The behaviour of US police officers

[TurkeysGhost]

Yeah, Americans just love torches. Also looting store or two, just so the justice is served.

yeah, let's try giving "do nothing" a few more decades to work.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. Riots threaten the stability of the system and elicit a response. Whether or not that's a good thing remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure, there's no way to ignore a riot the way society seems willing to ignore police brutality.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

We get it, man. You don't like police officers.

specifically police officers who elect a representative who doesn't know a tazer from a gun.

 

[Belz...]

Is it really that out of line though? I mean, objectively.

Yes, yes it is.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Yes, yes it is.

Maybe it was an accident. Instead of throwing a molotov cocktail, the protestor mistook it for a bottle of lemon pledge. Such mistakes are bound to happen, I hear.

 

[ponderingturtle]

specifically police officers who elect a representative who doesn't know a tazer from a gun.

Seriously are union officials always scum of the department? I mean returning a 14 year old boy found naked and bleeding to Jeffery Dahmer didn't stop John Balcerzak from being elected as police union president. Little things like that are nothing a cop would ever hold against another cop.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Well someone just shot this thread in the head and killed it either way.

Can we just cut and paste the last 10 pointless "Oh let's stop and define the exact amount of counter violence that is appropriate to violence" arguments and pretend we had them again?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Seriously are union officials always scum of the department? I mean returning a 14 year old boy found naked and bleeding to Jeffery Dahmer didn't stop John Balcerzak from being elected as police union president. Little things like that are nothing a cop would ever hold against another cop.

But Unions are our friends. Without Unions we wouldn't have the weekend and worker safety. Unions Good. Unions very good.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Well someone just shot this thread in the head and killed it either way.

Can we just cut and paste the last 10 pointless "Oh let's stop and define the exact amount of counter violence that is appropriate to violence" arguments and pretend we had them again?

Apologies, I suppose it is off topic. You're right, there's already a "riot, etc" thread for exactly this kind of thing.

Is there any good reason why this killer cop hasn't been arrested? I mean, it sounds like she admitted to criminal conduct on the spot. If we believe it was an accident, that's prima facie evidence of manslaughter. I can't see how there isn't probable cause for an arrest warrant right now.

Why does it take so long for cops to get arrested in these circumstances? This is a courtesy that would not be extended to anyone else under similar circumstances. Swift response, besides sending out the riot squad, would probably go a long way in dispelling any notions that out of control police are above the law.

 

[lomiller]

If you confuse a Taser with a Pistol, you should not be a police officer

It's not a matter of confusing them, it's about muscle memory and performing a familiar action. If you stop and think about it of course you can tell them apart, but if you want to perform an action in the fastest possible way you train until you do it without thinking about it.

IMO this isn't a degree of reaction time police really need nor is desirable. Outside of military use, everyone should be thinking when they fire a gun, thinking about why, thinking about what they are shooting at and thinking about what could be behind or around the target. This applies to police most of all.

And the same people who would let this officer off the hook are the some one who are outraged by that "innocent, patriotic" women who was shot trying to climb over that barricade in storming of the Capitol. The hypocrisy level is truly incredible here.

You certainly didn't see me doing anything of the sort, just the opposite in fact. There are enough real cases of police misconduct that I think it's a mistake to focus on something that for the present looks like an accident. In this case re-evaluation policy and training seems to be more important.

 

[ponderingturtle]

You certainly didn't see me doing anything of the sort, just the opposite in fact. There are enough real cases of police misconduct that I think it's a mistake to focus on something that for the present looks like an accident. In this case re-evaluation policy and training seems to be more important.

And how is it still not manslaughter, like getting confused and hitting the gas instead of the brakes and running your car into a crowd?

 

[Belz...]

Maybe it was an accident. Instead of throwing a molotov cocktail, the protestor mistook it for a bottle of lemon pledge. Such mistakes are bound to happen, I hear.

That's completely irrelevant. There are issues with police training and culture in the US. That has no bearing to your comment.

 

[lomiller]

I'd be okay with an involuntary manslaughter charge in this case, just as long as she is charged with something.

I think even involuntary manslaughter needs to be committing some criminal act at the time. This looks more like a civil wrongful death claim than a criminal charge.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

A coincidence, I'm sure.

Minneapolis police stop and search a disproportionate rate of Black and East African drivers and their vehicles during routine traffic stops compared with other races.

The city is predominantly white, yet Black and East African drivers accounted for 78% of police searches that started as stops for moving or equipment violations from June 2019 through May 2020, according to Minneapolis police data. Whites made up 12% of searches during the same types of stops in that time frame.

https://www.startribune.com/black-drivers-make-up-majority-of-minneapolis-police-searches-during-routine-traffic-stops/572029792/?refresh=true

 

[ponderingturtle]

I think even involuntary manslaughter needs to be committing some criminal act at the time. This looks more like a civil wrongful death claim than a criminal charge.

Simple it is reckless to forget you have your gun in your hand instead of your taser. I know I know police get all kinds of special considerations for what are criminal acts for anyone else, they are just minor mistakes for the police. So some member of the public causes the police to raid an innocent person and they are killed that is of course manslaughter. But a cop falsifies a warrant to do the same thing it is of course not at all a criminal act.

The police have to be held to lower standards of personal responsibility than members of the general public after all.

 

[JoeMorgue]

We're seeing the same excuses we saw for Trump.

"We're committing some new type of evil that doesn't fit neatly into perfect already established categories, therefore we can't be punished for it."

Yes an LEO shooting a suspect because they couldn't keep track of which weapon they were deploying doesn't exactly perfectly fit into our various definitions of "unlawful types of killing" quite as neatly as other actions do.

That doesn't mean they didn't do anything wrong.

 

[Suddenly]

From my collection of old police reports that I find amusingly chilling, if that is a thing:

On or about [date] at approximately [time] I was monitoring traffic on [road]. During that time I observed a [car] traveling north bound. The driver of the vehicle appeared to be nervous and looked away from the road and my patrol vehicle as it crossed in front of my marked patrol vehicle. At that time I pulled out... and began following the [car].

While following the [car] I could observe the driver keep brushing her hair with her hand in what appeared to be a nervous behavior due to me following behind the vehicle. The [car] made a right turn onto [road] in a manner much slower than normal traffic... The Driver had a scarf with sunglasses hanging from the rearview mirror obstructing her view that was clearly visible while following the vehicle. I initiated a traffic stop...

[the complaint then describes a comically illegal search where based solely on the driver being nervous when asked about drugs the officer asks for consent to search. The driver refuses consent and he searches anyway]


So yeah, completely normal society where cops think people being nervous about cops is a basis for finding some pretext (hanging things from the mirror is not specifically illegal in the jurisdiction in question) to pull someone over and start interrogating them about possible drug possession. I mean, not just do this sort of thing but also write it out and swear to it and have nobody in the system see it as alarmingly wrong.

Being cynical about cops is really just edgy tryhard stuff obviously.

(this stuff often is thrown out, but usually after significant expense and time and the arrest ends up showing up on background checks anyway. Meanwhile the state offers a fine for a plea of guilty at the first hearing and the choice is to pay $200 and end it or have it drag on for months while going to hearings and paying a lawyer with not guarantee of success and the possibility of a spiteful judge tossing you in jail.)

 

[Meadmaker]

I think even involuntary manslaughter needs to be committing some criminal act at the time. This looks more like a civil wrongful death claim than a criminal charge.

Here's the statute:

609.205 MANSLAUGHTER IN THE SECOND DEGREE.
A person who causes the death of another by any of the following means is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both:

(1) by the person's culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another; or

(The statute then describes other cases that might be manslaughter, but none of them fit.)


I think the officer was guilty of "culpable negligience" in this case.

There's a little bit of wiggle room if she claims that she was not conscious that her actions were taking a chance of causing death or great bodily harm. i.e. she thought she had a taser, which could not cause death or great bodily harm, so therefore she was not "consciously taking a chance". I think it's a stretch, though. It would be similar to "I didn't think the gun was loaded", which would never get you off of a manslaughter charge.

At any rate, manslaughter does not require any other criminal activity.

 

[JoeMorgue]

LEOs can't have it both ways, where they have more rights to engage people in forceful ways but less responsibility to be responsible in doing so.

A normal person can't go "Oopsie doodle I mistook my gun for a taser" because they aren't walking around deploying guns and tasers as a matter of course.

 

[lomiller]

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).

If you want to train someone to shoot as quickly and accurately as possible you are going to drill them until they do it without thinking about anything.


This, IMO, isn't a skill police really need and they shouldn't be trained that way. The only shooting skill they really need to train is accuracy. The rest should be mental checklists of things "like why am I drawing my sidearm at all", can I clearly see my target", "do I really know what I am shooting at", "what necessitates firing it at this time", "what else could I hit if I miss my target", "what other alternatives do I have", etc.

IMO it goes back to the warrior mentality that has been adopted by police, they train to win the fight rather than to think about the situation. The inevitable result is that guns are drawn far to often and are far to likely to be fired when they are drawn.


There is lots to dissect in this case but I don't think you can come up with criminal action. The fact that she is shouting for taser use is a pretty good indication she didn't intend to shoot him, and that rules out most criminal charges. Civil wrongful death lawsuits and re-evaluating training should be the end result here IMO.

 

[lomiller]

But why did she need to taser him in the first place?

There have been lots of exposés where people show hundreds of folks in any city with outstanding warrants that could be picked up at their homes, their addresses are on file and the police don't bother to go get them.

If the outstanding warrant was for a violent offence letting him back into the vehicle could have posed a danger because the vehicle itself could be used as a weapon. He could also harm someone accidentally while fleeing in it. Also, as we have seen, picking people up at their homes later doesn't always go as planned either.

If the warrant was for something minor and\or non-violent then yeah even the taser could have been overreaction, but so far as I know we don't have the information to reach that conclusion one way or the other.