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[nenjin]

Remember on the COPS show how they'd always chase people down, rather than take out their weapons and open fire on someone that was running?

What happened to those days? Was it really just the fact there was a network television camera pointed at them, that stopped them from just fucking mowing down anyone that tries to run?

Again, when did running become a death sentence?

"Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6" is such a truism for cops they put it on their fucking "medals." They're scared, armed and paranoid. We don't need cops like that. That's what the fucking enormous pensions are for; you risk your life and accept the risk of doing the right thing for this large chunk of money in perpetuity. If that's not a risk a cop can handle without blowing away unarmed civilians left and right, or snapping the necks of unarmed arrested citizens, fire their fucking asses.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think the problem in the US is that cops are way too teigger happy because of the sheer amount of guns in the system. One big step in addressing this would be to reduce the number of circulating firearms in general and have better gun control laws.

Cops actively killing people for pulling a gun or just touching their waistband is only the most visible part of a wide-reaching problem.  Not only will unilateral citizen disarmament not fix anything, it's a non-starter.  It's never gonna happen.

Why should civilians give up guns because cops are trigger-happy?  If cops were dogs or something I'd accept that getting bit is your own fault and you should change your behavior, but human beings are responsible for their own actions.

Because people generally dont like to get shot. And that includes cops. If there is a high expectation that any rando might pull a gun on you you are more likely to shoot first and ask questions later rather than wait to see if this will be the guy who will send you to the hospital or the morgue. And tbh I'd probably do the same in their boots in that scenario. So yes, IMO if you want to cut to the root of the problem you do need civilians to give up their guns, at least in the way its understood in the US right now.


Also, abolishing the police like in Minneapolis is more likely to result in private security firms in wealthy neighbourhoods and relative lawlessness in the rest. Not that lawlessness cannot happen with regular police (or that it only happens in the US. I mean, look up "3000 viviendas")  but it will probably be more widespread. Bad as they might be, I dont think replacing a public service with private firms will get you in the direction you want

don't need cops like that. That's what the fucking enormous pensions are for; you risk your life and accept the risk of doing the right thing for this large chunk of money in perpetuity.

Eeh, I dont know anything about cop pensions in the us, but that sounds like the kind of spurious reasoning that we get in healthcare. That because of pur (mostly supposed) hogh salaries we have to put up with whatever indignity. It doesnt work like that.

[TamerVirus]

Remember on the COPS show how they'd always chase people down, rather than take out their weapons and open fire on someone that was running?

What happened to those days?

COPS got canceled, following in the tradition of police officers turning off their cameras whenever they damn please

[Cthulhu]

I've heard the cops on the show actually took cues from the crew on how to proceed with different calls.  A really fucked up show, one cameraman got killed on the job.  Media is permeated with cop propaganda, it's all over netflix.  People watch those shows and get it into their heads that cops solve crimes.

[Reelya]

BTW with the gun control thing, I think less police violence is the outcome of that, not the reason to do the gun control in the first place. Going off raw numbers alone, the #1 reason to have gun control is to reduce the suicide rate. But suicide prevention isn't the sexy and racy headline-grabbing thing.

[nenjin]

That because of pur (mostly supposed) hogh salaries we have to put up with whatever indignity. It doesnt work like that.

That's exactly how it works. You're in a job where you have to deal with all of humanity, often the worst parts of it. That pay (other than you know, a sense of civic duty and honor) is the reason to do your job professionally, and respect people's rights even though they can be total d-bags to you or even try to harm you.

Go look at the American Police Challenge Coins. They literally meme about riding out their 20 years so they can collect their pensions, and get access to special insider trading just for cops to make even more money, or get access to moonlighting deals where people hire cops for private security at crazy high pay.

We need better cops with an actual moral backbone. We need cops that are actually willing to risk their lives to do the right thing, instead of doing the wrong thing because it's safer. If a cop violates their oath of duty, they should lose their benefits, regardless of whether they're criminally charged or not.

[Cthulhu]

There's a challenge coin for the Adam Schoolcraft thing, where they put him in an involuntary mental institution for recording their malpractice.  It's got the quote from the arresting officer on it, "Just take him, I can't fucking stand this guy"

[nenjin]

Yeah, no wonder the police force is so untrustworthy. Every decent cop is literally hazed / shamed / tortured until they either play ball or quit. It's barely one step removed from organized crime.

The coin even says "You know what you did." As well as "Need help? Call the <Police Mental Health Assistance Line>"

Oops, my bad, that is a different coin commemorating moving cops who don't play to different locations hours from their home, to give them time to "reflect" on why.

[voliol]

Trigger-happy cops ought to make it unsafer for cops and civilians alike (disregarding cases of one cop shooting another).
After all, it may be safer for the civilian to shoot the officer and face a strict sentence by the law than to face extrajudicial capital punishment by a cop. If the cops weren't ready to execute anyone suspected for a minor traffic crime (by bringing their guns) that incitement wouldn't exist.

[Rolan7]

Yeah, no wonder the police force is so untrustworthy. Every decent cop is literally hazed / shamed / tortured until they either play ball or quit. It's barely one step removed from organized crime.

Yuup.  It's a system that turns idealistic rookies into "team players".  It's very organized and effective.  Then there's the "warrior training" that teaches cops to fear for their lives, to see every incident as a life and death struggle, and of course we get cops "defending themselves" against fleeing unarmed people.  Like:

A man has taken a gun-looking object from you, one which you know causes pain and incapacitates you, and has fired it at you. Your visceral reaction is to defend yourself. Your training tells you to defend yourself (especially in situations involving gun-like weapons). So you do. You are dealing with a man who has assaulted you.

This training is exactly the problem.  We need to change that training, as a start.

A man has pointed a gun-looking object at you, one which you know causes pain and incapacitates you, and has fired it at you.  Your visceral reaction is to struggle free and run.  You grab the other taser before it can be fired and sprint away, discharging it harmlessly.

What if Rayshard Brooks had the training of his assailants?  Would he have had the "visceral instinct" to kill them in defense of his life?  Would he have perhaps tased one of his assailants at point-blank range before fleeing?  He didn't have that instinct.  He ran for his life, and he was shot dead in "self defense".

This is not to excuse what happened. It was horrible. But there's zero reason to suspect that it was motivated by racism.


*Note: The fire came after protests in the city and was watched over by protesters. I don't know if it was BLM; just a guess.

Cripes.  Okay look, I do understand that it's hard to demonstrate racism in any one particular case.  Instead of trying, I tend to point out that black suspects are a lot more likely to be killed or even arrested for similar crimes.  We can look at specific reasons for that data - an obvious one is overpolicing of low-income neighborhoods which happen to be largely black.  That's still a real problem that needs to be addressed.  It's probably worse in scale than individual officers being racist.

People aren't protesting Derek Chauvin.  Blaming everything on a racist, violent psychopath doesn't actually address the systemic killings of black people in the US.  For that we need to fix the investigative process for police brutality and shootings.  Covering up a murder shouldn't be the safer option.  Those complicit should be charged (something that was eventually won, at least in George Floyd's case).

These are pretty uncontroversial things to ask for.  Most people probably believe that police should be accountable and shouldn't be allowed to cover up crimes.  But change wasn't happening.  Unaffected people don't want to hear about it, or maybe feel sad for a bit and move on to the next news cycle.  That's why the protests are necessary.  *I* needed to be forced to think about this, to hear about it.  To see people "like me" getting brutally assaulted by police for standing up for others.  This isn't just going away. 

No amount of impoverished looters can diminish the protest, despite the police letting them run wild.  No amount of police instigators or arsonists can erase the footage of peaceful protesters being flooded with gas, charged by shields, old men shoved onto the pavement and stepped over.  BLM didn't start this fire.

[Cthulhu]

The guys who shot Rashard Brooks had completed a 9 hour de-escalation training less than a week before.  I don't think training is how to fix this.  Gotta rip it out by the roots

[scriver]

I guess the problem is you Americans then because the rest of us manages to get it to work. Maybe try stop being Americans.

[Max™]

Brooks did nothing but escalate the violence from the first moment the cops arrived. He ran away, but only so that he would have the range he needed to use the taser without being grappled. He was clearly and deliberately attempting to execute cops who were just doing their jobs, and he left them no choice but to defend themselves.

Sorry, what the hell is going on here?

They showed up, talked to him which is on video as a surprisingly normal and chill sort of interaction.

Then they start trying to cuff him and he fights back and manages to get a taser from one of them.

You stated that he was "clearly and deliberately attempting to execute cops" and I know others have addressed this, but again... what the hell is going on here to reach this conclusion?

One taser, at least two cops, both of which have firearms... so just as an example, from someone who's actively thought through numerous situations whereby I may have to defend myself against an unarmed foe, disarm an armed foe, or if needed kill someone threatening others or myself (though the latter was always expected to be rare, I used to be pretty goddamn fast, someone wants to kill me and has no gun they can chase me for a while until they get tired and I'll beat them up for being a jerk).

Rather than tasering one cop and taking his weapon to shoot the other at close range, ideally after pushing the tasered cop onto him, as I would do if I was in this stupidly suboptimal situation... he took the taser and ran, creating distance which means it is going to be harder to accurately use the taser, and then even if he somehow he hit and incapacitated one of the officers... you're expecting someone to change direction mid-stride, cover the distance to the now incapacitated officer, retrieve their weapon, AND use it against the other officer who is coming the same direction?

Like, seriously, there are lots and lots of ways to hurt, maim, cripple, and kill a person.

There are a range of ways to accomplish this and avoid getting attacked by the state, of various difficulties and complexity, though pig farms play a role in several because nobody is digging through pig shit to find the possible remains of a psychopath.

It's not a bad thing to be unaware of the difficulties involved in any of that, it's not usually a pressing issue to have to figure out how to kill someone and avoid being attacked by a government, and movies or games or shows don't help much by presenting it as alternatively way too easy and way too hard to do.

Hell, I'm glad when others are so bad at it, that's a good thing, congratulations on being better at being a good person, or at the very least bad enough at being a bad person that you'll get caught if you try anything.

A taser could decisively alter the outcome against a single cop IF you miss their vest or any of the various items they wear which are almost certainly going to ground the charge rather than divert it into the wearer... these are not odds I would be interested in trying, and odds are I've been in many more fights than you, spent far more time studying and practicing how to incapacitate and if need be kill someone than you, and am better at keeping my head in a stressful situation than you.

Unless I was wearing a full suit of military body armor with an SMG backup for my AR-15 or M4 I wouldn't willy-nilly pick a fight with two cops who knew exactly where I was because being shot does not look fun. I've never tried it but I'll take the word of those who have been, there. Staring down the barrel of a 9mm and noticing you can see the hollow point while a cop is pointing it at you isn't fun either, made me real eager to let them handcuff me and put the goddamn thing back in their holster. I've done that and learned if you can see the cop they can probably see you so don't be seen if cops are interested in you, or even if they aren't, it's best to just avoid them completely whether you're a bored teenager or a grown ass man. I say this, because in all of the shit I've done and practiced and seen, and especially over the last couple of decades when I've seemed far more like a normal law-abiding citizen while cops casually shooting people for running away became far more common, I've figured out a very important rule.

There is only one surefire way to kill someone safely and get away with it: be a cop.

[nenjin]

It's the exact same thinking cops use: anything is grounds for a shooting because their lives > everyone else's. You don't even need to be an actual criminal, fuck they'll open fire and wound bystanders and it's justified in their minds because there was "one bad guy out there." Every day is 9/11 in their heads, and every perp is a terrorist, so the ends justify the means.

(And for the record, "The ends justifies the means" is literally stamped on one of the NYPD's coins. You know where that comes from? Yeah. It's George Washington's family motto. This kind of thinking literally goes back to the founding fathers.)

[kaijyuu]

One cultural change IMO really needs to happen is the whole "we're the good guys fighting the bad guys" narrative. How many times have you heard a cop talk about how they're going to "get the bad guys"? Dozens of times for me, in various media.

Reality has no "good guys" or "bad guys". Everything's complicated. Portraying oneself as a superhero in a black and white world (horrible pun intended) is a recipe for disaster.