Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

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

yeah there have been a lot of stories going around about dallas actually being a relative success story in police reform, which makes the whole thing a lot sadder/more frustrating to the extent it gets used to blunt calls for reform.

they not gonna kill u theyre just gonna lock u up for life on some bs conspiracy charge, congratulations

xp
like this one: https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/dallas-police-numbers

not saying that there is any connection in either of those instances --- more observing that the movement from military to police brings with it weapons AND culture. and that affects not just veterans in the force, but everyone: a rookie internalizes the idea that they're patrolling a warzone filled with potential enemies, and pops off because he gets scared. an aggro asshole justifies his aggression on the grounds that he's the only force for order in an otherwise savage environment. that some cops might have undiagnosed combat-related PTSD and/or TBI is noted simply as a possibility, and one that might figure in significantly into at least a few police interactions

xps

being a cop is plenty to give u ptsd on its own

i bet

i am so completely unimpressed by ppl's reactions to this shit. you really have a problem with bad cops? go be a good cop.

http://www.kare11.com/mb/news/police-scanner-audio-1/267042738

maybe robot cops will be less likely to kill black people indiscriminately

white supremacists also promote the idea that policing in black communities is some kind of "warzone" activity, I mean there are a lot of things in media, police subculture, and conservative middle class communities in general that contribute to cops having at a minimum a subconscious idea that a black person is threatening.

apparently from the Castile arrest xxp

maybe robot cops will be less likely to kill black people indiscriminately

― ejemplo (crüt), Friday, July 8, 2016 1:02 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not if they let white ppl program them

self-driving car that crashed didn't see color, iirc

We taught a twitter bot to be racist and anti-Semitic in like three hours, turning a robot into the dog from White Dog should be child's play.

Recently revisited this piece from last year:

Police Shootings Won't Stop Unless We Also Stop Shaking Down Black People
The dangers of turning police officers into revenue generators.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/police-shootings-traffic-stops-excessive-fines

http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/robocop_top.jpg

newt gingrich said this

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cm25nXqWEAAX7X3.jpg

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/07/08/newt-gingrich-white-americans-dont-understand-being-black-in-america/

honestly the most shocking thing so far

police need to be trained like monks, or Jedi or some shit