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F is for Fascism (Ferguson MO)

WakeBored said:
There are a lot of ways to respond to this post. I'll save commentary on your views of how the background self-defense rules are inequitable and unfair for another day. But I will say this: It's a pretty messed up view to expect police officers to protect and serve--and thus be the touchpoint between civil society and the violence inherent in lawless criminality--yet think they should perform their duties hamstrung by special rules that require them--and only them--to disengage in the face of an imminent threat to their life or the life of another. And you complain about a power imbalance? Well, thank God there is one! But at the end of the day, police officers are just people, and they just want to make it home to dinner like anyone else. If anything, considering their role and importance to life as we know it, we should give them more leeway to make split-second decisions in life-threatening situations than average citizens, not less.
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Perhaps if they were trained as if they were going to "protect and serve" the community, instead of being trained as if they were going out to war, fewer of them would be so concerned about "making it home to dinner." Being a police officer is a very difficult job, I won't deny it. But going into every situation as if the other person is the enemy is going to lead to problems. Since police are given the ability to use lethal force and determine when to do so, they should also be held to a greater level of responsibility with that ability. There is not a way to reverse dead. If an officer makes a mistake in killing a person, there is no way to take it back. It should only be done in the most dire of situations.

Also, while most of the argument here is focused on those killed by police, the bigger issue is really the systemic use of police to keep power and wealth within a limited group. That certainly affects more than just the few thousand that have been killed (and their families). That is a harder argument to quantify, though, which is why people try to fall back on other arguments with quantifiable numbers (of a sort, at least).
 
While y'all over here arguing the finer points of when force is justifiable, Republicans are on the other line killing democracy.
 
redwing42 said:
Perhaps if they were trained as if they were going to "protect and serve" the community, instead of being trained as if they were going out to war, fewer of them would be so concerned about "making it home to dinner." Being a police officer is a very difficult job, I won't deny it. But going into every situation as if the other person is the enemy is going to lead to problems. Since police are given the ability to use lethal force and determine when to do so, they should also be held to a greater level of responsibility with that ability. There is not a way to reverse dead. If an officer makes a mistake in killing a person, there is no way to take it back. It should only be done in the most dire of situations.

Also, while most of the argument here is focused on those killed by police, the bigger issue is really the systemic use of police to keep power and wealth within a limited group. That certainly affects more than just the few thousand that have been killed (and their families). That is a harder argument to quantify, though, which is why people try to fall back on other arguments with quantifiable numbers (of a sort, at least).
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Police use of force goes far beyond shooting guns. Heavy handed use of force that doesn't involve discharging a firearm impacts Americans in numbers orders of magnitude greater than those shot. Millions of Americans have experienced being roughed up by police, searched by police without cause or with very, very thin cause, or been part of a protest shut down by aggressive policing, or have friends/family members with these experiences. This stuff compounds over years and generations and leads to the situation we're in now, which is that a lot of Americans don't trust the police to do the right thing. When police don't have the trust and support of the community it is extremely difficult for them to effectively do their jobs. And that hurts all of us.
 
WakeBored said:
Even in the contest between man and steer the issue is not certain.
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Does the man have a helmet, a metal vest, a taser and a gun?

There is never certainty. These cops are too often using the uncertainty as an excuse to oppress the people they serve.
 
Chicago Police Are No Longer Allowed To Chase People For Minor Offenses Under New Policy

https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicag...m-toledo/74b4d4b4-9801-4f3e-b2f8-74c2d38c7c2d

The policy tells officers they are not allowed to pursue someone suspected only of committing a minor traffic offense, or suspected of committing a low-level misdemeanor, unless the person poses an “obvious” threat to the community.

It also provides guidance on ways cops can avoid foot pursuits altogether, and directs Chicago police to never chase if they believe the risk to officers or the public outweighs the need for “immediate apprehension.”

The new guidelines mark the first time the city has put in writing specific directives to officers when it comes to chasing suspects on foot - something experts say is one of the most dangerous activities in which officers engage.

“This [will] give officers an opportunity, maybe to slow things down and have a better outcome when they’re trying to capture suspects,” Superintendent David Brown said. “That is the intent of a foot pursuit policy, you know … ‘let’s use de escalation, let’s set up a perimeter if need be. Let’s choose the right place to capture him and the right time to capture him or her.’ ”

The city has known for years that its lack of a foot pursuit policy was a problem. It took the killing of a child during a foot chase through a dark Little Village alley to finally force action.
 
WokeandBroke said:
We've been trying that for 70 years. In the words of PhDeac, maybe try something new?
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From “Getting Tough; Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America”

In 1980, the United States spent three times more money on food stamps and welfare grants than on corrections. By 1996, the balance had reversed, with the nation devoting billions more to corrections than the two principal programs for the poor.
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Timely to our discussion:

 
 
MHBDemon said:
From “Getting Tough; Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America”
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A big part of conservative gaslighting is pretending that they haven’t largely succeeded in destroying New Deal era programs. They won. People stopped believing the government has a proactive role to prevent poverty. Instead they believe their fellow Americans are so horrible that they deserve to be locked up or even killed for minor mistakes.
 
They definitely believe its ok to die in 2021 because 1 - you can't afford healthcare, 2 - you can't afford food much less healthy food, 3 - gotta have guns everywhere, and 4 - cops are infallible (despite jebus telling everyone that humans are all sinners and thus... not perfect)
 
Colonel Angus said:
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I like the idea that Brad waits for the tabloids to tell him what to get mad about
 
It's weird that someone thinks a threat of gun violence is necessary to recover a stolen car.


[h=1]An Alabama Man Is Suing A Deputy Because He Says Tight Handcuffs Led To An Amputation[/h]
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/27/1001...cause-he-says-tight-handcuffs-led-to-an-amput

An Alabama man is suing a Jefferson County sheriff's deputy for excessive force and civil rights violations, alleging that handcuffs he says were secured too tightly resulted in the amputation of his left hand.
On Feb. 16, 2020, Giovanni Loyola was at his mother's house in Pinson, Ala., when three Jefferson County sheriff's deputies knocked at the door, according to the complaint. They were responding to multiple calls of two men fighting and handling large weapons. The lawsuit says a "Deputy Godber" grabbed Loyola by the wrist and forcefully removed him from the house moments after Loyola answered the door.
The lawsuit does not provide the deputy's first name. NPR's phone calls to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office went unanswered.
The deputy then allegedly pulled the then 25-year-old man down the steps and "slammed" Loyola against a car before throwing him to the ground and then punching him in the face, the lawsuit says. The deputy then secured Loyola's hands behind his back with handcuffs that were "unbearably tight." About 10 months later Loyola's left hand was amputated.
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As is typical, he tries to “gotcha” us with something that doesn’t even support his point. But IT STANDS!!!111!!

Atlanta did not defund their police, yet they were not able to protect this gentleman from having his car stolen. How does that support the need for police? They failed.
 
LOOK AT ALL THIS CRIME THE POLICE DIDN'T STOP!!! THAT'S WHY WE NEED MORE POLICE!
 
PhDeac said:
LOOK AT ALL THIS CRIME THE POLICE DIDN'T STOP!!! THAT'S WHY WE NEED MORE POLICE!
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On a very special episode of Low Expectations Theater, we discuss how crime is the responsibility of...*checks notes, looks awkwardly off camera, Ron Burgundy-voice*...NOT the perpetrators?
 
Deacon923 said:
Police use of force goes far beyond shooting guns. Heavy handed use of force that doesn't involve discharging a firearm impacts Americans in numbers orders of magnitude greater than those shot. Millions of Americans have experienced being roughed up by police, searched by police without cause or with very, very thin cause, or been part of a protest shut down by aggressive policing, or have friends/family members with these experiences. This stuff compounds over years and generations and leads to the situation we're in now, which is that a lot of Americans don't trust the police to do the right thing. When police don't have the trust and support of the community it is extremely difficult for them to effectively do their jobs. And that hurts all of us.
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I think this is a good point. I obviously have pro-enforcement views when it comes to the actual apprehension of potentially violent suspects, but the type of stuff you are talking about--roughing people up, thinly justified searches, flexing in the face of largely peaceful demonstrations, etc.--are just footfaults in the back-and-forth that is necessary to maintain the thin blue line. I can understand why a department might conclude that a show of force, for example, is useful in certain, limited situations, but when these type of tactics become the norm, it contributes to the "us vs. them" mentality that too often seems to permeate police-citizen interactions in urban settings. "Consent of the governed" is an important concept in the law-enforcement arena, and that mentality undermines that concept.

Related, I think, is aggressive enforcement of drug laws against low-level offenders. There are lots of reasons why we don't need to clog the system with low-level drug offenders, one of which is the current fragility of police-community relations. Rather than a department-by-department level decision, though, I would rather see that decision made on a nationwide and state-by-state basis through legislation, but that's a topic for another thread.
 
As far as earlier where it was discussed that people have some weird deferment to the word of police I’m curious if that will change moving forward. I’ll probably never sit on a jury but if I did and there is no body camera footage and it’s just the word of the police, I’m automatically dismissing it and there has to be more and more people with the same thinking.
 
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