We always joked about how they behaved like movie action heroes, always ready to use force. We were trained to avoid confrontation at almost any price. When in doubt, retreat.
I guess it's a different view on law "enforcement".
EDIT: Granted there's a big difference between trying to deescalate when possible and raiding a sleeping guy's apartment on bad info.
EDIT 2: This was an honest question and I felt like I got good answers despite the downvoting. Big thanks to everyone who took it at face value or applied the principle of charity, rather than just assuming I'm some kind of disruptive monster. http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html
Most of the recently published police violence in the US seems to come from really trivial situations, not from criminals. I watched the Sandra Bland video. The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too and I see a lot of people doing that too). She responds in an aggravated way. Instead of trying to defuse the situation he makes it worse by telling her to put out the cigarette. Why would you do that? This sounds like a pure ego-trip where the cop wants to assert his total dominance. He could have given her a ticket and just left.
It's worse than that. The cop tailgates her, waiting for an excuse to pull her over. His excuse is that she fails to signal while switching lanes (to create some distance between them.) He was going to pull her over no matter what.
This may have been a trivial situation for the cop, but for black people travelling out of state, it's a nightmare.
This doesn't explain or justify any of the rest of the incident though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_While_Black
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/24/is_this_your_car_like_sandra...
One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases, which seem to be becoming less common because it's not worth the safety risks in an urban environment and modern tech + resources make it unlikely that anyone can actually escape for that long. Sure, that'd make for a crappy movie but it's safer for everyone involved.
If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made.
Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor of mandatory police body-worn cameras, along with a right of citizens who are on the receiving end of a police encounter to obtain and review the footage. There's always the worry that the camera would be 'accidentally' turned off by the police, or that the footage would be lost if it showed anything embarrassing to the police, so to make them effective, you probably need a change in the law such that any discrepancy between the officer's version of events and the citizens is AUTOMATICALLY decided by judge/ jury in favor of the citizen if the 'mandatory' video footage is for some reason unavailable.
If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made.
Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor of mandatory police body-worn cameras, along with a right of citizens who are on the receiving end of a police encounter to obtain and review the footage. There's always the worry that the camera would be 'accidentally' turned off by the police, or that the footage would be lost if it showed anything embarrassing to the police, so to make them effective, you probably need a change in the law such that any discrepancy between the officer's version of events and the citizens is AUTOMATICALLY decided by judge/ jury in favor of the citizen if the 'mandatory' video footage is for some reason unavailable.
I don't think automatically ruling in the civilian's favor is a good idea because as we all know, tech breaks sometimes. I'm quite certain the body cameras exceed the standard definition of durable goods but they, like any other complex electronics, are susceptible to shock, moisture, fatigue, etc. and can break. All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor.
I think there's a middle ground somewhere between "toss the case because the bodycam footage went missing" and "lock up the cop and throw away the key"
Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct. This cost will be borne by the police department (and thus the government it belongs to, and thus the public of that area) rather than by the individual officer. This will help encourage the department to keep their stuff in good working order and make sure their staff aren't deliberately disabling the cameras.
This won't help much if the citizen is dead.
Example: civilian makes grandiose claim that is untrue and that cannot be refuted due to the camera malfunctioning. Officer is punished.
Example: civilian makes legit claim that cannot be proven due to camera malfunctioning. Officer successfully convinced court that camera failed to work and it's nonfunctionality was not preventable due to outside circumstances. Officer is not punished and civilian does not receive justice.
Etc.
The popular phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wrong. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. How strong that evidence is depends on just how much you'd expect to find evidence if the thing were actually true. For example, if you go looking in my garage for aliens, the absence of evidence is pretty compelling evidence for the absence of aliens in my garage, but it's extremely weak evidence for the absence of aliens in the universe.
When it comes to cameras, the question in how often they fail on their own compared to how likely tampering is, and any relevant context which might modify those basic probabilities. If the demonstrated MTBF is 10 years and your cameras are failing on average once every year then something is going on, for example.
Your mention about punishing the officer makes me wonder if you actually read my comment, though. I explicitly suggested that a camera malfunction should not be considered sufficient to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar for a criminal case, and that while it should work for a civil case, the cost there would not be borne by the officer.
The popular phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wrong. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
When it comes to cameras, the question in how often they fail on their own compared to how likely tampering is, and any relevant context which might modify those basic probabilities. If the demonstrated mean time between failures is 10 years and your cameras are failing on average once every year then something is going on, for example.
Your mention about punishing the officer makes me wonder if you actually read my comment, though. I explicitly suggested that a camera malfunction should not be considered sufficient to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar for a criminal case, and that while it should work for a civil case, the cost there would not be borne by the officer.
The actual popular phrase is "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" and that is NOT what I was referring to. The absence of evidence is still not evidence of tampering unless tampering can be proven. A hair fiber belonging to a suspect that is found at a crime scene is evidence that the suspect was there. A lack of a hair fiber of a suspect at a crime scene is not evidence that the suspect cleaned up their hair from the crime scene. Bleach on a floor at a crime scene is evidence of an attempt to clean it up. Does that make sense?
I'd argue that body cameras have not been around in wide circulation long enough to provide any meaningful data on their failure rates. Also I can safely assume they have some sort of warranty on them but that does not prevent a handful of defective ones from making their way into active use amongst law enforcement personnel.
Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct.
This is the passage I was replying to and you paraphrased another user's comment regarding a default judgment in favor of the civilian if the camera malfunctions. A malfunctioning camera does not necessarily prove a deliberate tampering and to hang an entire civil case judgment on that is not giving the losing side a fair shot at winning their case. The officer is employed by the department and a judgment born by the department in reference to the officer when the officer did not do anything wrong can have adverse consequences on their career and by extension, their life, far more than you are giving credit to.
Given that BWCs (body-worn cameras) weren't even significantly tested in the U.S. until 2012 and are still not what most people would agree is considered "widespread" then we can hardly conclude much of anything about their failure rates in active use.
Look at it like this: beforehand, there were three possibilities: the suspect was never there, the suspect was there and left behind hair, or the suspect was there and cleaned up. (You might add more, like the suspect being bald, but the general approach is the same.) If you then do a thorough search for the suspect's hair and find none, that removes the "left behind hair" possibility, leaving you with the other two. The probability of each is increased compared to before. How much each one increases depends on the context.
As for civil cases, I don't really see the problem. All you need to show for a civil case is that your version of events is more than 50% likely to be true. Even if body cameras fail on their own with great frequency, the odds of one failing naturally right at the critical moment when an officer supposedly abused a civilian are extremely low.
I also don't see why we can't make good estimates of body camera reliability right now. They're not magic. They're just electronics, not fundamentally different from a GoPro or similar. How often do those fail? The rates should be much the same.
There should also be weight given to the nature of the failure, of course. If a capacitor exploded, it was probably "natural causes." If it was mysteriously smashed, with a tread pattern that matches the tires on the officer's squad car, that ought to be enough to win a civil suit. Other circumstances will vary, but I'd say the number of cases where you have a "mysterious failure" that really is a legitimate electronics failure will be low.
I'm completely 100% for the body cameras and for transparency but I also understand that they shouldn't be the only evidence used to decide guilt or innocence and should not hold more weight over other pieces of evidence.
Wait, how exactly is the cop's life ruined?
If we need to explain "why now", that's still a question with your hypothesis - high speed chases have been dangerous for a long time, but they have also regularly been filmed for some while now.
So, US cops are right to have a different basic stance than German cops.
That is not to defend the actions described in the news article. And there certainly is a big problem with militarization of cops in the US.
They are third world because they are ignorant. And they are ignorant because they are third world.
Sometimes small incentives go a long way toward getting people further ahead. Sometimes they may shine by means of sports. But not everyone can be saved by sports. :-)
Mental illness, trauma, stress, physical disability / injury, side effects of living in a bad neighbourhood / neighbourhood targeted by law enforcement, trends in the local economy, etc. are some of the multifaceted reasons that people and families end up in poverty.
If I knew your philosophical leanings I could construct an example that would be quite common -- but for all I know you think it is not exploitation to offer jobs for minimum wage with no benefits that offer only 19 hrs a week of work (no benefits) but demand 24/7 availability.
So let me use a more extreme example. When individuals are suspected (NOT yet proven) of illegal immigration they are sent to a detention facility. There they are not allowed amenities like fresh socks or telephone calls unless they work for them at the rate of $0.13/hr. This is happening today to many thousands of people (http://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425511981/at-low-pay-governmen...).
Surely THAT counts as exploitation.
I bet the excuse (if an excuse exists at all) is the obvious "nobody is forced to work"/"we provide (bare minimum) amenities to anybody that wants them" circular reasoning.
The immigration issue is a different thing entirely.
I guess in US, it is:
When in doubt, shoot to kill.
I am in no way challenging the validity of your report. I'm offering this anecdote to put USian police training (or the lack thereof) in perspective.
I've heard from my father -an officer in the US Army-, and from many others who have reason to know that a HUGE part of an MP's training is in de-escalation and peaceful crowd control.
MPs are drilled over and over and over that the presence of a club, firearm, or -say- riot gear dramatically increases the tension of a situation and that they have to immediately and continually work very hard to bring that tension back down.
Some folks who have served as MPs have had opportunity to review the training procedures of some police departments who have been receiving military crowd control (and other) equipment. Many of those former MPs have gone on record with their serious dismay at the absence of even vaguely proper crowd control and de-escalation training.
If well trained USian MPs behave like action heroes; ready to use force at the slightest provocation, how are comparatively poorly trained USian police officers likely to behave when given identical equipment?
To highlight this even more, Police in Germany used only 85 bullets in all of 2001 [1]. Given their population is about 4x lower than the US, the equivalent would be the Police in all of the US using only ~340 bullets for a year.
In reality, The police in the US have KILLED over 400 people this year already.
[1] http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-police-used-onl...
http://www.thelocal.no/20150706/norway-police-shot-guns-twic...
http://yle.fi/uutiset/finnish_police_fired_guns_only_six_tim...
Edit: a sister comment cites numbers according to which almost 8 times as many police officers are killed in the US than in Germany per capita. Of course the real question is how many are attacked; if the police is better at gunfights than the criminals it is not a cause for alarm, rather the opposite.
People want to shoot at police because police shoot at people so often is probably just as true as the converse.
This is likely both true at the macro and micro level. That is, police behavior escalates individual situations into shootings which otherwise, with better training, could have ended peacefully.
_And_ with the culture of police quick to use force, people are more inclined to acquire weapons and use them during criminal activity.
Police positions on the usage and scale of force is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A violent, forceful police will create a violent, forceful criminal.
Which side you believe has more to do with your internal bias. Do you believe that police are violent because criminals are or do you believe criminals are violent because police are?
It's neither, though. It's a systematic problem with a systematic solution. Placing the blame isn't important, finding the solution is. You can do a little by trying to help people out of the situations where they're motivated to crime. You can do a lot by helping police nudge the outcome of interactions towards peaceful solutions.
The media whipping everyone into a frenzy over every contentious interaction doesn't help anybody.
But neither does ignoring the problem. I do wish we saw more responsible journalism on the topic, but apparently that doesn't generate the clicks...
This is a discussion we as a society are not having, and I believe we should. We had free mass media for long enough already to know that the general population can - and far too often does - go batshit insane thanks to news stories[0]. It's not enough that the reporting itself screws availability heuristic badly, the standard practice of journalism now consists of twisting the story (sometimes even outright lying) to maximize readers' outrage.
And no, one can't say it's the responsibility of the reader to not be fooled; news-induced dysrationalia is systemic, it is predictable.
Reminds me of a thing I read today, a reply on Quora about child soldiers posted by an ex-Marine[1]. Apparently, the primary military value of children is pissing off westerners. Military groups using them let journalists photograph kids with guns, maybe even some dead ones (doesn't really matter who killed them), and wait for the outraged civilians to push against their own countries' war efforts.
[0] - why are we having this "War on Terror" again?
[1] - http://www.quora.com/Why-do-Western-militaries-not-want-to-k...
People want to shoot at police because police shoot at
people so often is probably just as true as the converse.
I mean, even if they're honest good guy cops surely they'll call in backup and arrest you and make a really enthusiastic effort to put you in jail for a long time? And that's the best case - if they're bad cops it can only be worse?
Admittedly, my status as a british middle class white guy might mean I don't know what dealing with the police is like for other people.
The point is that in the USA even for minor things people expect to be shot at more than anything else. If you're going to take a risk and do something really gainful, you take it for guaranteed that the cops will shoot at you and make a point to shoot first.
Read up on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown
In general, though, I would agree with you that there can't be many situations in which your life would be improved if you shot at a police officer. By my observation any time someone does that it has the effect of enraging every cop in the land.
a situation I could be in that would be improved by me
shooting at the police
2) you have committed a minor crime, for which the sentence is sufficiently harsh that you are willing to add murder to the crime to prevent being sentenced. If a cop attempts to apprehend you and you shoot him, your situation is improved in that you are not apprehended and may not have to go to jail at all. Ratios of punishments for different crimes matter as well as the absolute value.
You've seen on the news people just like you getting killed in the street by police. You've known people who have been beat bloody in the exact same situation. Even if they don't kill you in the street, you have 30 years in a harsh prison ahead of you.
You have nothing to lose.
---
The idea is to teach police to keep subjects calm and try to convince them that surrendering really is the best outcome. People full of adrenaline don't always make the best decisions. Maybe they've been taking drugs, they've probably got a whole lot of stress in their lives, and possibly some mental illness as well. In a lot of places they're conditioned to think of police as the enemy, and in this situation they're really afraid.
https://www.google.de/search?q=polizei+deutschland&tbm=isch
People here don't mind because they know german cops are trained to use them responsibly.
People in Germany usually don't carry weapons.
Call it 9/10 in the US and 3/10 in Germany[1]. Note that this is number of guns, not number of people owning guns. Not sure how that changes the odds of any one person having access to a gun.
Perhaps more interesting is the number of verified homicides commited with a gun[2]: ~4/100 000 in the US, 0.2/100 000 in Germany. So one could guesstimate the odds of encountering an armed potential murderer in the US is about 4/0.02 ~ 200:1 -- or 200 times more likely for an US cop than for a German cop.
Not sure how valuable such macro-guesstimations are, really. But hey, numbers.
> police in the US carry weapons to deal with long range weapons.
I'm not so sure. Doesn't the typical US patrol officer carry a pistol, possibly with a shotgun for backup? If the aim really was to take out a single shooter (potentially in a crowd) surely something along the lines of an mp5 would make more sense?
Police in Norway has also been generally armed now, and waltz around with glocks. It strikes me as entirely useless -- the number of situations that can be defused/resolved with a somewhat poorly aimed 9mm bullet doesn't seem to justify the increase in weapons available (all you'd need to get them off a pair of cops would be a hunting rifle -- or a mob).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
Is this due to the Breivik massacre?
I was recently at a music festival with some ~3000 people -- and a couple of police officers with handguns. I have a hard time divining a scenario where those guns are going to help. If the aim was to be able to shoot attackers, at least some snipers at an elevated vantage point with low-power ammunition might have had a chance at taking someone out without endangering the crowds too much.
On the other hand, if the crowd went mad an rioted, you can be sure that the end result would've been that someone in the crowd would've ended up in possession of those guns.
It's an open question. For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US (and even declined free tickets to a very important tech conference in my field) because of your unpredictable trigger-friendly police [1] and your guantanamo-friendly interviews at border control [2]. I wonder it your unstability could reach me in Europe.
[1] Being a foreigner, I'm not protected by your constitution and the officers haven't sworn to protect and serve me.
[2] I do believe an intent to go to a conference could randomly be recategorized as seeking work, which is illegal, and using a false Facebook name could be recategorized as identity theft. I do believe it's therefore possible to be retained at your border for an undefined amount of time, with no record and no rights to a lawyer. I do believe I'd be upset in this situation and I could end up sentenced for life in your prisons.
http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/04/23/Feldmar/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/think-before-you-tweet-why-two-...
This is the "wonderful" thing about the Patriot Act: Even as an American citizen, you could be disappeared and shipped to a foreign country for torturing... and there's a good chance no one would find out, for years, maybe forever. I don't think you have an idea of how significant this is. America does not operate under the rule of law.
>To their surprise, however, when they arrived at L.A. International, they were not only detained and questioned at length by U.S. authorities, but were swiftly -- after a night in the cells, naturally -- plonked back on a plane back to England, and barred from entering the United States again.
I'm not sure what you mean. They were each returned to their respective countries.
People who were not returned (ie disappeared) are not able to speak of their experiences, so you would never know it happened.
Note that both Canada and England are allies of the USA. What happens to questionable people who are not from allied nations?
Unchecked police brutality is just one of a complex of problems I see in the news: The private for-profit prison industry that lobbies for more and longer incarcerations, the bail-and-debt system, civil forfeitures, plea bargaining, the unabashed wiretapping and widespread weakening of 4th Amendment rights... if you describe the US system of "justice" to a neutral party, he will guess you're talking about Russia or maybe North Korea.
To answer your question, whether that state reaches Europe depends on whether the US' war of the rich on the poor spreads to Europe. The statesmen of the US are cheaply purchased pawns of various rich industries, and law & order are replaced by high-tech feudalism. If Europe finds itself ruled by corrupt evil clowns like the US is, then we'll see similar conditions here.
That said, I have no idea how it will go. I have no knack at all for predicting politics. I'm betting on kicking the bucket before shit hits the fan.
I have never been to the US, and although a trip to California would be an obvious to-do in my profession, the main reason I don't consider it is the death penalty.
It sounds so unattractive to visit countries stuck with such laws. Despite all the nice things they have to offer.
It might be easier to understand from a European perspective. [1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Europe
Don't kill anyone and you'll be good.
Or perhaps you're actually concerned about false conviction, which is a different problem and no less bad when someone spend the rest of his life in prison
The majority of what you have been told by your media are "narrative" stories that are removed of all actual facts and details (to fit the narrative). Its pure politics.
For example, in the Ferguson case, you where told that the police officer (Darren Wilson) saw Michael Brown, and for whatever reason, just murdered him on the spot, by shooting him through the back of his head - all while Michael Brown was doing nothing wrong, and holding his hands up.
Except none of that is true. Here is the basic outline of what happened instead - http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ferguson-shooting-13-facts/...
Or here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown
And that's still leaving allot out.
In the case of Trayvon Martin, the spin was even worse.
This is a racist "white" man - http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2013/02/06/zimmerman...
And a watermelon soda is an ice tea - http://www.examiner.com/article/trayvon-s-skittles-arizona-t...
I'm assuming the later was "modified" in the produced story by all the left-leaning news outlets because it was too stereotypical / and the narrative must be protected. If you don't believe it, check the crime seen photos and the court records - I did.
And that's about 5% of the falsehood story. I could go on and on.
> Should we expect that America uprises against their own police?
Cops kill a reported 500 or so people every year. Maybe twice that much in real numbers.
The majority of those people are violent criminals - some of which are firing at cops, using knifes to stab cops, garbing at cops' guns, using vehicles to run cops over, etc.
Why would anyone that is not delusional with the political media spin revolt against cops?
It matters that it was a manufactured lie.
The "ice tea and skittles" was also mentioned every time the name Trayvon Martin was mentioned. Every. Single. Time.
So it must have also had a great importance to everything and everyone.
And the point was to show how these stories are manufactured by removing facts, and replacing them with the narrative... A young 12 year old kid just getting some ice tea and skittles on a bright sunny day - murdered by a white racist who had no injuries, was not arrested, was not handcuffed and taken-in, etc (all points proven false).
> Sorry but you're going to need to explain why having watermelon soda is a shoot-on-sight offense
Why would I have to explain it? What you just said is completely made up, and you are the one saying it. Trayvon was shot because he was beating Zimmerman's head into the pavement. They both made mistakes, it escalated. And everything that was reported was spun to the narrative.
There's no grand conspiracy to make the world believe that it was ice tea and not soda, you have invented this. (I assume you really are passionately concerned with the difference between soda and tea and not just trying to talk about a black kid liking fruit soda and watermelon as a way to engage racist stereotypes to dehumanize him.)
Whether he was going to drink it or mix it with codeine is immaterial to the events that led to his death so why even bring it up?
For the other 95% of the story, start with the 2nd link above, to see just how ridiculous Zimmerman's character was built-up.
Then check Trayvon's twitter screenshot for how he conversed and what drugs he liked (lean). Check the pictures found on his phone of him holding a gun and talking about selling it. Him being expelled from school. Burglary charges. See the conversations he had about being in some type of a fight club and making people bleed, etc...
Which was all mostly left out of the story, because it did not support the narrative - http://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hoodies-8...
Or how about the recording that was played for weeks non stop on CNN -
> Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
Which actually turned out to be -
> Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
> Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
> Zimmerman: He looks black.
The media did a number on that story. It wasn't a conspiracy, it was political spin. Which is what the media in the US does. They do not report facts anymore.
Do you see how easy it is to get trivial details wrong? Now imagine if you were actually upset about the death of a human being; it would almost seem insignificant that it was juice instead of ice tea.
Please do. Because right now with this soda business, with due respect, you're coming through as a little bit looney.
That Breitbart story was part of the first 5%, right? It wasn't very convincing either, especially not in an argument about media narratives... Anyway, as I recall it Mr Zimmerman's photo and his Peruvian heritage was reported early on in mainstream media.
It seems to me you don't have a lot of convincing arguments for your initial sweeping claims. It was an unfortunate event. An innocent man was killed. Let's just leave it at that, ok? None of your arguments have any bearing on this fact, no matter how much you try to smear Mr Martin (btw, you could easily forge such a narrative out of my life, as well).
I've edited 1 comment to expand it.
I also correct spelling mistakes when I see them.
And sometimes, within the first 10 minutes, I might add a sentence to the current reply.
> It seems to me you don't have a lot of convincing arguments for your initial sweeping claims. It was an unfortunate event. ... None of your arguments have any bearing on this fact, no matter how much you try to smear Mr Martin.
Smearing Zimmerman by the national media is not worrying, but reporting the facts of the case is to you?
Zimmerman's racist character was fabricated. Trayvon's innocent character was fabricated.
Anyway, on topic: There is a photo of me holding a gun. I have been reported to the police. I have used medicine recreationally. I have had trouble with teachers, being something of an unruly kid to them at times. It's easy to paint most anyone in such a light.
Why should I get shot close to my home? What is it that you're arguing, in fact?
What's the narrative? To what end?
And that's still leaving allot out.
You were there, I presume? I mean, obviously _any_ recollection of a complex course of events will leave out a lot, but the way you phrase it makes it sound like you know more about what happened. Care to shed some light upon this?
And a watermelon soda is an ice tea
Now this is getting interesting. Do you argue that there is a widespread media cover-up to hide the fact that Mr Martin bought a certain kind of soda that might be used with cough medicine? I can't even...
And that's about 5% of the falsehood story. I could go on and on.
Am I correct in my understanding that you claim to have knowledge of lots of errors in the reporting of the killing of Trayvon Martin, but you only tell us about the watermelon vs ice tea... thing? That's weird; why not give us something more substantial, something that's, you know, actually convincing (or at least, something that is... anything)?
Cops kill a reported 500 or so people every year. Maybe twice that much in real numbers.
Yeah, no. It's 500 reported killings during the first 6 months of 2015 already. Killings by police in the US are way up during the 2000s.
You're not convincing. If anything, it sounds like you are stuck in a narrative. Please provide something more substantial from your other 95% of truth.
One thing I have never seen anyone bring up on either side is the question of why Officer Wilson, believing his life to be in danger while sitting in his car, did not simply drive down the street to eliminate the danger, then reassess the situation from safety.
Wilson may well have been in danger, even mortal danger. He still did the wrong thing by responding with lethal force when he could have removed himself from that danger. As a result, he ended up killing one of the people he was sworn to protect.
The fact that his physical description, the event of the strong-armed robbery, and the report of the stolen item, was brought-cast - which led to the events that followed - is not relevant?
The typical standard in the US is that lethal force is only justified when the person represents an immediate danger to others. I personally think it should go a bit farther than this and also explicitly state that lethal force must be the last resort, i.e. that the person must not only present a danger to others, but that lethal force must be the only way to stop it. Either way, the fact that Michael Brown had just stolen stuff doesn't come into it.
The earlier events might, or might not, be relevant to the use of deadly force in a court of law, but they are relevant to my point of the narrative, of the story told to the public - the original comment you are relying to.
And yes, garbing at a cop's gun, trying to wrestle it away from him, and then later charging at him like a bull - is justifiable use of deadly force. And the previous events can be used to show the mindset of the individuals.
These things happen quickly, and there is no restart of the game.
Grabbing at a cop's gun may justify deadly force, but it wouldn't have happened if Wilson hadn't drawn it in the first place. It is the drawing of the gun which is the key event here. If he had simply stomped on the gas pedal instead then this whole controversy would have stopped before it started.
> It is the drawing of the gun which is the key event here. If he had simply stomped on the gas pedal instead then this whole controversy would have stopped before it started.
5. Wilson said when he tried to open his car door, Brown slammed it back shut, then punched Wilson in the face.
6. Fearing another punch could knock him out, Wilson drew his gun, he told the grand jury, and Brown grabbed the gun, saying "you are too much of a pussy to shoot me."
Like I said, these things happen quickly, there is really not much time to think and analyze. When you feel that your life is in danger, you just respond. Some people get tunnel vision, others don't even form memories.
Some other things that would have prevented this - is every single action that Michael Brown took.
Imagine you insult a person's mother, and in response he gets upset and shoots you. I say, if you hadn't mouthed off then you wouldn't have gotten killed. Is this true? Absolutely. Does it make your death justified? Not in the least.
The fact that these things happen quickly and that you "just respond" is not an excuse for using deadly force when it's not necessary. Police are supposed to be the ones protecting us, not the ones getting us killed. That he killed Michael Brown when he didn't need to is an abject failure on his part. Maybe it was a failure caused by a lack of time to think and a failure caused by an innate response, but it's still a failure. I also have to wonder why Wilson got so close when opening his door in the first place, to someone he knew might be dangerous. If he felt at a disadvantage because he was seated in his car, why not stop some distance away, get out, and confront the suspect on a better footing?
You don't get to engineer a dangerous situation, then use deadly force to eliminate the danger and call it good. The fact that the other person participated somewhat still doesn't justify it. If Wilson had taken more care before he was in the middle of a fight then he wouldn't have been in the position to "just respond" with deadly force in the first place.
If the rest of the bullet points are true, the first three don't make a difference.
To answer your question, police officer are not trained to retreat and allow a criminal to get away because they feel danger.
The beginning of the end of the war on drugs, body cameras, attention being cast on asset seizures and minimum mandatory sentencing - it has become obvious to most of the population that over the last 30 years the policing system has gotten out of control. You know it's understood to be bad when the president is openly discussing how much worse imprisonment is in the US than other countries, and becomes the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.
Your (confusingly) similarly enumerated point earlier "[1] and your guantanamo-friendly interviews at border control" is also flawed, as there is no possible way (of which I am aware) for US Customs and Immigration to send you to Guantanamo Bay without the assent of the country you are leaving. US C&I can turn you back, or temporarily detain you, and have a great deal of latitude with respect to questioning and searches, but you are always protected by the US constitution and possibly the laws of the country you are attempting to leave depending on where you are being questioned. The reason that people were allowed to be transported to Guantanamo Bay is that they were captured as unaffiliated combatants (who are allotted few rights in the Geneva Convention,) within the borders of a country whose sovereign granted the USA custody, and allowed deportation for detention without conditions.
That's my reading, too, but it's not clear that it's government's reading.
This seems excessive to me, you're not going to run into the cops going to a tech conference. I've lived in the US for the past 5 years, and never had any issues with police or border control. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that the part of California I live in (Orange County) is safer than my home country in Europe.
so six of one, half dozen of another.
I think that the likelihood of civilians being armed in the US is a lot higher than in Germany, so I can imagine why American cops are a little more paranoid. I've seen cops put a hand on their gun as they approach suspects, which I think is part of the training here.
I wonder how many cops in America get killed in line of duty compared to Germany.
Now, I'm well aware of the sins of LAPD in that era, but with regard to use of violent force and this damned finger-on-the-trigger mentality, I really feel like this has been a post-2003 evolution in tactics. It wasn't always like this. I don't remember being nervous about getting shot during a traffic stop. Hell, I can even recall two distinct occasions where SWAT was deployed to my house because I had hit the emergency button on my phone (rediculous, I know). In those cases, guns were drawn, but they weren't aimed and extreme caution was taken.
Second time was less funny.
http://www.corsipo.de/ (probably incomplete, but <5 per year)
In the usa:
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/US-Law-Enfo...
Extrapolating that into numbers:
DEU: <0.6 police officers killed per 10 mio citizens :::: USA: ~4.6 police officers killed per 10 mio citizens
Meanwhile the number of police kills are roughly:
DEU: ~1 person killed by police per 10 mio citizens :::: USA: ~12.5 persons killed by police per 10 mio citizens
The ratios are not all that far apart:
DEU: ~1.7 persons killed per police officer death :::: USA: ~2.7 persons killed per police officer death
Page 4, and 5 on:
Fhttp://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf
I don't want to argue with anyone, but I've always felt if police officers were given better training, and maybe required a bit more than a high school diploma, say an AA in psychology; we wouldn't have these posts? By better training, I mean less paramilitary emphasis?
I'll admit, I'm tired of the endless pullovers--for no reason other than driving an old car, or out past 10:30 p.m.
I'm tired of the Revenue Collection(that's not their fault! We need to tie income to violations in the United States, or lower fees altogether?) A rich man get a ticket--he tell the wife at dinner. A poor man gets a ticket; it just might be the last straw?
I'm just tired of being scared when they are around!
I don't think things are going to change for a long time. All I rely on is dash cams at present. No need for spending more than 20 bucks at Amazon? Those cheap ones work, and last a long time. Buy two--in case one breaks? I had on going over a year now. I haven't been pulled over since? Maybe I don't do out like I used to, or they see that little screen flip down?
It's the rate of violence that is dramatically different, and not nearly as much the per capita gun ownership rate.
The U.S. doesn't have a gun problem; we have a violence problem. If one magically made every single firearm disappear tomorrow, the murder rate would still be ridiculously high, because we'd still be finding ways to murder one another.
We need to reconcile gun ownership with the violence it can allow and our desire for less aggro policing.
That said police most definitely need to be trained to deescallate rather than automatically double down.
We need to seriously emphasize de-escalation.
While this may have an influence, it's important to remember that police officers are also trained to be wary of knives:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_KJ1R2PCMM
You can't totally disarm a population, so there are diminishing returns on this front.
Are you seriously comparing a knife with a firearm ?
You can inflict much more damage with a firearm even without special training (not everybody can throw a knife and do some damages).
Everything hinges on who attacks first. The weapon is secondary.
Knives are extremely dangerous and more difficult for your assailant to control at close range, and it doesn't seem like you have an appreciation of that.
If you have a gun and if you decide to attack first, maybe you can shoot two or three of them, disabling them, before they can kill you. I've never been in combat, but I don't think that kind of scenario is likely to happen in the real world. Also, even fatal shots are not immediately disabling unless they're to the CNS. Slashes across the arms can readily disable someone in a way that shooting them, even in the chest, won't, unless you hit their spine or some critical nerve or muscle area.
Guns are vastly superior if you have the advantage of distance. Otherwise, not so much.
I _thought_ that you're supposed to have some ammunition at home though? 'Taschenmunition' or something? Like, say, 20 rounds?
Let's ignore the standards for storing those, but my impression is that
a) ~a lot~ of people in CH have rifles _with_ ammo
b) ~a good number~ of kills at home in CH happen using said rifle ("Cheating wife? Thank the military for the rifle right here" or - on a different end of that scale - "Life is unbearable, but the state provided me with a convenient way to move on").
Can you set me straight?
http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-...
The guy had a knife and charged towards the officer, he fired off a warning shot in the air and then shot him in the foot.
And he was very apologetic about it. Not the usual "I feared for my safety so I put 5 rounds in his center mass" we see from American police.