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[Playergamer]

So long as we're discussing impossible solutions, why not just take away everyone's guns?

I think it would be easier to amputate everyone's trigger fingers. You can't hide a stash of those in the woods.

fun fact: it's commonly believed that captured english and welsh bowmen had their index and middle fingers cut off, and that's the origin of the v for victory sign.

second fun fact: that's almost certainly bullshit, because common bowmen were almost always executed, not ransomed.

[RedKing]

Literally all the finger gestures are rumored to have started with English bowmen. Seriously.

Well, that's to be expected since they had 43 fingers on each hand, and half of those were katanas.

[Xantalos]

Literally all the finger gestures are rumored to have started with English bowmen. Seriously.

Well, that's to be expected since they had 43 fingers on each hand, and half of those were katanas.

So one of their fingers was half katana?

[Il Palazzo]

Literally all the finger gestures are rumored to have started with English bowmen. Seriously.

Well, that's to be expected since they had 43 fingers on each hand, and half of those were katanas.

English katanas can't cut the Frenchman's armour!

[Max™]

So long as we're discussing impossible solutions, why not just take away everyone's guns?

I think it would be easier to amputate everyone's trigger fingers. You can't hide a stash of those in the woods.

Says you, but I got a whole pile... wait, that could be incriminating huh?

[Sheb]

Literally all the finger gestures are rumored to have started with English bowmen. Seriously.

Well, that's to be expected since they had 43 fingers on each hand, and half of those were katanas.

So one of their fingers was half katana?

No, half of the hands were katanas. With 43 fingers on the blade, shooting winged hussars.

[SalmonGod]

/drunk
My experience is, on three occasions, planting my hands on the wheel in plain view and waiting for instructions.
My family I just visited was all "NO NO state everything as a question", because they're libertarians.  And maybe they're right.

I'm just saying I wouldn't reach for my fucking pocket-wallet without prompt.  I haven't looked into the most recent incident fully, but I've been consistently disappointed from a family bias of "govt iz ebil". I've been pulled over 3 times and I didn't reach for shit until directed.  It's not that fucking hard.

Pretend for a fucking second that you're the policeperson, and that there's a 1/100 chance the person you pulled over is a desperate felon.  And they suddenly reach for a pocket.

It's not that hard.  Just act slowly, and obviously.
They have lives too, and I think 90% of the cases I've seen *posted here* would have been fine if the suspects were like me.  Scared (yeah, it's scary!), and acted slowly and deliberately.  Just be careful and slow.

I'm really, really, really sick of seeing this sentiment.  It's such a lopsided perspective that it just blows my mind.  RedKing's protest meme quote responds to it pretty well.

We live in a society where trained, armed police officers can panic and make snap judgements, but untrained civilians are expected to remain perfectly calm with a gun in their face.

I'll just add to it that if an officer is justified in killing anyone they interact with who in any way does something that could be slightly construed as possibly making them uncomfortable for a split second then we are massively better off without police officers.  Law enforcement workers are supposed to be people who literally signed themselves up for the task of putting themselves in dangerous situations, with training and equipment.  If the outcome in reality is that police officers are the dangerous situation intruding to the lives of everyone else that didn't sign up for it, then they're exactly the opposite of what they're supposed to be.  This means the system is in need of either drastic overhaul or abolishment.

[SalmonGod]

In the same spirit as the viral protester sign, I encountered a poignant headline.  The article doesn't say anything new, but I was struck by what a strong statement the headline makes on its own.

Civilians shouldn't have to de-escalate police.

[Zangi]

In mother russiaMurica, it is police who panics.

[smjjames]

After looking at this: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/17/15985442/minneapolis-police-shooting-justine-damond-video I had a thought, what about a program that is kind of like a student exchange? Before non-US Bay12ers start objecting to having American cops walking around, the idea is basically like this: Have various cops volunteer (they have to want to do it) to go abroad for maybe a month and work with them and see how they do it without violence there while cops (again, volunteers) go over here and show how they do it, or get insight into the problems (fresh eyes, so to speak).

Obviously it wouldn't be a silver bullet of a solution and there would certainly be obstacles, the basic idea is to have police departments try to learn from departments abroad about how they deal with such things.

[Neonivek]

The big issue is that things are being presented in one direction but there are two (not here but... outside of here)

We should be protected from the abuse of police.

The police should be protected from the abuse of people.

I can fully understand why the police are so resistant to get body cams, because people will use it as fishing expeditions and we put so many standards on a cop that it might put a good cop in trouble.

Which is why I think perhaps if we do get Body Cams that we give it the same standards we have with normal cams which is that they cannot be used for fishing, that they need a warrant to access, and even with a warrant it isn't for the public to view but a independent party or special task force. ANY change to how we treat the police should include provisions for how the police are likewise protected from its abuse.

Which don't get me wrong police are TERRIFYING and often it seems that they are overly protected, as someone said "It shouldn't be a civilian's job to de-escalate the police". Only that the vilifying of the police pretty much justifies the resistance against these changes. When police officers are refused entry in a parade because it demeans lives, I wouldn't trust those same people to handle those laws.

Sorry I guess I am off topic, but I just wanted to say something about it. The excessive anti-police message outside this forum is dreadful and counter productive.

[Descan]

I'm only going to say this once.

Police officers are not denied entry to [queer] parades.

The individual officer is completely allowed to come; just not in uniform or in his/her capacity as an officer, nor do they want the police precincts to participate with their own police-theme floats.

It's barring the *institution* from the parade, not the people. And it's not like police precincts are corporations, either :V

[Baffler]

That's ridiculous though. You can't just not have police presence at a parade of any description. You're holding an event that draws a crowd, making special use of public roads, and demonstrating over a controversial political issue (often by doing things that would get you jailed for public indecency on a normal day.) Any of those alone would warrant police presence. It's not like they're there to oppress the parade or something; they need to be there for crowd and traffic control, to deal with the thieves that always turn out to events like that, and to handle the quite real possibility that someone takes issue and tries something.

[Cthulhu]

I'm only going to say this once.

Police officers are not denied entry to [queer] parades.

The individual officer is completely allowed to come; just not in uniform or in his/her capacity as an officer, nor do they want the police precincts to participate with their own police-theme floats.

It's barring the *institution* from the parade, not the people. And it's not like police precincts are corporations, either :V

You don't have any capacity to bar the monopoly on legitimate violence from any space.  Even putting aside the obvious reasons you would need police presence, from a basic philosophical standpoint you have no leverage to make a statement like that.  The police will go where they want.

Also suggesting that the culture of mutual fear and hostility between the police and the public is an apparatus meant to keep the means of violence out of the hands of the proletariat got me banned from /r/latestagecapitalism.  Tankies do the darnedest things.

[Sheb]

That's ridiculous though. You can't just not have police presence at a parade of any description. You're holding an event that draws a crowd, making special use of public roads, and demonstrating over a controversial political issue (often by doing things that would get you jailed for public indecency on a normal day.) Any of those alone would warrant police presence. It's not like they're there to oppress the parade or something; they need to be there for crowd and traffic control, to deal with the thieves that always turn out to events like that, and to handle the quite real possibility that someone takes issue and tries something.

You can have police providing security to the parade without having police (or precincts) participating in the parade. I think both are misadvised mind you, but they are different things.