The behaviour of US police officers

[JoeMorgue]

Get shot when they confuse their gun for a taser.

"Wait you mean you were confused as to whether the suspect had a taser or a taser, or you confused your gun for your taser?"

"Both."

 

[Armitage72]

Someone posted a comic on another forum, which I can't access and steal to post here where I am right now. It showed a police officer identifying various objects.
Sandwich. "Gun"
Cell phone. "Gun"
Candy bar. "Gun"
Pistol. "Taser"

 

[bruto]

He was unarmed when he was shot. There is nothing else that matters.

Agreed. The officer told him to drop the gun and put his hands up, but then gave him no time to comply. He was shot for not dropping the gun after the gun was dropped. Although in this case at least the command was not ambiguous or conflicting, it still, I think, falls into the category of a command that no human being can comply with.

e.t.a. I posted the link to the cartoon referenced (copyrighted, no hot links).

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2021/04/maritzapatrinos-500x500.jpg

 

[cmikes]

Outside of qualified immunity, I couldn't disagree with you more. Unions protect workers whether that be in the public or private sector.

And yes, the police kill white people too.

Well, yes, exactly. The unions protect certain police officers (and other government workers, but that's another thread) from the consequences of their own actions. How else do you explain an officer like Derek Chauvin having eighteen complaints against him over the course of his career and still having a job? Not only still having his job, but being a training officer who's supposed to be mentoring new police officers on how to correctly serve as officers.

If you have a job that involves customer service, would you still have your job if that many customers complained about you? There are plenty of things that need to be done to solve the problems with the police in this country, but the number one priority is to restrict or get rid of entirely police unions. For one thing, politicians are never going to interested in real reform as long as they're raking in the kickbacks donations from union dues.

But the biggest problem, which you yourself identified, is that reform is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, as long as the unions are "protecting workers" when they abuse or even kill someone.

 

[acbytesla]

Well, yes, exactly. The unions protect certain police officers (and other government workers, but that's another thread) from the consequences of their own actions. How else do you explain an officer like Derek Chauvin having eighteen complaints against him over the course of his career and still having a job? Not only still having his job, but being a training officer who's supposed to be mentoring new police officers on how to correctly serve as officers.

If you have a job that involves customer service, would you still have your job if that many customers complained about you? There are plenty of things that need to be done to solve the problems with the police in this country, but the number one priority is to restrict or get rid of entirely police unions. For one thing, politicians are never going to interested in real reform as long as they're raking in the kickbacks donations from union dues.

But the biggest problem, which you yourself identified, is that reform is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, as long as the unions are "protecting workers" when they abuse or even kill someone.

There's a difference between saying that police should be held accountable for their actions and saying that police shouldn't have the right to collective bargaining. I want them to be paid well, have vacation time, have healthcare etc. Yes, the police union has too much power in many jurisdictions. They should be able to have representation when dealing with employment issues not issues such as excessive force.

There are states in the South such as Louisiana where they have poor union representation. The police there are underpaid and have to work security jobs on the side, This in itself is not good but it has also leads to corruption.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

One thing that might start to make the problem less intractable is to think at what level laws and law enforcement should be determined locally. State level seems appropriate to me - certainly no lower than county level - I'd say laws that have the chance of penal sanction as opposed to civil fines should be defined no lower than state level.

There will be laws against theft etc, but why should smallish towns have their own legal systems? We saw how that worked in Ferguson when the DoJ investigated - it wasn't just the police department, it was the local courts as well. There is no reason to suppose Fergusson was an outlier, in fact its disparity index for vehicular stops on some occasions had been better than the Missouri average.

ETA: So as a start - set it so those more-local police forces report to the state justice department, and also that the state is in charge of recruitment and training.

There would also be economies of scale.

Of course this is not very much in line with the principle of devolving as much as possible to the lowest level.

Ask most activists in our city and they'll say it is the state appointing 4 of the 5 comissioners for our municipal PD that is a large part of the problem.

 

[quadraginta]

I only saw the body cam but this one was a justified shooting. The boy turned and the officer fired in less than a second. The boy had the weapon through the chase. I'm sure others will disagree.

<snip>

The boy's hands were raised in the air ... open and empty ...when he was shot. This is perfectly evident from the video record.

I'm not clear about what he could have done that would be less threatening. Perhaps you have some suggestions.

Remember "Hands up. Don't shoot!"?

Apparently this cop didn't.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Loveland, Colorado police arrest a woman with dementia for shoplifting.



One might think that the cops would notice this woman has a problem.

It's only coming to light now, it was almost a year ago. They just can't handle it when people don't obey them.

CBS Denver: Loveland Police Respond To Federal Lawsuit Claiming ‘Excessive Use Of Force’ During Arrest Of 73-Year-Old Woman

She is also 5-feet and weighs 80 pounds.

And again we have the usual suspects:

Garner’s lawyers accuse supervising officer Sgt. Metzler of helping his subordinates cover up the brutality and allegedly directed that Garner be denied access to medical care for her injuries. Metzler also is alleged to have kept his own body camera deactivated and failed to write a report regarding use of force, both of which are claimed to be a violation of the Loveland Police Department’s written policies. ...

According to Loveland police, the arresting officer has been placed on administrative leave pending the investigation’s outcome. An officer who assisted in the arrest and the on-scene supervisor have been reassigned to administrative duties.

 

[bluesjnr]

He was unarmed.
If a soldier shot a surrendering man it would be a War Crime.

It's bizarre that soldiers working in a theatre where every single individual they meet could be an enemy combatant have far higher standards than LEO's.

They must have their "feared for my life" gland remove during basic.

Now I think about it, why don't we just send the cops in as an invasion force? Job'd be done in a couple of days. Don't sweat the collateral

 

[erlando]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xv...plant-on-people-they-shot-trial-reveals-vgtrn

I thought that was only in the movies. The US really has a huge problem with their policing.

 

[erlando]

I only saw the body cam but this one was a justified shooting. The boy turned and the officer fired in less than a second. The boy had the weapon through the chase. I'm sure others will disagree.

That is some apologetic ********. The officer orders him to drop the gun and show his hands. The boy does so but the officer doesn't give himself time to actually confirm that the boy complied before murdering him.

He did exactly what he was told but was executed anyway.

 

[Nessie]

This news article has very good video of what happened, the chase, a freeze-frame which shows the boy had the gun in his right hand as he stopped at the gap in the fence, where he threw the gun behind the fence and then turned raising his hands in the air before he was shot.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-16...-shot-dead-by-chicago-police-officer-released

It proves that Toledo had started to comply by stopping, dropping/throwing the gun and showing he was no longer armed and could no longer get quick access to the weapon.

 

[erlando]

This news article has very good video of what happened, the chase, a freeze-frame which shows the boy had the gun in his right hand as he stopped at the gap in the fence, where he threw the gun behind the fence and then turned raising his hands in the air before he was shot.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-16...-shot-dead-by-chicago-police-officer-released

It proves that Toledo had started to comply by stopping, dropping/throwing the gun and showing he was no longer armed and could no longer get quick access to the weapon.

All prior attempts to deescalate and gain compliance with all of the officer’s lawful orders had failed.

19 seconds. "All prior attempts".

 

[Darat]

It's bizarre that soldiers working in a theatre where every single individual they meet could be an enemy combatant have far higher standards than LEO's.

They must have their "feared for my life" gland remove during basic.

Now I think about it, why don't we just send the cops in as an invasion force? Job'd be done in a couple of days. Don't sweat the collateral

This is what really seems so strange to me - that the USA (as a whole) doesn’t seem to have understood what they have created with their police forces.

Police forces aren’t particularly loved in any country (talking about “free” countries), they are after all often the enforcement arm of the state and society and as such often ruffle feathers. And yes there are “bad apples” in all of them, and yes they all could improve BUT I don’t know of any other free country that the police are like an invasion force keeping an unhappy to be invaded populace “in place”.

Not only that but their police seem to be (as people have pointed out) less controlled, under less regulations and more dangerous to the general population than when their own military are an unwanted invasion force in a foreign country!

It is a mind boggling situation.

 

[Darat]

19 seconds. "All prior attempts".

Despite how it makes me feel I’ve watched this killing.

(I have to admit I can’t watch most of the videos of people actually being killed, I have to stop before the “kill shot” - I find it too upsetting. Strange since if it was in a movie I’m happy with the most gruesome horror, but if I know it is real I can’t watch without being very upset.)

I cannot see what grounds there was for shooting him, the videos do not show the police being at risk of harm from him, so no grounds on a matter of self defence, and he doesn’t present a risk of harm to any member of the public.

 

[Checkmite]

This is what really seems so strange to me - that the USA (as a whole) doesn’t seem to have understood what they have created with their police forces.

Police forces aren’t particularly loved in any country (talking about “free” countries), they are after all often the enforcement arm of the state and society and as such often ruffle feathers. And yes there are “bad apples” in all of them, and yes they all could improve BUT I don’t know of any other free country that the police are like an invasion force keeping an unhappy to be invaded populace “in place”.

Not only that but their police seem to be (as people have pointed out) less controlled, under less regulations and more dangerous to the general population than when their own military are an unwanted invasion force in a foreign country!

It is a mind boggling situation.

It's guns. The problem is guns. Guns all the way down. The populace at large having free and, meaningfully, uncontrolled access to guns.

There's a (in some ways sickening) platitude, one among many, that is popular with the gun-rights set that goes, "People shouldn't be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of the people." The unspoken assertion is that the reason the government should "be afraid of the people" is because if a government agent or agency "steps out of line", by whatever value is deemed deserving, an armed citizenry can shoot them to death.

Rhetorically, according to the gun-owners who cite that platitude, the situation in America is the former - people are afraid of the government, because not enough people are armed and they have not resisted government action to "restrict gun rights", allowing government power to thus grow unchecked by concerns of deadly resistance by the populace.

Of course, that is nonsense; in reality the government - in the form of law enforcement agencies - is deathly afraid of the people and operates under a perpetual siege mentality. So afraid of the people in fact that as a standard rule of engagement with members of the public they presume the citizen they are having contact with will be armed or have a weapon within immediate reach, and the police are trained and encouraged to use pre-emptive deadly force against any person who unexpectedly has an object in their hand or appears to be potentially reaching for any sort of unseen object because that object, if it exists at all, could possibly be a gun or other weapon and if you let them get it into their hand because you would prefer to positively identify it before killing them simply for reaching for it, it will already be too late and they will have killed you with it instead.

 

[Belz...]

Despite how it makes me feel I’ve watched this killing.

(I have to admit I can’t watch most of the videos of people actually being killed, I have to stop before the “kill shot” - I find it too upsetting. Strange since if it was in a movie I’m happy with the most gruesome horror, but if I know it is real I can’t watch without being very upset.)

I don't find it strange at all. It means you can tell fiction from reality. We're not supposed to find that stuff fine.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Picture of cops macing journalists in Minnesota

@AFPphoto
journalist @EleonoreSens
and another member of the press is maced by Minnesota Police after an unlawful assembly is declared in Brooklyn Center, MN

https://twitter.com/AlexKentTN/status/1383290508181590018

Brooklyn Center government opposes the use of less lethal weapons to disperse protests, and the cops promptly ignored this and started spraying the streets with tear gas, pepper spray, and beanbag rounds.

A judge issued a restraining order against the unconstitutional targeting of journalists, and the cops simply ignore it.

The cops are rioting. It's the same pattern every time. The police are a political axis all to their own, and they will not tolerate challenges to their supreme authority. Constitution, lawmakers, and courts be damned.

The police are above the law, and they'll use any amount of violence necessary against anyone that challenges that.

 

[Craig4]

This news article has very good video of what happened, the chase, a freeze-frame which shows the boy had the gun in his right hand as he stopped at the gap in the fence, where he threw the gun behind the fence and then turned raising his hands in the air before he was shot.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-16...-shot-dead-by-chicago-police-officer-released

It proves that Toledo had started to comply by stopping, dropping/throwing the gun and showing he was no longer armed and could no longer get quick access to the weapon.

It's important to consider that real life doesn't have freeze frame. We need to look at it how the officer saw it. He was chasing an armed suspect (remember these two were involved in a shooting). The officer saw a fluid motion that happened in less than a second.

 

[BobTheCoward]

It's important to consider that real life doesn't have freeze frame. We need to look at it how the officer saw it. He was chasing an armed suspect (remember these two were involved in a shooting). The officer saw a fluid motion that happened in less than a second.

No, we don't. The officer shot an unarmed person. No other detail is relevant.