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[nenjin]

I don't understand, what assumptions am I snidely doubling down on?

but it's convenient for you to assume it wasn't.

The implication of that statement on your own beliefs is what I mean.

A union official said the officer did not feel it was necessary to use a Taser on the unarmed 150-pound victim who was distraught.

“Our officer did not believe he was any threat at all,” said Jeff Solomon, the union’s president.

“The other officers started yelling and screaming to get down, Tased him multiple times, and from what we understand (told the university officer) to Tase him again,” Solomon said.

But Rodriguez said that at one point the university officer left the room to make a phone call and came back while officers struggled to subdue the student to get him to paramedics

“He (the university officer) never engaged and he just stood there and watched,” Rodriguez said.

It was not until the student tried to run away that the officer used his Taser, Rodriguez said. The student was taken to a hospital for treatment and sustained no serious injuries from the Taser, he said.

This is the relevant section of the article. And it doesn't seem in temporal order in terms of events. But the officer in fact used his taser, in what I'd like to think but don't know is standard procedure: when a suspect and/or POI is trying to flee the scene.

We have two different stories of what happened, but we already have an administrative result, which is the officer acting with restraint has already been fired.

So it's wildly premature to condemn the other officers, and just wrong to say he was fired for "Not instantly escalating the situation".

And it's not wildly premature to fire a 20 year veteran exercising police discretion, without the results of a full investigation? But this again goes back to my core complaint with police violence these days: they are more concerned with their own safety than the people they're interacting with, even, apparently, at the non-lethal level. Could they have cleared the weapons to secure the scene? Handcuffed the student for his safety and everyone else's? These are all things that an investigation could suss out. Oh, except the one dissenting officer has already been fired.

The question is, how many officers does it take to tase a 150 pnd suicidal college student and, and if the answer is "Every single taser on the scene available", is that excessive? If it is, why is this officer being fired.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

How these cops, which tend to be huge guys, can so completely fail to immobilize tiny people without shocking them and beating them, is beyond me. And shit, the vest is meant for bullets but I guarantee you it would take the edge off most body blows. I'm not a cop. I'm just some guy. But I guarantee you I could immobilize most people smaller than me without doing as much harm to them as these cops seem so intent on doing.

Somebody who actually has combat training should be able to do a lot better.

[nenjin]

Here in Nebraska, University Police are appointed by the Governor, the same as the State Patrol, because they want the best possible interaction between police and students. The University is a big deal in town. And having dealt with a fair number of cops in my town, the nicest by far are the university police. I wonder if that kind of policy is common among police departments in college towns. It'd certainly explain why a cop who has spent a lot of time on campus has a wildly different response than city cops who are responding to the scene.

[smjjames]

Crossposting from the wtf thread:

Apparently the cop violence protestors are planning on disrupting the royal couples (William and Kate) NYC visit. Come on, theres no point to doing that and they've got nothing to do with the whole thing.

I get it, they want to keep the attention on the issue, but why target William and Kate? Not like they can do some sort of royal decree or some such thing. Not that we'd obey it anyhow.

[Descan]

Frankly, they should probably fire the whole American police force and just hire military veterans. At least they have training and restraint.

[nenjin]

I suppose if the royals are getting a nice little tour of America, they should get a look at what it's currently feeling like too.

In all seriousness though, it's such a bad idea. If it gets violent shit gets a little too real.

[Phmcw]

And it's not wildly premature to fire a 20 year veteran exercising police discretion, without the results of a full investigation?

This! Also, is the "procedure" really to scream "get on the ground" the to taze the fuck out of peoples if they don't comply?

If so can I come work in the US? I'm a sysadmin, but using the same standards I'll reboot any malfunctionning server once and then trow it out and buy a new one if that fail.
I'll also expect to report myself those expenses and no one else to put his nose in my reporting, just like the police. For my performance report I've got two experts, me and my pal. Is that ok?
All that troubleeshooting, and configuration nonsense...

[smjjames]

I suppose if the royals are getting a nice little tour of America, they should get a look at what it's currently feeling like too.

In all seriousness though, it's such a bad idea. If it gets violent shit gets a little too real.

True, though it just feels like they're trying to get William and Kate to do something about it with their influence.

And it's not wildly premature to fire a 20 year veteran exercising police discretion, without the results of a full investigation?

This! Also, is the "procedure" really to scream "get on the ground" the to taze the fuck out of peoples if they don't comply?

If so can I come work in the US? I'm a sysadmin, but using the same standards I'll reboot any malfunctionning server once and then trow it out and buy a new one if that fail.
I'll also expect to report myself those expenses and no one else to put his nose in my reporting, just like the police. For my performance report I've got two experts, me and my pal. Is that ok?
All that troubleeshooting, and configuration nonsense...

Um, do you have a different analogy? That one kind of went over my head due to me not being a sysadmin.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If they don't want to deal with protestors they can just not come. We will hardly lose anything if we aren't visited by foreign royalty.

[nenjin]

I suppose if the royals are getting a nice little tour of America, they should get a look at what it's currently feeling like too.

In all seriousness though, it's such a bad idea. If it gets violent shit gets a little too real.

True, though it just feels like they're trying to get William and Kate to do something about it with their influence.

That's not how it really works. They aren't going to be like "Excuse me, Mr. Obama? Do you think you could kindly have your bobbies stop beating up on those African chaps? Capital, thanks. Love the blouse Mrs. Obama."

Since Ferguson it's been said the police violence here is getting the world's attention. I don't know if that's really true, I haven't looked into it. But the protestors certainly want that. Publicly embarrassing your government, and by extension, your country in front of foreign dignitaries by sticking our social issues directly in their faces is a great way to get someone to do something, anything, so you.

My guess is security will be so tight a large protest won't get within a mile of wherever they are.

[Rolan7]

Certain communities have a lot of overt criminality.  These same communities tend to be racially homogenous.  Look at this cultural gem which is still sung by kids to this day, here in North Carolina (the song is about nearby Tennessee)

Once two strangers climbed on Rocky Top,
Lookin' for a moonshine still.
Strangers ain't come back from Rocky Top,
Guess they never will.

Dead DEA investigators, wooo.

What do you have against the Osbourne Brothers?  This is a really strange non-sequitur.

The song supports my point that some communities are locked in a cycle of animosity with the police.  This tends to happen with poor, culturally homogenous communities.  Like mountain moonshiners who murder DEA agents, I thought that was obvious.

I was trying to dig up statistics to confirm or deny these constant (unsupported) accusations of racial bias, but I'm at my wit's end.  The problem is covered well in this fine CNN article:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/02/politics/kristoff-oreilly-police-shooting-numbers-fact-check/

Basically, the departments are self-reporting if at all.  That's crazy and should be fixed.  I think this has already come up in the thread, but it bears reiterating.

Even if we use O'Reilly's bullshit data it's still clear that black people die to police disproportionately.

Yeah, in typical FOX news fashion O'Reilly only quoted part of the data (which is from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention).  In doing so he encourage people to jump to an incorrect conclusion.  Sure ~3x as many whites are shot, when there are about ~5x as many white people.

The ironic part is that the Propublica article did the same thing, to a lesser degree.  Adjusting the numbers per capita was understandable.  Focusing entirely on the young teen demographic was... misleading on their part.  Which is what the FOX soundbite basically pointed out:  The numbers are different outside of the young teen demographic.

At the end of the day, "Black teens are 21 times more likely to get shot dead by police" is just as true as "326 White-Americans and 123 African-Americans were shot dead by police".  They're both technically true, and both lead the reader to make assumptions and jump to certain conclusions.  And they're both based on woefully incomplete data.

I don't understand, what assumptions am I snidely doubling down on?

but it's convenient for you to assume it wasn't.

The implication of that statement on your own beliefs is what I mean.

People are assuming things about these cases which fit their position.  I'm not assuming that, I'm watching people claim stuff when there's nothing to back it up.  Sometimes it turns out to be possible, if remotely.  I just think we should stick to the facts, or make it clear when we're hypothesizing.

This is the relevant section of the article. And it doesn't seem in temporal order in terms of events. But the officer in fact used his taser, in what I'd like to think but don't know is standard procedure: when a suspect and/or POI is trying to flee the scene.

“The other officers started yelling and screaming to get down, Tased him multiple times, and from what we understand (told the university officer) to Tase him again,” Solomon said.

This surprised me...  I didn't read it that way.  I don't think the officer used his taser, I think the other officers tased the suspect and then asked him to do it.  That usage of "again" seems unclear to me.

So it's wildly premature to condemn the other officers, and just wrong to say he was fired for "Not instantly escalating the situation".

And it's not wildly premature to fire a 20 year veteran exercising police discretion, without the results of a full investigation?

Yeah, wouldn't it be weird if they fired him just for that?  Again, they didn't.  We know they didn't.  You keep saying they did, but that is wrong.

Presumably he was fired for walking away from the active scene.  To join the speculation train, the situation would make more sense if he got self-righteous and argumentative.  But we don't know that!  We know very little about the situation, but that isn't stopping anybody.  In fact, I'll keep going!  If I was concerned about fellow cops using excessive force, maybe I wouldn't... leave them alone in the room??  Unless I was so angry I was losing control.

Wow, I see why everyone enjoys making up stuff for their position!  Everything makes sense when fill in the gaps yourself.

But this again goes back to my core complaint with police violence these days: they are more concerned with their own safety than the people they're interacting with, even, apparently, at the non-lethal level. Could they have cleared the weapons to secure the scene? Handcuffed the student for his safety and everyone else's? These are all things that an investigation could suss out. Oh, except the one dissenting officer has already been fired.

Case in point!

How these cops, which tend to be huge guys, can so completely fail to immobilize tiny people without shocking them and beating them, is beyond me. And shit, the vest is meant for bullets but I guarantee you it would take the edge off most body blows. I'm not a cop. I'm just some guy. But I guarantee you I could immobilize most people smaller than me without doing as much harm to them as these cops seem so intent on doing.

Somebody who actually has combat training should be able to do a lot better.

Those huge cops, huh?  Wasn't everyone on Wilson's case for mentioning Brown's size?  Not that Wilson was small, but since we're apparently expecting cops to defuse threats based on body weight.

And just for the record, I've seen a taser get used on someone.  Twice.  One of my friends did it with a buddy to see what it was like.  My friend got back up, shook hands, and tased the buddy back.  It was "like touching an electric fence", which is an experience we have in common.  It's exceedingly unpleasant, but not exactly painful...  Like getting hit with a giant foam hammer and all your muscles cramping.  That was years ago, but my friend offered to do it to me recently...  I should probably take him up on it.

[Frumple]

... and yeah, just for the actually bloody important record, tasing kills and causes pretty vicious injury regularly. There is a freaking reason they're classified as less than lethal instead of non-lethal weapons. They're not casual-ha-ha weapons, they're weapons that can fairly easily end up causing broken bones and outright death.

[smjjames]

... and yeah, just for the actually bloody important record, tasing kills and causes pretty vicious injury regularly. There is a freaking reason they're classified as less than lethal instead of non-lethal weapons. They're not casual-ha-ha weapons, they're weapons that can fairly easily end up causing broken bones and outright death.

I also recall several incidents where the taser apparently caused cardiac arrest.

[Rolan7]

According to Wikipedia:

Between June 2001 and June 2007, there were at least 245 cases of deaths of subjects after having been shocked using Tasers.[91] Of these cases:

    In 7 cases, medical examiners said Tasers were a cause or a contributing factor or could not be ruled out as a cause of death.
    In 16 cases coroners and other officials stated that a Taser was a secondary or contributory factor of death.
    In dozens of cases, coroners cited excited delirium as cause of death. Excited delirium has been questioned as a medical diagnosis.[92]
    Several deaths occurred as a result of injuries sustained in struggles. In a few of these cases head injury due to falling after being shocked contributed to later death. Some police departments, like that of Clearwater, Florida, have tried to eliminate such incidents by prohibiting taser use when the suspect is in danger of falling.[93]

That said, the military doesn't use them in general training.  But citizens are allowed to carry them without any license.

[nenjin]

The article doesn't specify how many officers other than the terminated officer responded. Was it 3? 6? More? The article clearly states it was more than 1. How many cops does it take to subdue a college kid that is guaranteed to weigh a fraction of what they do? 2? 3? 4? Was it reasonable for him to not get involved? Clearly the police department thinks it takes 3 trained cops to tase a skinny kid. (I weighed 150 pounds most of my life, so I know exactly what it would take to put me down.)

For all we know, his "leaving an active scene" was him leaving to call his command and be like "this shit is getting out of hand, what should I do?" Or to report what he'd just seen.

We don't know. The article doesn't specify, and with all the police-related shit going on, that's probably not for a lack of trying. You're simply taking the not-terminated police at their word. I am not. Nowhere does the article specify why he was actually fired. But presumably it was after ~11 months of deliberation, and it's relates to this incident specifically.

So with all due respect

We know they didn't.  You keep saying they did, but that is wrong.

Kindly stop telling me I'm wrong, because _we_ don't _know_ shit.