Alton Sterling shooting.

[Swordfish]

15 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

If the cameras keep "falling off" or otherwise "malfunctioning" at very convenient times that will have to happen.

Is there some indication there is no footage?  because that does not jive with the report that I saw.  What I saw the chief saying was that the cameras became dislodged during the struggle, but there is still footage which is under review.

It may be premature to start complaining about this part yet.

 

[Swordfish]

4 hours ago, SkynJay said:

I agree.  At some point the streets started being treated as a war zone.  Some police want to pretend the us vs them attutude is coming from the other side but that isn't how it's playing out.  

Us vs them is probably understandable given the job, particularly in certain aras of the country.

The problem is not so much treating interactions with people under the assumption that they are violent criminals.  He was, after all, a violent criminal, and they were responding to reports that he had threatened someone with a gun.

The issue is that even violent criminals do not deserve to be summarily executed by the police, even if they happen to have a gun in their pocket.  Which is what happened here.

[James Arryn]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

That "should" is a tricky thing. Most people will agree that there are instances where a police officer shooting a civilian is justified. However, given the current flood of incidents, I think it is pretty safe to say that police have abused this premise by expanding the set of instances far beyond anyone would find reasonable (e.g. shooting a subdued individual simply because there is a gun in said individual's pocket).

The issue is not gun control, it's the belief that every person in the country could should them. This is a subset of what I meant by the mentality of an occupying force in hostile territory. The US has the most guns per capita of any first world country, but it is not unique in having liberal gun laws. For example, Switzerland has fairly liberal gun control laws and a fairly high number of guns per capita (even if we exclude the army-issued ones), but I'm pretty confident that I've never seen a Swiss police officer or border guard scared for their lives because Swiss citizens can be carrying guns. The same is true of several other Western countries.

I don't think we can do anything about gun control (see the Second Amendment) and it probably would not help. What we can do is attempt to demilitarize the police and remove the harmful mentality. The first step was initiated last year: we need the military to stop sending them equipment. The next step is teaching them that their lives are not more important than the lives of people in the communities they patrol. This means that police officers who act like the ones in the video have to go to prison. They'll be much less trigger happy if they know that going too far leads to second degree murder conviction.

If you dismiss the militia guns...which aren't issued with ammunition when private...the Swiss/100 rate is between 1/4 and 1/5 of the U.S.A. And if you only include guns designed for hunting humans, it skyrockets from there. A lot of rural areas have hunting rifles, but handguns and a/var-auto weapons is almost exclusively an American fetish among developed countries.

 

There's a connection, we can keep acting like number one in guns (by far) and number and be in gun violence (by far) is some kind of weird coincidence, but I think it's nutty. Anyways, here's me going back on my resolution to not talk too much about guns in this latest gun related death thread.

[Dr. Pepper]

Can anyone with law enforcement experience or knowledge address why Diamond Reynolds was made to get out of the car with several automatic weapons aimed on her?  I recall seeing a similar scenario once before, where the passenger who didn't do anything had several guns trained on them as though they were presumed to be wearing a suicide vest or something.  I'm going to pretend that the cops who had just arrived on scene had cause to be concerned about safety, but ffs, why wouldn't one single handgun have been enough?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Can anyone with law enforcement experience or knowledge address why Diamond Reynolds was made to get out of the car with several automatic weapons aimed on her?  I recall seeing a similar scenario once before, where the passenger who didn't do anything had several guns trained on them as though they were presumed to be wearing a suicide vest or something.  I'm going to pretend that the cops who had just arrived on scene had cause to be concerned about safety, but ffs, why wouldn't one single handgun have been enough?

Best guess is because there was still a gun in the car. But that shooting is also completely messed up. 

[Altherion]

15 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

If you dismiss the militia guns...which aren't issued with ammunition when private...the Swiss/100 rate is between 1/4 and 1/5 of the U.S.A. And if you only include guns designed for hunting humans, it skyrockets from there. A lot of rural areas have hunting rifles, but handguns and a/var-auto weapons is almost exclusively an American fetish among developed countries.

Here's an article with a list of countries (it's near the end) with both the guns per capita and killing by police per capita over a decade. Yes, the US has more guns, but not that much more. Also, the large number of guns in the US is somewhat misleading: it's not that everyone in the US owns a gun, but many of the people who do own guns own more than one. In a way, this is the flip side of the police as occupying force mentality: in certain regions, few people trust the police.

[Swordfish]

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

Here's an article with a list of countries (it's near the end) with both the guns per capita and killing by police per capita over a decade. Yes, the US has more guns, but not that much more. Also, the large number of guns in the US is somewhat misleading: it's not that everyone in the US owns a gun, but many of the people who do own guns own more than one. In a way, this is the flip side of the police as occupying force mentality: in certain regions, few people trust the police.

Yep.  And rightfully so.

And let's face it, police brutality, particularly toward minorities, is hardly something new.

[James Arryn]

16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Here's an article with a list of countries (it's near the end) with both the guns per capita and killing by police per capita over a decade. Yes, the US has more guns, but not that much more. Also, the large number of guns in the US is somewhat misleading: it's not that everyone in the US owns a gun, but many of the people who do own guns own more than one. In a way, this is the flip side of the police as occupying force mentality: in certain regions, few people trust the police.

Edit: i'm rewinding. I really didn't mean to discuss this here. Apologies.

[all swedes are racist]

2 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Can anyone with law enforcement experience or knowledge address why Diamond Reynolds was made to get out of the car with several automatic weapons aimed on her?  I recall seeing a similar scenario once before, where the passenger who didn't do anything had several guns trained on them as though they were presumed to be wearing a suicide vest or something.  I'm going to pretend that the cops who had just arrived on scene had cause to be concerned about safety, but ffs, why wouldn't one single handgun have been enough?

Im guessing because she was filming?

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, R'hllors Red Lobster said:

Im guessing because she was filming?

When there is a shooting, it is standard practice to have everyone out where they can be seen and be put into a place that is less dangerous. Police are taught that people in a car are much more dangerous - concealed weapons, they could start the car and start a chase or hit someone with it, etc. 

As paradoxical as it sounds, this would be considered de-escalating the situation. 

Her filming it likely had nothing to do with it. 

[Altherion]

I can understand having her get out of the car, but I think the question was why it was necessary to point so many guns at her.

[Dr. Pepper]

Yup, definitely the number of guns is what I'm questioning.  Though I'm also curious about the reason for handcuffing her.  With that many cops on the scene, they could have easily had one of them questioning her immediately instead of stuff her into a squad car in handcuffs with her daughter.  I assume it's probably because they all wanted to have a chance to work the scene where their colleague just murdered someone, maybe not realizing that she'd been recording the whole time, but I'm open for a more optimistic take.

[Kalbear]

32 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I can understand having her get out of the car, but I think the question was why it was necessary to point so many guns at her.

Because there was a gun in the car, and someone had been shot. Force had been escalated at that point. When you draw your firearm I believe it's standard policy to keep it trained until the entire situation has been completely de-escalated - which means everyone is now considered not able to cause harm, IE handcuffs. 

I agree that it looks incredibly scary and dangerous, and it is - but I also believe that this was entirely the standard procedure followed. This is what I believe police are trained to do typically. 

I also have no idea why she would be handcuffed and taken away. Then again, I have no idea why Phil was shot.

[all swedes are racist]

Make sense... thank god good practice and proper training kicked in before someone got hurt

[sperry]

Another thing to look at is how do you increase the quality of people on the police force.

Because right now you have a low paying job, that requires low qualifications, that puts you in shitty situations dealing with often shitty people, and people basically never want to see you because you're either about to get them in trouble, or because something shitty just happened to them. It shouldn't be surprising then when our best and brightest aren't the ones facing the difficult situations that police officers are often put into. You can end up with a bunch of bullies and burnouts that way.

[James Arryn]

37 minutes ago, sperry said:

Another thing to look at is how do you increase the quality of people on the police force.

Because right now you have a low paying job, that requires low qualifications, that puts you in shitty situations dealing with often shitty people, and people basically never want to see you because you're either about to get them in trouble, or because something shitty just happened to them. It shouldn't be surprising then when our best and brightest aren't the ones facing the difficult situations that police officers are often put into. You can end up with a bunch of bullies and burnouts that way.

I've long believed that teachers and cops deserve more pay coupled with higher standards. One changes lives (for better or worse, I want to invest in better) and the other saves them (or not) and I'd prefer they do.

Additionally, for the police, I would actually lower entry level salary and add an extend training year at entry level pay some of which would be interning on the job, but at a steeper escalation once passing X years, high ratings,etc.

For teachers I would invest more heavily into teaching technology, increase class numbers (wait, I know) but always include student teaching length and volume to help with the tech and typical issues behavioural load, leaving the teacher to concentrate on subject and behavioural issues he/she has identified as more serious. 

For both professions I would offer attractive early retirement packages, or decent funding and transition support structure for academic/training for second careers.

Long explanation: burnt out cops and teachers often do much, much more damage than good.

Cops are burned out in part because the money was pretty good coming out of school, but only increased marginally over time, with a low degree of real advancement offered and therefore with only their pensions at the end of the tunnel as motivation to stay on the job.

Teachers are burned out by high volume/ratio of day to day behavioural issues, increasing tech requirements they may not have the skills for and again sense that advancement options are limited, and burnt out teachers hang on to the bitter end for pension and summers off.

Fallibg asleep writing this, not sure making sense.

[sperry]

Just now, James Arryn said:

I've long believed that teachers and cops deserve more pay coupled with higher standards. One changes lives (for better or worse, I want to invest in better) and the other saves them.

 

Plus, people like and respect teachers. I would guess police approval rates are up there with Bush 2nd term approval ratings. While police do save lives, very few people have had their lives saved by a police officer. Most people have gotten questionable speeding tickets, driven through speed trap towns, and had a car break in or similar where the cops basically tell you tough shit. And that's not even getting started with minorities who feel they are victims of racial profiling and/or racially motivated violence.

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, sperry said:

Another thing to look at is how do you increase the quality of people on the police force.

Because right now you have a low paying job, that requires low qualifications, that puts you in shitty situations dealing with often shitty people, and people basically never want to see you because you're either about to get them in trouble, or because something shitty just happened to them. It shouldn't be surprising then when our best and brightest aren't the ones facing the difficult situations that police officers are often put into. You can end up with a bunch of bullies and burnouts that way.

Eh. Much like teaching, being police attracts certain kinds of people - not people looking for a paycheck or because of low qualifications. It's pretty difficult to go through the training, and they do tend to weed out people beforehand. Security guards definitely this is true - but police are a bit different.

That said, who tends to go for police jobs are either those who genuinely want to serve and protect the community and hold police as a good sign of things (often relatives of police do this) - or people who want to exercise power. The latter are problematic. 

But really, the problem isn't that police are incompetent. In neither of the shootings in the last 24 hours would I look at that and say that the police were acting incompetently as far as their training or behavior. They were quite well-trained and acted in a way that was fairly common. The problem is that their training dictated that they saw Alton and Phil as threats that should be considered deadly. They saw two black men, both of whom they considered armed, and believed they represented the maximum possible threat to their safety. Because that was what they've been taught to do. 

I don't think for a second that the police involved are particularly racist in thought, at least no more than any generic white man in the US. I think that they've been taught that black people are the enemy, that they are a threat, and that they are fundamentally scared. And they've also been taught that it is perfectly acceptable for them to end the life of a black person if they believe they are threatened. 

[Boris the Blade]

Shooting in Dallas at the BLM protest. 2 cops and a protester shot by a sniper apparently.

[all swedes are racist]

Holy shit. 

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Protests-in-Dallas-Over-Alton-Sterling-Death-385784431.html

some video with many shots audible... Stay safe Dallas folks...