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Afroman found not liable in defamation case

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Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea it’s as simple and stupid as that. This (black) peasant isn’t respecting our authority and higher status. If we let one slide then everyone is going to think we are equal to them. In their logic, they have to fight in court.

This is a common archetype when people get challenged (escalation of commitment), they effectively double down. I don't necessarily think it was racially motivated (but also don't doubt that it could have been).

> don't necessarily think it was racially motivated

Growing up Adams county myself, I'll go ahead and be the one to tell you that it was absolutely racially motivated. You do not want to be a minority out there. Hell, you don't want to be perceived as being left leaning at all out there. This is the same area where a ~15 year old girl was assaulted on camera, in front of a police officer for participating in a protest (IIRC, BLM, but I could be wrong). This made the front page of reddit when it happeend.

And this is very likely, corruption motivated as well. I have enough family and friends left out there who have first hand experience with the politics and policing of the area to know. In fact, I have a late friend who had this exact thing happen (though, one county over), on video and everything. He's just not a D list celebrity with money, so nobody cared.

If someone wrote a documentary about this area and tried to pass it off as fiction, people wouldn't believe it, as it would be considered too absurd to be believable.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Innocent bystanders are regularly killed by police discharging guns False. Innocent bystanders are killed by police discharging guns, but rarely. And, while the goal should be zero, it will never be zero

Let's aim for a max of once every year, then, over the entire USA. And once that's achieved, let's aim for once every few years. Once a decade should be good enough, you probably won't get better than that. The EU has a much bigger population than the USA, in a smaller space, and I'd bet they're already around this number.

The EU doesn't have armed criminals like the USA. The EU also doesn't have police being killed by criminals. It's close to 50 to 1.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves. If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it. Instead they decided to sue, which made even…

If the police possessed the self-control and critical thinking to not drag this whole thing into a lawsuit, I think the raid would likely have never happened in the first place.

I suspect that either this was some confidential informant who just reported false claims about Afroman and the police used it to get a warrant. Or the whole department is just corrupt and make up stuff to get a warrant in order to raid his house hoping to forfeiture his money.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never be zero because perfection is impossible. It's like saying there should be zero car fatalities. We should work to get them down (enforcement against drunk driving, maybe checkpoints, stronger driving tests), but asking for zero accidents just isn't reality.

That's not analogous at all. Everyone drives, and so everyone is a possible source of a car crash. Police are not (in theory) just whoever wanders into the goddamn precinct. They're (in theory) trained professionals, educated in what they do, and therefore entrusted with both the force of law, and the deadly force they wear on their belts. And no we probably can't make it ZERO, but we could surely get it under 1,300!…

1300 is not the rate of innocent bystanders being killed. It's the rate of people killed by police period. Maybe if we didn't have police being killed by criminals in the USA then they wouldn't need to go in armed and scared for their lives.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#555
post #361
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American police are trained to be afraid. They escalate situations constantly. They're trained that every traffic stop is LIKELY their last. I've had a gun pulled on me twice for traffic stops when I went to grab something. I'm white.

Not even the most dangerous job in the US. Forest workers, commercial fishermen, pilots etc are more dangerous. If we're talking about gun violence, your corner market cashier is more likely to get shot, Has anyone thanked a 7 eleven worker for their sacrifice thas you can get a slurpee at 2am?

I don't think you can use this datapoint for this purpose. Cops are employing the paranoid strategies already, so there's no way to discern between 'these strategies are needless' and 'these strategies are effective'.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wielding a knife is a deadly threat so I am not sure what the relevance is.

The relevance is that you don’t need to assume that the knife wielding person can hit you from a distance. One way or the other, this doesn’t seem to be a problem in other countries.

Pulling a percentage out of my ass that can't be terribly inaccurate, 99% of police encounters with guns drawn the police are under 21 ft away, at which distance a knife is as dangerous as a gun.

If someone is less than 21 ft from you and they are going to be using a knifes against you, then you should still draw a gun just as often as if they had a gun. So at <21 ft you think guns should be drawn less because they have knives you should also be thinking guns drawn the ~exact amount less no matter which of the 2 weapon they had.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#557
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves. If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it. Instead they decided to sue, which made even…

Mega-streisand effect ... they stacked together so many of em

I hope they appeal this case just to stack together one more humiliation.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#558

I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they see…

Not a silly question. If you go back to the 2000s, you'll see the growing militarization of local police. This is partially an economic prop-up where the military can now sell police departments materials/arms/etc. and police departments can buy them. Thus the military needs more. Nice little situation they found.

At the same time as these departments getting more funding, it feels like most departments have decided its better to use taxpayer funds to settle court cases rather than train and be more selective.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#559
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Snopes article is useful. For those who don’t want to read it, here is what Grossman says about that quotation: > That clip took my entire, full day presentation, and took it completely out of context. -They left out the part where I say that this is a normal biological, hormonal backlash from fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system arousal) to feed-and-breed (parasympathetic nervous system arousal) that can…

I don’t see why any of those should be exonerating? Also, I feel like “nothing wrong if it does happen” regarding shooting someone, is the wrong perspective. If shooting someone is necessary, then it is necessary, but that doesn’t mean nothing went wrong. Anytime someone gets shot is a time something has gone wrong.

So if someone threatens to kill you and your family, and you shoot them, something has gone wrong? I'd say something has gone right.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not analogous at all. Everyone drives, and so everyone is a possible source of a car crash. Police are not (in theory) just whoever wanders into the goddamn precinct. They're (in theory) trained professionals, educated in what they do, and therefore entrusted with both the force of law, and the deadly force they wear on their belts. And no we probably can't make it ZERO, but we could surely get it under 1,300!…

1300 is not the rate of innocent bystanders being killed. It's the rate of people killed by police period. Maybe if we didn't have police being killed by criminals in the USA then they wouldn't need to go in armed and scared for their lives.

By definition, every person the police interact with is innocent, because at such time as they are talking to a cop, even being detained by one, they have not been convicted of a crime.
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