The behaviour of US police officers

[cullennz]

Just to be fair, the X2 Taser is listed at 454 grams which is slightly more than 16 ounces. It is a double shot TASER and is the model most commonly carried by police officers. The X26 is a single shot TASER aimed as a home defense weapon.

A fully loaded Glock 17 weighs in at 32.28 oz which I believe is the lightest firearm typically carried by patrol officers.

Assuming she didn't have her eyes shut and was actually looking where she was shooting, you would have thought the fact the thing in her hand wasn't day glow yellow would have been a hint she hadn't grabbed the right thing.

 

[bruto]

I know lots of cops. My best friend is about the nicest person you will ever meet. His sister is a police officer as is her husband. So is his brother in law and his father in law. They are all incredibly kind. I hate seeing blanket statements against any group.

But you're right, the rate of domestic violence committed by police officers is 2 to 4 times what it is in the general population. Nevertheless, what stuns me about this story is how police officers are treated. This police officer who killed his wife was never even charged.

In my (fortunately fairly limited) experience, there's a huge difference in cops' attitudes, depending on which side they see you on. If they start out seeing you as an offender, and that's anything from a murderer to a kid throwing rocks at bottles in the dump, they go into rage mode, and you're lucky to get out unscathed. If they see you as a person in trouble, just been robbed, a good guy, etc., there's nothing nicer than a cop. It's as if a switch is flipped. I'm fully ready to believe many of the cops we hear about here, who have just blown some poor man's head off, are the nicest guys in the world most of the time.

 

[acbytesla]

Assuming she didn't have her eyes shut and was actually looking where she was shooting, you would have thought the fact the thing in her hand wasn't day glow yellow would have been a hint she hadn't grabbed the right thing.

Look up the TASER X2. It isn't day glow yellow. It may in fact be all black. The cartridges at the front of the TASER come in black and yellow. If it is black it looks a bit like a GLOCK. Not much in my opinion, but a bit.

 

[portlandatheist]

If you confuse a Taser with a Pistol, you should not be a police officer, period. Weight and shape alone should tell you the difference.
Attempts by some to let the officer off the hook here are ridiculous.

Agreed, she has no business being a police officer. I don't see anybody (yet) trying to let her off the hook. It was either incompetence or malice, both are crimes. I cannot imagine an indictment for murder (malice), this is hopefully going to be some variety of a manslaughter charge(incompetence).

 

[Ziggurat]

Assuming she didn't have her eyes shut and was actually looking where she was shooting, you would have thought the fact the thing in her hand wasn't day glow yellow would have been a hint she hadn't grabbed the right thing.

Have you heard the term "inattentional blindness"? It's actually amazing what you can fail to notice when you're paying attention to something else.

Tasers should have a different firing mechanism than guns. They should be made so that if you try to fire a gun the way that you fire a taser, nothing happens.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Is it standard that they are yellow?

UK Police use yellow tasers but an officer carrying one is either a highly trained specialist in a firarms unit or is just carrying a baton and spray.

 

[cullennz]

Look up the TASER X2. It isn't day glow yellow. It may in fact be all black. The cartridges at the front of the TASER come in black and yellow. If it is black it looks a bit like a GLOCK. Not much in my opinion, but a bit.

Sorry. I was just going by this article I found that has a photo that says these are the tasers Minneapolis cops use.

Might not be true though.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/06/07/taser-use-down-in-both-minneapolis-st-paul-police

Edit: And they are all day glow yellow

 

[acbytesla]

Sorry. I was just going by this article I found that has a photo that says these are the tasers Minneapolis cops use.

Might not be true though.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/06/07/taser-use-down-in-both-minneapolis-st-paul-police

Edit: And they are all day glow yellow

Interesting, I was looking at TASER's website. The ones there are black. If it was yellow, there is another reason besides being half as heavy that makes the "honest mistake" excuse not likely.

 

[dudalb]

Do we not also murder each other at a rate higher than those comparable Nations as well?
The violence by the State should certainly considered in the context of the violence of the citizens who compose that State, no?

That we are willing to allow so many firearms to be in the hands of such a violent populace indicates a little bit of insanity.

Here in Philly, we are on track for 600 murders by gun this year, topping last years' numbers by over 100.
With a clearance rate for homicides of around 35% (and an assumption for the sake of argument that each killer is responsible for an average of 3 of those murders) that means 238 new armed murderers walking our streets just from a two year period.

People demonstrably willing to murder others, who face potential life in prison if apprehended.

We ask our police to protect us from these individuals. Heaven forbid they should be rude while doing so.

Difference between police protecting us and the police taking the law into theri own hands.
Problem is the extremes dominate this discussion;those who have a automatic "Anti Cop" attitude and those who think the Police can do no wrong.

 

[dudalb]

A lot of the attitude almost seems to be that criminals are actually outlawed and thus outside the protection of the law.

Frankly, seem to me they think the main task of the police is shooting people to keep the ******* and other inferior races in line.

Edited by zooterkin: 

Edited for rule 10. Don't mask words, let the autocensor deal with them.

 

[dudalb]

Interesting, I was looking at TASER's website. The ones there are black. If it was yellow, there is another reason besides being half as heavy that makes the "honest mistake" excuse not likely.

As someone with experience with firearms, I just don't buy the honest mistake unless the officer is a complete idiot.
Any pistol is going to weigh a LOT more then a Tazer, for one thing.
I

 

[acbytesla]

As someone with experience with firearms, I just don't buy the honest mistake unless the officer is a complete idiot.
Any pistol is going to weigh a LOT more then a Tazer, for one thing.
I

Except some officers never pull their firearm let alone fire it. If it's seldom in your hand are you going to notice?

(I'm just playing devil's advocate...attempting to be as reasonable as possible.)

 

[deadrose]

My best friend is a Seattle Police officer. He use to be a police officer across Lake Washington in Kirkland. When he was there, he responded to the murder (accidental killing) of a woman by her husband who also happened to be an ex Kirkland Police officer.

This ex officer had a few domestic violence calls against him. Apparently he would point his gun at his wife and pull the trigger and the gun was not loaded. He was never arrested for this. But then the wife ended up dead. Wasn't charged for this either. Also kept his pension.

I had to check and see if we were overlapping friends. Apparently not. Another really egregious mess happened some years ago in the King County Sheriff's Dept, which involved people I knew, and got some laws changed regarding disability benefits & pensions. This creep applied for his disability pension from prison, on the grounds that being a pedophile was a disability. There were no grounds to deny it at the time. That's been fixed now.

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19961109&slug=2358779

https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Sims-wants-to-halt-pensions-to-crooked-cops-1203498.php

This area has had some remarkably awful law enforcement people (see also David Brame).

 

[jimbob]

It isn't easy being a cop!

I know you were in the Navy... out of interest, do you have an idea what sort of penalty someone eould face for a negligent discharge that killed someone?

 

[dudalb]

Except some officers never pull their firearm let alone fire it. If it's seldom in your hand are you going to notice?

(I'm just playing devil's advocate...attempting to be as reasonable as possible.)

Most police departments require officers to requalify annually with their firearms.

 

[Dr.Sid]

If you confuse a Taser with a Pistol, you should not be a police officer, period. Weight and shape alone should tell you the difference.
Attempts by some to let the officer off the hook here are ridiculous.

So are the attempts to sell this as police brutality and racism. This is just incompetence. Not big difference, especially on receiving end, sure.
I wouldn't even say the protesters were off, in anything, this concerns everybody, not just BLM. They did act uninformed though. As did many forum members. People just seem to enjoy getting angry, even if sometimes there is no reason, or the reason is different.

 

[cullennz]

If you look at the video from her body cam, it shows her partner in the shot, with a a holstered day glow yellow taser on his left side, so definitely brightly coloured

Also it shows the black pistol she is holding.

So sorry, but in my personal Cullennz rules of extremely too either jumpy or braindeadingly stupid to ever put on a uniform again, unless it is in an office typing up reports.

Even then she will probably get confused and start typing them into the team coffee machine.

Link to video

https://www.wsj.com/articles/minnes...traffic-stop-incident-killing-him-11618202288

 

[dudalb]

So are the attempts to sell this as police brutality and racism. This is just incompetence. Not big difference, especially on receiving end, sure.
I wouldn't even say the protesters were off, in anything, this concerns everybody, not just BLM. They did act uninformed though. As did many forum members. People just seem to enjoy getting angry, even if sometimes there is no reason, or the reason is different.

Police Brutality, yes.
Racism, not so sure about in this case.
Agree that too many people in this forum make up their minds about these kind of cases automatically, without waiting for facts,to fit in with their political ideology.

 

[acbytesla]

Most police departments require officers to requalify annually with their firearms.

That's once a year.

I grant you I don't buy it either. I'm just thinking it through.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Except some officers never pull their firearm let alone fire it. If it's seldom in your hand are you going to notice?

(I'm just playing devil's advocate...attempting to be as reasonable as possible.)

They are required to fire their weapons at targets though I don't know if it is every year or every two years or some other interval.

If you aren't trained to feel the difference then your training is inadequate.

I'm still of the opinion this is a mistake that doesn't need to happen. Once it occurred one time, every police department in the country should have addressed it with some kind of 'engineering controls'. That means you make it very hard if not impossible to make the mistake:

Make the handles feel grossly different. Make taking the safety off different. Make sure officers train to tell the difference (work practices).