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Police Homicides in the United States

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Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#201

Post by perfmode »

tomohawk wrote: post #135
stctgion wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an unarmed man charges at you, you don't have the right to kill them. Police forces all round the world manage fine with battons and other non lethal weapons.

There's plenty of other exemplars of police violence to make the point. No need to turn the incident with Michael Brown into something it wasn't. I'd hardly describe a violent, 6'4", 300 pound guy charging at me as something that needs to be dealt with with kids gloves. According to our legal tradition, you can use deadly force if you fear for your life. This is the universal right of all free people - to defend them…

Regardless of the legality, I reserve the right to an opinion on the matter. I consider it cowardly to shoot an unarmed man, violent or not.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#202

Post by cyphunk »

The description of this technique is excellent. I once used this many years ago to determine the hidden depth of card card sharing networks for pay tv. it's not exact but it does help quantify issues with deep unreachable data, and sets a base line to compare against over time.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#203

Post by KGIII »

ojbyrne wrote: post #127
KGIII wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this led to the police militarization?

It's not the only cause (I'll save you the rant on US defense spending, you can watch Why We Fight ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436971/ ) , but it's a positive feedback loop. I don't believe I used the word "led" or suggested one caused the other. I am suggesting that once gun ownership (and concealed carry) and police militarization are established, one reinforces the other.

Ah, you said blame them. I'd assumerd that meant you felt they were the cause of both. I was pretty confused. Thanks for clearing that up.

I am a fan of responsible firearm ownership, but not the NRA - by the way. I don't know if I'd blame them, but I'd agree that they contribute to the 'gun culture' that ends up with irresponsible people wanting to own firearms.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#204

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #199
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just me. It's just not a good organization to stand behind to focus on the demilitarization of the police. It's too racially motivated to gain popular support. "Black Lives Matter is an international activist movement...that campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people... The U.S. population's perception of Black Lives Matter varies considerably by race... former New York City Mayor Ru…

To me that’s appropriate. Black people are at the forefront of police abuse in the US. Solve the problem of black people being abused by police and you’ve solved the problem in general. I totally agree that many people have a distorted view of the movement but to me that’s a reflection of problems with our culture more than problems with the movement.

> Solve the problem of black people being abused by police and you’ve solved the problem in general.

This is why BLM should _not_ handle this situation. They think they're the only ones that cops are jerks to. The issue isn't racism, it's the inability of our police force to self-police and remove the bad apples.

> many people have a distorted view of the movement

It literally says that it has "campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people." Its focus is not police reform for everyone.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#205

Post by bingly_ »

vidarh wrote: post #92
keiferski wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is based on a false assumption: that the proper police response to life-threatening criminal acts is to kill the perpetrator. If you get past the they deserve it Puritan mentality, the ideal scenario is for police minimize death (of criminals and police officers) at all costs. Numerous other countries handle violent criminals in ways other than "kill them immediately"; the tendency of police officers to use imme…

An example I tend to give is the case a while back where someone was wielding an axe. Two police officers went after him, and the axe-wielding man was shot and killed because he went for one of them. Success, surely? He protected his partner, who might have been harmed. The way something like this would likely have gone down somewhere like the UK would be that the first responders would have called for reinforcement,…

The United States has areas of significantly bad crime. 4 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world (measured by murders per capita) are in the U.S. These cities have murder rates from 44 to 60 per 100,000 people.[0] For reference the United States as a whole has a murder rate of 4.88, and United Kingdom has a rate of 0.92.[1] Making matters worse the violence isn't distributed evenly in those cities, it's often concentrated in a few "bad parts."

There are neighborhoods in the U.S. where your chance of being the victim of a violent crime in given year is 1 in 7.[2] That's for civilians. When we send police in to try and protect those victims it's hard to send them unarmed.

[0] - http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-dangerous-cities-in-... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... [2] - http://abcnews.go.com/Business/worst-neighborhoods-violent-c...

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#206

Post by ryanlol »

emodendroket wrote: post #172
ryanlol wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely not much, but having the first google result for someones name point to a dossier with ideally: * Name, DoB * Some decent photos for easy identification * Footage of them murdering someone, pages like this without solid evidence don't seem like a good thing. * Collection of news articles, court documents * Contact information (social media, home address(es), phone numbers) * Employers contact informat…

> The somewhat unlikely worst case scenario is that it simply doesn't bother them at all. People ask George Zimmerman for his autograph.

People try to shoot George Zimmerman in the head.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#207

Post by DuskStar »

thisacctforreal wrote: post #94
blattimwind wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your explanation is somewhat simplistic, but the observation that societies different from the US manage without the massive police violence is of course spot on. There was a (now deleted) comment a few minutes ago about a police response resulting in someone being shot by the police, the commenter concluded that it was overall reasonable given the circumstances, since no one else got hurt. That looks like a…

Mass shootings in America are not an easy problem to fix. If 0.00005% of the population decides to spend the last 20 minutes of their life going on a murder spree, there's not much you can do, at least in the context of America. Guns are prolific in the US: between 2000 and 2010, 2,000,000 AR15s alone were manufactured for domestic use. Deciding on a set of laws to control that number of firearms to end these arbitra…

From my perspective, I'd rather have someone spending the last 20 minutes of their life on a shooting spree than spending the last couple of days cooking up some AMFO, renting a truck from U-Haul, and causing some serious issues. A lot of people seem to assume that the fallback from a rifle (for the purposes of a killing spree) is a kitchen knife or something - I don't think this is universally accurate.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#208

Post by michaelt »

arca_vorago wrote: post #187
michaelt wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if some of the preference for violence in the American policing tradition goes back to Western films - where outlaws are wanted dead or alive, a quick draw is the main thing a lawman needs, and the climax of the film is the lawman meeting the bad man in the street, drawing first and shooting him dead.

There are so many comments worth responding to in this thread, but this one in particular raises my ire. Are you really trying to reduce policing tradition in America to western films? How about the real west, where self defense was a way of life. I don't want to be too combative but I seriously don't understand peoples inability to understand the principles of self defense as a natural human right, and yes that incl…

  western films? How about the real west, 
  where self defense was a way of life.
I restricted my comment to western films as I can talk about them truthfully, having seen several. I can't comment on the real west truthfully as I wasn't there and neither have I engaged in the serious scholarly study that would let me tell reality from legend.

I'm not sure how the rest of your comment relates to my comment.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#209

Post by JBlue42 »

maxerickson wrote: post #188
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building support for amending the Constitution and then doing that would undermine the argument about arms being a constitutional right. My point is that this isn't possible. There is _not_ popular support for these kind of changes, and if you think there is, I implore you to spend some time talking to people from the Midwest. There absolutely would be armed resistance to these kinds of changes, assuming an amendme…

I live in the Midwest and understand the challenge. The first step to passing an amendment is obviously creating the conceptual space for that to happen, and gee look where we are.

Go the Chris Rock route and charge an obscene tax on bullets for handguns. Also, make it illegal to own handguns.

Beyond some of the more obvious ones like our lawmakers know about (gun show loopholes, etc.), maybe something like requiring insurance, just like you have for your car.

There's a lot more regulation that can't be done but no willpower or even political power, seeing as that new terrible bill about concealed carry just got passed by the House.

No resolution in sight, at least for 2-4 years.

Re: Police Homicides in the United States

#210

Post by scruple »

always_good wrote: post #21

One of the worst videos I've seen on the internet is the Daniel Shaver execution from last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62Va6Ft2cw The Sergeant (voice in the vid) thinks he's fucking Jigsaw, and he wasn't even the guy that pulled the trigger. America is fucked.

And he (the officer, Philip Brailsford) was just found not guilty of second-degree murder 2 days ago. Fucked, indeed.
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