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[NullForceOmega]

Actually according to reporters on the street the Dallas Police were very much just doing their jobs, not interfering with the protest at all until shots were reported.

[SalmonGod]

I've only seen one video referenced anywhere near the shooting before everyone was evacuated and blocks were shut down.  The video caught a glimpse of two officers lying on the ground, appearing incapacitated.  I think that's where the two confirmed casualties is coming from.  I'm seeing other sources saying as many as 6, but without anything to back that up.  The best information available at this point seems to be that a 6 man swat team was called in, and were the only authorities authorized to approach.  There was shooting between them and the suspect.  Suspect escaped and is at large.

Oh, and I've seen multiple mentions of a woman shot outside the building, not stated by anyone, but implied to be an innocent bystander.

[Frumple]

Vicious fucking cycle, exacerbated by isolationism.
I really hope it doesn't explode, because a lot more good people will die on both sides...

Hey, look on the bright side. If that lot more is less than about 600 (570 something?) total over the course of a lil' over half a year, we'd actually be seeing a decrease in police related deaths.

[Neonivek]

I am also glad this isn't a race riot... I think...

[SalmonGod]

Video very close to shoot-out.  Lots of gunfire.  I imagine this is the last person to be recording this thing before being sent away.

Also seeing reports that protesters were targeted in the initial bursts of gunfire, before everyone had fled and police began returning fire.

[Rolan7]

Well at least this isn't an instance where the police intentionally antagonized a protest in order to make them violent (or "violent") in order to justify their arrest and thusly shutting the protest down.

Well... to my knowledge...

Yeah, we hold these underfunded public servants to a higher standard than that.
And hopefully the people in these impoverished communities choose not to antagonize police for peer respect, a survival-level resource.  Even when facing what the media reports as racial police oppression against them.

Again, vicious cycle.

Vicious fucking cycle, exacerbated by isolationism.
I really hope it doesn't explode, because a lot more good people will die on both sides...

Hey, look on the bright side. If that lot more is less than about 600 (570 something?) total over the course of a lil' over half a year, we'd actually be seeing a decrease in police related deaths.

"Police related deaths", sure.  Instances of police misconduct, no.
It's mostly accepted that Michael Brown at least reached into Wilson's car.  Yet Ferguson is one of the top cases of supposed "police misconduct" justifying a general racial uprising.  It's horrific.
Yeah maybe Wilson pulled Brown's arm into the car as part of some fancy hoax so he could later shoot him.  Give me a fucking break.

What I will admit is that these high-profile cases may be staged to distract from actual police misconduct.  But the ones that actually hit the news are not obviously police misconduct.  And in America, we're supposed to prove guilt before we condemn.

There have been a couple of cases in this thread that *were* clear misconduct on the part of the police, but nobody fucking talks about them.  I tried!  But they didn't take off.  So yeah, I'm actually more willing to believe that the media is purposely choosing unconclusive cases in order to cover up misconduct.  Than I am to believe that Officer Wilson did anything wrong.

Oh, and to be snippy, you misspelled "murder" as "police related deaths".  The furious response always jumps to "murder", instantly, because innocent-until-proven-guilty doesn't apply to police.
It happened in this very thread, today, like it always did.  Murder murder murder, be outraged!  He's not a suspect, he's a victim!  He's not a suspect, he's a murderer!

...And Philando Castile probably *was* the victim of police misconduct.  Manslaughter, maybe even murder.  It's just kinda fucked up that people jump to that conclusion prematurely, and pile on the fuck-the-police attitude which just makes things worse. 
But much worse is that they choose the worst causes to support!  Like a guy who was illegally selling CDs and waved a gun in someone's face outside a mall, then struggled during his arrest.  I'm sorry, THIS is who you choose as a martyr??

I haven't looked into that case, but I bet it's another Ferguson.  The outrage machine has cried wolf a lot, but I'm still listening...  Not as raptly as I used to, though, I have shit to do and the previous cases were mostly bullshit.

[Max™]

Well, with Castile you have the video with her sitting there trying to calm the officer down, "he was reaching for his wallet, and you fired four shots into him" while her kid is sitting there, there's no probably about it being misconduct.

The other guy gets tossed against a car and held down by two cops, I couldn't see both arms clearly from the angle, but they didn't look free to do stuff like draw and aim a weapon.

Though I first heard he was face down and later someone said on his back, but yeah he wasn't calmly and smoothly laying face down with his hands on the back of his head.

[SalmonGod]

But much worse is that they choose the worst causes to support!  Like a guy who was illegally selling CDs and waved a gun in someone's face outside a mall, then struggled during his arrest.

When you say stuff like this, it makes it hard to take accusations of hyperbole and framing from you seriously.

illegally selling CDs

Justifies nothing that transpired.  It's one of the most inflammatory points on this subject that the person killed by police (will avoid using the word victim here just for you) always without fail has any violation of law, no matter how minor or remote, brought up in a discussion about whether it was right for them to be killed.  What do you really think a minor non-violent crime has to do with being killed by police?  I seriously need to understand what the relationship is between the two points.

waved a gun in someone's face outside a mall

Unconfirmed

then struggled during his arrest

Being as fair as I possibly can here by labeling this debatable. 
--On your side, it's difficult to determine with finality exactly how much a restrained person is struggling from video footage.  I think it can be determined whether someone has been successfully restrained or not.  Maybe you would disagree on that point.  You just can't with how much strength or determination a person is exerting resistance to that restraint.
--On my side, it's completely unrealistic to expect someone who has been tasered, is having their body forced into concrete, and is likely surging with adrenaline to be completely still.  So it's literally impossible for a person who is being handled this way by police to not be accused of struggling during arrest.

What's undebatable is what's shown on video.  Suspect was shot point blank while restrained.  The guy feels a gun in his pocket.  He doesn't just take the gun, which is hand is already touching and would immediately remove that threat.  Instead, he removes his hands from the suspect completely, sacrificing physical control and taking longer than disarming would have, in order to draw his own gun and shoot.


NBC is reporting 10 officers shot, 3 dead, and 2 suspects at large.

[Frumple]

Rol, I give slightly less than two shits about the character of the people getting killed, or even the bloody circumstances. If there's less people being put in the ground one way or another due to interactions with the police, I'm pretty close to not giving a single damn how it happens. This ain't what my taxes are paying for, nor what some of my friends and family should have to be connected to because they actually want to try to not be one of these shits, and I've been sick of it for a long time and getting sicker.

And anything else I was about to say got ninja'd, so whatever. Too late for this shit.

[Rolan7]

But much worse is that they choose the worst causes to support!  Like a guy who was illegally selling CDs and waved a gun in someone's face outside a mall, then struggled during his arrest.

When you say stuff like this, it makes it hard to take accusations of hyperbole and framing from you seriously.

I haven't read deeply into either.  What I know at a glance:

1 - Alton Sterling

This guy was selling CDs in the parking lot outside a convenience store.
[SNIP]
Supposedly, he flashed his gun at the homeless man and insisted that he be left alone, at which point homeless dude calls 911 and reports a black man brandishing a gun.
[SNIP]
Clearest details are from the video, which show Alton on his back, with officers kneeling on him.  He's squirming, but it doesn't appear to be serious resistance beyond natural reflex to having your joints ground into concrete.

I really just read your account and restated it with less conjecture, and also adding that it's not really legal to sell CDs in a private parking lot.
Where's the hyperbole?!

illegally selling CDs

Justifies nothing that transpired.  It's one of the most inflammatory points on this subject that the person killed by police (will avoid using the word victim here just for you) always without fail has any violation of law, no matter how minor, brought up in a discussion about whether it was right for them to be killed.  What do you really think a minor non-violent crime has to do with being killed by police?  I seriously need to understand what the relationship is between the two points.

I never suggested that it justified the shooting.  It's just an important aspect of the escalation of violence.  Did they shoot him for selling CDs in a private space?  No, they didn't.

And by all means, keep calling the person you don't like a murderer san trial.  Tell us what you really think, I don't mind.  It illustrates how justice-blind the anti-police side can be.

waved a gun in someone's face outside a mall

Unconfirmed

Yeah, he only "supposedly" did this.  According to *you*.

then struggled during his arrest

Being as fair as I possibly can here by labeling this debatable. 
--On your side, it's difficult to determine with finality exactly how much a restrained person is struggling from video footage.  I think it can be determined whether someone has been successfully restrained or not.  Maybe you would disagree on that point.  You just can't with how much strength or determination a person is exerting resistance to that restraint.
--On my side, it's completely unrealistic to expect someone who has been tasered, is having their body forced into concrete, and is likely surging with adrenaline to be completely still.  So it's literally impossible for a person who is being handled this way by police to not be accused of struggling during arrest.

What's undebatable is what's shown on video.  Suspect was shot point blank while restrained.

Yeah, I don't really know...  I haven't seen the video, I didn't know about the tasering until now.
That kinda changes things a lot, so I'll freely admit it might be police misconduct.  At least for now, I haven't seen the footage.

[Rolan7]

Rol, I give slightly less than two shits about the character of the people getting killed, or even the bloody circumstances. If there's less people being put in the ground one way or another due to interactions with the police, I'm pretty close to not giving a single damn how it happens. This ain't what my taxes are paying for, nor what some of my friends and family should have to be connected to because they actually want to try to not be one of these shits, and I've been sick of it for a long time and getting sicker.

And anything else I was about to say got ninja'd, so whatever. Too late for this shit.

I didn't say shit about "character", but circumstances are pretty important.
Yes, an ideal police force would have magic tasers and actual bullet-PROOF armor and no violent perpetrators would ever get killed during arrests.
We have a massive barely-policeable wasteland with little funding, and a bunch of antagonists who think there's a war on.

[Max™]

I only saw the first one from the car nearby, in the other you can see he was on his back, and yeah it's fucked up.

[Frumple]

Apparently a forth dead cop in Dallas. Also the first civilian injury and reports of bomb threats. S'going to be interesting hearing about the suspects' backgrounds... the accuracy and extent of the evasion that seems to have been involved so far sounds a lot like they had formal training of some sort.

[SalmonGod]

I really just read your account and restated it with less conjecture

... At the time of that post, I was going out of my way to repeatedly state that I hadn't read deeply into that incident yet.  I was only summarizing what I had seen about at a glance.  And out of everything, I even prefaced that specific sentence with "Supposedly".

Supposedly, he flashed his gun at the homeless man and insisted that he be left alone, at which point homeless dude calls 911 and reports a black man brandishing a gun.

You turn this into "waving a gun in some guy's face" - stated as fact, and lacking any of the context associated with the story regarding this specific detail (so far indicated that he was carrying the gun legally, and had been subject to persistent harassment from this person) that I later specified I happened to see at a glance from one source that looked questionable.  Said source makes no mention that I recall of how they obtained this information, which at the time seems to be omitted from all other reporting on the subject.

But god forbid that when one person shoots another person at a moment when it is shown on video they are defenseless that I go ahead and use the word murder, because that's framing the nature of the encounter on too much assumption, right?

I never suggested that it justified the shooting.  It's just an important aspect of the escalation of violence.

I don't understand how it is relevant at all.  Seriously, not in the slightest.  If the guy had been standing in the parking lot doing nothing illegal, it would have had zero influence on the sequence of events.

But no... it's very important that we know the guy was engaging in illegal activity.  This opens us up to the reasonable doubt that he was a good person.  His practice of selling CDs was in violation of law.  This probably also means he has a disrespectful attitude towards law enforcement.  It's probably safe to assume based on this that he wasn't cooperative, and that's what gets you shot by police.  Because when you're a criminal and you don't cooperate, police have to assume that you're a danger to them, or they won't get home safe to their families.

If this is not how you want me to interpret your brandishing this as an important point, then you will have to explain the correct interpretation to me.

Oh, and as far as you know, Alton had never been convicted of selling CDs illegally in a court of law, so how dare you go and use language that so casually presumes his guilt.   (sounds pretty ridiculous when turned around on you, right?)

[TheBiggerFish]

Please calm down.  Both of you.

I personally am more on SalmonGod's side of the depiction.
But we shouldn't get this thread locked.