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George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

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Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#611
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe "the right not to be prosecuted for a victimless crime" should be an amendment. Then homelessness/drugs-whatevers/prostitution can no longer have laws against them. "Address the root cause", exactly, and the root cause is the unjust laws. Though cops pretty much never being found guilty for unjust use of violence is a big one too, and I wonder what law changes can solve that issue.

> the right not to be prosecuted for a victimless crime So if I'm driving drunk, then I'm not prosecuted until there's a victim? Hm...

This isn't too far afield of the status quo.

I mean, if you've had a few drinks and get in your car, you're not going to be automatically stopped and ticketed. Instead you're weighing the risk that a cop is going to just happen to catch you.

If the laws are changed so that driving drunk isn't presumptively a crime, but rather that if you're in a crash and found to have high levels of alcohol in your blood, then the crash is assumed to be your fault and will have extremely high penalties, then the difference is just in the details. You'd be balancing a lower risk, but of a much higher cost.

That might not work as well because of some people having poor skills at discounting future risks, but it's not obvious that's the case. It deserves further investigation.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#612
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expect the push for more funding of the police to be the eventual narrative. This is to allow for more training and putting more officers where they are needed. Simply put, the defund the police slogans are damaging to the DNC outlooks in November and three major unions basically read the riot act to the DNC and members in Congress that no talk that can come back to collective bargaining being a reason police get awa…

"We do bad job, give us more money." doesn't sound like a good incentive, though.

Have you ever improved a team by taking away resources?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pseudo-randomly sampled 30 videos... Almost all of them had outright wrong, or heavily misleading titles and/or descriptions with contradictory claims in the comments - and almost none of them provided context to the police actions. This list is really more about stoking emotions than providing evidence of anything. I mean look at this one... https://twitter.com/jayjanner/status/1267111893753307137 A large volume o…

This is why any footage of an incident used in court must include the entire interaction. Police body cam footage can be rejected as evidence if it does not start with the officer stepping out of his vehicle. This is why so many iPhone recordings from bystanders gets thrown out in trial. Are there instances where police abuse their power? Yes. Absolutely. But it doesn't help anyone when people are cherry picking inst…

"Are there instances where police abuse their power? Yes. Absolutely."

That's really all we need to know to demand radical changes to police culture, if not the entire concept of ubiquitous armed police forces.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why any footage of an incident used in court must include the entire interaction. Police body cam footage can be rejected as evidence if it does not start with the officer stepping out of his vehicle. This is why so many iPhone recordings from bystanders gets thrown out in trial. Are there instances where police abuse their power? Yes. Absolutely. But it doesn't help anyone when people are cherry picking inst…

Handcuffing a lifeless freshly shot body is more than enough. I’ve seen it over and over. Why is that a policy? Second, why shoot to kill and not to incapacitate? Shoot to kill is a policy. Why is that a policy? The police rule by fear. I’ve never broken the law and yet Im really affraid of cops in the US. I know I should not have a reason to but can’t help but be intimidated by their tactics, their orders, their dem…

"Second, why shoot to kill and not to incapacitate? Shoot to kill is a policy. Why is that a policy?"

Most armed folks are taught that when you draw a gun it's to neutralize a threat. To neutralize is to completely eliminate the threat.

Has anyone here heard similar sentiments while getting a concealed carry license?

Something like 'Don't pull your gun out and point it at someone unless you intend to shoot and kill them. Anything less than that needlessly escalates the severity of a situation by introducing a weapon.'

The idea being that if you pull out a gun and don't use it, all of the sudden you have increased the potential for violence, exposed yourself as armed and willing, lost the element of surprise, and given potential assailants the idea/opportunity to match your use of force. Thus, "shoot to kill."

One problem is that guns are tools for a task, and when you pull out a tool, you want to leverage it as efficiently as possible. Maybe the answer isn't to use the tool differently, but use a different tool entirely.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#615

If there ever was a case of "don't comment unless you've RTFA" this it: people extrapolating their viewpoint on a list of 700 things from watching 1, 2, 3 ... At a minimum, watch 100 videos. I did last night, only took about an hour, it's easy to find some to nitpick, some which are ambiguous ... and plenty that are totally horrifying. If you can watch 100 videos in a row from Greg Doucette's list and say, "the milit…

As a non American I am not getting this at all. In many US cities/towns sheriff is elected. In all other cases city mayor is elected. How it happens that all those mayors and sheriffs are still in the office if police brutality is such a big issue? Does this mean that people just do not care, or there is only some minority who thinks that the police is too violent and the rest is ok with that?

[deleted]

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're entirely warranted to be pissed about tear gas use, but it's misguided to expect quick and accurate federal redress, as the executive function intentionally doesn't cover state or local jurisdictions. states run themselves, and the federal judiciary basically only steps in when state/local governments don't follow their own rules (the presumed expression of the will of the people) or violate the constitution.…

Why would people want power local and limited? Noting the sordid history of local, "States Rights", Jim Crow style policies that exist at the local level. Especially when the issue concerns US policing which is the ideological descendant of slave patrols.

Sheriffs date back to the early 1300s. Even up until the 1970s, small communities had local militias and army reserves when things got beyond what a sheriff could handle. Most of these places switched to policing in the late 70s and 80s. How, precisely is that "the ideological descendent of slave patrols"?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#617
post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, for the example you provide the only contradictory claims come from accounts that have very few followers. The few posts saying "she was throwing things" have fewer than 10 followers. But, also, rubber bullets are less lethal, not non lethal, and so they should be reserved for situations where life is at risk. If she wasn't throwing molotov cocktails or bricks they shouldn't have used rubber bullets on her. The o…

As a rule of thumb, coming from my dad who served in the German federal police and was sent to every single castor transport (nuclear waste to be stored in Germany, quite a controversial topic) up to 2007/8, countless fottball games and G8/20, NATO conferences, demonstrtions decrease in violence with increasing numbers of children, women and older people. Applies to both sides, except for the children of course. The…

German police is trained to deescalate if possible and for riot or protest control, use of lethal weaponry is rarely authorized if riot control is necessary at all. Water cannons can still hurt people but they're massively less lethal than any type of bean bag rounds or rubber bullets.

Notably, the German police is also trained for much longer, three to four years at minimum. They're trained with guns to aim for parts of the body that make it less likely to kill a target instantly or quickly and instead incapacitates them (of course, with a gun you can never know but you can alter the odds) and to only use guns as the very last resort of stopping someone. Every bullet a german police officer fires in the line of duty is accounted for (54 in 2018) and every person killed is investigated by police officers from a different precinct (11 killed in 2018). From what I've experienced and seen, guns seem to be treated as the first weapon of choice for the police officer in the US, which is the wrong mentality.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#618
post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Simple. People go into shock look incapacitated, then come out of it. People get pumped with a dozen rounds and keep fighting. 2. Have you ever shot a gun? Have you ever shot a pistol? Now to simulate the Andrenaline dump run few sprints then try again. You CAN NOT shoot to disable this is not a Hollywood movie, it does not work. Most people can’t hit anything past few meters away with a pistol. Gun is not a taser…

Then they shouldn't have a gun at all

So they should allow innocent people to be killed?

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handcuffing a lifeless freshly shot body is more than enough. I’ve seen it over and over. Why is that a policy? Second, why shoot to kill and not to incapacitate? Shoot to kill is a policy. Why is that a policy? The police rule by fear. I’ve never broken the law and yet Im really affraid of cops in the US. I know I should not have a reason to but can’t help but be intimidated by their tactics, their orders, their dem…

"Second, why shoot to kill and not to incapacitate? Shoot to kill is a policy. Why is that a policy?" Most armed folks are taught that when you draw a gun it's to neutralize a threat. To neutralize is to completely eliminate the threat. Has anyone here heard similar sentiments while getting a concealed carry license? Something like 'Don't pull your gun out and point it at someone unless you intend to shoot and kill t…

Are we talking war combat here? Because in a civilian case shooting legs and taking cover might just as well do it.

The real reason they shoot to kill is because they don’t want the victim to sue. A dead man never sued, their families have a lower chance of getting anything though that has started to change with so much footage.

Re: George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody in the left in Germany will claim police brutality is at any level near what America is facing as that's completely absurd. However, people do acknowledge police is authoritative, profile racially, and abuse their power at times. I think you can acknowledge both without being inconsistent.

> Nobody in the left in Germany will claim police brutality is at any level near what America is facing as that's completely absurd. And that's not what I said. They certainly won't agree that police in Europe is "on average, very kind". > However, people do acknowledge police is authoritative, profile racially, and abuse their power at times. That's an overly euphemistic way of describing "ACAB", which is very commo…

Extreme left. I don't think this sentiment is popular on the left as a whole.
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