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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

#211

Post by [deleted] »

Mithaldu wrote: post #60
vowelless wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No direct comparison, but, police officers killed in germany: http://www.corsipo.de/ (probably incomplete, but In the usa: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/US-Law-Enfo... Extrapolating that into numbers: DEU: Meanwhile the number of police kills are roughly: DEU: ~1 person killed by police per 10 mio citizens :::: USA: ~12.5 persons killed by police per 10 mio citizens The ratios are not all that far…

[deleted]

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

#212

Post by mistermann »

mikeash wrote: post #185
Programmatic wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor. I think there's a middle ground somewhere between "toss the case because the bodycam footage went missing" and "lock up the cop and throw away the key"

Judge each person's criminal case on their own merits. If neither the civilian nor the cop can be proven to have committed a crime, they should both go free. Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct. This cost wil…

> If neither the civilian nor the cop can be proven to have committed a crime, they should both go free.

This won't help much if the citizen is dead.

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

#213

Post by lectrick »

Every time you aim a gun at an innocent persons' head without first doing due diligence before escalating, you increase the chances of an accident or misunderstanding which results in an innocent person dead.

Which we hear about all the time. So WTF?

In any event, why would a squatter merit such a hostile response?

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

#214

Post by dllthomas »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #119
acdha wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that the police have far more resources available. Once someone demonstrates that they're actually a threat, the police still have the option of applying superior force but they have far more options for controlling when and where that happens and ensuring that innocent bystanders aren't needlessly exposed. One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases, which seem to be becomin…

"One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases" If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made. Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor…

While I favor body cameras, I don't think your reasoning here holds up. Even if we assume cops only favor their own safety and power, we would expect to see this policy around high speed chases - they are dangerous for the cops as well.

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

#215

Post by kcbanner »

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.

It does seem like the US officers prefer to shoot and ask questions later.

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

#216

Post by jessriedel »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #132
jessriedel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of that. > I would argue that I have a duty of care to those children and their parents that is AT LEAST equal to my duty of care towards my own children. Well, first this would only plausibly apply to dangers that have to do with you taking responsibility for the children. Is there is some exogenous risk that has nothing to do with where the children happen to be at a given time (a condition that i…

And I would argue that in a trade-off between police or military safety vs civilian safety, civilians are similarly "both more vulnerable and more innocent (in the sense of being less responsible for their predicament)" than the military or police that interacts with them.

Agreed.

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

#217

Post by fweespeech »

mistermann wrote: post #210
fweespeech wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 matte…

> 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. If you think of them as undisciplined teenage boys in over their heads, given a job for which they have not developed sufficient levels of mental matur…

I'm not sure how the idea that we hand undisciplined teenage boys firearms and power over the rest of the population any less horrific than what I described.

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

#218

Post by ghufran_syed »

dllthomas wrote: post #214
ghufran_syed wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases" If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made. Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor…

While I favor body cameras, I don't think your reasoning here holds up. Even if we assume cops only favor their own safety and power, we would expect to see this policy around high speed chases - they are dangerous for the cops as well.

"They are dangerous for the cops as well" - That's true..but hasn't it always been true? Car speeds haven't meaningfully changed in the last 40-50 years, so it's likely that the danger to civilians and police hasn't particularly changed either. So, if it's true that police agencies are encouraging less dangerous means of achieving the same ends, why now and not before? The change suggests some other factor, and my supposition is that widespread video footage of these chases may have played a role.

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

#219

Post by maehwasu »

Two years ago, I was in the US for a month and volunteered to chauffeur two Chinese students to a Celtics game as an outing (I was working for a homestay/education consulting company at the time).

On the way back at night, driving through a small town in central Massachusetts, I passed a cop car, going at the speed limit. The cop immediately pulled out and began tailing me, but did not turn on his lights.

I tried to maintain a constant speed, a couple miles above the 35 mile per hour speed limit, since I know cops treat excessively slow speeds as an indicator of drunk driving.

Eventually, after 15 minutes of being tailed, I hit my foot a bit too heavily on the gas, and went to 45 miles per hour. He instantly turned on his lights, and pulled me over.

The officer was extremely skeptical when he got to the car, especially since the name on the car's registration was my company's, not mine, and I had two minors in the back. After some questioning and prodding about where we had been and what we had been doing, he let me go with a warning.

I shudder to think what would have happened if I had pulled over in the same situation, but black. The officer was serving no sort of duty except to troll for problems where none existed.

I haven't returned to the US since: it turns out there are many places I can live where I don't have to have nerve-wracking interactions with hostile law enforcement, ever.

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