|
Jarmak posted:That clip looks bad mostly because of the absolutely ridiculous amount of cops that are surrounding the guy, but the truth is its irrelevant because excess manpower doesn't really make grappling a guy with a knife less dangerous. Dude just stabbed someone and is continuing to move toward a cop after taking multiple non-lethal rounds and still not going down, no one is getting charged in that situation. There's also the issue of all of them just unloading the moment the first cop fires. The problem, as usual, is that the cops are just too itchy to escalate a situation more than necessary. Even if we assume that it would have been impossible for the dozen cops surrounding him to step out of the way while keeping him contained, having half the precinct mag dump into the suspect makes it look like they are only interested in killing him. The suspect - in this case and in many others - would have a much better chance of surviving if the cop in the best position to take a shot takes a single shot, then everyone involves re-assesses the situation and determines whether deadly force is still necessary. The police's goal should be to de-escalate, the reality is usually the opposite.
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2015 21:59
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 02:31 |
|
|
deratomicdog posted:Police constantly put themselves in dangerous situations. We shouldn't make them unnecessarily more dangerous by not giving them the tools they need to do the job. The U.K. Police try to use a trash can for christs sake. You know the proverb about the man with a hammer, right? Just based on the relative number of police shootings, clearly US police are absolutely terrible at doing anything other then escalating a situation. The guns just need to be put away. There would not be some bloodbath if cops stopped carrying guns and instead stored them in their center console or trunk behind a lock. Any time that lock is opened, there needs to be a full report justifying the introduction of deadly force into a situation. In this situation where the suspect is ventilated by what seems to be a dozen cops, think of how differently that could have ended if the cops were able to show some restraint. Wildly dumping their magazines into the man basically just means they had decided to kill him and weren't going to stop until they accomplished that goal. Yet there are plenty of videos of cops in other countries, in the rare occasions that they have to resort to deadly force, there is usually an aimed shot or two fired. The situation is then re-assessed, and if the suspect is still a threat, more shots are fired. Taking control of a situation and calmly getting it under control is a hell of a lot better than running in, screaming like a pack of lunatics, then executing anyone who looks at them funny.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2015 23:21
|
|
|
Dead Reckoning posted:I don't understand your logic here. If the police are in a situation which justifies in using deadly force to stop a suspect or defend themselves, then it's by definition acceptable if the suspect dies. If the police aren't justified in shooting someone twenty times, they aren't justified in shooting them once. That doesn't mean that they can't use tactics that reduce the odds of the suspect dying. One shot at at time in that situation still stops him, but increases the likelihood that paramedics (who are already on the way because of the stabbing, right?) could get him to the hospital in time. e: It's one thing to acknowledge that a death is an acceptable outcome, it's another thing entirely to immediately employ the force to make that a certainty. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Dec 5, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2015 16:38
|
|
|
Discendo Vox posted:It's worth noting that the examples provided don't indicate that limb wounds were the product of an intentional policy of aiming at the limb. So, to use the Denmark numbers as an example, hitting 51 people with 66 shots and wounding (rather than killing) 75% of them is just a big coincidence? And even if it that is just an accidental result rather than intentional policy, awesome, what can we do to get closer to those results? e: Adjusting those Danish numbers for population would correspond to US police shooting at about 3,750 people and hitting ~3,000 of them, with only ~625 ending up dead. That alone would actually be an improvement on single year stats for American police, but that's actually a decade's worth of data from Denmark. chitoryu12 posted:The German chart from earlier had incidents where suspects were shot and wounded, but survived (including suspects who were actively shooting at the police or victims). Combined with the low number of kills in comparison, this suggests that German police only fire until the shooter stops shooting and then delivers prompt medical attention instead of handcuffing their bleeding body. This seems like a good idea and was one of the suggestions originally offered in response to the San Francisco shooting, and is not mutually exclusive with disabling shots escalating to shots aimed to kill. Who are the people arguing for the current policy of a mag-dump as soon as a cop gets jumpy? AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 8, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2015 00:03
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:Aiming a gun at someone you're trying to arrest is a standard practice. How in the world is this acceptable behavior? Bringing a gun into a situation only increases the odds someone is going to die, there's no good reasons for police firearms not to be locked away until a situation requiring deadly force presents itself, and not to have a pile of paperwork every time that lock is touched.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2015 15:13
|
|
|
serious gaylord posted:That would be why they opened fire. The video is bad enough that you don't have to misrepresent things. Multiple witnesses have said the guy had a gun. He's refused to drop it. He then walks towards a public place with other people present and he was apparently shot while he had the gun in his hand. Even if we assume deadly force was justified, since he was not actively shooting at the police why not shoot him once, then see how compliant the dude is? The volley of gunfire just ensures it's an execution rather than the police taking someone into custody with the minimum of force required as you might hope.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2015 17:48
|
|
|
Elendil004 posted:I found this interesting paper. Appears well credentialed, and is in line with my own knowledge of firearms instruction. A few interesting points: It can't be as cut and dry as you put it though, because different police forces have different approaches to firearms. People posted stats earlier of German and Danish police shootings, the number of shots fired was pretty close to the number of people shot - there was no mag dumping going on. If fewer shots fired could result in fewer people dying, shouldn't American police forces reassess their tactics? AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Dec 14, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2015 06:39
|
|
|
Wasn't this the same issue for a long time with civil rights complaints? A lawsuit for pay discrimination or unlawful firing used to require documented evidence of willful discrimination (for example, a manager e-mail to another manager about making lower offers to women). This was obviously an unreasonable bar for most employees, so the standards were changed so statistical evidence could be used. Even if there wasn't a stupid e-mail like the example, if a company is found to be systematically paying women or minorities less for equivalent work, that can now be used as evidence in a discrimination lawsuit. Even without a smoking gun, there is no way for widespread pay differences to be anything other than discrimination. This seems to make sense, as the former bar was way out of reach in most circumstances. It's fair to approach police discipline in the same way. We're not talking about a criminal conviction, an administrative punishment is somewhat similar to a civil infraction like a discrimination claim (the administrative punishment probably even has less of a burden). If Officers Bob and Joe and Sally each get a couple of complaints over a few years, but for whatever reason the claims couldn't be corroborated, then that can certainly be white noise or addressed with minor things like additional training. But if Officer Fuckface on the other hand picks up a dozen complaints over the same period of time, even if the complaints cannot be fully vetted (it's well documented police will intimidate people trying to come forward to complain, so it wouldn't exactly be surprising) there is obviously a pattern going on here. That should be plenty of reason to get rid of Officer Fuckface and replace him with someone who isn't clearly pissing off the community he's policing. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Dec 19, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2015 14:41
|
|
|
A Fancy Bloke posted:And while I don't think people should be punished for hearsay, it turns out that is how nearly every other job in America does it. Why shouldn't people with the power of life and death over civilians not be held to standards as lofty as those of a Wal Mart Cashier? Investigation is not a punishment. Even a complaint based on hearsay should at least lead to an investigation, but the police aren't even bothering with that. Unless someone is willing to brave harassment and intimidation to formally swear to a complaint, the police just drop it and pretend nothing even happened. There's also a difference between one complaint and a pattern of them. It's absurd to think that there's nothing behind a long string of "unfounded" complaints against a single officer, but even when the police do look into complaints, they do so in a vacuum. At the very least a long record of public complaints means that the officer in question is providing lovely customer service and shouldn't be interacting with the public. Even if there's not enough to fire him, keep him in the police station where he can only be a dick to other officers.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2015 00:58
|
|
|
You know those surveys that accompany most public-facing jobs? What do you think happens if enough of those come back negatively? Surely you don't imagine that the employer contacts people responding that way to have them swear to their statements before investigating the employee. Far more likely, the employee is warned, hopefully provided some additional training and support, and if the pattern continues, is fired. This is not some egregious abuse by employers, it is a matter of getting rid of lovely employees. Police officers who draw an egregious number of complaints are obviously failing one of the key aspects of their jobs (community engagement), why do you people keep defending them? Of course a criminal conviction is a different matter, but Jarmak, you are pretending an administrative disciplinary action requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Dec 20, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2015 02:19
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:I never said that You sure seem to be heavily implying it. I brought up the discrimination suit example earlier for a reason - a pattern of behavior is still evidence of wrongdoing even if no individual incident can be specifically verified. A company that can be shown to statistically pay women less is still in violation of employment laws even without a specific e-mail saying "let's give those bitches lower raises". Why would an administrative disciplinary hearing carry a heavier burden of proof than a civil lawsuit? Dead Reckoning posted:I mean, maybe there's some other way to read that than calling for disciplining people based on un-sworn statements or punishing people based solely on number of complaints regardless of merit, but that seems like the most obvious interpretation. Why are you so offended by the idea of an officer being punished based on the number of accusations? What employer in the world, except for the police, would keep someone in a public-facing position after a pattern of complaints from customers? Whatever else, he is clearly incapable of interacting with the public and undermines the department's image. Even if you don't fire him, that should be more than enough to put him in an office and away from pissing off the public and making every other officers' job more difficult.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2015 03:18
|
|
|
Dead Reckoning posted:I don't think anyone should be disciplined based on accusations that the accuser is unwilling to swear to the truthfulness of, police or no. Talk is cheap. Add the fact that policing is by nature a "competitive enterprise" where officers are required to confront and detain criminals, and I think it's reasonable to require a complainant we willing to make a sworn statement. I expect that they receive very few comment cards that say, "Officer DrunkYet was wholly professional and used appropriate force when he arrested me and confiscated my dope & illegal handgun." How would you explain some officers receiving [statistically significantly] more complaints than other officers [working similar beats]? Even if the job is confrontational in nature, the officer drawing more complaints is obviously not doing his job as well as all the others not drawing as many. He should receive remedial training, and if it continues, not be allowed to engage the public. Police departments have back-office jobs too. Also, you seem be ignoring documented instances of police harassing and intimidating people who make a sworn complaint. Maybe if that issue can be addressed, then it would be reasonable to require sworn statements. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Dec 20, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2015 03:37
|
|
|
Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Shouldn't the city be able to fire SFPD management then, since they failed to perform their duties in a timely and competent fashion? Theoretically, that's what elections are for.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2015 17:57
|
|
|
They won't be eliminated because police are lazy. The alternative would be keeping an eye on the house for a while, establishing the suspect's routine, then arresting him with a minimum of confrontation. That's a ton of planning and requires far more time than just getting outfitted in military hand-me-downs and playing out little kid pew-pew fantasies. Not to mention not nearly as much fun, and are you really going to be the monster that denies police their right to have some fun?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2015 17:04
|
|
|
Toasticle posted:Edit: actually reminds me of a question for any lawyers left: How/Why is forced labor allowed in prisons? Doing it for commissary money fine but I don't recall sentances including forced labor. Aren't you just sentanced to be locked up for X time? I forget if it was this thread but there was a story about a prison where refusal to work meant solitary (Which is another legal question, most psychiatrists I've seen say it is unequivocally torture after 24 hours, without human contact or stimulus you literally start to lose your mind and fairly quickly, how is that allowed?) If I'm not mistaken, most prison labor is "voluntary". As in, you can volunteer to work for pennies an hour, or you can forget about any sort of "privileges" like interacting with other people or going outside.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2015 00:22
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:That article is really bad and it's not clear what exactly they're challenging. Bail bondsman for example, aren't legal in all states, but if they're challenging the concept of bail in general I don't understand what they could possibly be basing it on. Not only is the concept of bail explicitly mentioned in the constitution, it's settled law that you don't have a right to receive it at all. Bail as it is now is absurd and obviously a way to keep poor people locked up while exempting anyone with resources from the same hardship. If cash bail is necessary, it should be a percentage of assets so a person's means don't enter into it. That really should be the case for all criminal penalties, fines included. The "justice" system we have now with regard to payments to courts grinds the already poor deeper into poverty without impacting those who have the ability to pay.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2015 15:59
|
|
|
Dr Pepper posted:This idea that cops that cops should't be investigated or disaplined because of complaints is simple to understand once you realize that the people arguing it, as always, simply don't want or expect cops to be held to any professional standards. If you're a customer service agent and a few people fill out a survey negatively, you can be sure that at the very least your management will look into what's going on and give you some remedial training. The idea that an employer would have to go out and get a sworn affidavit from the people complaining just to investigate the issue is ridiculous, and has nothing to do with workers' rights. It just insulates bad employees from any sort of scrutiny. Even more hilarious, imagine the response if customer service agents threatened and intimidated people trying to leave bad reviews like cops do.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2015 19:46
|
|
|
Cole posted:i can understand it. If his age is not relevant to justifying the shooting, what is there to understand about the cops/DA claiming he looked older? It's not wrong because of the facts of the argument (which are completely irrelevant), it's wrong because it's not a loving excuse to shoot someone in the first place.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2015 21:19
|
|
|
Cole posted:I don't know. Why not ask the people who were talking a lot about it before I ever got here? And you're engaging them and defending the cops/DA because...?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2015 21:21
|
|
|
Cole posted:Because harping on the one justifiable part of the cop's statement doesn't help anything, and I would rather people help the cause rather than hurt the cause. But it's not a justifiable part of the statement, since it is not relevant to the shooting regardless of accuracy.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2015 21:23
|
|
|
CommanderApaul posted:The issue is that the legal standard for charging an officer with a crime while they're carrying out their duties is whether their actions are reasonable given what they knew at the time the alleged crime occurred. The dispatcher was told that there was a black male at the park repeated pulling out a gun and pointing it at people, but that he was probably a juvenile and it was probably fake. The information dispatched to the officers was "black male at the park repeatedly pulling a gun from his waistband and pointing it at people." The Grand Jury decided that given that information, the officers were justified in shooting the kid when he reached for his waistband because they were responding to what was relayed to them as a borderline active shooter. The age and size and all that stuff doesn't really enter into it because it has nothing to do with the legal standard that the prosecution has to meet to justify charges. The prosecutor is flapping his gums about it because he needs to find some way to justify the Grand Jury not issuing an indictment to the media and the public, otherwise the city is going to explode. And he's doing a very, very bad job of it, because giving a straight clinical legal explanation of why the charges weren't warranted isn't going to help either. This still doesn't make sense though. If the officers believed he had a real gun and was pointing it at people, why would they needlessly endanger both themselves and the suspect by pulling up within a few feet and surprising him? They created a situation where the slightest twitch by Rice "justifies" the shooting rather than approaching with caution so they could use the minimum of force necessary to defuse the situation. I can understand not bringing murder charges, but how in the world is creating a situation that so obviously could result in someone getting shot not at the very least negligent homicide even if we get into a clinical explanation.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2015 00:18
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:Here I bolded the part of my post where I specifically answered what you're curious about!: The only thing the Constitution says about bail is a limiting statement, there's nothing in there that requires the use of payment for bail. Eliminating paid bail in favor of, say, electronic monitoring for minor crimes as the article suggests is the goal the would not run afoul of the Constitution. I'm curious though, why doesn't the existing bail system run afoul of the 14th Amendment? The current bail system basically guarantees poor people facing trial stay in jail, while the rich get to go home - this cannot reasonably be called equal protection. Same goes for fines levied by courts, a $1000 fine may be crippling to someone without means while being irrelevant to someone who can pay. It's a two-tiered "justice" system that only further impoverishes the poor. Making bail/fines/fees a percentage of assets rather than an absolute amount would be a great step towards creating a legitimately equitable alternative. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Dec 29, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2015 03:34
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:What? The lawsuit is alleging something about bail violates the constitution, no one is trying to say the constitution requires bail. The lawsuit appears to be alleging that using bail for minor crimes rather than releasing people on their own recognizance or using electronic monitoring, etc is inequitable. The article is really light on details though, so perhaps you're right. Jarmak posted:Also the current bail system does take assets into account, what are you talking about? It's arbitrary as far as I'm aware. Judges can take into account the means of a defendant when setting bail, but ultimately pick a number based on some combination of precedent and what feels good. I'm proposing that if and when cash bail is deemed appropriate, it should be set at a percentage of the defendant's assets and the dollar amount owed be based on the determination of that figure. And fines are generally codified as absolute figures, which certainly inequitably target the poor.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2015 04:55
|
|
|
Stereotype posted:Yeah you're right, they were probably super stoked when they heard that there was a young black pre-teen in the park with a fake gun because then they could satisfy their satanic lust for child blood, they'd probably been planning on shooting someone all week. How silly of me to think they recklessly approached a situation and then cowardly panicked. If you negligently create a situation where someone ends up dying, that is a serious crime - even murder in some instances. Premeditated murder, with or without satanic bloodlust, is not the only crime in the world.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2015 15:27
|
|
|
Jarmak posted:There was absolutely nothing shady about the way the grand jury portion of this was handled, If people want to be pissed at the DA for not thinking a crime occurred then that's valid but trying to make out the way the grand jury was handled to be some sort of corruption or subversion of the processes is ridiculous. So if it wasn't a cop that killed a child, the DA would also have brought in biased "expert" witnesses to avoid a prosecution? Surely there's plenty of examples of him having done just that if that's the case. And if not, his inability to handle cases equitably in his position as a public servant should be at the least grounds for recusal, if not outright disbarment. Also, gently caress Cleveland for electing this rear end in a top hat. If he manages to get himself re-elected that tells you all you need to know about those people. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Dec 29, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2015 23:21
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:Why is Look at those earrings, clearly he was a thug that had it coming. His eyes are red, he was probably crazed out on weed. Those pajamas are in gang colors, too. Makes you think...
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2015 04:48
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:There are also a disturbing number of people who think certain demographics shouldn't be allowed to vote. I've met a distressing number of people that thought poll taxes were a great idea and need to be brought back. It gets more anachronistic than that. I've talked to multiple people who thought property ownership was a good prerequisite for voting.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2015 03:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 02:31 |
|
|
The point is that grand juries are designed to prevent baseless trials, not enable prosecutions when the DA isn't interested. Now, they're terrible at that as well (ham sandwich, etc) but in theory that is the goal - provide a check against an overzealous prosecutor since a trial can be rather ruinous even if there is an eventual acquittal. Grand juries are not designed to bring people to trial against the wishes of prosecutors - especially since prosecutors can decline even to bring a case to grand jury. The decision not to try Loehmann was made long before the grand jury ever convened, and the only reason a grand jury even occurred was so that McGinty had some public cover for his desire to let that murderer off the hook. I'd still argue that the way that McGinty conducted those grand jury proceedings was in bad faith, but the reality is that is unfortunately not illegal. The remedy here is a political one, and if the people of Cuyahoga County re-elect McGinty you can basically just write them off as racist assholes who accept child murder.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2016 09:29
|
|