Another "I can't breath" death: Police Reform & Protests in the USA

[Santti]

And now to some lighter news:

Tucson police to fire officer who fatally shot a man in a wheelchair 9 times from behind

Fired? Yeah, he is just going to find work at another police department.

[Yuujin]

Daily reminder that cops love beating people, even if they are fellow cops. Black and white undercover cops were recording protestors when police stopped the undercover officers but decided to just beat the black one.

As Hall complied with a command to get on the ground, he was picked up and slammed face-first into the pavement twice, causing blood to gush from his nose and lips, according to the civil complaint. He was then surrounded by officers who attacked him with batons, fists and boots, striking him in the head and body, court documents state.

Myers hit Hall on the head and face with a shin guard, according to the civil complaint. Myers also smashed Hall’s cellphone with his baton, leading to a charge of destruction of evidence, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Hall remained cuffed for 10 minutes so he wouldn’t blow his cover to protesters before he was eventually recognized as an officer and treated by medics, court records state. His undercover partner that night, who is White, was arrested but not beaten.

[s_bushido]

Daily reminder that cops love beating people, even if they are fellow cops. Black and white undercover cops were recording protestors when police stopped the undercover officers but decided to just beat the black one.

It's from a few months ago, btw. But still, you left out the best part:

Officers involved in the attack were identified in a roll call the next day but remained on the force until the FBI obtained text messages exchanged between former officer Dustin Boone and Myers.

The text messages showed that the officers were excited to hurt protesters that day, with Boone texting that “it’s gonna be a lot of fun beating the hell out of these [expletives] once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart,” according to criminal court filings.

Fortunately, seems like they were convicted (with extremely light sentences, given the recommendations of federal prosecutors). The cynic in me wants to believe that the only reason they were punished is because the person they assaulted was another cop...

[Yuujin]

It's from a few months ago, btw. But still, you left out the best part:



Fortunately, seems like they were convicted (with extremely light sentences, given the recommendations of federal prosecutors). The cynic in me wants to believe that the only reason they were punished is because the person they assaulted was another cop...

Really just shatters the delusion that cops aren't the aggressors during protest when they are such savages they'll beat their own.

[s_bushido]

Really just shatters the delusion that cops aren't the aggressors during protest

Nah, the people who hold to that "delusion" are immune to facts.

Or they will simply brush it off as another isolated incident.

Or...they believe that the protesters rioters are getting what's coming to them for destroying innocent people's property and burning down American cities, and should be grateful the cops aren't just using their guns.

[Yuujin]

Nah, the people who hold to that "delusion" are immune to facts.

Or they will simply brush it off as another isolated incident.

Or...they believe that the protesters rioters are getting what's coming to them for destroying innocent people's property and burning down American cities, and should be grateful the cops aren't just using their guns.

Too bad it seems cops are cowards and every time there is a peaceful protest they are out in full force, but whenever there is a riot they're just standing by watching everything burn down, waiting for the national guard to show up to do their job for them.

[gondrin]

It's from a few months ago, btw. But still, you left out the best part:



Fortunately, seems like they were convicted (with extremely light sentences, given the recommendations of federal prosecutors). The cynic in me wants to believe that the only reason they were punished is because the person they assaulted was another cop...

You know, I normally don't wish harm onto anyone as it is evil to do so but this time, I wish someone would Tanya Harding them good enough to disable them for a good long while. Some people just deserve it.

[Mayhem]

You know, I normally don't wish harm onto anyone as it is evil to do so but this time, I wish someone would Tanya Harding them good enough to disable them for a good long while. Some people just deserve it.

Interesting, so cop shoots man in wheelchair 9 times in the back and kills him, nothing.
Cops beat up another cop, tonya them!

hu

[Breccia]

Interesting, so cop shoots man in wheelchair 9 times in the back and kills him, nothing.

The guy had a knife. That's likely a Get Out Of Jail card here. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds.

[gondrin]

Interesting, so cop shoots man in wheelchair 9 times in the back and kills him, nothing.
Cops beat up another cop, tonya them!

hu

Hmm, that cop should be in jail for the rest of his life hoping he doesn't drop the soap. I wasn't even commenting on that cop. 2 different people and 2 different circumstances.

[Goatfish]

Why is it that people like you react so violently to the idea that we should hold our police to a higher standard? Makes you wonder.

I dunno, why is it so hard to get an admission that sometimes the amount of force used is justified? I mean we can't admit it here on any specific cases, but obviously there comes a point that police use of force is justified if we believe in self defense laws at all. There is about 700,000 LEO's in the US with something like 400 million police interactions a year and about 1000 deaths a year with police involved. This means about .00025% of police interactions end fatally on a yearly average. Because of the numbers game, I could show you a new police brutality video every day for a year and you would think the police are "hunting people in the streets", when really the chance of anyone being involved is incredibly minor.

So you end up with very rare events being pushed as incredibly common. Within those rare events the immediate narrative is ACAB and nothing the victim has done justifies deadly force up to and including a direct threat on the officers life. No one is advocating for letting cops have free reign on murder. If anything, Data seems to show that the vast majority of people who interact with police approved of their conduct, with those suspected of a more serious crimes reporting more dissatisfaction with their handling of the interaction. Exactly what you would expect.

What exactly do you realistically want? I'm a big believer in Blackstone's Formula, or even Ben Franklins expansion of it. I would rather see 100 guilty people go free than see one innocent person suffer, and that applies just as much to the police as it does to the criminals. We seem to be well within that ratio as it seems that far less than 1% of the police force is involved in a deadly shooting or criminal misconduct despite it being a profession where the name of the game is enforcing the law in a 2A country. I feel like the common leftist argument anymore is that we should somehow have a police force with 0 incidents ever. I think it's a little silly to expect every policeman to be a therapist, martial artist, masterful orator, lawyer, sharpshooter, and be emotionless arbiters of justice (unless it's a "peaceful protest" and then they need to side with the protesters I guess?). It's not that it wouldn't be effective, it's that it's completely unreasonable to expect.

[Huehuecoyotl]

I dunno, why is it so hard to get an admission that sometimes the amount of force used is justified? I mean we can't admit it here on any specific cases, but obviously there comes a point that police use of force is justified if we believe in self defense laws at all. There is about 700,000 LEO's in the US with something like 400 million police interactions a year and about 1000 deaths a year with police involved. This means about .00025% of police interactions end fatally on a yearly average. Because of the numbers game, I could show you a new police brutality video every day for a year and you would think the police are "hunting people in the streets", when really the chance of anyone being involved is incredibly minor.

So you end up with very rare events being pushed as incredibly common. Within those rare events the immediate narrative is ACAB and nothing the victim has done justifies deadly force up to and including a direct threat on the officers life. No one is advocating for letting cops have free reign on murder. If anything, Data seems to show that the vast majority of people who interact with police approved of their conduct, with those suspected of a more serious crimes reporting more dissatisfaction with their handling of the interaction. Exactly what you would expect.

What exactly do you realistically want? I'm a big believer in Blackstone's Formula, or even Ben Franklins expansion of it. I would rather see 100 guilty people go free than see one innocent person suffer, and that applies just as much to the police as it does to the criminals. We seem to be well within that ratio as it seems that far less than 1% of the police force is involved in a deadly shooting or criminal misconduct despite it being a profession where the name of the game is enforcing the law in a 2A country. I feel like the common leftist argument anymore is that we should somehow have a police force with 0 incidents ever. I think it's a little silly to expect every policeman to be a therapist, martial artist, masterful orator, lawyer, sharpshooter, and be emotionless arbiters of justice (unless it's a "peaceful protest" and then they need to side with the protesters I guess?). It's not that it wouldn't be effective, it's that it's completely unreasonable to expect.

The police should be held to a higher standard than the people they serve. End of.

Even if your wall of hand-waving is true, even if we let all of your "few rotten apples" battlecry stand, then when a policeman breaks the laws, or injures an innocent person, or uses unnecessary force on a guilty person he should face the full weight of the law. In fact he should face MORE of that weight, because he's been put in a position of authority and trust, and he's abused it.

There's nothing leftist about that, unless you're prepared to accept that the Right Wing are essentially authoritarian and therefore quite happy to see a few skulls cracked to keep the rest of the populace in line.

In the meantime, if training them properly to handle the situations they face is too much, at least stop training them to be hammers. Because at the moment far too many nails are getting killed or injured because the police have free reign to use whatever force they feel like, with little to no consequences.

[s_bushido]

[army of straw]

No one believes there can be zero incidents. What people want is accountability. When you do hear about an incident, and it's invariably revealed that the officer(s) in question were involved in previous shit that was just handwaved away, then the ACAB comes out. Because it's fucking irrefutable proof.

"Leftists" don't want "every policeman to be a therapist, martial artist, masterful orator, lawyer, sharpshooter, and be emotionless arbiters of justice." That was the entire goddamned point of Defund the Police. Those resources should be diverted away from these untrained and unqualified fucks and spent on people who are trained in those fields. Or into programs that address the issues leading to criminality in the first place. You don't need some jackass with a gun rolling up to every situation that the police are expected to deal with currently.

[Endus]

I dunno, why is it so hard to get an admission that sometimes the amount of force used is justified? I mean we can't admit it here on any specific cases, but obviously there comes a point that police use of force is justified if we believe in self defense laws at all. There is about 700,000 LEO's in the US with something like 400 million police interactions a year and about 1000 deaths a year with police involved. This means about .00025% of police interactions end fatally on a yearly average.

This is manipulative abuse of statistics.

It's like claiming that COVID isn't deadly because "only" 0.0025% of inhalations give you an infectious load of virus that will lead eventually to death.

It ignores the whopping levels of non-fatal abuse by officers, for instance. It ignores their unfair targeting. It ignores that the standard that should be established as the expected outcome is zero unjustifiable uses of force by police. Zero. Not a single one, anywhere. Anything beyond that standard is a problem that necessitates a response, and the status quo is increasingly a vehement lack of said response, which is how abusive officers rack up a dozen or more abuse of force complaints, like the 18 that Derek Chauvin had before he decided to murder a man by slowly choking him to death in broad daylight, surrounded by a crowd too afraid of him to stop him.

Because of the numbers game, I could show you a new police brutality video every day for a year and you would think the police are "hunting people in the streets", when really the chance of anyone being involved is incredibly minor.

"I could show you a new police brutality video every day for a year and I'm still gonna argue that there isn't a problem" is certainly . . . a take.

So you end up with very rare events being pushed as incredibly common. Within those rare events the immediate narrative is ACAB and nothing the victim has done justifies deadly force up to and including a direct threat on the officers life.

The narrative is ACAB because fellow officers back and support their murderous and abusive colleagues, both laterally among colleagues and upwards through chains of command.

No one is advocating for letting cops have free reign on murder.

Shall we go back to the thread about George Floyd's death before Chauvin was convicted of murder and see how many people were absolutely in favor of Chauvin and the actual murder he actually committed, live on camera?

Because you're flat wrong on this.

If anything, Data seems to show that the vast majority of people who interact with police approved of their conduct, with those suspected of a more serious crimes reporting more dissatisfaction with their handling of the interaction. Exactly what you would expect.

You said "data", so . . . citation required.

What exactly do you realistically want? I'm a big believer in Blackstone's Formula, or even Ben Franklins expansion of it. I would rather see 100 guilty people go free than see one innocent person suffer, and that applies just as much to the police as it does to the criminals.

No one is asking that officers be criminally charged when there isn't evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

We're pointing out that there is a really incredibly broad range between that standard, and what would get you fired in basically any other job on the planet.

If you can't clear an officer concretely of an abuse of force complaint, a single instance should be grounds for dismissal. They should be suspended (with pay) or on desk duty while that investigation occurs.

They are not owed a defense; this is not a criminal proceeding.
They are not owed a rebuttal.
They are not owed an appeal.
Their unions should place the sanctity and respect of the profession itself ahead of any individual member, meaning the unions themselves should be seeking to see bad cops fired, to protect the dignity of the profession.

This is pretty standard shit in most other professional fields. A single ethical violation absolutely can and will get you fired, if it's serious enough, and if it's unclear, it's always going to default to a question of whether the employer (the PD in this case) is willing to take on the legal liability and risk that the complaint was legitimate and they've continued to employ an abuser (which can and will bite the PD in the ass down the line in terms of lawsuit liability).

I feel like the common leftist argument anymore is that we should somehow have a police force with 0 incidents ever. I think it's a little silly to expect every policeman to be a therapist, martial artist, masterful orator, lawyer, sharpshooter, and be emotionless arbiters of justice

1> This is the antithesis of what "defund the police" is about.

2> We want officers to just do their jobs. Not to assault innocent citizens. Not to be "arbiters of justice" in any way at all, because they are not trained for that in any way whatsoever. That they shouldn't be "therapists", because they should be hands-off on mental health calls. That there should be specialists within the force that can handle negotiations or sharpshooter stuff, and otherwise, they don't even try, because they know they don't know how to do that. And especially that they aren't fucking lawyers and do not know the law and need to shut the fuck up about it.

Police officers need to;
A> keep the peace. This means their job is over once peace is re-established.
B> Handle arrests and detainments. Their job stops with the arrest; they have no capacity to determine guilt, and are just arranging meetings.
C> Be aware of the limits of their privileges, and stop exceeding them. Ever. If there's a question, back off and fuck off.

If nobody's in danger and no laws are being broken, officers can be polite to those present and otherwise fuck off. You don't need to see my ID when I'm walking down the street. You don't need to ask me where I'm going. And if you do, and I tell you to "Fuck off", you should thank me for my time and wish me a good rest of my day.

[Goatfish]

The police should be held to a higher standard than the people they serve. End of.

Even if your wall of hand-waving is true, even if we let all of your "few rotten apples" battlecry stand, then when a policeman breaks the laws, or injures an innocent person, or uses unnecessary force on a guilty person he should face the full weight of the law. In fact he should face MORE of that weight, because he's been put in a position of authority and trust, and he's abused it.

There's nothing leftist about that, unless you're prepared to accept that the Right Wing are essentially authoritarian and therefore quite happy to see a few skulls cracked to keep the rest of the populace in line.

In the meantime, if training them properly to handle the situations they face is too much, at least stop training them to be hammers. Because at the moment far too many nails are getting killed or injured because the police have free reign to use whatever force they feel like, with little to no consequences.

Who is arguing that people who break the law should not be liable for it? The whole point of Blackstone's Formula is that we don't convict people without a preponderance of evidence. Which political side is it that is screaming ACAB on day one of any police event before any real information is actually known? Which political side is screaming for the death or comparable of LEO's with merely a single complaint known against them? I'm all for giving police more training, as are most Republicans I talk to. I'm all for doing what we can to create a safe society, but one side is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

This is manipulative abuse of statistics.

Wow, this is a whole mass of fuck, let me see if I can disentangle some of this.

It's like claiming that COVID isn't deadly because "only" 0.0025% of inhalations give you an infectious load of virus that will lead eventually to death.

This is disingenuous and inaccurate and you know it.

It ignores that the standard that should be established as the expected outcome is zero unjustifiable uses of force by police. Zero. Not a single one, anywhere. Anything beyond that standard is a problem that necessitates a response, and the status quo is increasingly a vehement lack of said response, which is how abusive officers rack up a dozen or more abuse of force complaints, like the 18 that Derek Chauvin had before he decided to murder a man by slowly choking him to death in broad daylight, surrounded by a crowd too afraid of him to stop him.

I mean, besides the fact that the Chauvin event was far more nuanced than what you are stating here... I already stated that expecting 100% is absolutely unreasonable.

"I could show you a new police brutality video every day for a year and I'm still gonna argue that there isn't a problem" is certainly . . . a take.

It certainly is a take. If you have a phone design that breaks .1% of the time, then it's seen as not a big problem when 1000 people have the phone and only 1 phone breaks. When a 100 million people have the phone, then you are going to end up with 100,000 complaints of phones breaking even though the statistics have never changed. It's getting into a fallacy of viewing statistics as large numbers. It becomes even more of an issue when national statistics are used for state level changes, when the majority of these events happen in a few major cities and incredibly rarely in the rest of the country. I might as well be arguing that the high levels of police brutality in India or Mexico are reasons we need to defund police in Nebraska.

The narrative is ACAB because fellow officers back and support their murderous and abusive colleagues, both laterally among colleagues and upwards through chains of command.

Many right wingers and even independents would agree with you but for the reason of "any enforcement of laws that violate 2A." I don't see literally anyone except the most nut job of nut jobs claiming anything other than "any person who violates laws written and dictated by society without a shadow of a doubt should suffer consequences." If you want to argue with those nut jobs, then you can go find them, but don't pretend everyone who has a view different from yours is suddenly a full QAnon psychopath. You don't get to decide the motivations or unknown stances of other people.

Shall we go back to the thread about George Floyd's death before Chauvin was convicted of murder and see how many people were absolutely in favor of Chauvin and the actual murder he actually committed, live on camera?

Because you're flat wrong on this.

Again, it's very possible to have a nuanced view on that case. I don't expect you to accept that, but the fact that so many people have an opposing view might just mean that there is more to the story. People need to stop treating the incident as though Floyd is actually the second coming of Jesus and did absolutely nothing wrong just as much as people need to stop treating Chauvin as if he's a poor little policeman with such a hard job.

You said "data", so . . . citation required.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp08.pdf
If you want to find a newer source, feel free to find it yourself. I'd be interested in your statistics showing how much crime police actually commit because according to this 2016 DoJ report:

Surprisingly little is known about the crimes committed by law enforcement officers, in
part because there are virtually no official nationwide data collected, maintained, disseminated,
and/or available for research analyses. Researchers have utilized other methodologies to study
police misconduct and crime in the absence of any substantive official data, including surveys,
field studies, quasi-experiments, internal agency records, and the investigative reports of various
independent commissions delegated to report on this phenomenon within particular jurisdictions.
These methodologies have thus far failed to produce systematic, nationwide data on police
crime.

We're pointing out that there is a really incredibly broad range between that standard, and what would get you fired in basically any other job on the planet.

I mean there is also a huge difference in the danger of the job, specifically the level of interaction with the public in dangerous circumstances. I mean unless you can tell me when it would be normal in an office job to forcefully restrain or dole out fines another person?

They are not owed a defense; this is not a criminal proceeding.
They are not owed a rebuttal.
They are not owed an appeal.
Their unions should place the sanctity and respect of the profession itself ahead of any individual member, meaning the unions themselves should be seeking to see bad cops fired, to protect the dignity of the profession.

This might be the most radical position I've ever seen someone take on the justice system. I'm legitimately impressed.

Police officers need to;
A> keep the peace. This means their job is over once peace is re-established.
B> Handle arrests and detainments. Their job stops with the arrest; they have no capacity to determine guilt, and are just arranging meetings.
C> Be aware of the limits of their privileges, and stop exceeding them. Ever. If there's a question, back off and fuck off.

If nobody's in danger and no laws are being broken, officers can be polite to those present and otherwise fuck off. You don't need to see my ID when I'm walking down the street. You don't need to ask me where I'm going. And if you do, and I tell you to "Fuck off", you should thank me for my time and wish me a good rest of my day.

A- Mostly agreed, though I would say that their job when peace is re-established is to continue on patrol for further disruptions of peace.
B- This is generally how it goes. Though I would argue that having the capacity to determine potential guilt is necessary to do the job in the first place.
C- I would again mostly agree, but as long as our police force is run by humans with emotions and not robots who lack nuance this isn't going to happen. I personally prefer humans enforcing the law because of the nuance.

When would a cop ever ask to see the ID of someone walking down the street unless they are confirming the correct target of an arrest warrant? I mean maybe in current day Australia or Austria where you need papers to leave the house and protesting is illegal, but that's not the US.

[jonnysensible]

snip

sorry buddy ACAB (this includes all Australians)

google lasd gangs

etc

[Canpinter]

When would a cop ever ask to see the ID of someone walking down the street unless they are confirming the correct target of an arrest warrant? I mean maybe in current day Australia or Austria where you need papers to leave the house and protesting is illegal, but that's not the US.

Just be black or brown in a lot of big citys.

[jonnysensible]

Which political side is it that is screaming ACAB on day one screaming for the death or comparable of LEO's with merely a single complaint known against them?
the Chauvin event was far more nuanced
People need to stop treating the incident as though Floyd is actually the second coming of Jesus and did absolutely nothing wrong
When would a cop ever ask to see the ID of someone walking down the street unless they are confirming the correct target of an arrest warrant? I mean maybe in current day Australia or Austria where you need papers to leave the house and protesting is illegal, but that's not the US.

these were all the bits where you gave the game away by the way. So you can improve for next time. Especially the last bit, full right wing nutjob detected.

[Lenonis]

I dunno, why is it so hard to get an admission that sometimes the amount of force used is justified?

1) No one is making the strawman argument you decided to attack. 2) The bolded word is your problem.

Because of the numbers game

Naw. I'm not interested in playing this game "well we shouldn't worry about murder if it's just a few." We can and should hold our police to higher standards. Period.

What exactly do you realistically want?

Increased standards for police hiring. Increased salaries to go along with those standards. Lower tolerance for cops hiding and covering for other cops. And an increase in alternate forms of support for issues that don't require police involvement.

I would rather see 100 guilty people go free than see one innocent person suffer, and that applies just as much to the police as it does to the criminals.

You sure don't seem to care about a cop shooting an innocent person.

I feel like the common leftist argument anymore

Oh hey, your true colors are showing. That didn't take long.

[Goatfish]

Just be black or brown in a lot of big citys.

Link even one story of this happening. I'd love to see any data about how someone was stopped for their ID purely because of their race. Also the point that big cities =/= the country. It's a common misstep I see from people who grew up in cities that they actually have no idea how the rest of the country functions.

1) No one is making the strawman argument you decided to attack. 2) The bolded word is your problem.

They definitely are, and it was even quoted in the post you just pulled from.

Naw. I'm not interested in playing this game "well we shouldn't worry about murder if it's just a few." We can and should hold our police to higher standards. Period.

That is a complete mischaracterization of my argument. The argument is that some murders may go free due to lack of substantial evidence, but that's worth it if it saves those who are innocent. This is why a jury is told explicitly that they should only convict if there is no doubt.

Increased standards for police hiring. Increased salaries to go along with those standards. Lower tolerance for cops hiding and covering for other cops. And an increase in alternate forms of support for issues that don't require police involvement.

Most of that is agreed upon by the majority of US citizens. As far as the "support that doesn't require police", care to give any examples where you can do this effectively and not severely hinder the response time to incidents or potentially put said social worker in serious danger?

You sure don't seem to care about a cop shooting an innocent person.

Oh hey, your true colors are showing. That didn't take long.

I mean, feel free to quote me saying that I don't care about innocent deaths. The issue is that you've become so tribal that anyone who doesn't agree with you 100% is a lunatic which leads you to apply views to people they have never stated. Your scope of reference is fucked when you start pretending that moderate views make someone a far right lunatic.