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The behaviour of US police officers

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bluesjnr said:
My locality has made the decision? Where I come from "localities" are not a factor.
Hire twice as many or cut in half - whatever it takes.

Make it a national budget and get rid of the unions or reign them the **** in. I could come over to the US and sort this out in a max of 6 months with presidential support......... if I survived that long.
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And where do you come from? In the U.S., policing is largely a local function. There are around 18,000 independent police departments and sheriffs' offices in the U.S. at the city, county and state levels, ranging in size from one guy with a dog to the 55,000 officers and civilian employees of the NYPD. There are also federal law enforcement authorities like the FBI, ATF, ICE, Secret Service etc., but they have zero authority over other local forces or each other. There is nothing like a national police authority.

In six months you couldn't even assemble the mailing addresses for 18,000 agencies, and the president has absolutely nothing to do with any of it. Your lack of understanding explains your lack of understanding.
 
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Here's some lovely body-cam video, released yesterday from Port Allen, LA. While wrongly arresting a man for breaking his own window because he had locked himself out of his house, one of the officers didn't like the man yelling for help and told him in a threatening tone to "scream again, go ahead". The man did, whereupon the officer tased him - twice -- while he was handcuffed, sitting in the back seat of the police cruiser.



Don't miss the part at the end where the police verify that it's the guy's house and admit that they can't book him for breaking his own window, so they agree to make the arrest for disturbing the peace instead because of him 'doing all that hollering'.
 
rdwight said:
Police around here are generally one to a car but will deal with stops after a second car arrives on scene. Depending on the amount of police on duty and size of the patrol, that seems like a decent angle to take to increase cover and minimize risk.
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In Chula Vista (near San Diego) they use drones as support. They have been used for thousands of 911 calls and can cover the whole city. They can also be used out of the trunk of a patrol car.

Out of 5934 drone flights, 2718 of them have had the drone arrive first on the scene feeding real-time info to relevant first responders --police, fire, paramedic, and of course the dispatchers so they know what to send out.

There are privacy and scope concerns but, so far, this is only used to respond to emergency calls (not to patrol) and maps of every drone flight are public. See here for Mar 2021 flight maps:
https://www.chulavistaca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/22134/637529470768200000

KPBS - Chula Vista Police Drones

“These drones provide real time information to our officers while they're in the field. The drones are up -- they arrive usually prior to officers arrival. And they are able, through their cell phones or their mobile data computers, to feed them live information about what’s actually occurring.”

Chief (Roxana) Kennedy says one of the main advantages of the drones is helping to de-escalate otherwise unknown situations.

“Officers have the ability then to see, is this an armed individual? Is this just someone pacing in the street? Do I really need to respond into the area or would it be better for me to stay back? Do they have a pen in their hand or is it a knife in their hand? So it gives them that real, critical information to make better decisions and be able to de-escalate situations so that everyone goes home safely.”
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Checkmite said:
Here's some lovely body-cam video, released yesterday from Port Allen, LA. While wrongly arresting a man for breaking his own window because he had locked himself out of his house, one of the officers didn't like the man yelling for help and told him in a threatening tone to "scream again, go ahead". The man did, whereupon the officer tased him - twice -- while he was handcuffed, sitting in the back seat of the police cruiser.



Don't miss the part at the end where the police verify that it's the guy's house and admit that they can't book him for breaking his own window, so they agree to make the arrest for disturbing the peace instead because of him 'doing all that hollering'.
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Using the taser as a punishment. All bad apples there.

I can't understand why they didn't wait those 5 minutes it took to actually verify that he was the owner of the house before putting him in handcuffs. He wasn't running anywhere. In fact he was sitting still until the police threatened to "light him up" with a taser.
 
Checkmite said:
Here's some lovely body-cam video, released yesterday from Port Allen, LA. While wrongly arresting a man for breaking his own window because he had locked himself out of his house, one of the officers didn't like the man yelling for help and told him in a threatening tone to "scream again, go ahead". The man did, whereupon the officer tased him - twice -- while he was handcuffed, sitting in the back seat of the police cruiser.



Don't miss the part at the end where the police verify that it's the guy's house and admit that they can't book him for breaking his own window, so they agree to make the arrest for disturbing the peace instead because of him 'doing all that hollering'.
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Seems like body cams didn't have the desired effect. What a bunch of asshats.
 
erlando said:
Using the taser as a punishment. All bad apples there.

I can't understand why they didn't wait those 5 minutes it took to actually verify that he was the owner of the house before putting him in handcuffs. He wasn't running anywhere. In fact he was sitting still until the police threatened to "light him up" with a taser.
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If it was a white female, the police would have likely believed her and then rendered what assistance they could.
 
quadraginta said:
My apologies. I must have been thinking of a different case.

I was thinking of this one.


Cop shoots caretaker of autistic man playing in the street with toy truck​

But the caretaker wasn't sitting. He was lying down on the pavement with his hands in the air.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_3244360838b52403a2.jpg[/qimg]

It was the autistic man he was trying to protect who was sitting. And he was not killed. In fact, he was unharmed. Even though the cop who shot the caretaker fired three rounds.
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That's the same incident. The caretaker was lying down because the cops ordered him to. He kept begging for them not to shoot the disabled man playing with a toy truck.

It was awful!

Goes to show you how unreliable memories can be. I'm now glad the disabled man wasn't killed. Hopefully my memory will remain corrected and not revert back to the distorted recollection.
 
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dudalb said:
Shame what happened in Ohio is detracting from what is going o in North Carolina, which, IMHO< is much more outrageous conduct by the police.
Graranteed, 90% dod the time a agency draes it feet on releasing information, it's part of an attemped cover up.
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If what's on the body cam videos is anything close to what the witness described on Cuomo last night, that was a ******* lynching.
 
quadraginta said:
...It was the autistic man he was trying to protect who was sitting. And he was not killed. In fact, he was unharmed. Even though the cop who shot the caretaker fired three rounds.
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Yup. Failure to assess, failure to de-escalate, and failure of marksmanship. The "target" was sitting in the middle of the street in broad daylight and the SWAT-Team member fired three rounds, missing the "target" with all three.
 
Darat said:
Neither you nor I can make that claim since what happened happened so nothing else could have happened (until we invent time travel).

Your view is that the only thing in the entire arsenal of policing that could have prevented a throat slitting is firing 4 shots, I don’t agree with that assessment.
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That's just because you value the victim of the stabbing less than the victim of the shooting and you generally don't know what you're talking about. You casually dismiss the threat to the stabbing victim while suggesting other things might have worked. What might have worked just isn't good enough. The officer had to protect the girl from being stabbed and there wasn't time for your naive suggestion that some effort and trial and error in other methods would have kept her from being stabbed.
 
quadraginta said:
My apologies. I must have been thinking of a different case.

I was thinking of this one.


Cop shoots caretaker of autistic man playing in the street with toy truck​

But the caretaker wasn't sitting. He was lying down on the pavement with his hands in the air.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_3244360838b52403a2.jpg[/qimg]

It was the autistic man he was trying to protect who was sitting. And he was not killed. In fact, he was unharmed. Even though the cop who shot the caretaker fired three rounds.
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I have never understood this one. I've never understood why police got called or why they showed up in the manner they did. I've also never understood how an officer with a rifle, with a scope could not have determined the item was a toy truck.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The broader point is probably don't call the cops unless you're accepting that someone risks being shot. Mental health crisis, property crime, crimes of violence, petty disturbances, it's a one size fit all solution. People with guns will show up, and if someone acting up doesn't immediately recognize this threat and go docile, they risk being shot. Or they might get killed anyway by some maniac like Chauvin or reckless moron like Potter.

That's kinda what this conversation boils down to. All the cops really do is show up with a gun and the authority to kill with very little oversight. In some cases they kill people when it's not justified or lawful, and sometimes they kill people when it is justified. Hoping for a "good" outcome is pretty naive, the best we can hope for is that the cops don't brazenly violate the law as they mete out violence.

The idea that police would train and prioritize not killing is simply beyond the pale. The best we can hope for is that they kill the right people. Cops deescalate through overwhelming force, it's what they do. Know that before dialing 911.
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I disagree that overwhelming force is the only tool for de-escalation. Sure, in a "someone's in the act of being violent" there may be limited options. That isn't all situations.

Just the same your comment goes to show why people would want someone else they can call that has the ability and authority to actually help in the manner needed.
 
Sheriff's deputies shoot unarmed Virginia man who was on the phone with 911

"After viewing the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's deputy's bodycam video and listening to the 911 call, it is evident that the tragic shooting of Isaiah Brown was completely avoidable," David Haynes, an attorney for Brown's family, said in a statement. He said Brown was "on the phone with 911 at the time of the shooting and the officer mistook a cordless house phone for a gun."
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Christ.
 
quadraginta said:
The cops don't seem to have learned a great deal from the Chauvin trial.

I think a lot more need to find themselves behind bars for a substantial amount of time.

Preferably in gen. pop., where they can hone their de-escalation skills.
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Let's see, they learned that if there are multiple witnesses, and multiple recordings that they can't murder someone in handcuffs lying face down when the defense attorneys can't find a jury that would believe the guy just randomly died or somehow posed any sort of threat whether actual or imagined.

But, in this shooting the cop claims he thought there was a gun, and that seems to prevent even an indictment let alone a conviction.
 
I've posted this link a few times now.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/05/policekillings/

Unless you really believe that US society is somehow uniquely violent, criminal and/or non-compliant, how else do you explain the vast disparity in killings by your police service of the civilian population they are supposed to protect? You have seemingly created, in my 60 years on this earth, a law enforcement service which sees it as acceptable to kill people for any crime, however minor, if that person does anything the police don't like while they are being approached. I may often not care for the Police service in Scotland, but I have never actually feared for my life when I have interacted with them.
 
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