Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/10/06/red-wing-calls-for-attacks-on-police-to-be-considered-hate-crime/

“Currently 30 officers in 2015 have been killed by gunfire, that’s a little over three a month,” Red Wing Police Chief Roger Pohlman.

From Harris County, Texas to Fox Lake, Ill., officers have died at the hands of those who they swore to protect.

“They are targeting not the person but the position and the authority,” Pohlman said.

A call to honor the lives lost came from the National Fraternal Order of Police. The group wants cities, counties and states to acknowledge this crisis and work with them to address the violent surge against officers.

“I think it’s a very trying time for law enforcement,” Pohlman said.

fun debate question, is it worse to die at the hands of those you swore to protect, or to die at the hands of those sworn to protect you

It's worse to die at the hands of those sworn to protect you. Broken promises suck.

Another fun debate question, how can you call it a violent surge, when the yearly number of officers killed has been steadily dropping?

Currently 886 people in 2015 have been killed by police. 185 of them were unarmed, that's a little over 18 a month.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database#

Hahn, who is represented by high-profile Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos, claims officers retaliated against her for calling a nonemergency police hotline to report that she felt harassed by Officer Kenyatte Valentine. Hahn, then 40, was leaving a birthday party with her 11- and 7-year-old children and asked Valentine what he was doing in front of a car whose alarm had sounded. According to the lawsuit, the officer responded with a profanity.

Valentine followed Hahn in her car after she called to complain, stopped her for a seat-belt violation, ordered her to leave the vehicle, and beat her while her children waited in the back seat, according to the lawsuit. Another officer, identified in court documents as Jody Knisley, joined Valentine and allegedly punched Hahn in the face "until she was limp" and her "clothes were almost ripped off."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/woman-sues-carlsbad-police-excessive-force-seatbelt-violation

From Harris County, Texas to Fox Lake, Ill., officers have died at the hands of those who they swore to protect.

The Fox Lake case is far from settled, the police are investigating it as such but there have also been reports and plenty of speculation that the officer committed suicide.

Oh, they are adding all kinds of deaths -- accidental, off-duty conflicts, suicides -- together to make up a war on police. I took ten minutes to look at the cases involved in an hysterical "8 COPS IN 7 DAYS AND OBAMA MERELY RUBS HIS HANDS IN GLEE" -- only 2 were clear cases of officers killed by strangers on duty.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2ac4090767bf4bd58855ff296fcdf810/reports-officers-shooting-boy-pellet-gun-justified

tamir rice case

:[

If the officer isn't to blame because he got wrong information, then the person giving the wrong information is guilty of manslaughter, no?

This is insane. Hopefully Cleveland police will be put under DOJ administration as soon as possible.

"The officers did not create the violent situation," Sims wrote. "They were responding to a situation fraught with the potential for violence to citizens."

jesus christ

I mean the cops are being disingenuous as hell with this shit, as if once someone makes a false or exaggerated report, they have ZERO mechanisms to accurately and swiftly judge the threat at the scene. Nope, what's told to them over the radio dictates exactly how they react and requires them getting out of the car and firing within two seconds.

I remember a case LIKE this from when I was a teenager, where a local suburban kid had a toy gun that looked very realistic, and he was pointing it at various places and pretending to shoot it. the person who called 911 said they believed the weapon was real.

the cops showed up and assessed the threat, determined it wasn't, and even then the mother bitched that the cops harassed her kid, but nobody died.

Obviously one can't use one standalone case to make a sweeping statement but it illustrates there are alternate means of handling the situation that don't involve going full on CAll of Duty within seconds of arrival.

If the officer isn't to blame because he got wrong information, then the person giving the wrong information is guilty of manslaughter, no?

― Frederik B, Sunday, October 11, 2015 10:41 AM (1 hour ago)

obviously not

terribly sad story with zero accountability, once again. go america

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/us/2-outside-reviews-say-cleveland-officer-acted-reasonably-in-shooting-tamir-rice-12.html

if any of the non-principals should face discipline (though probably not criminal), it's the dispatcher, who chose not to relay that the 911 caller said that the gun was "probably fake" and fair was "probably a juvenile"

"The officers did not create the violent situation," Sims wrote. "They were responding to a situation fraught with the potential for violence to citizens."

...by cops.

i.e. any situation where a poorly-trained cop with a gun is dealing with the public.

i mean the cops were the only ones in this situation who posed any real threat to anyone.

yeah I mean details get miscommunicated to the cops all the time, either by a dispatcher or a civilian. it's like they're suggesting that the onus was on the civilian to positively ascertain the threat level....

I get that cops have to protect the general public but I really don't see what they saw upon arrival at the team that told them they had to basically exit the vehicle shooting.

Not sure if best thread (sorry if it's already on another one) but
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/the-nypd-is-using-mobile-x-rays-to-spy-on-unknown-targets/411181/?single_page=true

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm-beach/fl-palm-beach-gardens-officer-shooting-20151019-story.html

Church musician's car breaks down on the exit ramp, he flags down cars for help, gets shot by a plainclothes police officer. Of course the local PD is saying the officer was "suddenly confronted by an armed subject," etc.

no cameras or witnesses, this one will end well :(.

officer will say he identified himself, nobody to refute. ugh...I probably wouldn't react much differently than the victim if, at 3 am, already on edge due to vehicular breakdown, I saw some stranger looking into my car.

This past Friday in Columbus, Mississippi: http://www.cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=45604

Three Columbus Police Department officers are on administrative leave after a shooting Friday resulted in the death of a 26-year-old Columbus man.

Chief Tony Carleton said the officers -- who he declined to identify -- are on indefinite leave pending the results of investigations into the shooting death of Ricky Javonta Ball.

Ball was a passenger in a car police officers attempted to stop about 10 p.m. Friday near the intersection of 14th Avenue North and 21st Street North. A woman driving the car did not stop immediately and Ball jumped from the car and ran, according to Warren Strain, spokesperson with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

Authorities have not said what happened next, whether Ball was armed or how many times he was shot. An autopsy is scheduled for this week. MBI is handling the investigation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/us/spring-valley-high-school-sc-officer-arrest.html

The deputy also detained a second student, Niya Kenny, who told a local television station that her only offense was objecting to his treatment of the other girl.

“I was crying, like literally screaming, crying like a baby,” Ms. Kenny, 18, told WLTX. “I couldn’t believe that was happening. I’d never seen nothing like that in my life, a man use that much force on a little girl.”

As she protested, she said, “He said since you’ve got so much to say, you’re coming, too.”

grrrrr this sounds so fucking familiar from when i was in grade and middle schools: "you got something to say, too?"

https://twitter.com/shiftmsnbc/status/659117014368309248

FALSE ALARM, EVERYONE

whew

"i just want everyone to know that i didn't assault that student because she was african-american. i assaulted her because i am a psychopathic jerk with violent tendencies."

also, lol: https://twitter.com/WilFay33/status/659121227559280640

Wife tried to run a thought experiment of what it would take for white assholes to believe that violence perpetrated on a black child by a police officer might be wrong. I explained to her this is not a useful road to go down because there is none. There will be churches full of white people all across this country where the accepted line of reasoning will be that the cop may have overreacted, and it did look bad from the video, but she must have done something to set him off, she wasn't just sitting there, she's no saint, etc. I believe "she's no saint" is already the line on Fox, actually.

I think the more useful discussion is why are we using cops in social worker roles all the fucking time? The lowest level quality-of-life crime a cop should be expected to deal with is public intoxication, or something to that effect. Cops are equipped with tasers, batons and guns because they are trained and expected to respond to acts of violence. But because a LICSW is some kind of girly liberal bullshit, we have determined as a society that more muscle is what we really need, everywhere. This doesn't even have to be a federal legislative conversation. This could just be a local level hiring practice. But nobody has the imagination anymore for sending anything other than "a bigger dog" into any potentially confrontational situation.

De-escalation takes work; escalation only takes ego.

in the more troubled schools here they've been trying new talk-it-out-with-students discipline techniques and a bunch of people have complained that basically this appears not to be punishment and doesn't do anything more to make the place stop looking lawless and shouldn't we be seeing some CONSEQUENCES etc

despite the CONSEQUENCES regime being the one where tempers flare wildly and teachers get scared and there are cops in the building

I think the more useful discussion is why are we using cops in social worker roles all the fucking time?

that is an excellent question and frankly i didn't even know cops were employed in many schools.

'Sources' say that this particular cop won't be employed there anymore!

I don't see color when I violently assault children for no reason

that child could have been black, white, red, yellow, or whatever, and I still would have suplexed her ass

Outrageusly, the two girls arrested in class will still be charged. One of them for disrupting class after a police officer assaulted one of her classmates...

I mean, sure, he was out of line, but she should not have protested. 1000$ bail.

I hope that the judge looks at this and throws it out immediately

Fields has been fired.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/28/452501995/s-c-sheriff-will-decide-deputy-s-future-with-department

presumably he can wait for the gofundme money to roll in

i hate the world.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/there-are-no-innocent-black-people-1739019535

As anybody who spends any time in any grammar/jr. high/high school can tell you, there are cops baked into primary education in a way that is almost unrecognizable to those of us who grew up prior to columbine

we had cops assigned to our campuses in jr. high/high school in the late 80s. I saw them all the time. My high school cop once produced a list of the literally hundreds of gangs/gang members that were active on campus, which was total Satanic Panic + racist bullshit. He is, unsurprisingly, a right-wing fundie Xtian nutjob (here's his linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegadfly4u) who plays in a Christian rock band. Worst high school ever.

I think we had a cop by the time I graduated. Obviously Officer Whatever didn't have much to do at my school, and I think the teachers resented his presence (not necessarily him personally) for the most part. Anyway, depressing.

xpost

God is Not an Option
Publish America
2007

God Is Not an Option is a collection of poems, thoughts, songs and short stories centered on the God-shaped vacuum in your soul, custom-built by a loving Creator, long before you were born. Whether you agree or not, no human being can truly live absent a relationship with God. As a Christian father, American, veteran, poet, songwriter and police sergeant, author Greg Doyle brings to life his personal experiences and unshakable faith in God, while sharing intimate insights into the Creator’s heart.

What have you got to lose forever if you don’t know God? You can’t even imagine it. Nothing you know on earth can compare to the wonders of heaven. Why gamble with your eternal future?

From God’s perspective, you are either with Him or you are not. No one knows what that looks like in eternity. Who honestly would decline God’s invitation to join Him in paradise? Could you imagine that what you believe really matters to God?

Realistically, where you and eternity are concerned, God Is Not an Option.

No one knows what that looks like in eternity

and neither will you!

two blocks away from last night, the police shot a guy in the head after he flagged them down and then "extended a towel-wrapped arm towards them". The cops told him to put down the gun and then shot him. Anyway, unarmed OF COURSE.

― nomar, Saturday, June 20, 2015 5:10 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

video showed him with a big head wound and the cops flipping him over and cuffing him. He's still alive somehow.

― nomar, Saturday, June 20, 2015 5:12 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

below is an update about this case, which is to me one of the most egregious crimes committed by police I've ever heard about but still seems to go underreported even in L.A. It's difficult to read and see how this poor gent is now.

http://www.losfelizledger.com/article/federal-lawsuit-to-be-filed-in-walter-deleon-shooting/

that is fucking horrifying

i hope he and his family get $50 million

jesus fucking christ, that is the worst thing i've read in i don't know how long. i'm at work and i'm about to cry.