This is a really well written article. This also echo's alot of the sentiment that many people have. I remember reading recently about the differences in police training from Germany vs the US. One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations. It's no wonder we have so many issues here in the US, it makes me sad.
When I did my compulsory military duty in Germany I ended up being military police. We had a lot of interactions with American MPs due to the US military being stationed there.
We always joked about how they behaved like movie action heroes, always ready to use force. We were trained to avoid confrontation at almost any price. When in doubt, retreat.
I guess it's a different view on law "enforcement".
Huh, why don't criminals in Germany exploit this, always threaten confrontation and have their run of the city?
EDIT: Granted there's a big difference between trying to deescalate when possible and raiding a sleeping guy's apartment on bad info.
EDIT 2: This was an honest question and I felt like I got good answers despite the downvoting. Big thanks to everyone who took it at face value or applied the principle of charity, rather than just assuming I'm some kind of disruptive monster. http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html
Because the German cops are not push overs either. If somebody will attack them they will fight back. But by trying to deescalate first you set the tone for the interaction.
Most of the recently published police violence in the US seems to come from really trivial situations, not from criminals. I watched the Sandra Bland video. The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too and I see a lot of people doing that too). She responds in an aggravated way. Instead of trying to defuse the situation he makes it worse by telling her to put out the cigarette. Why would you do that? This sounds like a pure ego-trip where the cop wants to assert his total dominance. He could have given her a ticket and just left.
> The cop stops her for a trivial traffic violation (I often forget my turns signals too and I see a lot of people doing that too).
It's worse than that. The cop tailgates her, waiting for an excuse to pull her over. His excuse is that she fails to signal while switching lanes (to create some distance between them.) He was going to pull her over no matter what.
This may have been a trivial situation for the cop, but for black people travelling out of state, it's a nightmare.
Edit: this is true, it is Bland's car turning right onto the thoroughfare as the officer drives away from his first stop. It doesn't appear that she comes to a full stop or that she is using her blinker when she turns. This is probably what caused the officer to actually pursue Bland so quickly after finishing his prior stop.
This doesn't explain or justify any of the rest of the incident though.
Remember that the police have far more resources available. Once someone demonstrates that they're actually a threat, the police still have the option of applying superior force but they have far more options for controlling when and where that happens and ensuring that innocent bystanders aren't needlessly exposed.
One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases, which seem to be becoming less common because it's not worth the safety risks in an urban environment and modern tech + resources make it unlikely that anyone can actually escape for that long. Sure, that'd make for a crappy movie but it's safer for everyone involved.
"One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases"
If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made.
Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor of mandatory police body-worn cameras, along with a right of citizens who are on the receiving end of a police encounter to obtain and review the footage. There's always the worry that the camera would be 'accidentally' turned off by the police, or that the footage would be lost if it showed anything embarrassing to the police, so to make them effective, you probably need a change in the law such that any discrepancy between the officer's version of events and the citizens is AUTOMATICALLY decided by judge/ jury in favor of the citizen if the 'mandatory' video footage is for some reason unavailable.
While I favor body cameras, I don't think your reasoning here holds up. Even if we assume cops only favor their own safety and power, we would expect to see this policy around high speed chases - they are dangerous for the cops as well.
"They are dangerous for the cops as well" - That's true..but hasn't it always been true? Car speeds haven't meaningfully changed in the last 40-50 years, so it's likely that the danger to civilians and police hasn't particularly changed either. So, if it's true that police agencies are encouraging less dangerous means of achieving the same ends, why now and not before? The change suggests some other factor, and my supposition is that widespread video footage of these chases may have played a role.
Eh, maybe. I think decisions need less explanation when they're the right one. Why now? Maybe they just figured it out. Hanlon's razer, &c.
If we need to explain "why now", that's still a question with your hypothesis - high speed chases have been dangerous for a long time, but they have also regularly been filmed for some while now.
"One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases"
If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made.
Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor of mandatory police body-worn cameras, along with a right of citizens who are on the receiving end of a police encounter to obtain and review the footage. There's always the worry that the camera would be 'accidentally' turned off by the police, or that the footage would be lost if it showed anything embarrassing to the police, so to make them effective, you probably need a change in the law such that any discrepancy between the officer's version of events and the citizens is AUTOMATICALLY decided by judge/ jury in favor of the citizen if the 'mandatory' video footage is for some reason unavailable.
I don't think automatically ruling in the civilian's favor is a good idea because as we all know, tech breaks sometimes. I'm quite certain the body cameras exceed the standard definition of durable goods but they, like any other complex electronics, are susceptible to shock, moisture, fatigue, etc. and can break. All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor.
All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor.
I think there's a middle ground somewhere between "toss the case because the bodycam footage went missing" and "lock up the cop and throw away the key"
Judge each person's criminal case on their own merits. If neither the civilian nor the cop can be proven to have committed a crime, they should both go free.
Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct. This cost will be borne by the police department (and thus the government it belongs to, and thus the public of that area) rather than by the individual officer. This will help encourage the department to keep their stuff in good working order and make sure their staff aren't deliberately disabling the cameras.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of deliberate tampering. The tech is not flawless and this kind of outcome is really not fair to either side. The camera only shows 1 point of view and if for X reasons it is used to judge the officer or the civilian as the overwhelming evidence then it can have severe consequences for either or both sides if it does work or does not work.
Example: civilian makes grandiose claim that is untrue and that cannot be refuted due to the camera malfunctioning. Officer is punished.
Example: civilian makes legit claim that cannot be proven due to camera malfunctioning. Officer successfully convinced court that camera failed to work and it's nonfunctionality was not preventable due to outside circumstances. Officer is not punished and civilian does not receive justice.
Absence of evidence is evidence of tampering. It is not proof.
The popular phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wrong. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. How strong that evidence is depends on just how much you'd expect to find evidence if the thing were actually true. For example, if you go looking in my garage for aliens, the absence of evidence is pretty compelling evidence for the absence of aliens in my garage, but it's extremely weak evidence for the absence of aliens in the universe.
When it comes to cameras, the question in how often they fail on their own compared to how likely tampering is, and any relevant context which might modify those basic probabilities. If the demonstrated MTBF is 10 years and your cameras are failing on average once every year then something is going on, for example.
Your mention about punishing the officer makes me wonder if you actually read my comment, though. I explicitly suggested that a camera malfunction should not be considered sufficient to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar for a criminal case, and that while it should work for a civil case, the cost there would not be borne by the officer.
Absence of evidence is evidence of tampering. It is not proof.
The popular phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wrong. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
When it comes to cameras, the question in how often they fail on their own compared to how likely tampering is, and any relevant context which might modify those basic probabilities. If the demonstrated mean time between failures is 10 years and your cameras are failing on average once every year then something is going on, for example.
Your mention about punishing the officer makes me wonder if you actually read my comment, though. I explicitly suggested that a camera malfunction should not be considered sufficient to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar for a criminal case, and that while it should work for a civil case, the cost there would not be borne by the officer.
The actual popular phrase is "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" and that is NOT what I was referring to. The absence of evidence is still not evidence of tampering unless tampering can be proven. A hair fiber belonging to a suspect that is found at a crime scene is evidence that the suspect was there. A lack of a hair fiber of a suspect at a crime scene is not evidence that the suspect cleaned up their hair from the crime scene. Bleach on a floor at a crime scene is evidence of an attempt to clean it up. Does that make sense?
I'd argue that body cameras have not been around in wide circulation long enough to provide any meaningful data on their failure rates. Also I can safely assume they have some sort of warranty on them but that does not prevent a handful of defective ones from making their way into active use amongst law enforcement personnel.
Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct.
This is the passage I was replying to and you paraphrased another user's comment regarding a default judgment in favor of the civilian if the camera malfunctions. A malfunctioning camera does not necessarily prove a deliberate tampering and to hang an entire civil case judgment on that is not giving the losing side a fair shot at winning their case. The officer is employed by the department and a judgment born by the department in reference to the officer when the officer did not do anything wrong can have adverse consequences on their career and by extension, their life, far more than you are giving credit to.
Given that BWCs (body-worn cameras) weren't even significantly tested in the U.S. until 2012 and are still not what most people would agree is considered "widespread" then we can hardly conclude much of anything about their failure rates in active use.
Lack of a hair fiber is both evidence that the suspect was never there and evidence that the suspect was there and cleaned up his hair afterwards. How much weight it lends to each depends on context (i.e. if you have a lot of other evidence that he was there, then then cleaning theory is much more likely) but it does support both.
Look at it like this: beforehand, there were three possibilities: the suspect was never there, the suspect was there and left behind hair, or the suspect was there and cleaned up. (You might add more, like the suspect being bald, but the general approach is the same.) If you then do a thorough search for the suspect's hair and find none, that removes the "left behind hair" possibility, leaving you with the other two. The probability of each is increased compared to before. How much each one increases depends on the context.
As for civil cases, I don't really see the problem. All you need to show for a civil case is that your version of events is more than 50% likely to be true. Even if body cameras fail on their own with great frequency, the odds of one failing naturally right at the critical moment when an officer supposedly abused a civilian are extremely low.
I also don't see why we can't make good estimates of body camera reliability right now. They're not magic. They're just electronics, not fundamentally different from a GoPro or similar. How often do those fail? The rates should be much the same.
There should also be weight given to the nature of the failure, of course. If a capacitor exploded, it was probably "natural causes." If it was mysteriously smashed, with a tread pattern that matches the tires on the officer's squad car, that ought to be enough to win a civil suit. Other circumstances will vary, but I'd say the number of cases where you have a "mysterious failure" that really is a legitimate electronics failure will be low.
It's a fact of our justice system (and indeed any reasonable justice system) that if you murder somebody but there isn't any way to prove it, you go free.
How many cases have there been of the police taking lives of civilians who were in the right and can prove it but were given no chance? How many time does evidence and video have to be conveniently "misplaced"?
Likewise how many cases were there where civilians filed complaints against officers which ultimately led to demotions, terminations, otherwise good cops not being able to get promoted, etc.
I'm completely 100% for the body cameras and for transparency but I also understand that they shouldn't be the only evidence used to decide guilt or innocence and should not hold more weight over other pieces of evidence.
I should have clarified I'm assuming worst case scenario where a cop shoots a civilian and kills them. The camera malfunctioned so the cop couldn't prove that for X reasons the civilian was a deadly threat then the cop is charged with murder and automatically convicted due to the video evidence not being there to support their claim and due to the civilian automatically winning due to the previous poster's proposition.
Why would the cop's life be ruined? There are already way too many cases where police body cameras "mysteriously malfunction", often on multiple officers at once. There need to be repercussions for such behavior. This is just an extension of innocent until proven guilty. If cops want to make arrests, they should make sure their camera is working. They would never go out without a functioning gun, radio, or car.
> We always joked about how [American MPs] behaved like movie action heroes, always ready to use force.
I am in no way challenging the validity of your report. I'm offering this anecdote to put USian police training (or the lack thereof) in perspective.
I've heard from my father -an officer in the US Army-, and from many others who have reason to know that a HUGE part of an MP's training is in de-escalation and peaceful crowd control.
MPs are drilled over and over and over that the presence of a club, firearm, or -say- riot gear dramatically increases the tension of a situation and that they have to immediately and continually work very hard to bring that tension back down.
Some folks who have served as MPs have had opportunity to review the training procedures of some police departments who have been receiving military crowd control (and other) equipment. Many of those former MPs have gone on record with their serious dismay at the absence of even vaguely proper crowd control and de-escalation training.
If well trained USian MPs behave like action heroes; ready to use force at the slightest provocation, how are comparatively poorly trained USian police officers likely to behave when given identical equipment?
US is a third world country with a first-world layer on top. A more concrete difference is that there are a lot of people in the US with guns and bad attitudes. (A lot of Americans don't know it because the layers don't mix much.)
So, US cops are right to have a different basic stance than German cops.
That is not to defend the actions described in the news article. And there certainly is a big problem with militarization of cops in the US.
If I knew your philosophical leanings I could construct an example that would be quite common -- but for all I know you think it is not exploitation to offer jobs for minimum wage with no benefits that offer only 19 hrs a week of work (no benefits) but demand 24/7 availability.
So let me use a more extreme example. When individuals are suspected (NOT yet proven) of illegal immigration they are sent to a detention facility. There they are not allowed amenities like fresh socks or telephone calls unless they work for them at the rate of $0.13/hr. This is happening today to many thousands of people (http://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425511981/at-low-pay-governmen...).
I bet the excuse (if an excuse exists at all) is the obvious "nobody is forced to work"/"we provide (bare minimum) amenities to anybody that wants them" circular reasoning.
The cost also comes in the ignorance of that third world part who have poorer access to education and opportunities.
They are third world because they are ignorant. And they are ignorant because they are third world.
Sometimes small incentives go a long way toward getting people further ahead. Sometimes they may shine by means of sports. But not everyone can be saved by sports. :-)
Well I don't know exactly how we're defining who is and who isn't a third world American, but the reasons for poverty are a lot more complicated than being "ignorant".
Mental illness, trauma, stress, physical disability / injury, side effects of living in a bad neighbourhood / neighbourhood targeted by law enforcement, trends in the local economy, etc. are some of the multifaceted reasons that people and families end up in poverty.
> differences in police training from Germany vs the US
To highlight this even more, Police in Germany used only 85 bullets in all of 2001 [1]. Given their population is about 4x lower than the US, the equivalent would be the Police in all of the US using only ~340 bullets for a year.
In reality, The police in the US have KILLED over 400 people this year already.
I don't think the amount of bullets used by the police in different places can be meaningfully compared without knowing the number of bullets fired at the police.
Edit: a sister comment cites numbers according to which almost 8 times as many police officers are killed in the US than in Germany per capita. Of course the real question is how many are attacked; if the police is better at gunfights than the criminals it is not a cause for alarm, rather the opposite.
Don't overlook the very likely strong coupling between the bullets fired 'at' and 'by' police and how it likely goes both ways.
People want to shoot at police because police shoot at people so often is probably just as true as the converse.
This is likely both true at the macro and micro level. That is, police behavior escalates individual situations into shootings which otherwise, with better training, could have ended peacefully.
_And_ with the culture of police quick to use force, people are more inclined to acquire weapons and use them during criminal activity.
Police positions on the usage and scale of force is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A violent, forceful police will create a violent, forceful criminal.
Which side you believe has more to do with your internal bias. Do you believe that police are violent because criminals are or do you believe criminals are violent because police are?
It's neither, though. It's a systematic problem with a systematic solution. Placing the blame isn't important, finding the solution is. You can do a little by trying to help people out of the situations where they're motivated to crime. You can do a lot by helping police nudge the outcome of interactions towards peaceful solutions.
The media whipping everyone into a frenzy over every contentious interaction doesn't help anybody.
People want to shoot at police because police shoot at
people so often is probably just as true as the converse.
Could you add some more detail on this point? I'm having difficulty thinking of a situation I could be in that would be improved by me shooting at the police?
I mean, even if they're honest good guy cops surely they'll call in backup and arrest you and make a really enthusiastic effort to put you in jail for a long time? And that's the best case - if they're bad cops it can only be worse?
Admittedly, my status as a british middle class white guy might mean I don't know what dealing with the police is like for other people.
I'm not sure what he's getting at except maybe that penalties for some crimes are so severe here in the states as to incentivize escaping apprehension by any means necessary. I'm thinking about something like drug trafficking where you can go to prison for life.
In general, though, I would agree with you that there can't be many situations in which your life would be improved if you shot at a police officer. By my observation any time someone does that it has the effect of enraging every cop in the land.
The idea is to get away. In the long term the police might be more enthusiastic to catch you – and that long term might only be 10 minutes. In the short term though, in this instant, the police are already chasing you. They have you cornered and you don't see a way out of this without surrendering.
You've seen on the news people just like you getting killed in the street by police. You've known people who have been beat bloody in the exact same situation. Even if they don't kill you in the street, you have 30 years in a harsh prison ahead of you.
You have nothing to lose.
---
The idea is to teach police to keep subjects calm and try to convince them that surrendering really is the best outcome. People full of adrenaline don't always make the best decisions. Maybe they've been taking drugs, they've probably got a whole lot of stress in their lives, and possibly some mental illness as well. In a lot of places they're conditioned to think of police as the enemy, and in this situation they're really afraid.
a situation I could be in that would be improved by me
shooting at the police
Two situations:
1) a situation where you believe there's a reasonably chance the police are going to shoot you and cover it up. Shooting them keeps you alive.
2) you have committed a minor crime, for which the sentence is sufficiently harsh that you are willing to add murder to the crime to prevent being sentenced. If a cop attempts to apprehend you and you shoot him, your situation is improved in that you are not apprehended and may not have to go to jail at all. Ratios of punishments for different crimes matter as well as the absolute value.
> make a really enthusiastic effort to put you in jail
The point is that in the USA even for minor things people expect to be shot at more than anything else. If you're going to take a risk and do something really gainful, you take it for guaranteed that the cops will shoot at you and make a point to shoot first.
I'm unable to figure out what point you are trying to make with the link to the Brown shooting, unless you last read that page several months ago and are unaware of the new information that has been added since then.
Often not reporting on a problem would be exactly the right thing to do.
This is a discussion we as a society are not having, and I believe we should. We had free mass media for long enough already to know that the general population can - and far too often does - go batshit insane thanks to news stories[0]. It's not enough that the reporting itself screws availability heuristic badly, the standard practice of journalism now consists of twisting the story (sometimes even outright lying) to maximize readers' outrage.
And no, one can't say it's the responsibility of the reader to not be fooled; news-induced dysrationalia is systemic, it is predictable.
Reminds me of a thing I read today, a reply on Quora about child soldiers posted by an ex-Marine[1]. Apparently, the primary military value of children is pissing off westerners. Military groups using them let journalists photograph kids with guns, maybe even some dead ones (doesn't really matter who killed them), and wait for the outraged civilians to push against their own countries' war efforts.
[0] - why are we having this "War on Terror" again?
To be fair, far fewer people own guns in Germany than they do in the US. Police in Germany likely carry weapons to deal with knives and other close range weapons, while police in the US carry weapons to deal with long range weapons.
>
To be fair, far fewer people own guns in Germany than they do in the US.
Call it 9/10 in the US and 3/10 in Germany[1]. Note that this is number of guns, not number of people owning guns. Not sure how that changes the odds of any one person having access to a gun.
Perhaps more interesting is the number of verified homicides commited with a gun[2]: ~4/100 000 in the US, 0.2/100 000 in Germany. So one could guesstimate the odds of encountering an armed potential murderer in the US is about 4/0.02 ~ 200:1 -- or 200 times more likely for an US cop than for a German cop.
Not sure how valuable such macro-guesstimations are, really. But hey, numbers.
> police in the US carry weapons to deal with long range weapons.
I'm not so sure. Doesn't the typical US patrol officer carry a pistol, possibly with a shotgun for backup? If the aim really was to take out a single shooter (potentially in a crowd) surely something along the lines of an mp5 would make more sense?
Police in Norway has also been generally armed now, and waltz around with glocks. It strikes me as entirely useless -- the number of situations that can be defused/resolved with a somewhat poorly aimed 9mm bullet doesn't seem to justify the increase in weapons available (all you'd need to get them off a pair of cops would be a hunting rifle -- or a mob).
No, it's based on some hand-waving about "terror threats" due to us helping NATO alienate people in the Middle East. The "threats" are classified (but really dangerous, ok, trust us, wink-wink) -- and no one's tried to explain how moving the handguns from lock-boxes in the police command cars to the hips of random patrol officers are supposed to help counter these "terror threats".
I was recently at a music festival with some ~3000 people -- and a couple of police officers with handguns. I have a hard time divining a scenario where those guns are going to help. If the aim was to be able to shoot attackers, at least some snipers at an elevated vantage point with low-power ammunition might have had a chance at taking someone out without endangering the crowds too much.
On the other hand, if the crowd went mad an rioted, you can be sure that the end result would've been that someone in the crowd would've ended up in possession of those guns.
How often do police kill people who are obviously armed? Many of the police killings I've heard of were perpetrated on unarmed people. It seems disingenuous to dismiss concerns about police violence because the civilian could have been a gun owner. What matters is whether the killing could have been avoided if the police had reacted differently.
What does it mean for us Europeans, who still have, for the moment, more lenient police? Should we expect that America uprises against their own police? Draw a Fergusson every 3 months? Becomes either less economically stable or more economically agressive? Should we expect that US' political influence requires us to step up our police, the same way France escalated an NSA-style law six months ago? It worries me that a friend country's police goes more totalitarian, but are there actual consequences on us?
It's an open question. For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US (and even declined free tickets to a very important tech conference in my field) because of your unpredictable trigger-friendly police [1] and your guantanamo-friendly interviews at border control [2]. I wonder it your unstability could reach me in Europe.
[1] Being a foreigner, I'm not protected by your constitution and the officers haven't sworn to protect and serve me.
[2] I do believe an intent to go to a conference could randomly be recategorized as seeking work, which is illegal, and using a false Facebook name could be recategorized as identity theft. I do believe it's therefore possible to be retained at your border for an undefined amount of time, with no record and no rights to a lawyer. I do believe I'd be upset in this situation and I could end up sentenced for life in your prisons.
For what it's worth, I feel the same way as you do about the US, and I'm a US citizen. I've told friends that I may return to the US "when the US becomes a democracy again."
Unchecked police brutality is just one of a complex of problems I see in the news: The private for-profit prison industry that lobbies for more and longer incarcerations, the bail-and-debt system, civil forfeitures, plea bargaining, the unabashed wiretapping and widespread weakening of 4th Amendment rights... if you describe the US system of "justice" to a neutral party, he will guess you're talking about Russia or maybe North Korea.
To answer your question, whether that state reaches Europe depends on whether the US' war of the rich on the poor spreads to Europe. The statesmen of the US are cheaply purchased pawns of various rich industries, and law & order are replaced by high-tech feudalism. If Europe finds itself ruled by corrupt evil clowns like the US is, then we'll see similar conditions here.
That said, I have no idea how it will go. I have no knack at all for predicting politics. I'm betting on kicking the bucket before shit hits the fan.
The next US response will be gradual de-escalation of its police aggressiveness.
The beginning of the end of the war on drugs, body cameras, attention being cast on asset seizures and minimum mandatory sentencing - it has become obvious to most of the population that over the last 30 years the policing system has gotten out of control. You know it's understood to be bad when the president is openly discussing how much worse imprisonment is in the US than other countries, and becomes the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.
Except that it is possible this will become politicized. If one party becomes identified as the party supporting prison and law enforcement reform then the other party will then by default have to be the party opposing that. Then when THEY get into office they will oppose reforms. I hope this politicization does not happen but I am worried it may.
Your reaction is extreme. Working professionals from rich countries that come to the US on short term Visas are not subjected to intense scrutiny. No one is prosecuted for the name on their Facebook account.
You need to be a bit more careful with sweeping generalizations like "no one." Here are two cases just off the top of my head that almost perfectly contradict what you wrote.
While those incidents are obviously outrageous, refusal at the border isn't the same as prosecution and certainly nobody was sentenced to life imprisonment.
I grant part of that. But now _you_ have to tell me: How do you claim to know that no one was arrested and suffered life imprisonment? The point you seem to be missing is that you have no way of knowing!
This is the "wonderful" thing about the Patriot Act: Even as an American citizen, you could be disappeared and shipped to a foreign country for torturing... and there's a good chance no one would find out, for years, maybe forever. I don't think you have an idea of how significant this is. America does not operate under the rule of law.
>The border guard then escorted him to his car and made sure he did a U-turn and went back to Canada.
>To their surprise, however, when they arrived at L.A. International, they were not only detained and questioned at length by U.S. authorities, but were swiftly -- after a night in the cells, naturally -- plonked back on a plane back to England, and barred from entering the United States again.
I'm not sure what you mean. They were each returned to their respective countries.
> For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US
I have never been to the US, and although a trip to California would be an obvious to-do in my profession, the main reason I don't consider it is the death penalty.
It sounds so unattractive to visit countries stuck with such laws. Despite all the nice things they have to offer.
It might be easier to understand from a European perspective. [1]
> I have never been to the US, and although a trip to California would be an obvious to-do in my profession, the main reason I don't consider it is the death penalty.
Don't kill anyone and you'll be good.
Or perhaps you're actually concerned about false conviction, which is a different problem and no less bad when someone spend the rest of his life in prison
> It's an open question. For the last 6 years I've refused to set foot in US (and even declined free tickets to a very important tech conference in my field) because of your unpredictable trigger-friendly police [1] and your guantanamo-friendly interviews at border control [2]. I wonder it your unstability could reach me in Europe.
This seems excessive to me, you're not going to run into the cops going to a tech conference. I've lived in the US for the past 5 years, and never had any issues with police or border control. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that the part of California I live in (Orange County) is safer than my home country in Europe.
In Europe you are more likely to have lightly if unarmed cops because its more acceptable to have troops with fully automatic weapons deployed. I still remember quite a few pictures of such at airports if not on the streets
The majority of what you have been told by your media are "narrative" stories that are removed of all actual facts and details (to fit the narrative). Its pure politics.
For example, in the Ferguson case, you where told that the police officer (Darren Wilson) saw Michael Brown, and for whatever reason, just murdered him on the spot, by shooting him through the back of his head - all while Michael Brown was doing nothing wrong, and holding his hands up.
I'm assuming the later was "modified" in the produced story by all the left-leaning news outlets because it was too stereotypical / and the narrative must be protected. If you don't believe it, check the crime seen photos and the court records - I did.
And that's about 5% of the falsehood story. I could go on and on.
> Should we expect that America uprises against their own police?
Cops kill a reported 500 or so people every year. Maybe twice that much in real numbers.
The majority of those people are violent criminals - some of which are firing at cops, using knifes to stab cops, garbing at cops' guns, using vehicles to run cops over, etc.
Why would anyone that is not delusional with the political media spin revolt against cops?
That newsmax.com article is fascinating. The first three facts in their list have no relevance to the legitimacy of the shooting. They are clearly trying to paint Michael Brown as a bad person who deserved to die, and they aren't even being subtle about it. The fact that he had just stolen something has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether Darren Wilson acted correctly when he fired his gun.
One thing I have never seen anyone bring up on either side is the question of why Officer Wilson, believing his life to be in danger while sitting in his car, did not simply drive down the street to eliminate the danger, then reassess the situation from safety.
Wilson may well have been in danger, even mortal danger. He still did the wrong thing by responding with lethal force when he could have removed himself from that danger. As a result, he ended up killing one of the people he was sworn to protect.
OK, so why aren't they trained that way? Unless a criminal represents an imminent threat to the public, the police should prioritize safety above getting their man.
> The fact that he had just stolen something has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether Darren Wilson acted correctly when he fired his gun.
The fact that his physical description, the event of the strong-armed robbery, and the report of the stolen item, was brought-cast - which led to the events that followed - is not relevant?
How is it relevant? The question is whether Darren Wilson was justified in using lethal force. The standards for the use of lethal force by police do not, to my knowledge, contain any mention of previous criminal activity by the suspect.
The typical standard in the US is that lethal force is only justified when the person represents an immediate danger to others. I personally think it should go a bit farther than this and also explicitly state that lethal force must be the last resort, i.e. that the person must not only present a danger to others, but that lethal force must be the only way to stop it. Either way, the fact that Michael Brown had just stolen stuff doesn't come into it.
The points in the article dispel the myth of the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" story. It obviously did not go that way at all (e.g., such as not even being shot in the back of the head).
The earlier events might, or might not, be relevant to the use of deadly force in a court of law, but they are relevant to my point of the narrative, of the story told to the public - the original comment you are relying to.
And yes, garbing at a cop's gun, trying to wrestle it away from him, and then later charging at him like a bull - is justifiable use of deadly force. And the previous events can be used to show the mindset of the individuals.
These things happen quickly, and there is no restart of the game.
They may be relevant to your point of the narrative, but my point is that the key question is whether Wilson was justified in his use of deadly force, and the earlier events are not relative to that. That is why the portion of my comment which you quoted says "...has absolutely no relevance to the question of whether Darren Wilson acted correctly...." (Emphasis added.)
Grabbing at a cop's gun may justify deadly force, but it wouldn't have happened if Wilson hadn't drawn it in the first place. It is the drawing of the gun which is the key event here. If he had simply stomped on the gas pedal instead then this whole controversy would have stopped before it started.
> It is the drawing of the gun which is the key event here. If he had simply stomped on the gas pedal instead then this whole controversy would have stopped before it started.
5. Wilson said when he tried to open his car door, Brown slammed it back shut, then punched Wilson in the face.
6. Fearing another punch could knock him out, Wilson drew his gun, he told the grand jury, and Brown grabbed the gun, saying "you are too much of a pussy to shoot me."
Like I said, these things happen quickly, there is really not much time to think and analyze. When you feel that your life is in danger, you just respond. Some people get tunnel vision, others don't even form memories.
Some other things that would have prevented this - is every single action that Michael Brown took.
The fact that Brown could have prevented his death by changing any of his actions is true, but irrelevant.
Imagine you insult a person's mother, and in response he gets upset and shoots you. I say, if you hadn't mouthed off then you wouldn't have gotten killed. Is this true? Absolutely. Does it make your death justified? Not in the least.
The fact that these things happen quickly and that you "just respond" is not an excuse for using deadly force when it's not necessary. Police are supposed to be the ones protecting us, not the ones getting us killed. That he killed Michael Brown when he didn't need to is an abject failure on his part. Maybe it was a failure caused by a lack of time to think and a failure caused by an innate response, but it's still a failure. I also have to wonder why Wilson got so close when opening his door in the first place, to someone he knew might be dangerous. If he felt at a disadvantage because he was seated in his car, why not stop some distance away, get out, and confront the suspect on a better footing?
You don't get to engineer a dangerous situation, then use deadly force to eliminate the danger and call it good. The fact that the other person participated somewhat still doesn't justify it. If Wilson had taken more care before he was in the middle of a fight then he wouldn't have been in the position to "just respond" with deadly force in the first place.
> , and why it matters that it's soda and not ice tea.
It matters that it was a manufactured lie.
The "ice tea and skittles" was also mentioned every time the name Trayvon Martin was mentioned. Every. Single. Time.
So it must have also had a great importance to everything and everyone.
And the point was to show how these stories are manufactured by removing facts, and replacing them with the narrative... A young 12 year old kid just getting some ice tea and skittles on a bright sunny day - murdered by a white racist who had no injuries, was not arrested, was not handcuffed and taken-in, etc (all points proven false).
> Sorry but you're going to need to explain why having watermelon soda is a shoot-on-sight offense
Why would I have to explain it? What you just said is completely made up, and you are the one saying it. Trayvon was shot because he was beating Zimmerman's head into the pavement. They both made mistakes, it escalated. And everything that was reported was spun to the narrative.
I'm not familiar with the specific product pictured, so maybe it is a soda, but if you show a can with the Arizona Ice Tea trade dress to 100 people, 99 of them will describe it as "ice tea".
There's no grand conspiracy to make the world believe that it was ice tea and not soda, you have invented this. (I assume you really are passionately concerned with the difference between soda and tea and not just trying to talk about a black kid liking fruit soda and watermelon as a way to engage racist stereotypes to dehumanize him.)
Whether he was going to drink it or mix it with codeine is immaterial to the events that led to his death so why even bring it up?
edit: you are right, it is coming off looney. Ice tea, soda, watermelon flavored fruit punch or juice, ... the point has been made - a stereotypical-flavor juice drink is converted unanimously to "ice tea" by the media (by 10 out of 10 outlets) for the narrative's sake.
For the other 95% of the story, start with the 2nd link above, to see just how ridiculous Zimmerman's character was built-up.
Then check Trayvon's twitter screenshot for how he conversed and what drugs he liked (lean). Check the pictures found on his phone of him holding a gun and talking about selling it. Him being expelled from school. Burglary charges. See the conversations he had about being in some type of a fight club and making people bleed, etc...
Or how about the recording that was played for weeks non stop on CNN -
> Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
Which actually turned out to be -
> Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
> Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
> Zimmerman: He looks black.
The media did a number on that story. It wasn't a conspiracy, it was political spin. Which is what the media in the US does. They do not report facts anymore.
This constant editing of old comments is getting worrisome. There is a perfect threaded comment system available here, why not let us use it? This is just corny.
That Breitbart story was part of the first 5%, right? It wasn't very convincing either, especially not in an argument about media narratives... Anyway, as I recall it Mr Zimmerman's photo and his Peruvian heritage was reported early on in mainstream media.
It seems to me you don't have a lot of convincing arguments for your initial sweeping claims. It was an unfortunate event. An innocent man was killed. Let's just leave it at that, ok? None of your arguments have any bearing on this fact, no matter how much you try to smear Mr Martin (btw, you could easily forge such a narrative out of my life, as well).
> This constant editing of old comments is getting worrisome.
I've edited 1 comment to expand it.
I also correct spelling mistakes when I see them.
And sometimes, within the first 10 minutes, I might add a sentence to the current reply.
> It seems to me you don't have a lot of convincing arguments for your initial sweeping claims. It was an unfortunate event. ... None of your arguments have any bearing on this fact, no matter how much you try to smear Mr Martin.
Smearing Zimmerman by the national media is not worrying, but reporting the facts of the case is to you?
Zimmerman's racist character was fabricated. Trayvon's innocent character was fabricated.
Come on. You rewrote the comment totally, to the point where earlier replies don't make any sense. You did this with your other posts to, though not as aggressively, adding points, fleshing them out. It's weird. The discussion gets ever weirder. Oh, now you did it again - to concede the fact.
Anyway, on topic: There is a photo of me holding a gun. I have been reported to the police. I have used medicine recreationally. I have had trouble with teachers, being something of an unruly kid to them at times. It's easy to paint most anyone in such a light.
Why should I get shot close to my home? What is it that you're arguing, in fact?
Do you see how easy it is to get trivial details wrong? Now imagine if you were actually upset about the death of a human being; it would almost seem insignificant that it was juice instead of ice tea.
The majority of what you have been told by your media are "narrative" stories that are removed of all actual facts and details (to fit the narrative). Its pure politics.
What's the narrative? To what end?
And that's still leaving allot out.
You were there, I presume? I mean, obviously _any_ recollection of a complex course of events will leave out a lot, but the way you phrase it makes it sound like you know more about what happened. Care to shed some light upon this?
And a watermelon soda is an ice tea
Now this is getting interesting. Do you argue that there is a widespread media cover-up to hide the fact that Mr Martin bought a certain kind of soda that might be used with cough medicine? I can't even...
And that's about 5% of the falsehood story. I could go on and on.
Am I correct in my understanding that you claim to have knowledge of lots of errors in the reporting of the killing of Trayvon Martin, but you only tell us about the watermelon vs ice tea... thing? That's weird; why not give us something more substantial, something that's, you know, actually convincing (or at least, something that is... anything)?
Cops kill a reported 500 or so people every year. Maybe twice that much in real numbers.
Yeah, no. It's 500 reported killings during the first 6 months of 2015 already. Killings by police in the US are way up during the 2000s.
You're not convincing. If anything, it sounds like you are stuck in a narrative. Please provide something more substantial from your other 95% of truth.
I am not a US citizen, a supporter of the militarization of the police, or their unchecked use of power, but your third (numbered) point: "[1] Being a foreigner, I'm not protected by your constitution and the officers haven't sworn to protect and serve me." is incorrect. All persons on US soil are protected by the US constitution, whether citizens or not.
Your (confusingly) similarly enumerated point earlier "[1] and your guantanamo-friendly interviews at border control" is also flawed, as there is no possible way (of which I am aware) for US Customs and Immigration to send you to Guantanamo Bay without the assent of the country you are leaving. US C&I can turn you back, or temporarily detain you, and have a great deal of latitude with respect to questioning and searches, but you are always protected by the US constitution and possibly the laws of the country you are attempting to leave depending on where you are being questioned. The reason that people were allowed to be transported to Guantanamo Bay is that they were captured as unaffiliated combatants (who are allotted few rights in the Geneva Convention,) within the borders of a country whose sovereign granted the USA custody, and allowed deportation for detention without conditions.
> One of the things that stuck out at me was the huge amount of hours they spend training to "not" shoot, and learning how to de-escalate situations.
I think that the likelihood of civilians being armed in the US is a lot higher than in Germany, so I can imagine why American cops are a little more paranoid. I've seen cops put a hand on their gun as they approach suspects, which I think is part of the training here.
I wonder how many cops in America get killed in line of duty compared to Germany.
I don't want to argue with anyone, but I've always felt if police officers were given better training, and maybe required a bit more than a high school diploma, say an AA in psychology; we wouldn't have these posts? By better training, I mean less paramilitary emphasis?
I'll admit, I'm tired of the endless pullovers--for no reason other than driving an old car, or out past 10:30 p.m.
I'm tired of the Revenue Collection(that's not their fault! We need to tie income to violations in the United States, or lower fees altogether?) A rich man get a ticket--he tell the wife at dinner. A poor man gets a ticket; it just might be the last straw?
I'm just tired of being scared when they are around!
I don't think things are going to change for a long time. All I rely on is dash cams at present. No need for spending more than 20 bucks at Amazon? Those cheap ones work, and last a long time. Buy two--in case one breaks? I had on going over a year now. I haven't been pulled over since? Maybe I don't do out like I used to, or they see that little screen flip down?
When I was growing up in LA in the 80s, several family friends were cops in rougher areas like Hawaiian Gardens, etc. I recall hearing multiple times that engaging with violent force was discouraged because they never knew what kind hellfire was going to erupt. They proceeded with extreme caution and did not act like warrior cops. If there was any doubt, they backed way up.
Now, I'm well aware of the sins of LAPD in that era, but with regard to use of violent force and this damned finger-on-the-trigger mentality, I really feel like this has been a post-2003 evolution in tactics. It wasn't always like this. I don't remember being nervous about getting shot during a traffic stop. Hell, I can even recall two distinct occasions where SWAT was deployed to my house because I had hit the emergency button on my phone (rediculous, I know). In those cases, guns were drawn, but they weren't aimed and extreme caution was taken.
Kinda funny. I was about 10 and after the button was hit, it went on speaker and dispatch was listening for ~10 minutes trying to figure out what was going on.
The vast majority of U.S. guns are in private collections and don't kill or threaten anyone.
The U.S. doesn't have a gun problem; we have a violence problem. If one magically made every single firearm disappear tomorrow, the murder rate would still be ridiculously high, because we'd still be finding ways to murder one another.
And highly restricted. People are not allowed to carry, concealed or not, unless they are on their their way to and from hunting, for example. At home they have to be locked up in a safe. And so on.
For sure our police more often than necessary become very aggro. It may have to do with knowing anyone could own and possess either legal or illegal firearms.
We need to reconcile gun ownership with the violence it can allow and our desire for less aggro policing.
That said police most definitely need to be trained to deescallate rather than automatically double down.
It is called the Tueller Drill and the distance is 21 feet. Within 21 feet, a knife-wielding attacker stands a very good chance of stabbing the defender due to the time it takes the attacker to cover 21 feet vs. the defender unholstering, aiming and firing their weapon.
Lets try a metal experiment, you have your knife and 3 enemies attack you at the same time. How many can you neutralize from 5 feet with your knife ? Suppose you have special training and you can throw your knife and kill one of them, you still have 2 ... Try the same mental experiment when you have a firearm in your hand ...
You can inflict much more damage with a firearm even without special training (not everybody can throw a knife and do some damages).
That is a poorly specified, unrealistic thought experiment with lots of hidden variables.
Everything hinges on who attacks first. The weapon is secondary.
Knives are extremely dangerous and more difficult for your assailant to control at close range, and it doesn't seem like you have an appreciation of that.
If you have a gun and if you decide to attack first, maybe you can shoot two or three of them, disabling them, before they can kill you. I've never been in combat, but I don't think that kind of scenario is likely to happen in the real world. Also, even fatal shots are not immediately disabling unless they're to the CNS. Slashes across the arms can readily disable someone in a way that shooting them, even in the chest, won't, unless you hit their spine or some critical nerve or muscle area.
Guns are vastly superior if you have the advantage of distance. Otherwise, not so much.
The context of the thread was police officers being trained to be wary of knives. Imagine two comparable traffic stops where in one case the "perp" has a concealed knife, and the other has a concealed gun. A single officer in each case faces a very comparable risk at close range. I'd argue that at three feet, the officer is much more likely to be killed by a concealed knife than a concealed gun, assuming that is the perp's intention (and the perp has already been asked to get out of the car).
5 feet may not be enough for you to shoot more than one person even if you have your weapon already drawn. When fighting opponents at close range you'd probably be more successful with your knife - especially if you know how to handle one. It's easier to hit with a knife than with a bullet in close quarters, and as 'harshreality suggests, you can disable your opponents in ways the gun wouldn't let you, by cutting through their nerves.
Irrelevant. Let's try a mental experiment. Let's say a cop is performing a traffic stop and asks the driver to step out of the car. If the driver steps out and jams a 6 inch knife into the cop's neck, how much does it matter that the cop could theoretically shoot 3 people?
If you are being attacked by three people, you probably shouldn't start by throwing a knife at one of them. You will probably then have two people, one of them armed with your knife.
In Switzerland almost every adult male also doesn't have any ammunition for his rifle at home. So realistically the worst police officers can expect is to be being hit over the head with that rifle.
Disclaimer: I'm from the neighboring country to the north. I know nothing.
I _thought_ that you're supposed to have some ammunition at home though? 'Taschenmunition' or something? Like, say, 20 rounds?
Let's ignore the standards for storing those, but my impression is that
a) ~a lot~ of people in CH have rifles _with_ ammo
b) ~a good number~ of kills at home in CH happen using said rifle ("Cheating wife? Thank the military for the rifle right here" or - on a different end of that scale - "Life is unbearable, but the state provided me with a convenient way to move on").
Thanks a lot. I feel old, both for learning that my information is absolutely outdated and for not .. asking Wikipedia about it, before I posted here. :)
