Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[SalmonGod]

he was fired promptly

Yeah... forgot to mention that one.  They're rarely fired.  Usually when a cop does something bad, they're put on vacation paid leave, pending internal investigation that will swear this good cop did everything by the book "even though the event was tragic and mistakes were made".  Then they wait for the media attention to blow over, before putting them back on the street.  The only time they get punished is when there's at least one riot and sustained legal pressure, and by sustained I mean for years.

[Leafsnail]

I know police have done some nasty things in Britain too, but not nearly in the same league as America, as far as I'm aware.

And there are... many problems with the police here.  Training, cultural divides, corruption, prejudice, vigilantism, and cowardice.

Cowardice:  The whole point of police is to be a group of people that is trained, equipped, and willing to take risks on behalf of the public.  The current trend is to instead put the public at risk for their own safety whenever possible.  I think this is the main reason innocents/minor criminals get shot by police all the damn time.  "The glint of metal from their wedding ring made me suspect for a split second that they might be carrying a weapon!" is not a proper excuse for sudden deadly force.  When they believe that it is, they're making themselves just another danger to innocent people in addition to crime.

Another factor, and I know it's one that isn't going to be popular: guns.  American police are more likely to have a gun, and they know people around them are more likely to have guns so they're going to be more jittery.  You're going to be more scared if you know way more people have the ability to suddenly kill you, and more likely to have the weapon that allows you to translate that into a death.

I already know this will trigger half a dozen responses that the same police officers without guns would instead reflexively gouge people's eyes out or something.

[SalmonGod]

Newly Discovered Homeland Security Files Show Feds Central to Occupy Crackdown

This article appears to be a few months old, but this is the first I've heard of it... and it stands in stark contrast to the one that was extremely widespread more recently about the release of e-mails showing the white house advised to "go easy" on the protestors and arrest as little as possible.  A search for the latter article returns almost exclusively right-wing news sources.

[Korbac]

I know police have done some nasty things in Britain too, but not nearly in the same league as America, as far as I'm aware.

And there are... many problems with the police here.  Training, cultural divides, corruption, prejudice, vigilantism, and cowardice.

Cowardice:  The whole point of police is to be a group of people that is trained, equipped, and willing to take risks on behalf of the public.  The current trend is to instead put the public at risk for their own safety whenever possible.  I think this is the main reason innocents/minor criminals get shot by police all the damn time.  "The glint of metal from their wedding ring made me suspect for a split second that they might be carrying a weapon!" is not a proper excuse for sudden deadly force.  When they believe that it is, they're making themselves just another danger to innocent people in addition to crime.

Another factor, and I know it's one that isn't going to be popular: guns.  American police are more likely to have a gun, and they know people around them are more likely to have guns so they're going to be more jittery.  You're going to be more scared if you know way more people have the ability to suddenly kill you, and more likely to have the weapon that allows you to translate that into a death.

I already know this will trigger half a dozen responses that the same police officers without guns would instead reflexively gouge people's eyes out or something.

I think they may reflexively tazer / bash up a bit with their batons, but I imagine they'd stop before a death. With guns, you shoot once, and often it's too late to stop.

[Scelly9]

I never really understood why they didn't just have the first three bullets in a clip as rubber, unless they knew they where going against armored people, in which case SWAT would probably be called anyway.

[Nadaka]

I never really understood why they didn't just have the first three bullets in a clip as rubber, unless they knew they where going against armored people, in which case SWAT would probably be called anyway.

Because then they would feel like they would feel ok about shoot people more often and with less provocation. And there is no such thing as a non lethal weapon.

[Scelly9]

I never really understood why they didn't just have the first three bullets in a clip as rubber, unless they knew they where going against armored people, in which case SWAT would probably be called anyway.

Because then they would feel like they would feel ok about shoot people more often and with less provocation.

Blurgh, stupid human psychology. Didn't think of that.

And there is no such thing as a non lethal weapon.

Never said there was, however the fact remains rubber is less likely to kill someone than metal.

[SalmonGod]

I dunno… You could enact stricter gun control laws or even a ban.  Police would still want to keep their guns on the grounds that they have to deal with criminals who will have illegal access to guns.  Trigger fingers might ease up a bit, but I bet there would still be plenty of incidents with the justification that they're dealing with criminals who they have to assume could have illegal firearms.  So while I agree in a sense, there's unfortunately no winning that one the way I see it.

There also remains the fact that police still kill people who they know to be unarmed or even completely restrained and defenseless, and they do it with vehicles, batons, tazers, rubber bullets, actively denying medical treatment, and just plain negligence.

[Scelly9]

I dunno… You could enact stricter gun control laws or even a ban.

Good luck with that, at the moment it's legal to build homemade guns, so none of those are registered. To be honest, a shotgun is not a difficult thing to make. Besides, people don't like it when you fuck (obviously) with the constitution.

[SalmonGod]

I think people accepted plenty of constitution fuckery post-911.

I agree with you about gun control, though.  Not likely to happen anytime soon.  That's just how I think it would turn out if some gun control did get pushed through.

[Scelly9]

Oh, right, that. I do hate this country sometimes.

[palsch]

I never really understood why they didn't just have the first three bullets in a clip as rubber, unless they knew they where going against armored people, in which case SWAT would probably be called anyway.

I'm not aware of a less-than-lethal round you can chamber in a regular sidearm without sacrificing pretty much all stopping power. The first priority of a police gun is that whoever you shoot stops moving. There aren't really full power rubber bullets you can load into a gun and have them equally or even nearly as effective at that job as regular rounds. Rubber bullets for crowd control tend to come out of shotgun sized weapons, not 9mm sidearms.

As for British police overreach, excepting about three or four unjustified or questionable shootings by specialist firearms police (going back to 2005 here), there have been a couple of cases I can think of in recent years.

The first is the weird case of Ian Tomlinson, a man who was pushed over and died during the G20 protests. The officer who pushed him, Simon Harwood, was found not guilty of manslaughter, despite the death being separately ruled unlawful and the officer's behaviour being ruled gross misconduct.

The other, which was viewed as a case of bad optics rather than misconduct or overreach, was the use of mounted police charges as crowd control during the tuition fee protests in 2010 (ground view). Horse charges are seen as a pretty major and violent tool, even if no harm is done. The idea of using those - combined with the heavy handed kettling techniques - against broadly peaceful and calm student protesters pushed the Met to further reform their riot control tactics, resulting in the oddly sensible hands-off approach to the later actual London riots. Then that approach got heavily criticised.

Oh, those riots were partially in response to one of those questionable shootings, but nevermind that.

There have been others, obviously, but those are the highest profile cases where there has been video and widespread attention. I'd note that the UK has far more restrictive laws regarding such video of, say, active court cases, so anything that is currently being prosecuted wouldn't be have any video or other information released until after a verdict to avoid potential prejudice of a jury hearing such a case. Even if such information leaked, publishing or spreading it could be considered contempt of court and be punishable with potential jail time. This has the odd effect of making more marginal but visible cases of misconduct better known than blatant and prosecuted cases, at least before conviction.

[SalmonGod]

There was a spanish protestor, I think it was just last week, killed by a rubber bullet.

[sneakey pete]

It struck me today that the Police system in the US is (as I understand it) quite odd, in that local police forces are all separate entities, compared to say, here in Australia, where there's a police force for each state, the federal police and that's it. Maybe the adhoc approach to policing is the real reason that the USA seems to be having so many more issues?

[ChairmanPoo]

There was a spanish protestor, I think it was just last week, killed by a rubber bullet.

Not last week, it was several months ago back in Catalonia. But yeah, their non-lethalness is dubious, and the police resort to them with abandon