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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

#231

Post by Evolved »

Programmatic wrote: post #171
Evolved wrote: post #151

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…

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"

I agree but that wasn't what the previous post asserted so I was replying to their hypothetical situation.

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

#232

Post by unabst »

mikeash wrote: post #183
tessierashpool wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I think this should be taken a little bit farther, and we should say that their number one job is not to kill anybody at all. Sometimes they have to, but it's not acceptable just because the person they kill is guilty of a crime, even a heinous crime. Killing should only happen when it is the only possible way to stop an imminent life-threatening situation. Any use of lethal force should be viewed as a great failure,…

Amen. I would go as far to say Police should serve and protect lives, period, including, if not most importantly, those they arrest. Unfortunately being a gun society is likely what makes this impossible. There is a kill or be killed mentality. If the worst weapon we had was kunf-fu we'd hire Jet Li and be done (though he does appear to dodge bullets).

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

#233

Post by manish_gill »

toephu2 wrote: post #224
maehwasu wrote: post #219

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…

So because of one isolated incident you think all cops in the U.S. act this way and therefore will never visit again? You think what you see on TV isn't just handpicked? and is actually representative of the thousands of pull overs cops perform daily? You think every single black person pulled over gets shot?

This excuse ("bad apples") is getting pretty old. One anecdote can be discounted. Tens and hundreds of them in the past several years are a bit hard to ignore. US cops are bad. Face it.

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

#234

Post by Evolved »

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…

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of deliberate tampering. The tech is not flawless and this kind of outcome is really not fair to either side. The camera only shows 1 point of view and if for X reasons it is used to judge the officer or the civilian as the overwhelming evidence then it can have severe consequences for either or both sides if it does work or does not work.

Example: civilian makes grandiose claim that is untrue and that cannot be refuted due to the camera malfunctioning. Officer is punished.

Example: civilian makes legit claim that cannot be proven due to camera malfunctioning. Officer successfully convinced court that camera failed to work and it's nonfunctionality was not preventable due to outside circumstances. Officer is not punished and civilian does not receive justice.

Etc.

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

#235

Post by Evolved »

sooheon wrote: post #187
Evolved wrote: post #151

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…

How many cases have there been of the police taking lives of civilians who were in the right and can prove it but were given no chance? How many time does evidence and video have to be conveniently "misplaced"?

Likewise how many cases were there where civilians filed complaints against officers which ultimately led to demotions, terminations, otherwise good cops not being able to get promoted, etc.

I'm completely 100% for the body cameras and for transparency but I also understand that they shouldn't be the only evidence used to decide guilt or innocence and should not hold more weight over other pieces of evidence.

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

#236

Post by vfdfv »

estava wrote: post #206
javert wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. They are not exploited.

The cost also comes in the ignorance of that third world part who have poorer access to education and opportunities. They are third world because they are ignorant. And they are ignorant because they are third world. Sometimes small incentives go a long way toward getting people further ahead. Sometimes they may shine by means of sports. But not everyone can be saved by sports. :-)

Well I don't know exactly how we're defining who is and who isn't a third world American, but the reasons for poverty are a lot more complicated than being "ignorant".

Mental illness, trauma, stress, physical disability / injury, side effects of living in a bad neighbourhood / neighbourhood targeted by law enforcement, trends in the local economy, etc. are some of the multifaceted reasons that people and families end up in poverty.

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

#237

Post by manish_gill »

sago wrote: post #51

"nothing ... is more important than officers’ personal security" I'm not sure this is true. If it were, why would they put themselves into potentially violent situations? It seems to me the priorities are 1. Make the arrest. 2. Officer safety. 3. Public safety. 4. Justice. In that order. They are related, to get 4 you sometimes need 1-3. But not always. 'Militarised police' is correct, because this corresponds exactl…

Wouldn't you say Public Safety should triumph Officer Safety?

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

#238

Post by jacquesm »

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 Sandra Bland case is a study in dumb escalation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_While_Black

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/24/is_this_your_car_like_sandra...

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

#239

Post by tzs »

Mithaldu wrote: post #150
michaelt wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm unable to figure out what point you are trying to make with the link to the Brown shooting, unless you last read that page several months ago and are unaware of the new information that has been added since then.

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

#240

Post by Elrac »

adventured wrote: post #135
Elrac wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My German wife says this is (to a large part) a direct consequence of the fact that the US has a much larger population of people with nothing left to lose. Middle class workers working off a mortgage in suburbia are a lot less likely to become violent killers than underprivileged folk who have precious few career options outside of drug dealing in gangs.

That's an incorrect conclusion. Check out the historical murder rate of Appalachia in the US. Extremely high gun ownership, extremely low murder rate. I grew up there, deep in poverty, everyone owned guns, and the murder rate was on par with the best of Europe per 100,000 people. The difference? Cultural. Where I grew up, people simply did not believe in killing each other, period. Desperation was widespread, yet the…

Nice try, poor logic.

What you call "people [not believing] in killing each other" is a phenomenon that calls for an explanation. I believe that explanation is simply that there's nothing to be gained from killing a desperately poor person. Appalachia (and other poor rural areas) have no gangs because there's no way to make a profit on organized violence. Gangs and the associated violence happen in cities because that's where some of the people, at least, have money that they can spend on drugs or prostitution or simply be robbed of.

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