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

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

#91

Post by lucozade »

RickJWagner wrote: post #80

For those in countries outside the USA-- please be assured this is sensationalist rubbish. Cops are the most under-payed, overworked, least respected workers in the country. They put their lives on the line every day and have to put up with hostile press. They are told to wear body cameras, then are told to take them off when the results are not to the liking of the agitators. Cops are simply a political football, an…

Tone aside, most of this is from the transcripts of an on-going court case. And although some of the witnesses are highly dubious, most of these accounts have come from police officers who are testifying. So yeah, they might be lying under oath but I'm not sure that helps your point much.

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

#92

Post by weberc2 »

kerkeslager wrote: post #78
bitlax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't put Baltimore on the rest of us.

Is there a US city where cops who murder unarmed black men are convicted with any sort of regularity?

How many cities in the US have police who "murder unarmed black men" regularly to begin with? Of course if that number is small, then the number of cities who regularly convict them will be small. You can't take the small number of cities that regularly convict as evidence of a problem.

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

#93

Post by GrantSolar »

chmod775 wrote: post #65
squarefoot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thes…

>And no, the problem probably isn't guns.

The biggest factors do revolve around guns though. Not just numbers, but the culture which feeds into itself and the perception that guns are not a problem, but a solution ("The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"). Of course, this then provokes a "Have-a-go-Harry" take on confrontation where people who are woefully ill-equipped to deal with a situation attempt to do so. The lack of training, the fetishisation of guns, and the sheer number of guns are all extremely significant factors in gun crime. Take away any one of these and the rate of gun crime would drop significantly. Unfortunately, any solution has to work within the framework of "no further regulation" to even get close to implementation which rules out swathes of methods

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

#94

Post by Maken »

talldan wrote: post #81
minxomat wrote: post #2

> 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. This is the tone and conclusion of this article. If you want the actual story, read the original report here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-gun...

The author is citing real events. When some cops are corrupt, does it matter that the rest might be decent? An individual police officer represents the entire force. They wear the colours and the badge as a representative of the whole establishment. Would you call the police if you knew there were such troubling corruption issues? It would definitely make me think twice - you just don't know which officer will turn u…

> When some of them are corrupt, does it matter that the rest might be decent?

That argument can be used to attack virtually any minority.

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

#95

Post by bjl »

weberc2 wrote: post #72
pornel wrote: 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.

It's not about being polite, it's about coming to absurd conclusions that generalize a million people based on a handful of carefully selected malefactors. We can say, "we want to reduce police corruption" without peddling or subscribing to this complete nonsense (which is unfortunately The Root's wheelhouse).

If it was only a handful of malefactors, then the rest of them should be forcing the bad apples out quickly, and calling for justice. The fact that the vast majority of police officers remain silent lends some credence to the generalisation.

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

#96

Post by duncanawoods »

pjc50 wrote: post #77
arethuza wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much what happened in Northern Ireland as part of the Good Friday Agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Service_of_Northern_Ire...

Hmm. Population of NI: 1.8m. Population of Baltimore: 600k (declining! as shown by a helpful google graph). So NI is three Baltimores. Worst year of Troubles: 1972, 479 troubles-related deaths. I'm unclear as to whether that includes "background" non-political crime, so I'll round it up to 500 (current NI murder rate is about 1/100k pop). Current Baltimore murder rate: 373 in 2017. Murder rate for three Baltimores: 1…

That is a fascinating comparison but one aspect that may not make it a fair is comparing NI region vs. city. It would be interesting to compare just Belfast to Baltimore because thats where the majority of deaths happened.

edit: add a dodgy esimation

Belfast poulation in 70's: 431k

% of troubles deaths in Belfast : 43%

=> murder rate: 479 * 0.43 / 431 = 44 homicides per 100k

But as you note, the NI figures is only the political murders so it can only really be compared against a similar subset of Baltimore homicides e.g. "gang violence".

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

#97

Post by krapp »

pornel wrote: post #14
minxomat wrote: post #2

> 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. This is the tone and conclusion of this article. If you want the actual story, read the original report here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-gun...

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.

>There's no reason to be polite about this.

There is - the tone of the article affects the tone of the thread. Hacker News is supposed to be about intellectually gratifying discussion, but an article whose purpose is to spark outrage results in comments full of invective and tedious boilerplate. Cathartic for people who want to rant about Americans and guns and ACAB... but we've already been there and done that and read that a hundred times.

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

#98

Post by corecoder »

RickJWagner wrote: post #80

For those in countries outside the USA-- please be assured this is sensationalist rubbish. Cops are the most under-payed, overworked, least respected workers in the country. They put their lives on the line every day and have to put up with hostile press. They are told to wear body cameras, then are told to take them off when the results are not to the liking of the agitators. Cops are simply a political football, an…

> They put their lives on the line every day

They also put other people's lives on the line every day.

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

#99

Post by Clubber »

guildwriter wrote: post #86
mathattack wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What goes on in Chicago and its gangs goes far beyond the police and the indiscretions that go on there. Case in point: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2016/Chic... Drill rap, the music of Chicago's gangs, is ultra violent and serves as a method of calling out other crews and taunting them into a response. Thanks to Youtube, Soundcloud, and social media the spread of this music is now easier than e…

Is that "Whataboutism?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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

#100

Post by krapp »

talldan wrote: post #81
minxomat wrote: post #2

> 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. This is the tone and conclusion of this article. If you want the actual story, read the original report here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-gun...

The author is citing real events. When some cops are corrupt, does it matter that the rest might be decent? An individual police officer represents the entire force. They wear the colours and the badge as a representative of the whole establishment. Would you call the police if you knew there were such troubling corruption issues? It would definitely make me think twice - you just don't know which officer will turn u…

>When some cops are corrupt, does it matter that the rest might be decent?

Of course, if you replaced "cops" here with "black people", you basically arrive at the attitude of the corrupt cops themselves, and those who justify their "zero tolerance" policies, including those mentioned in TFA.

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