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Investigation: Police Shootings

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#151

Post by djloche »

enraged_camel wrote: post #137
notdonspaulding wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: citation needed. Second: In almost the entire US, being armed is not against the law. Third: If it's as much of a "common occurrence" as you claim, please paste here one example from the list of shootings on the article's main page where an officer shoots a civilian without any provocation.

>>Second: In almost the entire US, being armed is not against the law. Way to miss the point. Of course being armed isn't against the law. But most states don't allow open-carry, and if someone is reporting you to the cops and saying you're armed, that means you just broke the law by failing to conceal your weapon. Furthermore, if the person reporting you says you're acting suspiciously or in a threatening manner, th…

Open carry is only disallowed in 5 states. That said, I agree that the police are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later no matter the situation.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#152

Post by daveguy »

enraged_camel wrote: post #137
notdonspaulding wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: citation needed. Second: In almost the entire US, being armed is not against the law. Third: If it's as much of a "common occurrence" as you claim, please paste here one example from the list of shootings on the article's main page where an officer shoots a civilian without any provocation.

>>Second: In almost the entire US, being armed is not against the law. Way to miss the point. Of course being armed isn't against the law. But most states don't allow open-carry, and if someone is reporting you to the cops and saying you're armed, that means you just broke the law by failing to conceal your weapon. Furthermore, if the person reporting you says you're acting suspiciously or in a threatening manner, th…

On the contrary, in the US most states do allow open-carry. Only 9/50 states prohibit or restrict licensing to effectively prohibit open carry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_carry_in_the_United_State...

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#153

Post by shkkmo »

cbr wrote: post #138
shkkmo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be missing the point. The graph was posted to show evidence for a 'war on car fatalities' not a 'war on the dangers of driving'. This is akin to announcing a 'war on cancer fatalities' but only caring about improving cancer treatments, not removing carcinogens on the environment.

It's as if we were successfully making cancer less deadly, but at the same time more people were living long enough to get cancer that there were more cancer deaths. We'd still be making the kind of progress we care about in working against cancer fatalities, even though there are more of them. And a suggestion that reduce longevity so that fewer people would die of cancer would be missing the point.

Would a suggestion to stop contaminating the ground water and air with carcinogens also miss the point?

Obviously, it is a bad idea to maximize the wrong metric. In the case of cancer, just measuring survival rates is a bad metric, but so is measuring cancer deaths per capita. A better metric is to measure the per-capita deaths due to cancer within specific age groups.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#154

Post by rasz_pl »

ghshephard wrote: post #26
rayiner wrote: post #3

Worth reading through these. A lot of people with mental illness shot just for holding guns or knives or "driving toward police." Recently, an au pair we know (from Germany), had a gun pulled on her because she reached into her purse to get her ID when she was pulled over. The fact that Maryland's finest are totally mental and she could get killed for doing that never occurred to her.

On the flip side, if there really is a threat, police officers have standard training which makes it clear that they have less than three seconds to react, before they are killed. Bringing their weapon to a ready state, actually increases the time that they have to react, and lets them make more rational decisions.

> lets them make more rational decisions.

it re-frames decision process from 'what should I do?" to "should I kill him?"

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#155

Post by melted »

gherkin0 wrote: post #129
notatoad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen police shoot and kill a man "armed with a toy" and it's very, very hard for me to fault them for it. It sounds bad when you say it, but armed with a toy and armed should be treated as the same thing. When a man being chased by police stops his car, gets out, takes cover behind the door and starts pointing something that looks remarkably like a gun at police, he should be shot.

> When a man being chased by police stops his car, gets out, takes cover behind the door and starts pointing something that looks remarkably like a gun at police, he should be shot. I disagree, especially in your outlined scenario, for a couple of reasons: 1) First and foremost: the police are professionals whose job should be to protect the public, even if that means they put themselves in harm's way. The person wit…

I take it you're not a cop, and don't have any cops in your family. The rule is very simple: unless you want to get shot, don't fuck with police. Pointing a toy weapon at an officer counts as fucking with police in my book.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#156

Post by DanBC »

melted wrote: post #155
gherkin0 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When a man being chased by police stops his car, gets out, takes cover behind the door and starts pointing something that looks remarkably like a gun at police, he should be shot. I disagree, especially in your outlined scenario, for a couple of reasons: 1) First and foremost: the police are professionals whose job should be to protect the public, even if that means they put themselves in harm's way. The person wit…

I take it you're not a cop, and don't have any cops in your family. The rule is very simple: unless you want to get shot, don't fuck with police. Pointing a toy weapon at an officer counts as fucking with police in my book.

It's not surprising when people describe the police as a fascistic brutal regime.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#158

Post by cauthon »

jeffmould wrote: post #147
tptacek wrote: post #2

Some notes: * The Guardian has a very similar feature, "The Counted": http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0... The Guardian's feature is better in some ways; for instance, it attempts to account for all police engagement fatalities, not just shootings. Some of the worst police abuses in the US haven't involved guns, and if you read the data carefully you learn some surprising things, like how d…

First off, I am not a doctor and I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night. But as someone that was an EMT and who worked around law enforcement for numerous years in other capacities, I have seen this all too often. "like how dangerous tasers are." Taser stats can be a bit deceiving. In the vast majority of cases where a taser is deployed the individual is in a drug-induced state with increased heart activi…

> To generalize and say that tasers are dangerous does not take into account the entire picture of events or situation at hand. It's not the taser itself that is dangerous it is the situation the individual has placed themselves in that causes the danger.

That's misleading. If a taser is dangerous in the "vast majority of cases" in which it is used, then its use is dangerous. Doesn't matter if it's safe in situations where it isn't used.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#159

Post by knowaveragejoe »

newman314 wrote: post #103
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the first clip I wouldn't call that "competence" so much as "overwhelming force", something US police use frequently. It's worth noting that at the beginning of the video, an officer is trying to ram the perp with a trashcan found at the scene... It's also worth noting that in the US an officer is much more likely to be killed. Hence why regular people are more likely to be killed by police. It's a fearful, kneeje…

Source please for "in the US an officer is much more likely to be killed"? I took a quick look and found this. [1][2] Looks like number of cop deaths are at a 50 year low but can't find a country by country comparison. [1] http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2014/09/i-saw-posting-on-facebo... [2] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131230/15411225716/numbe...

It's surely anecdotal, however I have a hard time believing most of Europe, in particular the UK, has more mentally ill and/or drug addicts who are more prone to this kind of behavior than the general populace. You also have a variety of high profile examples of cop-killing in the US that play into this kneejerk reactionary arms race on the part of police.

Re: Investigation: Police Shootings

#160

Post by wolf550e »

raarts wrote: post #143
thaumasiotes wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In almost the entire US, being armed is not against the law. So what? Cops don't know the law and aren't expected to know the law. The fact that a cop didn't know the law is a legal defense if you accuse him of messing up.

Cops aren't expected to know the law? Does that hold for civilians as well? As a comparison, here in The Netherlands, all citizens are expected to know the law. Not knowing it is never an argument as far as I know.

Not knowing that what you are doing is illegal is not a defense for you, true. But when a cop arrests you for doing something they believe is illegal but in fact is legal, you are not allowed to resists arrest. You must allow yourself to get arrested (and searched) and then explain later, at the precinct. You'll lose a few hours, people will be worried about you, you might lose your job, and the police don't owe you anything, because cops do not have to know the law. Only prosecutors are supposed to know the law, and then only if a judge is willing to shame the prosecutor (not a given).
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