murdered him on the spot, by shooting him through the back of his head - all…

Sorry but you're going to need to explain why having watermelon soda is a shoot-on-sight offense, and why it matters that it's soda and not ice tea.

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

#144

Post by jschwartzi »

meowface wrote: post #129
grecy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-polic…

To be fair, far fewer people own guns in Germany than they do in the US. Police in Germany likely carry weapons to deal with knives and other close range weapons, while police in the US carry weapons to deal with long range weapons.

How often do police kill people who are obviously armed? Many of the police killings I've heard of were perpetrated on unarmed people. It seems disingenuous to dismiss concerns about police violence because the civilian could have been a gun owner. What matters is whether the killing could have been avoided if the police had reacted differently.

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

#145

Post by TeMPOraL »

shkkmo wrote: post #89
colechristensen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't overlook the very likely strong coupling between the bullets fired 'at' and 'by' police and how it likely goes both ways. People want to shoot at police because police shoot at people so often is probably just as true as the converse. This is likely both true at the macro and micro level. That is, police behavior escalates individual situations into shootings which otherwise, with better training, could have en…

> The media whipping everyone into a frenzy over every contentious interaction doesn't help anybody. But neither does ignoring the problem. I do wish we saw more responsible journalism on the topic, but apparently that doesn't generate the clicks...

Often not reporting on a problem would be exactly the right thing to do.

This is a discussion we as a society are not having, and I believe we should. We had free mass media for long enough already to know that the general population can - and far too often does - go batshit insane thanks to news stories[0]. It's not enough that the reporting itself screws availability heuristic badly, the standard practice of journalism now consists of twisting the story (sometimes even outright lying) to maximize readers' outrage.

And no, one can't say it's the responsibility of the reader to not be fooled; news-induced dysrationalia is systemic, it is predictable.

Reminds me of a thing I read today, a reply on Quora about child soldiers posted by an ex-Marine[1]. Apparently, the primary military value of children is pissing off westerners. Military groups using them let journalists photograph kids with guns, maybe even some dead ones (doesn't really matter who killed them), and wait for the outraged civilians to push against their own countries' war efforts.

[0] - why are we having this "War on Terror" again?

[1] - http://www.quora.com/Why-do-Western-militaries-not-want-to-k...

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

#146

Post by fweespeech »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #106

I, for one, get tired of the constant refrain of hero worship while these guys say that there number one job is to get home safely. They are afforded terrible powers to intervene in, and disrupt, someone's life. That trade is made under the assumption that they do a dangerous job. A benefit is afforded to them due to the responsibility that they bear. Obviously, they want to have as much power with as little danger a…

> Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers’ actions “on point.” It’s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me.

> I noted that the officers could have sought information from the apartment complex’s security guard that would have resolved the matter without violence. But he played down the importance of such information: “It doesn’t matter whatsoever what was said or not said at the security booth.”

It sounds far, far worse than:

> I, for one, get tired of the constant refrain of hero worship while these guys say that there number one job is to get home safely.

It honestly sounds like they are so self-centered that they only care about their arrest stats/job performance + personal safety. They care nothing for anyone else's safety if it gets in the way of their job performance numbers. That is a horrific concept, honestly.

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

#147

Post by pessimizer »

maxxxxx wrote: post #102
brownbat wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, why don't criminals in Germany exploit this, always threaten confrontation and have their run of the city? EDIT: Granted there's a big difference between trying to deescalate when possible and raiding a sleeping guy's apartment on bad info. EDIT 2: This was an honest question and I felt like I got good answers despite the downvoting. Big thanks to everyone who took it at face value or applied the principle of ch…

Because the German cops are not push overs either. If somebody will attack them they will fight back. But by trying to deescalate first you set the tone for the interaction. Most of the recently published police violence in the US seems to come from really trivial situations, not from criminals. I watched the Sandra Bland video. The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too an…

> The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too and I see a lot of people doing that too).

It's worse than that. The cop tailgates her, waiting for an excuse to pull her over. His excuse is that she fails to signal while switching lanes (to create some distance between them.) He was going to pull her over no matter what.

This may have been a trivial situation for the cop, but for black people travelling out of state, it's a nightmare.

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

#148

Post by [deleted] »

maxxxxx wrote: post #102
brownbat wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, why don't criminals in Germany exploit this, always threaten confrontation and have their run of the city? EDIT: Granted there's a big difference between trying to deescalate when possible and raiding a sleeping guy's apartment on bad info. EDIT 2: This was an honest question and I felt like I got good answers despite the downvoting. Big thanks to everyone who took it at face value or applied the principle of ch…

Because the German cops are not push overs either. If somebody will attack them they will fight back. But by trying to deescalate first you set the tone for the interaction. Most of the recently published police violence in the US seems to come from really trivial situations, not from criminals. I watched the Sandra Bland video. The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too an…

[deleted]

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

#149

Post by pessimizer »

ams6110 wrote: post #110
DanBC wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Enough" in that you have people on HN saying pretty much that most of the black people who get shot and killed by police deserved it and that black people are stupid violent criminals so it's no wonder they get killed so often, and that if only they were docile and compliant in the face of police harassment they wouldn't get shot so much. It's fucking weird seeing that stuff on HN, and it's scary to think how those…

There's a difference between the way you phrase it and the objective fact that most people who are killed by police are in fact people with lengthy and often violent criminal histories. Not all, of course. But most.

Do you have a citation for that? Not that I dispute it, but I don't know it to be true either.

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

#150

Post by Mithaldu »

michaelt wrote: post #116
colechristensen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't overlook the very likely strong coupling between the bullets fired 'at' and 'by' police and how it likely goes both ways. People want to shoot at police because police shoot at people so often is probably just as true as the converse. This is likely both true at the macro and micro level. That is, police behavior escalates individual situations into shootings which otherwise, with better training, could have en…

People want to shoot at police because police shoot at people so often is probably just as true as the converse. Could you add some more detail on this point? I'm having difficulty thinking of a situation I could be in that would be improved by me shooting at the police? I mean, even if they're honest good guy cops surely they'll call in backup and arrest you and make a really enthusiastic effort to put you in jail f…

> make a really enthusiastic effort to put you in jail

The point is that in the USA even for minor things people expect to be shot at more than anything else. If you're going to take a risk and do something really gainful, you take it for guaranteed that the cops will shoot at you and make a point to shoot first.

Read up on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown

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