Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

ideally even human should be judged as an individual but the truth is that you represent your group, especially when you wear your group's uniform, and your actions impact how other members of your group are treated. if that's something that's a concern to you, you might want to make sure that other members of your group are not putting your life at risk with their shit behavior.

It is amazing in this day and age that more people haven't tried taking the law into their own hands and going off on cops. And hopefully, that remains the case -- really, I'm saying that it's amazing people are remaining sane in circumstances that provoke anger and frustration.

Most of my family is in the Dallas area, so last night was pretty fucked, personally. I didn't actually know TX was right to carry, and tho it seems crazy to me to bring a rifle to a protest, that initial "suspect" was pretty quickly cleared, and in fact surrendered the gun to the cops shortly after the shots went off. I haven't heard of any other weird doings from last night, and as far as the robot bomb thing -- if negotiations fail, I guess I'd rather involve a drone than a real person.

yeah, it's not exactly the same: it's either a cultural issue or a recruitment issue in the police, but either way the police chiefs have a responsibility for the behaviour of all of their officers and they really need to own that xps

darragh do you really think that police depts shouldn't try to prosecute their officers? what are you even arguing?

You see tgis argument a lot in other contexts. Its wrong then too.

― poor fiddy-less albion (darraghmac), Friday, July 8, 2016 10:34 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When will the Muslim community CONDEMN these horrible attacks?

― how's life, Friday, July 8, 2016 10:37 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah except cops actually constantly cover for each others law breaking when theyve specifically vowed to uphold the law, and being a cop is a job not a religion or an ethnic identity you fucking super geniuses

My point is really more that unquestioning support of fellow officers who have clearly done wrong doesn't ultimately do anything but perpetuate the wrongdoing and increase public enmity towards cops on the whole.

and a job that is not too hard to get iirc xp

the argument in this context is "when a thing stops being undeniably the case, people will be less inclined to think it is the case"

which I think is not wrong

right. No. I'm wrong. I realized that after I posted that.

I get that it's a part of the larger story, but seeing the sensationalistic 'shooter wanted to kill whites' in every other headline is distressing and unhelpful.

not going to post it here but the new york post front page is a particularly vile example of that

i only posted that to show that was the headline.

im also surprised that there havent been more shootings of cops in the US in the past. amazed actually.

wouldn't expect anything less from that piece of shit rag

deport rupert murdoch

to the middle of the sun

for New York's lip-moving readers

I find the term civil war remarkably ambivalent but I guess that's not how other people are taking it

i've been avoiding posting about this shit. i don't have anything deep or even slightly informative to say anymore. i'm angry and i'm really scared. my life is totally disconnected from philando castile's. i can't get his name out of my head. he was pulled over and cited dozens of times in the last few months. he was killed a 10 min drive from my front door.

last night i saw that the dallas PD rolled a robot armed with a bomb and detonated it next to the last sniper suspect. that's something we learned to do in iraq.

nice photo CBS

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/751432908804685824/photo/1

i've been avoiding posting about this shit. i don't have anything deep or even slightly informative to say anymore.

this is how i feel too.

DJP's post upthread about armed clashes w police sadly prescient

that's something we learned to do in iraq.

― goole, Friday, July 8, 2016 10:55 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's not all we learned. in my experience, there appears to be a lot of veterans who, upon returning, go into the police force. and it occurs to me that the type of guy who is most uniquely unsuited to community policing---almost as exactly wrong as an actual criminal---is a guy that learned everything he knows from kicking down doors in a warzone. and who might also have some unresolved PTSD/TBI/etc

no clue as to what the numbers are for former combat vets going into the police force, but i bet it's substantial, and i bet that, in addition to the MRAPs and AR15s, they're bringing that culture of occupation with them

that's something we learned to do in iraq.

― goole, Friday, July 8, 2016 10:55 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf we probably learned to do it in a university research lab somewhere

like put those guys on SWAT or HRT or something, but keep them the hell away from traffic stops, esp if the only traffic stops they've ever known were armed checkpoints in zones of actual, persistent armed resistance, and where it was not entirely unreasonable to maintain vigilance even around children/old ladies/whatever

I posted initially (FB) about Sterling and Castile, tbh in part out of a feeling that I at least wanted my black facebook friends to feel that people actually care about this. My friend group seems to be pretty insularly liberal to left and I don't have anyone to try to educate or push back on. I really have nothing to say that hasn't been said by a lot of people and I hate the impulse I have to try to say something original or pithy for likes. The only thing I hope is that no one feels like they should back off on police reform just because police officers were killed. Reform in the long run is better for police too.

I think the bomb robot thing was developed as a way to detonate explosive devices or suspected explosive devices. this was the first I had heard of it being used directly against a person.

like put those guys on SWAT or HRT or something, but keep them the hell away from traffic stops, esp if the only traffic stops they've ever known were armed checkpoints in zones of actual, persistent armed resistance, and where it was not entirely unreasonable to maintain vigilance even around children/old ladies/whatever

― jason waterfalls (gbx)

i don't even know about putting them on swat, given the internet fad for "swatting". it's a fucking miracle nobody's been killed because of that yet.

xpost Yeah, kinda feel like the questionable inception of Bomb-Bot 2000 is going to get lost in the midst of this mess.

IDK how to feel about it -- they were in a long standoff with the guy and he was pretty well-armed, it seems, and you had several dead already. In this particular case it's hard to criticize, but I can certainly see the door being opened to horrible misuses in the future.

Gbx, absolutely booming fucking posts this hour

patrol cops need to be disarmed.

nonlethal ammo and weapons with access to lethal when necessary
it makes no goddamn sense that the options are shoot and potentially kill or nothing when they feel threatened

outside of that, yeah; it's another scary day in the USA

i'm not going to start worrying about bomb-bot 2000 until they start crowdsourcing its programming to 4chan.

this is the guy apparently

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cm2ffTXUMAAKE4U.jpg

cool that the suspect in the photo that the DPD originally tweeted out (who wound up getting thousands of death threats) was in fact one of those fabled "good guys with a gun"

good guy with an unloaded gun who immediately surrendered it to police because he recognized holding it was a threat to his life long before he knew the police considered him a suspect

Blowing people up using robots is, uh, not a great development in the history of policing, anywhere in the world.

that's not all we learned. in my experience, there appears to be a lot of veterans who, upon returning, go into the police force. and it occurs to me that the type of guy who is most uniquely unsuited to community policing---almost as exactly wrong as an actual criminal---is a guy that learned everything he knows from kicking down doors in a warzone. and who might also have some unresolved PTSD/TBI/etc

the Army still markets itself like it did for decades, and who knows maybe in the past it was a good way for working class kids to get some training in skill and possibly money for a house or education, but I was thinking about the marketing of the Army as a "ladder up" and how, in reality, the Army experience leaves someone uniquely ill-suited to the modern workplace, which is much more fluid, team and discussion based, freelance economy, etc etc., like the Army is designed to take decision making OUT of the hands of people and replace that with protocol (I'd guess for good reason because of the deadly nature of the work) but in the modern workplace the ability to discuss and collaborate and learn new things quickly and juggle multiple projects and be a part of multiple teams etc etc is really at odds with the military mentality, so it's no wonder these guys go into the most familiar line of work: driving around in a vehicle packing a weapon

Otm

Blowing people up using robots is, uh, not a great development in the history of policing, anywhere in the world.

― They could have been Stackridge. (Tom D.), Friday, July 8, 2016 12:38 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heaven forbid they use some sort of non lethal robot weaponry

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-game-snoop-dogg-protest-lapd-20160708-snap-htmlstory.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

this is kinda off-topic but there are a ton of ex-military dudes working in the community college system. idk why that is (and I only work with California) but it's definitely a thing.

that's not all we learned. in my experience, there appears to be a lot of veterans who, upon returning, go into the police force. and it occurs to me that the type of guy who is most uniquely unsuited to community policing---almost as exactly wrong as an actual criminal---is a guy that learned everything he knows from kicking down doors in a warzone. and who might also have some unresolved PTSD/TBI/etc

no clue as to what the numbers are for former combat vets going into the police force, but i bet it's substantial, and i bet that, in addition to the MRAPs and AR15s, they're bringing that culture of occupation with them

― jason waterfalls (gbx), Friday, July 8, 2016 11:14 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As much as I agree with this, is there really any link to the Castile or Sterling shootings? Were any of the cops involved vets with PTSD? It seems to me like the profile I see more often of a shooter is either a shook, inexperienced rookie or an aggro asshole with a record of brutality, not a PTSD-stricken vet.

whats interesting is this sort of thing hasnt really touched LA very significantly because the LAPD has had a very public very long program of re-ingratiating itself with community and working very hard to maintain trust.. after you know, a massive riot broke out because of police brutality.

xp

there's a desperate need to improve how we vet & hire cops but ultimately that would necessitate higher pay/bigger policing budget which we all know will never happen

dallas police have a relatively good reputation for community relations too as far as that goes, still agents of the police state tho

is there a thread about having crazy racist friends pop up out of nowhere on social media? i mean, this is a pretty common occurrence, right?

i am in favor of paying cops better and vetting cops better and training cops better and disarming cops and it is frustrating that those imperatives are considered contradictory