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Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

theroot.com

61–70 of 177 posts

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#61

Ignoring the content of the article, why are so many articles on sites like these written so "weird"? There is lots of text and it seems there is very little actual content. It is like only a few lines actually have something to say, but the rest is just filler content. It is like someone wrote an article of a few lines, and someone else just extended it with random sentences to fill a page. To make matters worse, us…

Because this is a shit article pushing a political agenda with absurd rhetoric pandering to a niche that happens to be prevalent on HN?

After reading the last paragraph, I went straight for the flag button;

"It is not just Baltimore cops. It is cops. They will shoot you in the face in front of your infant daughter. They will choke you to sleep for selling cigarettes. They will shoot you in the back for walking away. And they will get away with it so often that we are shocked when they are indicted."

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#62
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's in a country where lots of people have guns.

Few by US standards, and most of them for hunting. And then there is some regulation, and well trained police.

And of course the compulsory military service..

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#63
post #40

Body cams on police and actual consequences for misconduct. Some of the videos of people (of all colors) being unlawfully murdered have led to absolutely zero consequence for those responsible. Those with authority granted by the public should have HIGHER accountability and more severe consequences, not be able to subvert them altogether. It's not difficult to imagine the level of misconduct that is likely occurring…

The price for this should be massive. Doing this once or twice corrupts the justice system and destroys public trust in police. This invites gangs to become the law and order. Look how that’s worked out in Chicago.

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Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#64
post #18

This isn't a problem with cops, or blacks, or whites, or anything like that. This is a problem with the USA. In some countries the entire police force of the country combined uses fewer bullets per year than the average police officer in the States. The homicide rates can be 40 times smaller in European countries than there. There's just something fundamentally wrong with that country and it would be a mistake to att…

1 - In most european countries, you are not allowed to carry weapons. 2 - European countries are very small in population in comparison to US.

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#65

Our US society is sick beyond belief.

The problem goes way beyond the US borders, and is a clear sign of corruption among the ruling class. When a cop is acquitted for murdering some innocent thanks to some intervention form above, he could become in the future a pawn of a private army for whoever was helping him/her from above. Suppose you're a high profile politician who needs some dirty job to be done, who would you trust more, some thugs recruited ar…

> The problem goes way beyond the US borders

Name one more western first world country besides the US, where cops shooting someone is hardly news. And no, the problem probably isn't guns.

In the US there's about 1 gun per resident, Germany 0.3, UK 0.06, and Canada 0.3. Meanwhile there were about 987 fatal shootings by cops in the US in 2016, compared to 13 in Germany, 4 in the UK, and 9 in Canada. Even adjusting these numbers for population and number of guns per resident, you will still be off by an order of magnitude.

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#66
post #61

Ignoring the content of the article, why are so many articles on sites like these written so "weird"? There is lots of text and it seems there is very little actual content. It is like only a few lines actually have something to say, but the rest is just filler content. It is like someone wrote an article of a few lines, and someone else just extended it with random sentences to fill a page. To make matters worse, us…

Because this is a shit article pushing a political agenda with absurd rhetoric pandering to a niche that happens to be prevalent on HN? After reading the last paragraph, I went straight for the flag button; "It is not just Baltimore cops. It is cops. They will shoot you in the face in front of your infant daughter. They will choke you to sleep for selling cigarettes. They will shoot you in the back for walking away.…

You seem outraged, but is anything they said wrong?

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#67
post #40

Body cams on police and actual consequences for misconduct. Some of the videos of people (of all colors) being unlawfully murdered have led to absolutely zero consequence for those responsible. Those with authority granted by the public should have HIGHER accountability and more severe consequences, not be able to subvert them altogether. It's not difficult to imagine the level of misconduct that is likely occurring…

> which differs sharply from the actual data on race/crime/police lethal force

Can you show me the data set that breaks down police killings by race of the killed person please?

Or can you even point me to the dataset that just lists all police killings?

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#68
Although this is a topic that is easy to get angry about, I can't honestly trust anything that I read from theroot.com since I have seen many articles that are just racially charged and completely biased. Just a few days ago, they posted something about the ousting of London Breed here in SF (https://www.theroot.com/london-breed-had-a-clean-shot-at-bec...). The problem with that article, is that it blames the ousting purely on racial issues. I feel neutral against London Breed, but I have several SF teacher friends that straight out don't like her. Why? Not because of the color of her skin, but because of some policies that she was supporting. Long story short, the teachers union had a deal with the city to finally get a super crappy raise amount. Something was better than nothing (I still think they are completely underpaid), but to add insult to injury, the raise was dependent on a new property tax to be passed. Since the new property tax is not popular for various valid reasons, London Breed had the bright idea to tell the teachers that "if they wanted the raise", they "had better go out and campaign". This ended up being completely unpopular with the teachers. Stuff like this is IMHO why she lost support. Of course, it is easier to tell a story that she got ousted because she is a woman of color that got knocked out by the rich white man... zero mention of any of these issues. That to me is theroot.com, so I can't take it seriously. Just another Fox News.

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#69
post #66
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is a shit article pushing a political agenda with absurd rhetoric pandering to a niche that happens to be prevalent on HN? After reading the last paragraph, I went straight for the flag button; "It is not just Baltimore cops. It is cops. They will shoot you in the face in front of your infant daughter. They will choke you to sleep for selling cigarettes. They will shoot you in the back for walking away.…

You seem outraged, but is anything they said wrong?

Not the OP, but I would say that is implying that _all_ cops could do this. I don't think that is the case. As with anything, you have a small group that thinks it is above the law and acts that way.

Re: Baltimore Cops Kept Toy Guns to Plant Just in Case They Shot an Unarmed Person

#70
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about people literally trying to get away with murder. The last two sentences are references to well-documented cases of police officers killing non-dangerous citizens. There's no reason to be polite about this.

The article is about a sub-group of these people, but the tone to me as well was one of sweeping generalizations. Edit (instead of replying to all of the individual replies): I'll be the first to acknowledge that there are systemic problems in police forces worldwide, just like there are systemic problems in any large organization, especially one endowed which so much executive power. However, any argument that paint…

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